Nemetschek and Tekla sign cooperation agreement

Nemetschek AG and Tekla Corporation optimize the exchange of construction project data between their software programs and coordinate their product offerings for dedicated customer groups.

Munich-based Nemetschek AG and Finland-based Tekla Corporationhave signed a Mutual Agreement on Cooperation and thus set a framework for cooperation on future projects. Nemetschek AG is Europe’s leading vendor of software for architects, engineers and the building industry, whereby the focus is on the whole process from design to facility management. Tekla Corporation is a major international vendor of 3D software for building and infrastructure engineering, with a focus on building information modeling of steel and concrete structures from design to construction. Together, the companies will improve the interoperability and workflow communication between their specialized software applications.

In terms of product strategy, the focus is on actual user demands and enhancing the digital workflow between different virtual modeling software programs. The partners plan to use vendor-independent open standards for data exchange, such as the IFC standard. The partners also want to share their experience with these formats and further develop them to strengthen the BIM (Building Information Modeling) community and the development of BIM into an industry standard process. Furthermore, the two partners intend to cooperate in marketing to align their product offering for multidisciplinary architecture and engineering firms.

The companies have agreed to work along the same principles with third parties for instance from the fields of infrastructure software and HVAC. “Together and with the help of additional partners we want to offer worldwide “best-in-class” solutions for the AEC market,” emphasizes Ernst Homolka, CEO of Nemetschek. “At Tekla we want to do our share in helping the building and construction industry move on to building information modeling as a way of working. This requires information systems of different disciplines to be able to communicate with each other. The data must not only be transferrable but exchangable. This way our customers can choose the best product for each task,” says Ari Kohonen, CEO of Tekla Corporation.

The Nemetschek subsidiary Graphisoft and Tekla already signed a cooperation agreement in September that also covered data exchange and close connection of ArchiCAD and Tekla Structures software at the process level. Tekla and Nemetschek subsidiary Scia are planning to complete model transfer between Scia Engineer and Tekla Structures.