2025-09-02

2024-10-23

We at ELPROCAD have pre­vi­ous­ly used BricsCAD as our main CAD pro­gram, but now we see the need to devel­op a ver­sion that also sup­ports an IntelliCAD-based prod­uct. We are doing this to meet the changes in the pric­ing of BricsCAD and to be able to offer our cus­tomers a more afford­able alternative.

We are cur­rent­ly eval­u­at­ing three dif­fer­ent IntelliCAD alter­na­tives, focus­ing on DWG com­pat­i­bil­i­ty, per­for­mance, smooth inte­gra­tion with our fea­tures, easy license man­age­ment and com­pli­ance with GDPR require­ments. The new IntelliCAD ver­sion will be test­ed over the next two to three years and then offered free of charge to our cus­tomers with Service Agreements for ELPROCAD ic. Customers with per­ma­nent BricsCAD licens­es will be able to choose to con­tin­ue with BricsCAD or switch to our new IntelliCAD-based program.

Once the new IntelliCAD-based option is in place, we will be able to offer three dif­fer­ent licens­ing options:

1. ELPROCAD ic – IntelliCAD-based, with a low­er price for new licenses.
2. ELPROCAD bc – BricsCAD-based, where cus­tomers can expect annu­al price increases.
3. ELPROCAD ac – AutoCAD-based, with the same pric­ing struc­ture as our cur­rent ELPROCAD xt.

This way we can con­tin­ue to offer flex­i­ble and afford­able solu­tions for our customers.

Customers who do not want to use the new IntelliCAD-based CAD pro­gram can choose to switch to ELPROCAD bc, where BricsCAD will con­tin­ue to be the CAD pro­gram. Please let us know in advance (con­tract renew­al) if you want to con­vert to ELPROCAD bc, oth­er­wise you will keep your cur­rent ELPROCAD ic contract.

2024-06-26

(Edited 2025-09-02)

Around the turn of the mil­len­ni­um, when the ELPROCAD ic prod­uct was first intro­duced to the mar­ket, it only sup­port­ed AutoCAD® as a CAD pro­gram. The orig­i­nal mean­ing of “ic” in ELPROCAD ic was “IntelliCAD” – a con­sor­tium of com­pa­nies with a deep part­ner­ship with the “Open Design Alliance” (which includes Bricsys/BricsCAD among oth­ers) regard­ing tech­nol­o­gy for han­dling the DWG for­mat. In the end, BricsCAD was cho­sen as the CAD pro­gram in ELPROCAD ic, and thus it took on the mean­ing “Integrated CAD”.

Over time, the devel­op­ment of BricsCAD has pro­gressed rapid­ly, but not always in areas that are impor­tant for ELPROCAD. BricsCAD is still a very com­pet­i­tive and afford­able alter­na­tive com­pared to AutoCAD®, but as the price pic­ture has changed sig­nif­i­cant­ly, we are find­ing it dif­fi­cult to offer our entire intend­ed cus­tomer seg­ment an afford­able and sim­ple CAD tool. Therefore, we believe that the time is ripe to devel­op an ELPROCAD ic ver­sion that also sup­ports an IntelliCAD-based prod­uct over the next few years.

Currently, we are eval­u­at­ing three dif­fer­ent IntelliCAD-based alter­na­tives, each with its own advan­tages and dis­ad­van­tages. The idea is to choose the option that works best with ELPROCAD both now and in the future. The focus will be on:

• Full com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with cur­rent DWG draw­ings and projects
• Speed and tech­ni­cal advantages
• Smooth inte­gra­tion with ELPROCAD functions
• Simple and easy-to-manage license handling
• European man­u­fac­tur­er (in terms of per­son­al data protection/EU GDPR Compliance)
• Minimal change in the user interface
• Expected future high price stability

The new IntelliCAD-based prod­uct will then be inte­grat­ed and test­ed over a 2‑year peri­od, after which it will be pur­chased and dis­trib­uted to cus­tomers with Service Agreements for ELPROCAD ic with­in the frame­work of the cur­rent Service Agreement at no addi­tion­al cost.

Over the next two to three years, we will release new ver­sions of ELPROCAD ic that are still based on BricsCAD. The new IntelliCAD ver­sion will first be test­ed by a small num­ber of pilot cus­tomers. When the new IntelliCAD ver­sion is avail­able to all cus­tomers with Service Agreements, they will be able to choose between con­tin­u­ing to use BricsCAD V25 as before or start­ing to use our new IntelliCAD-based CAD program.

When the new IntelliCAD ver­sion becomes avail­able, new ELPROCAD licens­es will thus be sold and rent­ed in three dif­fer­ent variants:

• ELPROCAD ic — IntelliCAD-based (also BricsCAD V25 for owned licens­es) with a low­er price pic­ture com­pared to the cur­rent ELPROCAD ic for new pur­chase and rental licens­es. We expect to be able to sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduce the price of new net­work licens­es with­in a few years com­pared to cur­rent new prices.Our goal is that the price of the Service Agreement for ELPROCAD ic will not increase over a 5‑year peri­od (from 2025 – 2030).
• ELPROCAD bc – BricsCAD-based ver­sion with a price pic­ture on new licens­es just like the cur­rent ELPROCAD ic prices.Customers with ELPROCAD bc Service Agreements for BricsCAD should bud­get for price increas­es that fol­low Bricsys’s annu­al price changes. Last year, Bricsys increased the prices of net­work prod­ucts by 33% com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year, which led to price increas­es for ELPROCAD ic last year.
• ELPROCAD ac – AutoCAD-based CAD pro­gram with the exact same price pic­ture as the cur­rent ELPROCAD xt on new licenses.Customers with Service Agreements for ELPROCAD xt for AutoCAD will not be sig­nif­i­cant­ly affect­ed by these changes, except that the prod­uct will be renamed to “ELPROCAD ac” in about two years.

We believe that our new IntelliCAD-based ver­sion will take the next step in inte­grat­ing even clos­er with the ELPROCAD appli­ca­tion, lead­ing to major sim­pli­fi­ca­tions and improve­ments regard­ing updates and license con­ver­sions, and being able to main­tain the rel­a­tive­ly low price picture.

New Versions of ELPROCAD in Progress

We also have a lot in progress, such as a new ELPROCAD ver­sion with a redesigned user inter­face, sup­port for BricsCAD V23, and excit­ing new doc­u­ment man­age­ment fea­tures (DMS) with sup­port for Microsoft Sharepoint® and Autodesk Vault®. We have also man­aged to recruit new com­pe­tent staff work­ing on sys­tem devel­op­ment, require­ments spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and prod­uct doc­u­men­ta­tion. In con­nec­tion with this, the devel­op­ment team has been gath­ered in its own com­pa­ny: ELPROCAD AB, which man­u­fac­tures the soft­ware that PROCAD Systems AB then dis­trib­utes and sells both direct­ly and in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er resellers.

If you have ques­tions about these excit­ing changes, feel free to con­tact us at info@elprocad.com or call me at +46 – 21-81 60 01 to book a Teams meeting.

We will release more details and a link to an FAQ with answers to com­mon ques­tions in the fall before the con­tract renewals start­ing in Q4 this year.

Rickard Jonsson

VD, PROCAD Systems AB