Open Design Alliance is a nonprofit organization creating software development kits (SDKs) for engineering applications. ODA offers interoperability tools for CAD, BIM, and Mechanical industries including .dwg, .dxf, .dgn, Autodesk Revit, Autodesk Navisworks, and .ifc files and additional tools for visualization, web development, 3D PDF publishing and modeling.

History

1998-2014

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. On November 22, 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.

2015-2024

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), support for STL and OBJ files was announced. In September 2018 Teigha brand was removed. In October 2018 ODA started work on IFC Solutio. In January 2019 Drawings 2019.2 introduced extrude and revolve 3d solid modeling operations as part of the standard SDK. Also that month, ODA announced the release of its new BimNv SDK. In May 2020 ODA switched to monthly releases. In June 2020 ODA released its free Open IFC Viewer, and in July 2021 ODA started development for STEP Support. In October 2021 ODA released its IFC validation engine. In January 2022 ODA started Scan-to-BIM development. In September 2022 ODA started MCAD SDK development, and in October 2022 ODA released STEP SDK for production use. In September 2024 ODA removed the free trial downloads of the ODAFileConverter.

ODA products and supported file formats

CAD

Drawings SDK also provides exchange of the following file formats to and from .dwg and .dgn:

BIM

Mechanical

ODA Core Platform Technologies

Membership

There are six types of ODA membership: There is also a free trial period.

Releases

Open Design Alliance provides monthly production releases.

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.

Member organizations of the ODA

The following is an incomplete list of members of the Open Design Alliance.

Corporate members

Founding members

The following is an incomplete list of founding member organizations of the Open Design Alliance.

ODA developers in Ukraine

Asking those who benefit from ODA solutions to help support our Ukrainian developers: https://www.opendesign.com/blog/2022/april/oda-organizes-support-ukraine-developers Apr 6, 2022 Since 2016 ODA has a 30-person development team in Chernihiv, Ukraine (almost students of Chernihiv Polytechnic National University). "Ukrainian engineers play an important role in developing ODA technologies, including our interoperability toolkits for DWG and Autodesk® Revit® files, and many other areas."

• Neil Peterson, ODA President On 4 April, 2022 in a response to full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and continuous shelling of Chernihiv Neil Peterson, ODA President, announced a campaign for collecting money to donate Ukrainian team members and their families, and stated that help with relocation and temporary housing being provided.