Self-hosted / open sourceCAD & EngineeringHeadquarters: CH

Cadwork: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Cadwork is a suite of 3D CAD/CAM and BIM software for timber construction, developed by cadwork informatik AG. Carpenters, joiners, technicians and engineers use it, and students through an education licence. It covers wood construction, roof framing, stairs, joinery, machine control and logistics, with modules for 2D and 3D drawing, automated roofs, walls and elements, CNC machine output, PDF import and a web viewer. It supports IFC for BIM exchange. The company also offers the Lexocad BIM product and the cadwork Engineer infrastructure tool.

Cadwork informatik AG is headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, which belongs to the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) but not to the EU. It has subsidiaries in several European countries, Canada and Australia. The sources consulted name no parent company, describe no open source licence and do not say where any web services are hosted, so ask the vendor about data location before using them.

See the 8 European alternatives ↓Assess your stack with Cadwork pre-selected

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Sovereignty score

80 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in Switzerland: Swiss law, recognised by the EU as adequate
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-680
Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 1, 2026

Headquarters	CH (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	YesVendor-stated
Hosting signal	CYON - cyon AG, CH (CH)Technically measured
Category	CAD & Engineering
Type	Product
Website	cadwork.ch ↗

The hosting signal shows the network that serves the vendor's website, often a CDN, and not necessarily where the service or your data is hosted. How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Cadwork

The European alternatives to Cadwork come from our knowledge base of over 6,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

68 European CAD & Engineering vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Cadwork

Cadwork is headquartered in Switzerland and falls under Swiss law, including the revised Swiss data protection act. Switzerland is not an EU member, but the European Commission recognises its level of data protection as adequate. Its Swiss headquarters does not by itself bring it under US legislation such as the CLOUD Act.

Cadwork runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

Cadwork is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Cadwork together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Cadwork?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Cadwork include ACCA software, ALLPLAN and AUCOTEC Engineering Base. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Cadwork?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Cadwork include Blender. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Cadwork GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Cadwork is headquartered in CH (EFTA) and hosts data in EU. That makes Cadwork an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 1, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

cadwork.com/?code=ch

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in CAD & Engineering

CAD & Engineering: Computer-aided design, 3D modelling and engineering simulation software. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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