The race to challenge Autodesk Revit with next-generation BIM tools has intensified with the launch of Motif, a startup that has just emerged out of stealth. Motif joins other startups including Arcol, Qonic, and Snaptrude, who are already on steady development paths to tackle collaborative BIM. However, like any newcomer competing with a well-established incumbent, it will take years to achieve full feature parity. This is even the case for Autodesk’s next generation cloud-based AEC technology, Forma.

What all these new tools can do quickly, is bring new ideas and capabilities into existing Revit (RVT) AEC workflows. This year, we’re beginning to see this happening across the developer community, a topic that will be discussed in great detail at our NXT BLD and NXT DEV conferences on 11 and 12 June 2025 at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London.

Though a late entrant to the market, Motif stands out. It’s led by Amar Hanspal and Brian Mathews, two former Autodesk executives who played pivotal roles in shaping Autodesk’s product development portfolio.

Hanspal was Autodesk CPO and, for a while, joint CEO. Mathews was Autodesk VP platform engineering / Autodesk Labs and lead the industry’s charge into adopting reality capture. They know where the bodies are buried and have decades of experience in software ideation, running large teams and have immediate global networks with leading design IT directors. Their proven track record also makes it easier for them to raise capital and be taken as a serious contender from the get-go.

Further reading – Motif V1: our first thoughts

Motif

In late January, the company had its official launch alongside key VC investors. Motif secured $46 million in seed and Series A funding. The Series A round was led by CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund, while the seed round was led by Redpoint Ventures. Pre-seed venture firm Baukunst also participated in both rounds. This makes Motif the second largest funded start-up in the ‘BIM’ space – the biggest being HighArc, a cloud-based expert system for US homebuilders, at $80 million.

While Motif has been in stealth for almost two years, operating under the name AmBr (we are guessing for Amar and Brian). Major global architecture firms have been involved in shaping the development of the software, even before any code was written, all under strict NDAs (Non-disclosure Agreements).

The firms working with Hanspal’s team deliver the most geometrically complex and large projects. The core idea is that by tackling the needs of signature architectural practices, the software should deliver more than enough capability for those who focus on more traditional, low risk designs.

There is considerable appetite to replace the existing industry standard software tools. This hunger has been expressed in multiple ‘Open Letters to Autodesk’, based on a wish for more capable BIM tools – a zeitgeist which Motif is looking to harness, as BIM eventually becomes a replacement market.

The challenge

Motif’s mission is to modernise the AEC software industry, which it sees as being dominated by ‘outdated 20th-century technology’. Motif aims to create a next-generation platform for building design, integrating 3D, cloud, and machine learning technologies. Challenges such as climate resilience, rapid urbanisation modelling, and working with globally distributed teams will be addressed, and the company’s solutions will integrate smart building technology.

Motif will fuse 3D, cloud, and AI with support for open data standards within a real-time collaborative platform, featuring deep automation. The unified database will be granular, enabling sharing at the element level. This, in many ways follows the developments of other BIM start-ups such as Snaptrude and Arcol, which pitch themselves as the ‘Figma’ for BIM. In fact, Hanspal was an early investor in Arcol, alongside Procore’s Tooey Courtemanche.

At the moment, there is no software for the public to see, just some hints of the possible interface on the company’s website. Access is request only. AEC Magazine is not privy to any product demonstrations, only what we have gleamed through conversations with Motif employees. The launch provided us with an exclusive interview with Hanspal to discuss the company, the technology and what the BIM industry needs.

A quantum of history

Before we dive into the interview, let’s have a quick look at how we got here. At Autodesk University 2016, while serving as Autodesk’s joint CEO, Hanspal introduced his bold vision for the future of BIM. Called Project Quantum, the aim was to create a new platform that would move BIM workflows to the cloud, providing a common data environment (CDE) for collaborative working.

Hanspal aimed to address problems which were endemic in the industry, arising from the federated nature of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) processes and how software, up to that point, doubled down on this problem by storing data in unconnected silos.

