Scottsdale, Arizona-based Open Design Alliance (ODA) was founded in 1998 to provide the engineering industry with a standard solution for .dwg interoperability. They are a non-profit technology consortium of more than 1,200 global companies where members share the cost of development for complex projects by developing solutions for far less money than any single company could do alone. While many of ODA’s members are competitors, they all agree to come together and develop key technologies for the engineering industry. As a non-profit, they’re able to offer their suite of products at an affordable price all the while benefiting the industry as a whole. 

How ODA Works

ODA builds programming toolkits for people who work with complex engineering data. Their tools provide a high-quality, cost-effective means for accessing, visualizing and manipulating engineering design data, with particular focus on architectural engineering and construction.

To understand what ODA does, consider a large engineering project such as the construction of a high-rise office building. The design work for this type of project is commonly done in an application such as Autodesk® Revit®, yielding a computer model of the building. A wide range of stakeholders require access to this computer model, but most of these stakeholders won’t be doing design work, rather they just need to do things like visualize the model or extract data from it. Revit itself can of course do these things, but Revit is a sophisticated design application that runs only on Windows, and it’s expensive, so it’s not the right tool for someone who needs to, for example, review the building model on a tablet at a construction site.

ODA software allows anyone to create applications that access and work with Revit models, on any platform, using a wide range of programming languages. It is a cost-effective solution that allows people to build economical and efficient processes around any type of engineering project.

ODA Offerings

ODA’s “Drawings SDK” is the industry’s leading technology for working with .dwg files.  Used by hundreds of companies in thousands of applications, the .dwg format was originally developed as the proprietary file format of Autodesk® AutoCAD® in the early 1980’s. Thanks to the work of ODA, seamless .dwg interoperability has become ubiquitous within the industry and is as popular as ever with billions of files in existence.

ODA’s success with .dwg has allowed them to increase the breadth and depth of their product line, to include support for other CAD formats, as well as other technologies. Their guiding principle is to provide common solutions for complex problems within the engineering industry.

In addition to Drawings SDK, ODA currently offers a suite of products including:

  • BimRv SDK, an interoperability toolkit for Autodesk® Revit® files, is the industry’s first standalone solution for working with .rvt and .rfa files from any application, on any platform.
  • Visualize SDK, the new standard for engineering graphics and professional visualization for desktop, mobile and web, is a new general-purpose toolkit designed for professional engineering applications.
  • Publish SDK, which allows users to publish CAD models to 2D or 3D PDF, is a general-purpose, cross-platform toolkit for creating high-quality PDFs from CAD data.
  • Architecture SDK, a complete solution for architectural design, is a cross-platform toolkit for building .dwg-based architectural design applications. It offers seamless interoperability with Autodesk® Architecture® files.
  • Civil SDK, which provides interoperability for Autodesk® Civil 3D® files and complete access to civil data, is a flexible, cross-platform solution for working with Autodesk® Civil 3D® files from any application.
  • Mechanical SDK, which provides interoperability for Autodesk® Mechanical® files with complete access to mechanical data, is a flexible, cross-platform solution for working with Autodesk® Mechanical® files from any application.

ODA continues to update its portfolio of products, on a monthly basis, with new features as well as new licensing options for its members. Since 2014, ODA regularly improves these basic systems:

  • Increasing test capacity with investment in new hardware, including heavy use of virtualization.
  • Increasing test coverage with aggressive implementation of new tests for correctness, stability, performance and leaks.
  • Improving the quality systems themselves with new features, better reliability and friendlier UI.

ODA has a broad and diverse customer base relying on their featured product lines.  Their clients include companies from all engineering disciplines, as well as companies in manufacturing, pharmaceutical, software and even retail. Notable customers include: Siemens, GE, SolidWorks and LOT Network members, Microsoft and Oracle, along with many others.

LOT Network and Open Design Alliance

In 2019, ODA was conducting their annual insurance renewals and LOT membership came up as a checkbox on one of these forms. They reviewed LOT Network and its mission, and it was all upside: low membership fees, a clear mission and obvious benefits to member companies. The decision to join was easy.

It’s important to note that currently the CAD and BIM industries are not heavily represented among LOT Network membership and ODA is on a mission to change that. The cost of frivolous patent litigation is an unnecessary tax on the industry, one that ODA members would like to see eliminated.

LOT Network, in a move to jump-start protections in the CAD and BIM industries, is offering ODA members who join, a free 2020 membership. Membership is also currently free for any company with less than $25 million in annual revenue.

Protecting the fair use of intellectual property benefits the entire industry and ODA encourages its members and other companies in the CAD and BIM verticals to join LOT Network. It is important for all companies who pride themselves on their innovation to protect themselves from exploitation and unnecessary – and costly – litigation.

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