Nemetschek released another Max this week, and in doing so explained the two it already had.
On 28 October the Group and its brand Allplan announced Allplan Max 2027 from a Munich dateline — “a new generation of AI, designed specifically for engineering workflows,” in the release’s words, launching alongside Allplan 2027. A day later, from the same dateline, the Group put three products under one heading: “Archicad Max for architecture, Allplan Max for engineering, and Bluebeam Max for construction.”
That sentence is the news. Not a feature, a taxonomy. Max is no longer just the name of a Graphisoft subscription plan or a Bluebeam one; it is the Group’s word for its premium AI tier, applied once per design-and-build discipline, and all three are described as running on “the Nemetschek Intelligence Platform, the Group’s common AI and data foundation.”
What Shipped, and Where
The engineering release is the substantive one, because it is the one that was not already on sale.
Allplan Max 2027’s named capabilities are Feature Builder, Workflow Builder, AI Formula Writer, AI BIM Analyst, AI Structural Analyst, AI Drafter, AI Coach, AI Visualizer and AI Steel Take Off. The 28 October release sorts most of them across three product groups: Allplan gets the BIM, detailing and workflow-customization tools; SCIA and FRILO “extend AI into structural analysis and engineering decision support, including AI Structural Analyst” and AI Coach; SDS2 brings AI into fabrication-oriented workflows. Two of the nine — AI Visualizer and AI Steel Take Off — are named in that release without being tied to a product group. The Group’s own 29 October release names the engineering portfolio in full, describing Allplan Max as extending AI “across the Group’s engineering portfolio (Allplan, SCIA, FRILO, RISA and SDS2)”. AEC Magazine’s write-up of the launch lists the 2027 versions of Allplan, Allplan Civil, Frilo, SCIA and SDS2.
The two executives quoted are Sunil Pandita, CEO of Allplan and Chief Division Officer Planning & Design at the Nemetschek Group, and Rahul J. Chillar, Chief Product Officer of the Planning & Design Division. Both press on the same point, which is control.
“Allplan Max is the next step in Allplan’s engineering-first strategy,” Pandita said. “We are bringing AI into the workflows engineers already rely on, with a clear purpose: create more capacity, make critical information easier to access and help teams move faster without giving up engineering control.”
Chillar’s version is blunter about the commercial logic — “Allplan Max is transforming Nemetschek engineering software into an AI engine,” he said, “embedding intelligence directly into the workflows engineers already use” while “preserving the rigor, traceability and human judgment engineering demands.”
On measured benefit the release offers one figure and immediately bounds it: “Users reported up to 36 percent faster completion for selected tasks, depending on workflow,” followed by “These results are self-reported estimates and may vary by role, project complexity, data quality and adoption.” That is the company’s number with the company’s own caveat attached, and it is worth noting that the caveat was written by the vendor rather than extracted from it. On what any of it costs, the 29 October release says only that “Availability, feature scope, beta status, subscription packaging and pricing may vary by product, plan and region.” The 28 October release is terser still, and does not use the words pricing or packaging at all: “Allplan Max 2027 unveils on October 28, 2026. Availability may vary by product, package and region.”
The Roadmap This Publication Reported Three Weeks Ago
On 8 October this publication covered Graphisoft’s 2026 portfolio and Archicad 30, and the finding then was that the shipping half of the release was a careful, unglamorous Archicad update while the half that would change how a practice works was labelled planned, coming soon and early access — with one exception, a beta. Archicad Max existed at that point as the third subscription tier, described for “innovative data- and AI-driven practices,” and the Model Context Protocol connectivity the announcement named was, in the release’s own word, “planned.”
The 29 October release is where that roadmap arrives. Archicad Max is now credited with an agentic AI Assistant in beta for multi-step tasks in the model, AI Assistant Spaces that ground answers in a firm’s own standards and project knowledge, an updated AI Visualizer, early access to the browser-based Nemetschek Creator — full access arriving with that product’s commercial release in 2027 — and a “Public Archicad MCP Server (beta) that connects the desktop AI applications an office already uses” to the Archicad model. Availability is with Archicad 30, rolling out by region.