Instead of focusing on rewriting or regenerating Revit as a desktop application, the vision was to create a cloud-based environment to enable different professionals to work on the same project data, but with different views and tools, all connected through the Quantum platform.

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Quantum would feature connecting workspaces, breaking down the monolithic structure of typical AEC solutions. This would allow data and logic to be accessible anywhere on the network and available on demand, in the appropriate application for a given task. These workspaces were to be based on professional definitions, providing architects, structural engineers, MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing) professionals, fabricators, and contractors with access to the specific tools they need.

Hanspal recognised that interoperability was a big problem, and any new solution needed to facilitate interoperability between different software systems, acting as a broker, moving data between different data silos. One of the key aspects of Quantum was that the data would be granular, so instead of sharing entire models, Quantum could transport just the components required. This would mean users receive only the information pertinent to their task, without the “noise” of unnecessary data.

Eight months later, the Autodesk board elected fellow joint CEO, Andrew Anagnost as Autodesk CEO and Hanspal left Autodesk. Meanwhile, the concept of Quantum lived on and development teams continued exploratory work under Jim Awe, Autodesk’s chief software architect.

Months turned into years and by 2019, Project Quantum had been rebranded Project Plasma, as the underlying technology was seen as a much broader company-wide effort to build a cloud-based data-centric approach to design data . Ultimately, Autodesk acquired Spacemaker in 2020 and assigned its team to develop the technology into Autodesk Forma, which launched in 2023—more than six years after Hanspal first introduced the Quantum concept.

However, Forma is still at the conceptual stage, with Revit continuing to be the desktop BIM workflow, with all its underlying issues.

In many respects, Hanspal predicted the future for next generation BIM in his 2016 Autodesk University address. Up until that point Autodesk had wrestled for years with cloud-based design tools, with its first test being Mechanical CAD (MCAD) software, Autodesk Fusion, which demoed in 2009 and shipped in 2013. Cloud-based design applications were a tad ahead of the web standards and infrastructure which have helped product like Figma make an impact.

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In conversation

On leaving Autodesk in 2017, after his 15+ year stint, Hanspal thought long and hard about what to do next. In various conversations over the years, he admitted that the most obvious software demand was for a new modern-coded BIM tool, as he had proposed in some detail with Quantum. However, Hanspal was mindful that it might be seen as sour grapes. Plus, developing a true Revit competitor came with a steep price tag—he estimated it would take over $200 million. Instead, Hanspal opted to start Bright Machines, a company which delivers the scalable automation of robot modules with control software which uses computer vision machine learning to manufacture small goods, like electronics.

After almost four years at Bright Machines, in 2021, Hanspal exited and returned to the AEC problem, which, in the meantime, had not made any progress. During COVID, AEC Magazine was talking with some very early start-ups, and pretty much all had been in contact with Hanspal for advice and/or stewardship.

Martyn Day: Your approach to the market isn’t a single-platform approach, like Revit?

Amar Hanspal: In contrast to the monolithic approach of applications like Revit, we aim to target specific issues and workflows. There will be common elements. With the cloud, you build a common back end, but the idea is that you solve specific problems along the way. You only need one user management system, one payment system, collaboration etc. There are some technology layers that are common. But the idea is about solving end-user problems like design review, modelling, editing, QA, QC.

This isn’t a secret! I talked about this in the Quantum thing seven years ago! I always say ideas are not unique. Execution is. When it comes down to it, can anybody else do this? Of course they can. Will they do this? Of course not!

Martyn Day: Data storage and flow is a core differential from BIM 2.0. Will your system use granular data, and how will you bypass limitations of browser-based applications. You talk about ‘open’, which is very in vogue. Does that mean that your core database is Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), or is there a proprietary database?

