What you already have works.
Your users know it. Your drawings work. Your plug-ins and customisations work. You’ve got projects running through it and, quite reasonably, you may see little benefit in changing a stable CAD environment simply because a newer version exists.
If you’re using BricsCAD V23 or V24, that may be exactly why you’re still using it.
So why reconsider that decision now?
Not simply because BricsCAD V26 is newer.
The more interesting reason is that the economics of bringing your existing license up to date have temporarily changed.
Until 11 October 2026, eligible BricsCAD V23 and V24 perpetual licenses can be upgraded to V26 on promotional terms.
For eligible V23 licenses, the promotional discount is 38%. That takes you forward three versions while effectively paying the cost of a one-version upgrade.
For eligible V24 licenses, the discount is 24%. That takes you forward two versions, again effectively for the cost of moving forward by one.
That doesn’t automatically mean you should upgrade.
But if you’ve been thinking, “What we have works, so we’ll bring it up to date when we eventually need to,” the cost of making that decision now is unusually favourable.
And for V23 customers, there is another consideration. After the next major BricsCAD release, the V23 upgrade route closes. If you subsequently decide you want to become current again, you may need to purchase a new license rather than upgrade the one you already own.
That’s a real difference between doing nothing because nothing has changed and reconsidering because something has.
This is probably the most important distinction in the whole decision.
The best time to buy a CAD upgrade isn’t necessarily the best time to install it.
If you’re responsible for a working CAD environment, you may quite reasonably want to check your plug-ins, LISP routines, custom menus, templates, plotters, network configuration and third-party applications before changing anything.
You may have live projects that you don’t want to disturb. Your IT team may want to test deployment first. You might simply prefer to let a newer release settle before rolling it out across the business.
Those are good reasons to manage deployment carefully.
They aren’t necessarily reasons to miss favourable upgrade terms.
BricsCAD V26 installs and runs independently of previous BricsCAD versions, so purchasing the upgrade does not require you to replace your existing installation immediately. Octave also specifically notes that C++ extension DLLs need to be compiled for the V26 platform toolset, which is exactly the sort of compatibility detail worth checking where businesses rely on specialist applications.
You can therefore separate two decisions:
Do we want to secure the upgrade while these terms are available?
and:
When is the right time for us to deploy V26?
For many businesses, separating those questions makes the decision much easier.
If you’ve deliberately skipped two or three releases, you’re not comparing one annual update with another. You’re looking at the cumulative development of BricsCAD since the version you’re currently using.
V26 itself introduced more than 60 new and enhanced features, followed by a further 30 new and enhanced capabilities in V26.2.
Not all of them will matter to you. Some potentially will.
For everyday CAD work, V26 expands Dynamic Block support, including the creation and editing of Dynamic Blocks, improves block handling and grip editing, introduces property-based selection filtering in V26.2, and adds improvements to drawing, dimensioning and documentation workflows.
If you work with point clouds, V26 adds tools including direct 2D polyline tracing over point-cloud data. V26.2 goes further with linear feature detection that can generate lines, polylines, civil strings or surfaces directly from a point cloud.
For survey and civil workflows, V26 includes Civil Section creation and TIN cut/fill reporting, while V26.2 adds Digital Elevation Model import/export, improved GIS export and direct Leica Infinity integration.
For BIM users, V26 added IFC 4×3 support and further project collaboration improvements. V26.2 now includes integrations with Autodesk Construction Cloud and Bentley ProjectWise, alongside a new IFC export interface with greater control over the geometry and data being exported.
And V26.2 now includes BricsCAD Assist, an AI-driven panel inside BricsCAD for finding documentation, how-to guidance and answers without leaving the drawing environment.
The point isn’t that every V23 or V24 customer suddenly needs every V26 feature.
You almost certainly don’t.
The question is whether, taken together with the current upgrade terms, enough has changed to make bringing your license position current worthwhile.
KTF works with businesses using BricsCAD in real production environments, including specialist applications, customisation, survey and civil workflows, point clouds and other third-party tools.
An upgrade conversation therefore doesn’t have to start with “How many licenses would you like?”
It can start with:
What are you running today, what do you depend on, and what would we need to check before you changed anything?
Sometimes the answer will be straightforward. Sometimes it will make sense to test something first. And sometimes the sensible decision will be to secure the commercial opportunity now but leave deployment until a more appropriate point in your project or IT cycle.
That’s fine.
The objective isn’t to get V26 installed as quickly as possible.
It’s to make the right decision for the way your business actually works.
There is one other question worth considering.
If you’ve been perfectly happy on V23 or V24, you may previously have decided that annual Maintenance wasn’t providing enough immediate value to justify continuing it.
That’s understandable.
But Maintenance isn’t really about needing a dramatic new feature every year. It’s closer to keeping cover in place.
Once you’re current, Maintenance keeps you entitled to future BricsCAD versions rather than allowing another multi-version gap to build up. It also keeps support available, including access to KTF support alongside Octave support.
You may not need that support every day, just as you don’t expect to call a breakdown service every time you drive your car.
Its value becomes clearer when something changes.
A new computer. A Windows update. A plug-in issue. A licensing question. A new employee. A different workflow. A deployment problem. Or simply the point at which the business needs to move forward again.
So if you do use this opportunity to become current, it’s worth thinking about whether you want to stay current this time too.
Maybe.
That’s deliberately not an automatic yes.
If you’re happily running BricsCAD V23 or V24, there may have been a perfectly sensible reason not to spend money upgrading it before now.
What’s changed is the decision in front of you.
For a limited period, you can bring an eligible V23 or V24 license up to V26 for the effective cost of a one-version upgrade. If you’re on V23, there is also a finite window before that license loses its upgrade route altogether.
And you don’t have to turn a commercial decision today into a rushed deployment tomorrow.
If you’d like us to look at your current licenses and help you work out whether upgrading now makes sense, talk to us.
We can confirm the commercial position and, if necessary, discuss your plug-ins, applications or deployment considerations before you make a decision.
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We’ll review your requirements and confirm if a Proof of Concept is the right approach before getting started.
We’ll help you understand what’s active, where, and what to do next.