Bluebeam Max, the construction leg, has been generally available since May and is the one with a live user base attached: the release says more than 2,000 early adopters “reported significant productivity gains in preconstruction, design coordination” and related work. Its named features are Smart Review, Smart Overlay, Magic Markups and sheet stitching. This publication has covered Bluebeam twice in recent weeks — once on its survey finding that 28% of US AEC firms run AI in production, and once on the decision to give the paid Max tier to students and educators free, which the Group dates to September and describes as worldwide for eligible users.
Why the MCP Line Is the One to Read Twice
Strip the branding and one sentence in the 29 October release does more work than the rest: “Bluebeam Max supports the Model Context Protocol for Anthropic Claude, GitHub Copilot CLI and AnythingLLM, turning natural-language prompts into markups and project insights.”
Naming three third-party AI clients, by name, is itself the claim — that the AI doing the work can be one the customer already pays for, pointed at Nemetschek data, rather than Nemetschek’s own assistant. The Group makes the argument explicitly, contrasting its approach with “tying customers to a single proprietary environment” and saying the Max offerings are built to work “across tools, vendors and project partners.” Julian Geiger, the Group’s Chief AI Officer, puts it as a condition: “AI in our industry only creates real value when it understands the project, works where professionals work and connects with everything else on the job.”
Read against the sector, this is a pattern completing rather than a departure. Revizto shipped an MCP server over live project data, EarthCam opened its jobsite cameras to ChatGPT and Claude with the detections already run, Arcadis plugged its own MCP server into Autodesk Assistant while keeping the keys, and Motif built a BIM authoring tool around agents from the start. What is different here is scale of surface: the Group reports more than 7.5 million users and €1.19 billion of 2025 revenue, and it owns the desktop applications at both ends of the workflow — the architect’s model and the contractor’s drawing set. An MCP server on each is a larger opening than a startup’s.
The betas in this family sit on the architecture side. The agentic AI Assistant is beta, the Public Archicad MCP Server is beta, and Nemetschek Creator is early access until its commercial release in 2027. On availability the 29 October release is specific: Bluebeam Max and Allplan Max 2027 are available globally, while Archicad Max is available with Archicad 30 and rolling out by region. So the open MCP server — the piece of this that most changes what an outside agent can reach — is the piece still carrying a beta label.
Analysis: a Tier Is a Strategy, Not a Feature List
The following is this publication’s reading, not a company claim.
The interesting decision is not any individual agent. It is that Nemetschek has chosen to sell AI as a named tier per brand rather than as capability folded into existing seats — and has used the same word three times so that a customer who has bought one knows what the others are. The Group’s acquisition of HCSS widened the map it has to cover; “Max” is the pricing-page answer to that width. Compare Motif, which priced per AI user rather than per seat: the startup made AI the unit of the subscription, and the incumbent has made it the top of a ladder a firm already stands on.
The risk in the ladder is the one every premium AI tier carries. If the Max features become the features, the tier stops being optional and becomes a repricing of the base product — and that argument will be had on renewal, in a year, with numbers neither release provides today.
What to Watch
Whether the betas get dates. The Archicad MCP server was marked beta on Graphisoft’s product page on 7 October and is marked beta in the Group’s release on 29 October. Three weeks is not a long time, but a public MCP server that stays in beta is a very different commitment from one that leaves it.
Whether the third-party client list grows or stays at three. Anthropic Claude, GitHub Copilot CLI and AnythingLLM is a specific, checkable list. It is also short, and the choice of which clients get support is a product decision a customer can plan around only once it stops moving.
Whether the self-reported 36% survives contact with a reference customer. The figure is bounded by the vendor, which is the right way to publish it. It is not yet bounded by anyone else.
