MickD: I do in fact have justification for my critique of BricsCAD. And I've described such critiques objectively. I feel like 1) You are being a little hypocritical (if you disagree, perhaps consider re-reading some of your own posts, especially regarding costing), and 2) Much of your critique indicates that you might not be reading my entire posts; you've asked a few questions in your last post that are answered clearly in my previous post. Furthermore, I sense that you have a conflict of interest; perhaps you're a re-seller? If that's the case, you should make such conflict of interest(s) clear. If you are a reseller, you're likely hurting your sales more than helping them. A good reseller makes people WANT to use their software.
You claim that I make statements that are vague/unclear (along those lines not worded exactly like that), but then in the same post you make very subjective arguments that are sometimes even misleading. This is very hypocritical. One statement you make is that "The Platinum version" (of BricsCAD) "is cheaper than AutoCAD LT". This is only true if certain conditions exist. And unfortunately, since you've dodged the topic of maintenance fees (or maybe you have no clue how much they are, just like me), we cannot say which product is cheaper with any certainty whatsoever. A 1-year subscription to AutoCAD LT is about half the cost of a 1-year subscription to BricsCAD Platinum. Somewhere during year 4 is when an AutoCAD LT subscription would become more expense than the Platimum's perpetual license. The wildcard here is the maintenance fees. Simply making the statement in your previous post about the cost of AutoCAD LT vs BricsCAD Platinum is misleading. I also objectively framed my 'pricing' argument in my previous post which you've accidentally missed I see.
To bury this topic I'm going to list the main things that deterred me from using BricsCAD:
The Parametric Block System Sucks (like really bad): I found some videos on YouTube 'demonstrating' BricsCAD's parametric block system, only to find out, after hours of wasted time, that this wasn't actually live workflow (this seemed dishonest to me). The parametric block system is decades behind.
The 'BIM' Vertical Feature Falls WAY Short Of What It's Marketed To Do: The 'BIM' version of the program feels totally commercially un-viable. Nothing on the internet indicates that a complete BIM project has even ever been created with the program. I really really wanted to make this work as I was extremely keen on bringing LISP into the realm of BIM projects. It appears that they are charging thousands of dollars for a program feature that is unproven, when they should really be doing full-scale beta testing. I will not comment on the Mechanical drafting features other that just saying "they look really good"; looks can be deceiving of course.
The Maintenance Costs Aren't Known Upfront: If anyone here is a re-seller and is at liberty to share, or has purchased a 'maintenance package' recently, this would be a very important pricing feature to make clear. This basically tips the scale as to whether or not the software is of better overall value than it's competitors.
Online Learning Resources Are Quite Far Behind Other Programs: Even much smaller software companies have better resources for learning the software. BricsCAD could improve so much in this area. It took A LOT of effort to discover my first point about the
When The Software Does Have Shortcomings, Many People Won't Admit it/They'll Beat Around the Bush And Dodge The Topic: It took A LOT of time and effort to find out that BricsCAD's parametric block system was what it was. This was due to the aforementioned youTube videos among other things. Every program has it's faults/shortcomings. The sooner people accept/admit that a program might be behind in a certain area, the sooner they can get to work on a fix/workaround.
Staying With Native 'DWG' File Formatting May Actually Be Hurting Them: All a program needs to be able to do is to 'export' a dwg. Nobody is looking for BIM in an exported DWG file. DWG's where first used in the early 1980's. Exchange between BIM programs is usually achieved with an 'IFC' model but also there are probably many other file formats.
BricsCAD used to have much more favorable pricing back when it focused on being a simple 'not AutoCAD' CAD program. To me it seems like Bricsys has veered their efforts towards supplying software tailored to large mechanical engineering firms (this is NOT a critique, but rather just an observation based on where it looks like their focus is, and their client base).
If any resellers or stakeholders are reading the debate between myself and MickD, I can say for certain that this is not how you market a software program. I would love to see stronger market competition in the CAD software business. I do believe with some adjustments in direction and marketing strategies, BricsCAD could become a much stronger competitor (although this might not be as profitable as their current direction, see paragraph above). A big different I'm seeing between the 'BricsCAD' community and other software program communities is that the other communities identify problems (not deny them) and get to work on a solution/workaround. Or worse case simple say "the software can't do that unfortunately". A user (or potential user) can then make a judgement call as to whether or not the software is for them, rather than wasting their time with unclear, subjective statements. I'll end this paragraph by stating again to potential resellers/stake-holders: This is not the way to market a software program. Even though I found BricsCAD to be"not for myself" I actually feel like I could market it better than much of what I'm seeing here.
Re: Rhino3D is a viable BIM alternative with some additional plugins; Even Trimble Sketchup is a viable BIM alternative. Whether these qualify as full BIM is another discussion altogether (and this varies depending on how far down the plugin rabbit hole one goes). There are firms successfully using both programs to create fully documented drawing sets (most likely combined with a 2D CAD program however).