BricsCAD and AutoCAD® feature comparison

BricsCAD versus AutoCAD® feature comparison.

Drawings
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Native DWG file format (thru AutoCAD 2021)
Password Protection - -
eTransmit
Sheet Set Manager
Geographic Location
Drawing Compare
Cloud Collaboration
Interface
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Dark and Light Color Themes
Industry standard commands, aliases, and variables

Command Line (Autocomplete, Midstring,

Clickable options)

Start tab
File (Drawing) tabs
Model and Layout tabs
Layout Manager - -
Menu bar
Toolbars
Ribbon
Tool Palettes
Contextual Right-click Menus
Contextual Quad Menu - -
Status Bar
Workspaces
Searchable Settings (Variables) Dialog Box - -
Lockable Interface
Clean Screen Mode
Drawing Explorer - -
Customizable User Interface (CUI)
Structure Browser - -
Selection, snap & track
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Selection Filtering (QSELECT)
Add Selected
Select Similar
Selection Cycling
Entity Snaps (Osnaps)
Polar Tracking
Zintersection 3D snap - -
Nearest Distance - -
Adaptive Gridsnap - -
Real-time boundary detection - -
2D Dynamic UCS - -
3D Dynamic UCS -
Drawing tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Line, Polyline, 3D Polyline, Spline, Ray, Xline
Multiline and Multiline Styles -
Circle, Arc, Ellipse, Elliptical Arc
Polygon, Rectangle, Region, Donut, Point
Helix -
2D Parameters, Constraints -
2D Autoconstrain 1 1
Annotation tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Dimensions, Dimension Styles
Multi-leaders, Multi-leader Styles
Single and Multi-line text, Text Styles, Text Editor
Hatches, Gradients, Hatch/Gradient Editor
Wipeouts
Revision Clouds
Attributes, Attribute Editor
Tables, Table Styles
Fields
Data Extraction -
Data Linking
Annotation Scaling
Spell Check
AutoCAD Mechanical Compatibility: Read, Display, Edit (with limitations) - - - - -
Editing tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Move, Copy, Rotate, Scale, Stretch, Mirror, Align
Trim, Extend, Lengthen, Break, Join
Fillet, Chamfer
CopyGuided - -
MoveGuided - -
Grip Edit
Properties panel
Manipulator (3D Gizmo) -
Draworder
Undo Per Entity (Property History) - -
Optimize - -
Simplify - -
Reference tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Blocks, Block Editor
Dynamic Blocks 2 2 2 2 2
Block Face Camera - -
Blockify - -
Associative Arrays
Dwg (Xref) Attach, Clip, Bind, Edit
PDF Attach, Clip
Image Attach, Clip, Adjust, Transparency
Point Clouds Colormap - -
Visualization tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Layers, Layer States
Transparency
Visual Styles -
LookFrom (ViewCube™) -
Match Perspective - -
Lights - -
Sun Properties - -
Materials - -
Render - -
Animation Editor - - -
Walkthrough navigation - -
ANIPATH command - -
Modeling tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
ACIS Modeling - -
Solid and Surface Modeling - -
Solid Primitives - -
Mesh Primitives - -
Polysolid - -
Union, Subtract, Intersect, Interfere - -
Extrude, Revolve, Loft, Sweep, Thicken - -
Twist - - -
Fillet, Chamfer - -
Slice - -
Multi-slice - - -
T Connect, L Connect, Connect with Nearest - - -
Extract Edges - -
Direct modeling - -
Deformable (Freeform) Modeling - -
Audit, Simplify -
Stitch - -
3D Parameters, Constraints - -
3D Autoparametrize - - -
3D Blockify and ParametricBlockify - - -
3D Parametric Design Tables - - -
Section planes - -
Drawing Views: Base, Projected, Section, Detail and Break Views - -
3D Threads - - -
Point Cloud Align - - -
Point Cloud Bubble Viewer - -
Civil tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
TIN Surface Modeling - - -
Civil Points - - -
TIN Volume Surface - - -
Grading - - -
Alignments - - -
Profiles (Vertical Alignments) - - -
Corridors - - -
Civil 3D Object Enabler -
Boundary Trim - - -
Building tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
CAD-based BIM features - - - - -
Structural Modeling Toolset - - - - -
Project Database - - - - -
Library Database - - - - -
Site, Building and Stories - - - - -
Windows and Doors - - - - -
Fully Parametric BIM Component Creation - - - - -
3D Spaces - - - -
Quickdraw - - - - -
Quickbuilding - - - - -
Point Cloud Floor Detection - - - - -
Point Cloud Projection - - - - -
Point Cloud Geometry Detection - - - - -
Point Cloud FitPlanar (geometry detection) - - - - -
Propagate - - - - -
Custom BIM Properties - - - - -
Drawing Customizations - - - - -
Analytical Model - - - - -
Python Scripts (Beta) - - - - -
Manufacturing tools
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Mechanical Browser - - -
Parts Library - -
Piping - - -
Assembly Modeling - - - - -
Exploded Views - - - - -
Kinematic Analysis - - - - -
Bill of Materials - - - - -
Balloons associated with BOM and Drawing Views - - - - -
Sheet Metal Design - - - - -
3D Solids to Sheet Metal Parts Recognition and Conversion - - - - -
Corner Relief for Adjacent Edge Flanges - - - - -
Lofted Bends - - - - -
Other features: Junctions, Miters, Tabs, Form Features - - - - -
Coloring - - - - -
Diagnostic & Repair for Invalid Sheet Metal Features - - - - -
Batch Processing - - - - -
Import, export, output
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Print/Plot
Publish/Batch Plot
CTB & STB Table Files
PC3 Printer Configuration Files
Named Page Setups
PDF Import, Export
DAE Import, Export - -
IFC Import, Export - - - -
3DM Import, Export - - -
LandXML Import, Export - - -
Import Civil 3D - - -
RFA Import - - - - -
SKP Import - - -
DGN Import
RVT Import - - - - -
DWF Export
SVG Export - -
FBX Export - -
STL Export -
Point Cloud Export (see below the available formats) - - 3
las - - 3
pts - - 3
Point Cloud Import (see below the available formats) - - 3
las - - 3
laz - - 3
pts - - 3
ptx - - 3
e57 - - 3
rcs - -
rcp - -

