The ARES Commander 2016 for Mac user-inteface (UI) embodies the older AutoCAD format UI prior to the advent and use of the Microsoft Ribbon-Style UI common now across many Windows-based CAD programs. In the later years of the last decade, and prior to Autodesk releasing the Mac version of AutoCAD, Graebert begun discussions with key industry licensees, including Corel Corporation of Canada and Dassault Systèmes of France.Īs such, today’s CorelCAD and DraftSight (from Corel and Dassault, respectively) are OEM-based versions of ARES Commander, with minor developer modifications to reflect, and relate to, those two company’s product lines and missions.
“ARES Commander,” the latest version being 2016, is the name given to Graebert’s own international product offering however, the company packages this entire CAD application and code base and licenses it to OEM’s (original equipment manufacturers) in the CAD industry. For those interested in Graebert more densely, we have a feature on the Annual Meeting event from Berlin. In fact, ARES Commander was the first CAD tool utilizing the DWG libraries from the Open Design Alliance (ODA) that used the format (.dwg) as its native file format, without any conversion layer. FelixCAD was not DWG based, nor was it aimed at being like AutoCAD. In 2010 the company spawned the ARES era with a brand new CAD engine behind it.² And yes, it is DWG native. In the early 1990’s Graebert developed its own CAD software, called FelixCAD (later rebranded PowerCAD, not to be confused with the Mac-only PowerCADD). The user-interface is fully OS X native and there are ways to customize it.
Graebert has been in the business of selling and supporting CAD for over 30 years and was a valuable Autodesk reseller in Germany, helping to spread AutoCAD throughout German industry.Ġ1 – Graebert ARES Commander 2016 shown here on Mac OS X.
) He gave me a brief run-down on the company’s history.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and talking to Graebert’s CEO and founder, Wilfried Graebert, when I was at the Graebert Annual Meeting event back in October, (see, Architosh, “Graebert Annual Meeting-ARES Breaks Down Walls in CAD,”. This means too, that in future AutoCAD on Mac reviews we will make comparisons to the DWG competitors or what some others have called clones of AutoCAD.¹ Thus, the reader will find comparative commentary on ARES 2016 at the end of this review. At the very least, it is helpful to relate these products to each other because they are remarkably similar. However, the decision has been made to treat products like ARES Commander as members of a unique “group,” along with AutoCAD itself, and thus do make key distinctions and comparisons inside of reviews of these products. There is enough banter on the internet coming out of product-centric blogs, product fan sites, et cetera, and we need not go there. We have done this deliberately to focus reader attention on what a product’s features do, are capable of, and not to enter the nebulous area of making superior/inferior distinctions between rival products. The complete review will walk the reader through some history, product introduction, basic orientation and learning, new features in version 2016, and finally comparative information as it relates to Autodesk’s AutoCAD itself.Īstute readers will note that Architosh has a longstanding tradition of deliberately not discussing much if anything about competitor products inside of product reviews. This is the first time Architosh has reviewed the ARES Commander product and as such the review will include our customary, though small, sections that help introduce and orient the reader to the use of the product. Recently Germany’s Graebert GmbH has released the latest version of its flagship CAD product, ARES Commander 2016, a true DWG file-based 2/3D CAD system that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems.