Open Design Alliance
Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization creating SDKs for engineering applications. ODA offers interoperability tools for .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk Navisworks, and .ifc files and a technology stack for visualization, web development, 3D PDF publishing, modeling, and more.
Developer(s) | Open Design Alliance |
---|---|
Stable release | 21.4
/ May 11, 2020 |
Type | Runtime library |
License | Proprietary (sources available to members) |
Website | opendesign |
ODA Products and supported file formats
.dwg Toolset
- Drawings SDK is a development toolkit that provides access to all data in .dwg and .dgn through an object-oriented API, allows creating and editing any type of .dwg or .dgn drawing file, and can be extended with custom .dwg objects. (Old names: Teigha Drawings, Teigha for .dwg files and Teigha for .dgn files; OpenDWG and DWGdirect; DGNdirect.)
Drawings SDK also provides exchange of the following file formats to and from .dwg and .dgn:
Format | Export | Import |
---|---|---|
.dgn | No | Yes (import .dgn to .dwg only) |
.dwf | Yes | Yes |
Yes | No | |
.dae (Collada) | Yes | Yes |
.svg | Yes | No |
Raster Formats | Yes | No |
.stl | Yes | No |
.hsf | Yes | No |
Three.js | Yes | No |
- Architecture SDK is a development toolkit for building .dwg-based architectural design applications. It offers interoperability with Autodesk Architecture files (old name: Teigha Architecture).
- Civil SDK is a development toolkit for working with Autodesk Civil 3D files. The Civil API provides read/write access to data in civil custom objects (old name: Teigha Civil).
- Mechanical SDK is a development toolkit for working with Autodesk Mechanical files.
BIM Suite
- BimRv SDK is a development toolkit for reading, writing, and creating .rvt and .rfa files.
- IFC SDK is a development toolkit featuring 100% compatibility with the buildingSMART IFC standard. It offers a geometry building module for creating IFC geometry, which includes the ODA facet modeler and B-Rep modeler.
- BimNv is a development toolkit for reading, visualizing and creating Autodesk Navisworks files.
Technology Stack
The ODA Technology Stack incorporates three products: Visualize SDK, Web SDK, and Publish SDK.
- Visualize SDK is a graphics toolkit designed for engineering applications development.
- Web SDK uses Visualize SDK to embed engineering models into web pages and create web/SaaS applications.
- Publish SDK is a development toolkit for creating 2D and 3D .pdf and .prc models. All PDFs are compatible with ISO standards and Adobe tools. Publish SDK can create PRC-based 3D PDF documents that contain full B-Rep models and can include animation, interactive views, part lists, etc.
History
- The Alliance was formed in February 1998 as the OpenDWG Alliance, with its initial release of code based on the AUTODIRECT libraries written by Matt Richards of MarComp.
- In 2002, the OpenDWG library was renamed to DWGdirect.
- And the same year, the alliance was renamed to Open Design Alliance.[1]
- On 22 November 2006, Autodesk sued the Open Design Alliance alleging that its DWGdirect libraries infringed Autodesk's trademark for the word "Autodesk", by writing the TrustedDWG code (including the word "AutoCAD") into DWG files it created. In April 2007, the suit was dropped, with Autodesk modifying the warning message in AutoCAD 2008 (to make it more benign), and the Open Design Alliance removing support for the TrustedDWG code from its DWGdirect libraries.
- In 2008, support was added for .dgn files with DGNdirect.
- In April 2010, DWGdirect was renamed to Teigha for .dwg files, OpenDWG was renamed to Teigha Classic and DGNdirect was renamed to Teigha for .dgn files.
- Since August 2017 (v. 4.3.1), Teigha contains production support for version 2018 .dwg files, including architectural, civil and mechanical custom objects.
- In February 2018 (v. 4.3.2), it was announced the availability of STL (stereolithography, is widely used for 3D printing and rapid prototyping) and OBJ (serves as an open exchange format for many 3D design solutions) file support.[2]
- In September 2018 Teigha brand was removed.[3]
- In October 2018 ODA started work on IFC Solution [4]
- In January 2019 Drawings 2019.2 introduced extrude and revolve 3d solid modeling operations as part of the standard SDK [5][6]
- In January 2019 ODA announced the release of its new BimNv SDK [7]
Membership
There are six types of ODA membership:
- Educational: qualified university use only, 1 year limit
- Non-commercial: any kind of internal automation for in-house use and R&D, 2 year limit
- Commercial: limited commercial use (sell up to 100 copies), web/SaaS use not allowed
- Sustaining: unlimited commercial use, web/SaaS use allowed
- Founding: unlimited commercial use with full source code
- Corporate: unlimited commercial use across multiple business units
There is also a free trial period.
Releases
Open Design Alliance provides three production releases each year:
- May/June
- August/September
- December
Release notes are created for each release that contain information about product enhancements, new features and instructions for migrating from previous SDK versions.
Intermediate releases are also provided each sprint (month).
Annual ODA Conference
Open Design Alliance holds an ODA conference every year in September. The two-day conference includes presentations from directors and developers and face-to-face meetings for non-members, members, ODA developers, and ODA executives. Anyone who is interested can register and attend the conference.[8]
Members of the Alliance (not exhaustive)
Corporate Members
Founding Members
- 4M SA
- Accusoft Corporation
- Advanced Computer Solutions
- Andor Corporation
- Beijing Glory PKPM Technology
- Bentley Systems
- BlueCielo ECM Solutions
- Software
- Central South University
- Chongqing Chinabyte Network Co Ltd
- CSoft Development
- EntIT Software LLC
- Epic Games
- Esri
- Glodon
- Graebert GmbH
- GRAITEC INNOVATION SAS
- Gstarsoft
- Haofang Tech
- Hilti
- Hyland
- IMSI/Design
- IntelliCAD
- Intrasec
- ITI TranscenData
- MIDAS Information Technology
- Onshape
- Oracle
- Photron
- Relativity
- Robert McNeel And Associates
- Safe Software
- Shandong Hoteam Software
- Shenzhen ZhiHuiRuiTu Information Technology
- Siemens
- Stabiplan
- Trimble
- UNIFI Labs
- Watchtower Bible and Tract Society
- ZwCAD Software
See also
- AutoCAD DWG
- Digital modeling and fabrication
References
- See https://www.opendesign.com/about
- "ODA Expands Teigha File Format Support". www.opendesign.com. Open Design Alliance.
- "Use of Teigha brand name to be discontinued". www.opendesign.com. Open Design Alliance.
- "ODA Begins Work on IFC Solution". www.opendesign.com. Open Design Alliance.
- "ODA Releases Drawings SDK 2019.2". Open Design Alliance.
- "New releases tumble out of the ODA". Graphic Speak.
- "ODA Releases New BimNv SDK for Navisworks Files". Open Design Alliance.
- "ODA Announces DevCon 2019 in Milan". www.opendesign.com. Open Design Alliance.
- "AllyCAD - Professional CAD Design Software". www.allycad.com. Retrieved 2020-04-30.
- "Nanosoft | Open Design Alliance". www.opendesign.com. Retrieved 2020-04-30.