Amar Hanspal: There are three things we have to figure out. One how to run in a browser, where you have the limited memory, so you can’t just send everything. You’ve got to get really clever about how to figure out what [data] people receive – and there’s all sorts of modern ways of doing that.

Second is you have to be open from the get-go. However we store the data, anybody should be able to access it, from day one.

And then the third thing is, you can’t assume that you have all the data, so you have to be able to link to other sources and integrate where it makes sense. If it’s a Revit object, you should be able to handle it but if it’s not, you should be able to link to it.

You have to do some things for performance – it’s not proprietary, but you’re always doing something to speed up your user experience. The one path is, here’s your client, then you have to get data fast to them, and you have to do that in a very clever way, all while you’re encrypting and decrypting it. That’s just for user experience and performance, but from a customer perspective, anytime you want to interrogate the data send and request all the objects in the database – there is a very standard web API that you can use, and it’s always available.

Of course we’ll support IFC, just like we support RVT and all these formats. But that’s not connected, not our core data format. Our core data format is a lot looser, because we realised in this industry, it’s not just geometric objects you’re dealing with, you must deal with materials, and all sorts of data types. In some ways, you must try and make it more like the internet in a way. Brian [Mathews] would explain that the internet is this kind of weirdly structured yet linked data, all at the same time. And I think that’s what we are figuring out how to do well.

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Martyn Day: We have seen all sorts of applications now being developed for the web. Some are thick clients with a 20 GB download – basically a desktop application running in a web browser, utilising all the local compute, with the data on the cloud. Some are completely on the cloud with little resource requirement on the local machine. Autodesk did a lot of experimentation to try and work out the best balance. What are you doing?

Amar Hanspal:  It’s a bit of a moving edge right now. I would say that you want to begin first principles. You want to get the client as thin as possible so that if you can, you avoid the big download at all costs. That can be through trickery, it’s also where WebGPU and all these new things that are showing up are helping. You can start using browsers for more and more [things] every day that will help deliver applications. But I do think that there are situations in which the browser is going to get overwhelmed, in which case, you’re going to require people to add something. Like, when the objects get really large and very graphical, sometimes you can deliver a better user experience if you give somebody a thicker client.  I think that’s some way off for us to try and deal with, but our first principle is to just leverage the browser as much as possible and not require users to download something to use our application. I think it may become, ‘you hit this wall for this particular capability’, then you’ll need to add something local.

Martyn Day: You have folks that have worked on Revit in your team. Will this help your RVT ability form the get go?

Amar Hanspal: We’ve not reverse engineered the file format, but, you know, we do know how this works. We’re staying good citizens and will play nice. We’re not doing any hacks, we’re going to integrate very cleanly with whatever – Revit, Rhino, other things that people use – in a very clean way. We’re doing it in an intelligent way, to understand how these things are constructed.

Martyn Day: The big issue is that Revit is designed to predominantly model, in order to produce drawings. Many firms are fed up with documentation and modelling to produce low level of detail output. Are you looking to go beyond the BIM 1.0 paradigm?

Amar Hanspal: Yes, fabrication is very critical for modular construction. Fabrication is really one of the things that you have to ‘rethink’ in some way. It’s probably the most obvious other thing that you have to do. I also think that there are other experiences coming out, not that we are an AR/VR play, but you’re creating other sorts of experiences, and deliverables that people want like. We need to think through that more expansively.

Martyn Day: Are you using a solid modelling engine underneath, like Qonic?

Amar Hanspal: Yes, there is an answer to that, but what we’re coming out with first, won’t need all that complexity, but yeah, of course, we will do all that stuff over time.  There is a mixture of tech that we can use – off the shelf – like license one or use something that is relatively open source.

Martyn Day: Most firms who have entered this space, taking on Revit, is the software equivalent of scaling the North face of the Eiger – 20 years of development, multidiscipline, broadly adopted. All of the new tools initially look like SketchUp, as there’s so much to develop. Some have focused on one area, like conceptual, others have opted to develop all over the place to have broad, but shallow functionality. Are you coming to market focussing on a sweet spot?

