Application

AddoBAR is a professional reinforcement detailing and bar bending schedule plugin developed by AddoSOFT (Pty) Ltd, a South African software company serving structural engineers and detailers worldwide. The software bridges the gap between advanced CAD systems and reinforcement detailing solutions, trusted by engineering firms in South Africa, the UK, Europe, and Australia.

Rebuilt from the ground up in V7.1.0 (June 2026), AddoBAR is engineered as a native C++ plugin using the GRX API for GstarCAD, delivering faster loading, quicker responsiveness, and enhanced stability without requiring a separate .NET runtime. The plugin introduces true intelligent rebar objects with grips, snaps, and live properties - a fundamental shift from generic CAD lines and text to proper reinforcement entities.

The rebuilt dockable bar schedule panel sits alongside the drawing and syncs automatically. Users can sort by any column, multi-select bars for bulk editing, edit values directly in-grid with smart drop-downs and numeric validation, and see bars highlight in the drawing on hover. The schedule diff feature provides colour-coded comparison against previous schedules with one-click update-in-place. Export to Excel writes numeric columns as real numbers, and a built-in publish tab handles batch PDF output.

Bar styles are managed through a reworked style manager with embedded live previews, custom tag fields, and per-style default layers. The tag bar system has been rebuilt with proper entity properties, grip editing for leader and text position, and support for leader, text, and range tag modes.

The rebar wizards include a retaining wall designer with live side-view preview, save/load configurations, and country bar mapping, plus a slab/area zone generator with diameter-aware mark grouping. Thirty ported tools from the AddoTools bundle provide GPS coordinate entry with WGS84 conversion, KML import/export, borehole soil logs, CSV/point import, block attribute batch processing via Excel, and batch PDF publishing.

AddoBAR generates bending schedules compliant with international standards including SANS 282 (South Africa), BS 8666 (UK), BS EN 1992-1-1:2004 (Eurocode 2), AS 3600 (Australia), and RSIC (Canada). The software offers both standalone (single workstation) and multi-user network (floating) licenses on an annual subscription basis, with a free version available (capped at 25 rebar entities) and a 30-day full-featured free trial requiring no credit card.

System requirements: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), 8 GB RAM recommended, 500 MB disk space, GstarCAD 2025-2026 (64-bit, Standard/Pro/Plus editions).