Additional formats available with BricsCAD Communicator (see below)

- - + / -
CATIA V4 4.1.9 − 4.2.4 - -
CATIA V5 V5R8 − V5−6 R2021 - -
IGES up to 5.3 - -
Inventor V11 − V2022 - -
JT 8.x, 9.x, 10, 10.2, JT 10.3, and JT 10.5 - -
NX 1 − NX 195311 − NX 1953 - -
Parasolid 9.0.x − 33.0.x - -
Pro/E / Creo 16 − Creo 8.0 - -
Solid Edge V18 − SE 2021 - - -
SolidWorks 2003 − 2021 - -
STEP AP203, AP214, AP242 - -
STL All (Graphical data only) - - -
VDA−FS 1.0 − 2.0 - - -
XCGM R2012 − 2021 1.0 - - -
Programming
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
ActiveX -
Extended Entity Data Editor -
Script Recorder -
Full LISP Support (vl, vlr, vla and vlax) -
Solutions Development System (SDS/ADS) -
DCL engine -
COM API - -
VBA Projects Support - -
.NET - -
BRX (ARX) - -
TX (Teigha eXtensions) - -
CUI menu files support, with Diesel expressions
Licensing
BricsCAD AutoCAD®
Lite Pro BIM Mechanical Ultimate LT Full
Multi-platform Licenses - -
Perpetual - -
Perpetual + Maintenance - -
Subscription
Network Multi-user - -
Volume (Perpetual) - -
Academic

(1) You can automatically apply geometric constraints but you cannot automatically apply a combination of geometric and dimensional constraints.

(2) You can manipulate dynamic block insertions but you cannot create dynamic block definitions.

(3) In the Autodesk® product suite, Recap is needed to import non-native point cloud formats and convert to AutoCAD's native rcs/rcp. For las/laz/pts/ptx, Map 3D and/or Civil 3D may be sufficient.