Amar Hanspal:  One of the things we learned from speaking to customers is that [in] this whole concept modelling / Skema / TestFit world there are so many things that developers are doing. We’re going after a different problem set. In some ways, the first thing that we’re doing will feel much more like a companion, collaboration product, and it will look like a creation thing. I don’t want to take anything out of market that feels half incomplete. The lessons we’ve learned from everything is that even to do the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) in modelling, we will be just one of sixteen things that people are using. I think, you know, I’d much rather go up to the North face and scale it.

Martyn Day: Many of the original letter writers were signature architects, complaining that they couldn’t model the geometry in Revit so used Rhino / Grasshopper then dropped the geometry into Revit. So, are you talking to the most demanding group of users to please?

Amar Hanspal:  I 100% agree with you. I think someone has to go up the North face of the Eiger. That’s my thing, it’s the hardest thing to do. It’s why we need this special team. It’s why we need this big capital. That’s why Brian and I decided to do it. I was thinking, who else is going to do it? Autodesk isn’t doing it! This Forma stuff isn’t really leading to the reinvention of Revit.

All these small developers that are showing up, are going to the East face. I give them credit. I’m not dissing them, but if they’re not going to scale the North face… I’m like, OK, this is hard, but we have got to go up the North face of the Eiger, and that’s what we’re going to do.

It’s like Onshape [cloud-based MCAD software] took ten years. Autodesk Fusion took ten years. And this might take us ten years to do it – I don’t think it will. So, what you will see from us – and maybe you might even criticise us for – is while we’re scaling, it’s going to look like little, tiny subsets coming out. But there’s no escaping the route we have to go.

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Martyn Day: From talking with other developers, it looks like it will take five years to be feature comparative. The problem is products come to the market and aren’t fleshed out, they get evaluated and dismissed because they look like SketchUp, not a Revit replacement and it’s hard to get the market’s attention again after that.

Amar Hanspal:  Yeah, I think it’s five years. And that’s why, deliberately, the first product that’s going to come out is not going to be the editor. It’s going to look a little bit more Revizto-like because I think that’s what gives us time to go do the big thing. If you’re gonna come for the King, you better not miss. We’ve got to get to that threshold where somebody looks at it and goes, ‘It doesn’t do 100% but it does 50% or 60%’ or I can do these projects on it and that’s where we are – it’s why we’re working [with] these big guys to keep us honest. When they tell us they can really use this, then we open it up to everybody else. Up until then, we’ll do this other thing that is not a concept modeller but will feel useful.

Martyn Day: How many people are in the team now?

Amar Hanspal:  We’re getting 35 plus. I think we’re getting close to 40. It’s mostly engineering people. Up until two weeks ago, it was 32 engineers and myself. Now I have one sales guy, one marketing, so we’ll have a little bit of go to market. But it’s mainly all product people. We are a distributed company, based around Boston, New York or the Bay Area – that’s our core.

We’re constructing the team with three basic capabilities. There’s classic geometry, folks – and these are the usual suspects. The place where we have newer talent is on the cloud side, both on trying to do 3D on the browser front end, and then on the back-end side, when we’re talking about the data structures. None of those people come from CAD companies, none of them, they are all Twitter, Uber or robotics companies – different universes to traditional CAD.

The third skill set that we’re developing is machine learning. Again, none of those guys are coming from Cloud or 3D companies. These are research-focused, coming from first principles, that kind of focus.

Martyn Day: By trying to rethink BIM and being heavily influenced by what came before, like Revit, is there a danger of being constrained by past concepts? Somone described Revit to me as 70s thinking in 80s programming. Obviously now computer science, processors, the cloud have all moved on. The same goes for business models. This weekend, I watched the CEO of Microsoft say SaaS was dead!

