CAD seats shouldn't cost more than junior engineers.
Consulting engineers and architecture firms live inside CAD, BIM, and document control software. AutoCAD, Revit, SolidWorks, Siemens NX — premium tools with premium annual seats. We find the workloads where FreeCAD, BRL-CAD, and OpenProject genuinely cover the brief, and keep premium seats only for the roles that need them.
R 2.72M
Typical annual licence spend
Across 8 common engineering tools
R 2.45M
Recoverable each year
After self-hosted OSS migration
3
Sector pain points we cover
From licensing to compliance to access control
The engineering stack, on the books
Tap a tool. See the open-source swap and the saving.
Bars show what the typical engineering firm spends annually on each licence. The sage portion is what the hosted open-source equivalent costs.
Typical Engineering stack
8 tools · R 2.72M/yr in licences
Replace
Siemens NX
CAD / Engineering · R 1.50M per year
With
FreeCAD
Self-hosted on your infra
Annual savings
R 1.35M
After hosting · approx 90% reduction
Current annual spend
R 2.72M
Estimated OSS hosting
R 272K
Annual savings
R 2.45M
Tap any tool to see the open-source replacement and the per-tool saving
Where the engineering bleed starts
Three things we hear on every engineering discovery call.
CAD and BIM per-seat annual licences
R30k to R60k per engineer per year across AutoCAD, Revit, SolidWorks. For a 15-person firm, that's the cost of another engineer.
Document management SaaS
Drawing revisions, transmittals, submittals. Proprietary document systems priced per project or per user. Self-hosted Nextcloud with version control handles the same workflow.
Client portal and e-signature overhead
Every project has sign-offs. Per-envelope e-signature billing compounds on large jobs. Self-hosted alternatives remove the variable cost.
How we handle the engineering edges