Relaunched in November 2012, the Ghent, Belgium cloud-based project information and collaboration platform Chapoo (formerly Vondle) will now be available to users of BricsCAD CAD software through an upcoming product release. Users will be able to open a .dwg file from a project on the Chapoo service, and to download and upload .dwg files from and to Chapoo (.dwg designs can be transparently stored on and accessed from the Chapoo service with or without dependent [xrefs, images, etc] files).
Claiming market leadership in BeNeLux, Chapoo was, until last year, a sister company of Bricsys, the developer of BricsCAD, so the relationship and integration is hardly surprising (it echoes past integration between, for example, AutoCAD and Autodesk’s collaboration platform Buzzsaw; third party SaaS vendors have also created plug-ins that enabled publication to their platforms from within AutoCAD and other CAD tools). However, Chapoo COO Mark Van Den Bergh clearly anticipates links to other software tools:
“Operating as a newly independent company, we are looking forward to establish similar technology relationships with other software vendors whose users can benefit from transparent access to our SaaS collaboration service.”
(The ‘divorce’ between Chapoo and Bricsys was clearly amicable. They now have totally separate development teams; finance and marketing still overlap, but will separate in due course.)
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[…] appear to be, er, biding their time. The BricsCAD/Chapoo integration, consolidated in February (post), has echoes of the combined Autodesk offering of Revit/Buzzsaw, and is further evidence of AEC BIM […]