Adding to the list of recent acquisitions that involve building-software developers comes today’s announcement that German company Nemetschek AG has acquired Bluebeam Software, headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., for $100 million cash. Nemetschek AG also owns Nemetschek Vectorworks, based in Columbia, Md., which it acquired in 2000, as well as Graphisoft, the developer of ArchiCAD based in Budapest, Hungary, which it acquired in 2007.

The Nemetschek group’s CAD, BIM, and presentation tools are used by more 1.2 million users in 142 countries, according to the company’s website. In the U.S., Nemetschek is one of the major providers of AEC software, along with Autodesk, Bentley Systems, and Trimble. With the acquisition of Bluebeam, which develops PDF-based collaboration tools such as Revu and Vu for the AEC industry, Nemetschek hopes to increase its North American presence.

“Bluebeam is a perfect addition that strengthens our solution portfolio across the life cycle in the building process by adding drawing-based workflows to augment our model-based BIM workflows,” said Nemetschek AG chief financial and operating officer and spokesman Patrik Heider in today’s press release.

Bluebeam also gets a boost from the acquisition. It gains access to Nemetschek’s European and Asian markets, and teams up with a fellow proponent of the Open BIM model, in which proprietary software developers integrate common data-exchange standards, such as universal BIM objects that users of competing software programs can include and manipulate in their building models. “I look forward to working together to make digital project collaboration easier than ever,” Bluebeam CEO Richard Lee said in the press release.

Bluebeam will continue operating with its current management team and as an independent-brand company of Nemetschek. The companies expect the acquisition to be finalized this month.

Note: This article has been updated since first publication to distinguish between the parent company Nemetschek AG and Nemetschek Vectorworks, the maker of the Vectorworks software.

 
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