Xenmark AS

Xenmark AS is a Norwegian software company, and it makes two kinds of things that don't obviously belong together — until you notice they both come from the same idea: software should solve the problem it was made for without adding unnecessary complexity.

The first is a growing collection of Windows utilities, ranging from small single-purpose tools to larger desktop applications. There isn't a fixed category they have to fit into. If there's a repetitive, awkward or unnecessarily complicated task that can be made simpler with a focused piece of software, it's something we're interested in building. The aim is the same each time: solve the problem, keep the software straightforward, and avoid turning a useful tool into a platform it never needed to be.

The second is our flagship web tool, Xenmark — the odd one out, the one product that lives in the browser instead of on your hard drive. There's a reason for the exception. Reviewing a drawing isn't something one person finishes alone at their desk. Someone issues it. Several other people, often in different companies, need to look at it and say what's wrong. Those comments get discussed, someone acts on them, and a new version goes out. That was never really a one-person job — it just got treated like one, scattered across email threads, marked-up PDFs nobody can quite reconcile, and screenshots pasted into chat.

Xenmark puts all of that in one place. You upload a drawing, and the people you invite comment directly on it — numbered, pinned to the exact spot, replied to, marked Open, In Progress or Closed as things move along. Once a scale is set you can measure things directly on the drawing too. When the review's done, it exports as a comment plan PDF and an Excel list, so there's an actual record of what was raised and what happened to it.

Only the person running the project needs a plan. Everyone they invite — a client, a contractor, an inspector, someone from a completely different company — can review for free. Which is really just an acknowledgment that many of the people whose input matters on a drawing aren't CAD users and shouldn't need to be.

That shows up clearly on drawings like a ship's fire and safety plan. The crew can see that a fire hose has moved from where the plan says it should be; they can't touch the DWG, and the engineering office that can is usually somewhere else entirely. Without a shared place to put it, that kind of observation can easily end up as a phone photo, an email or a message with little connection to the exact drawing revision. In Xenmark it's a comment, pinned to the right spot, on the right version, waiting to be resolved.

Neither product line tries to be more than it is. The utilities run locally and are designed to do their job without requiring users to move their files into an online platform. Xenmark doesn't try to be a document archive or a project management suite — it runs the review, hands you the record of it, and leaves the filing to whatever system you already use.

Xenmark AS is based in Norway.