Amar Hanspal:  We know we’re living in a post subscription world. Post ‘named user’ world is the way I would describe it. The problem with subscription right now, is that it’s all named user, you’ve got to be onboard, and then this token model at Autodesk is if you use the product for 30 seconds, then you get charged for the whole day.

It’s still very tied to, sort of like a human being in front in a chair. That’s what makes the change. Now, what does that end up looking like? You know the prevalent model, there’s three that are getting a lot of interest: one is the Open AI ChatGPT model. It’s get a subscription, you get a bunch of tokens. You exceed them, you get more.

The other one, which I don’t think works in AEC, is outcome-based pricing, which works for callcentres. You close a call, you create seven bucks for the software. I don’t see that happening. What’s the equivalent in AEC time? Produce drawing, seven bucks? What is the equivalent of that? That just seems wrong. I think we’re going to end up in this somewhat hybrid tokenised / ChatGPT style model, but you know we have to figure that out. We have to account for people’s ability to flex up and down. They have work what comes in and out. Yeah, that’s the weakness of the subscription business model, is that customers are just stuck.

Martyn Day: Why didn’t Autodesk redevelop Revit in the 2010 to 2015?

Amar Hanspal:  What I remember of those days – it’s been a while – is I think there was a lot of focus on just trying to finish off Revit Structure and MEP. I think that was the one Revit idea, and then suites and subscriptions. There was so much focus on business models on that. But you’re right. I think looking back, that was the time we should have have redone Revit. I started to it with Quantum, but I didn’t last long enough to be able to do it!

Conclusion

One could argue that the decision by Autodesk not to rewrite Revit and minimise the development was a great move, profit-wise. For the last eight years, Revit sales haven’t slowed down and copies are still flying off the shelves. Revit is a mature product with millions of trained users and RVT is the lingua franca of the AEC world, as defined in many contracts. There is proof to the argument that software is sticky and there’s plenty of time with that sticky grip, for Autodesk to flesh out and build its Forma cloud strategy.

Autodesk has taken active interest in the start ups that have appeared, even letting Snaptrude exhibit at Autodesk University, while it assesses the threat and considers investing in or buying useful teams and tech. If there is one thing Autodesk has, it’s deep pockets and throughout its history has bought each subsequent replacement BIM technology – from Architectural Desktop (ADT) to Revit. Forma would have been the first in-house development, although I guess that’s partially come out of the SpaceMaker acquisition.

But this isn’t the whole story. With Revit, it’s not just that the software that is old, or the files are big, or that the Autodesk team has given up on delivering major new productivity benefits. From talking with firms there’s an almost allergic reaction to the business model, coupled with the threat of compliance audits, added to the perceived lack of product development. In the 35+ years of doing this, it’s still odd seeing Autodesk customers inviting in BIM start-ups to try and help the competitive products become match-fit in order to provide real productivity benefits – and this has been happening for two years.

With Hanspal now throwing his hat officially in the ring, it feels like something has changed, without anything changing. The BIM 2.0 movement now has more gravitas, adding momentum to the idea that cloud-based collaborative workflows are now inevitable.  This is not to take anything away from Arcol, Snaptrude and Qonic which are possibly years ahead of Motif, having already delivered products to market, with much more to come.

From our conversation with Hanspal, we have an indication of what Motif will be developing without any real physical proof of concept. We know it has substantial backing from major VCs and this all adds to the general assessment that Revit and BIM is ripe for the taking.

At this moment in the AEC space, trying to do a full-frontal assault of the Revit installed-base, is like climbing North Face of the Eiger – you better take a mighty big run up and have plenty of reserves. And, for a long time, it’s going to look like you are going nowhere. Here, Motif is playing its cards close to its chest, unlike the other start-ups which have been sharing in open development from very early on, dropping new capabilities weekly. While it is clear to assess the velocity with which Snaptrude, Arcol and Qonic deliver, I think it’s going to be hard to measure Motif’s modeller technology until it’s considerably along in the development phase. It’s a different approach. It doesn’t mean it’s wrong and with regular workshops and collaboration with the signature architects, there should be some comfort for investors that progress is being made. But, as Hanspal explained, it’s going to be a slow drip of capability.

