what happened to GDL technology ltd. ?

Anonymous · ‎2008-12-18

I was just reading this article: www.graphisoft.com/company/press_zone/gdl.html
About GDL technology Ltd.

Does anyone know what happened to this Graphisoft founded company?

Karl Ottenstein · ‎2008-12-18

It was folded back into Graphisoft. I cannot recall the year, or find it on a quick search. I think it is discussed in one of the Graphisoft Annual Reports.

It was a great concept that was - in my opinion - poorly implemented from a management and marketing point of view, and thus never became a viable company / business. No doubt resource constraints were key in its failure, but many good things came out of it including the GDL web control and the GDL enabler for AutoCAD.

Cheers,
Karl

One of the forum moderators
AC 27 USA and earlier • macOS Ventura 13.6.6, MacBook Pro M2 Max 12CPU/30GPU cores, 32GB

Anonymous · ‎2008-12-18

Hi sdb and Karl,

If I understand it correctly... GDL technology Ltd. was the company that created some tools, namely: "GDL Object Explorer, GDL Object Web Plug-in, GDL Object Adapter and the GDL Object Publisher"...
I don't know what was its management and marketing philosophy...
If Karl could elaborate more on this matter would be useful to understand its demise...

It seemed a good initiative... But its main target was the building industry... and that was the reason of the failure (IMO)...
The best approach to a business like this is to focus in the end users needs... The building industry will naturally fallow it...

Djordje · ‎2008-12-19

You might ask Stefan Larsson, the current boss of international sales who used to run it.

IMHO it was the right move at the right time, quite long ago, but the ideas don't make themselves a success. I seem to remember that the lack of the funds was the reason for the ultimate demise. Even the GDL Central was not kept as a Web site.

Maybe the powers that be would consider revamping the idea, as the Virtual Building technologies have gained a lot more prominence in the meantime - and GDL is far beyond anything else out there.

Djordje

ArchiCAD since 4.55 ... 1995
HP Omen

Anonymous · ‎2008-12-19

Hi Djordje,

Djordje wrote:
You might ask Stefan Larsson, the current boss of international sales who used to run it.

If he could give us some insight would be interesting... Does Mr. Larsson has profile here?... or maybe if you could contact him?...

Djordje wrote:
Even the GDL Central was not kept as a Web site.

So... They didn't publish the objects?... They just built the objects and give it (with the plug-ins and adapter) to the clients... who then publish it in their own sites?...

Djordje wrote:
Maybe the powers that be would consider revamping the idea, as the Virtual Building technologies have gained a lot more prominence in the meantime - and GDL is far beyond anything else out there.

I totaly agree...
I note that all BIM software are converging in terms of productivity...
In a few years, ArchiCAD, Revit, Microstation, etc... will offer basically the same level of design productivity...
And when we get there... The "Plus" between them will be the quality of its object libraries...
The one that offers the best local and global libraries will lead.

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