BricsCAD Mechanical Q&A: Get 3D capability without the platform switch

Mechanical and manufacturing teams tend to run on DWG files and 2D drawings. Shifting over to an MCAD platform can mean higher costs, as well as greater complexity and disruption. BricsCAD Mechanical provides teams more capability without losing the tools and data upon which they already rely. It brings 3D modeling, assemblies, sheet metal, and manufacturing documentation on top of a DWG environment. No migration necessary.

We asked Callum Price, a CAD CAM engineer and mechanical and manufacturing specialist at Octave BricsCAD, to explain how BricsCAD Mechanical can work for you in practice.

9 questions about BricsCAD Mechanical answered

1. What is BricsCAD Mechanical, and what is it designed to help engineers do?

Price: BricsCAD Mechanical is built on BricsCAD Pro, so you get all the power and functionality of Pro with specialized mechanical and manufacturing tools layered on top. These tools include mechanical-specific drafting, assemblies, BOM, sheet metal and manufacturing documentation, all in one environment.

It allows engineers to take a design, whether designed in BricsCAD or another tool, and transform it into production-ready deliverables.

2. Who tends to get the most value out of BricsCAD Mechanical? What kind of teams or workflows is it best suited for?

Price: Typically, teams that are already invested in DWG and don’t want to throw that away.

That’s manufacturing environments such as Industrial Machinery, Equipment and Tooling, where the manufacturing process still needs to be captured and delivered through 2D drawings and documentation.

What we see a lot is those teams starting to need 3D and assembly capability, but not to the extent that a full platform switch to one of the high-end MCAD systems is justified, either in cost or complexity.

It gives them a way to move into 3D, build assemblies, create sheet metal models and produce production-ready output without losing the workflows, data or familiarity they already rely on.

3. A lot of companies still rely heavily on DWG files. How does BricsCAD Mechanical help them work with existing data instead of starting from scratch?

Price: As BricsCAD is a native DWG platform, these companies can continue to use their legacy drawings and data.

And with the familiar DWG environment, their onboarding time is minimal, so they can start working with it straight away.

4. When it comes to assemblies, how flexible is BricsCAD Mechanical? Do you typically see users working top-down, bottom-up, both?

Price: In practice, it’s very flexible. You can even use a hybrid approach; it’s totally down to the user’s preference or the job at hand.

This is due to the direct modeling approach taken by BricsCAD. You’re not locked into strict history-based modeling, so you can work more freely with geometry, especially when working with imported data or making changes late in the process.

Typically, top down comes into play when designing in context, that is when you’ve imported a piece of geometry and you’re designing around it. A common use case I’ve seen for this is fixture creation for supplied parts.

Bottom up is common when users are working with existing components and assembling these defined parts. Use cases like equipment layout are typical with this approach.

5. How does the Mechanical Browser fit into day-to-day work? What does it make easier that would otherwise be painful?

Price: The Mechanical Browser is really what brings structure to the flexibility I just talked about in the previous question.

As I mentioned, you’re not tied to a strict history-based modeling workflow, but the Mechanical Browser still gives you a structured view of assemblies, components, constraints, parameters and certain feature types.

It’s not a traditional feature tree. But where features are structured, such as sheet metal features or sketch-based features, they appear and can be edited here.

So, in day-to-day work, it lets you see how a model is organized and make changes without relying only on the geometry.

6. Standard parts libraries can be a time saver, but can also be a bit messy. How does BricsCAD handle standard components in a practical way?

Price: In BricsCAD Mechanical, standard parts from the library are inserted as mechanical blocks, and they’re parameter-driven, so you can adjust size or configuration without swapping the part out. They also conform to international standards like DIN, ISO, ASME and JIS.

They sit properly in the assembly structure and feed into the BOM, rather than just simple geometry. That makes them easier to manage and reuse consistently, without ending up with inconsistent or disconnected versions of the same part.

7. What does a typical workflow look like from 3D design to 2D documentation and BOM creation? Where does BricsCAD save the most time?

Price: This type of workflow would typically start with either imported geometry or native 3D modeling. From there, you build up the parts and assemblies directly within the DWG.

Once the design is in place, you can generate 2D drawings directly from the model, with views and annotations which stay associated with the model. At the same time BOM data comes from the assembly and defined parts, rather than being compiled manually.

You’re working from one set of data all the way through, where changes propagate throughout the drawings and models, rather than recreating it at each stage.

8. Sheet metal and manufacturability can be tricky. How does BricsCAD Mechanical help users get production-ready results faster?

Price: Put simply, it’s about taking geometry and getting it into a manufacturable state without rebuilding it.

You can convert existing solids into sheet metal automatically, and BricsCAD Mechanical will recognize bends and features where it can, so you’re not starting from scratch. From there, if additional work is required, you’re working with proper sheet metal tools that reflect how the part will actually be made, and you can unfold them directly to flat patterns for manufacturing.

We’ve seen this used in more advanced workflows too. For example, Murata Machinery built BricsCAD Mechanical into their CAD to CAM pipeline using the sheet metal recognition to convert 3D models into processing data for their machines. Their goal is to reduce manual input and move towards a fully automated design-to-manufacture workflow, and so far, they estimate to have reduced this design-to-manufacture time by 80% for end users.

The automatic conversion is not perfect in every case, but it reduces how much you must manually rebuild to make a part manufacturable.

9. Looking at the latest updates, what improvements stand out to you as most impactful for users?

Price: I think the biggest impact of BricsCAD V26.2 comes from reducing rework, in two slightly different ways.

On the sheet metal side, local repair means that when a specific feature needs correcting, you can deal with that issue directly rather than reworking/repairing the whole part.

On the documentation side, associative mechanical property data means you define a value once and it updates everywhere it’s used (e.g. annotations, title blocks), instead of managing the same information in multiple places manually.

The right tool for the next step

The goal of BricsCAD Mechanical is to give mechanical and manufacturing teams the tools to move forward without leaving their existing workflows behind. It brings 3D modeling, assemblies, sheet metal, and manufacturing documentation into a native DWG environment, enabling teams to take the next step without having to start over. If 3D capability is on the roadmap and a full platform switch is more than the job requires, BricsCAD Mechanical is where to start.

Find out more about BricsCAD Mechanical and download BricsCAD V26.2 today.