While Autodesk may have been inquisitive about the new BIM start-ups, I suspect the ex-Autodesk talent in Motif, carrying out a similar Quantum plan, would be seen as a competitor that might do some damage if given space, time and resources. Motif is certainly well funded but with a US-based dev team, it will have a high cash burn rate.

By the same measurement, Snaptrude is way ahead, has a larger, purely Indian development team, with substantially lower costs and lower capital burn rate. Arcol has backing from Tooey Courtemanche (aka Mr. Procore) and Qonic is doing fast things with big datasets that just look like magic and have been totally self-funded. BIM 2.0 already has quality and depth. The challenge is to offer enough benefit, at the right price, to make customers want to switch, for which there is a minimal viable product.

It’s only February and we already know that this will be the year that BIM 2.0 gets real. All the key players and interested parties will all be at our NXT BLD and NXT DEV conferences in London on 11-12 June 2025 – that’s Arcol, Autodesk, Bentley Systems, Dassault Systèmes, Graphisoft, Snaptrude, Qonic and others. As these products are being developed, we need as many AEC firms onboard to helping guide their direction. We need to ensure the next generation of tools are what is needed, not what software programmers think we need, or limited to concepts which constrained workflows in the past. Welcome Motif to the melee for the hearts and minds of next generation users!

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Xyicon has updated the Revit add-in for its information modelling platform which is designed to give non-AEC professionals, such as building owners and project managers, real-time access to data embedded within Revit RVT files.

Xyicon’s information modelling platform, which can be used for planning and operations, centralises both graphical and non-graphical data into integrated 2D/3D models.

The Revit add-in is designed to address the disconnect between AEC professionals and non-AEC project teams, by allowing anyone to work in a functional BIM environment.

BIM tools like Revit, as Xyicon explains, are built exclusively for AEC professionals, often leaving non-AEC stakeholders to rely on traditional methods like PDF based diagrams and spreadsheets. These manual workflows are said to limit collaboration, especially for those without modelling expertise or access to BIM software.

Find this article plus many more in the Jan / Feb 2025 Edition of AEC Magazine

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With Xyicon’s Revit add-in, any user can view and update the Revit BIM model directly and contribute to its progress. For example, through the Xyicon platform, users can lay out new or additional furniture, assets and equipment, move placements, rotate positions, view and edit parameters, or delete assets. At the same time, AEC professionals retain full control over what gets synced back to Revit. According to the developers, this ensures alignment and accuracy in the final model.

New features include a revamped UI/UX and optimised creation of 3D GLB files, resulting in smaller sizes, faster load times for web and mobile, and improved compatibility.

Xyicon is also gearing up to launch Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) integration early this year. This update will allow users to edit and collaborate on cloud-hosted Revit models directly within Xyicon—without the need for local downloads or Revit software.

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Pele AI is a new AI BIM Assistant for Revit designed to simplify, automate and streamline manual tasks such as tagging elements, generating views, organising sheets or graphically modifying elements.

The Revit add-in understands plain language instructions, bypassing the need for technical scripts or complex syntax.

Pele AI analyses the prompt, determines the necessary steps, and then executes the task in Revit. If the command is unclear or too complex, the software will reattempt execution. If it still cannot complete the task, it will notify the user and suggest that refining the input might improve the results.

Example prompts include:

• Create a building with 200m2 area as a rectangle, 6 storeys high
• Open all the floorplans that have a scale of 1:20
• Select any floors thinner than 400mm
• Make dimensions for the rooms in this plan view
• Highlight clashes between ducts and beams in this 3D view.

Pele is available through the Autodesk App store and supports Revit versions 2021 through 2025. The software is free to download, and a free trial gives users 20 prompts. The software is then charged per prompt – a 500-prompt bundle, for example costs $40.

