The American arm of the world's largest Autodesk partner - quietly running the software behind the buildings you walk through.
SYMETRI USA, NASHUA. A name change, not a personality transplant - Microdesk became Symetri in 2023 and kept doing the unglamorous work of making design software behave.
It's a Tuesday on a project that doesn't exist yet. On one screen, a Revit model of a hospital wing is being poked, prodded, and asked an impolite question: how much carbon will you cost us before a single beam is poured? The model answers, because someone installed a tool that makes it answer. That tool came from Symetri USA, and the question is the whole point of the company.
For most of its life this company was called Microdesk. Two people - Michael DeLacey and Robin Adams - opened the doors in July 1994 with a modest pitch: resell Autodesk, Softdesk and ESRI software to architects and engineers who needed help making it sing. Thirty years later the doors are bigger, the parent is Swedish, and the pitch has matured into something closer to a philosophy: design once, design well, and let the model carry the consequences.
CAPTION - The work is invisible by design. When Symetri does its job, you never notice the software; you only notice that the schedule held and the building stood up.
We challenge people to work smarter.
Strip away the acronyms and Symetri USA does one stubborn thing: it makes complicated design software useful for the people who build the physical world.
Building Information Modeling and Virtual Design & Construction - content, standards, automation and implementation so design and construction teams stop redrawing the same wall twice.
Enterprise asset management and digital twins - virtual models that mirror real assets and answer questions long after the ribbon is cut.
Technology advisory, AI and business-process analysis that starts with what the client wants, not what a vendor wants to sell.
Symetri isn't only a reseller. It writes its own add-ons - and keeps acquiring more to fold into them.
Rough public figures - US operations and the wider Symetri group.
Figures are public estimates; revenue reflects US operations, headcount spans the global Symetri group.
Michael DeLacey and Robin Adams launch Microdesk - a two-person reseller of Autodesk, Softdesk and ESRI tools.
Microdesk marks 25 years of AECO growth, by now one of North America's largest Autodesk consultancies.
Symetri (Addnode Group) acquires Microdesk, entering the US market and forming the #1 Global Autodesk Solution Provider.
Team D3 joins the group; Microdesk rebrands as Symetri, unifying the US business under the global name.
Naviate Zero launches for sustainable design; Symetri acquires CTC Software and folds its tools into Naviate.
Most software lets you draw a building and worry about its footprint later. Naviate Zero refuses that order of operations. Built on the One Click LCA platform, it puts emissions math next to the geometry, so an architect can see the carbon cost of a material choice while the choice is still reversible.
It is a small, telling move. Sustainability at Symetri isn't a slide deck - it's an add-on you install.
Empowering people to work smarter for a better future.