The post AI BIM assistant for Revit launches appeared first on AEC Magazine.

BIM software startup, Skema, has introduced a new integration with SketchUp aimed at helping designers make use of SketchUp’s early-stage design capabilities to drive BIM workflows and Revit deliverables.

The integration allows designers to start massing in SketchUp, move into Skema for ‘block-and-stack’ planning, and return to SketchUp for design exploration of facades, rendering, energy use, lighting, and more.

According to the developers, Skema’s ‘BIM in Minutes’ feature allows users to move their designs into Revit at the push of a button, ready for construction documentation.

“We’re working to bridge the gap between SketchUp and a firm’s existing BIM workflows within Revit,” said Richard Harpham, co-founder of Skema. “The new Skema for SketchUp extension empowers architects to transform their initial design concepts into precise, data-rich BIM models faster—reducing rework, data loss, and coding.”

Skema for SketchUp is available now for $349/year.

Meanwhile, to learn more about Skema, watch the following presentations from AEC Magazine’s NXT BLD / NXT DEV conferences

• BIM BOM BOOM: A roadmap to deliver profitable productized construction
• The Rapidly Evolving Software Landscape, which includes a demonstration of how multiple new applications, including Skema, Snaptrude, and Augmenta, can work together to help automate design.

NXT BLD and NXT DEV 2025 will take place in London – 11-12 June 2025

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The Autodesk AI brand debuted in Las Vegas last year at Autodesk University, but the launch lacked any real substance. Despite a flashy logo there were no significant new AI capabilities to back it up. The event seemed more like a signal of Autodesk’s intent to add greater focus on AI in the future — building on its past achievements. It came at a time where ‘AI-anything’ was increasing share valuations of listed companies.

Fast forward 12 months and at Autodesk University 2024 in San Diego the company delivered more clarity on its evolving AI strategy — on stage and behind the scenes in press briefings. Autodesk also introduced a sprinkling of new AI features with many focused on modelling productivity, signalling that progress is being made. However, most of these were for manufacturing with little to excite customers in Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC), other than what had already been announced for Forma.

In his keynote, CEO Andrew Anagnost took a cautious tone, warning that it’s still early days for AI despite the growing hype from the broader tech industry.

Anagnost set the scene for the future. “We’re looking at how you work. We’re finding the bottlenecks. We’re getting the right data flowing to the right places, so that you can see past the hype to where there’s hope, so that you can see productivity rather than promises, so that you can see AI that solves the practical, the simple, and dare I even say, the boring things that get in your way and hold back you and your team’s productivity.”

One of those ‘boring things’ is sketch constraints, which govern a sketch’s shape and geometric properties in parametric 3D CAD software like Autodesk Fusion, which is used for product design and manufacturing.

Fusion’s new AI-powered sketch auto-constrain feature streamlines this process by analysing sketches to detect intended spatial relationships between aspects of the design.

Automatically constraining sketches is just the starting point in Autodesk’s broader vision to use AI to optimise and automate 3D modelling workflows. As Anagnost indicated, the company is exploring how AI models can be taught to understand deeper elements of 3D models, including features, constraints, and joints.

At AU, no reference was made to similar modelling productivity tools being developed for Autodesk’s AEC products, including Forma. However, Amy Bunszel, executive VP, AEC at Autodesk, told AEC Magazine that the AEC team will learn from what happens in Fusion.

Another ‘boring’ task ripe for automation is the production of drawings. This labour-intensive process is currently a hot topic across the CAD sector (read this AEC Magazine article).

This capability is also coming first to Autodesk’s product design and manufacturing product. With Drawing Automation for Fusion, Autodesk is using AI to automate the process, down to the precise placement of annotations.

With the click of a button, the AI examines 3D models and does the time-consuming work of generating the 2D drawings and dimensions required to manufacture parts. The technology has evolved since its initial release earlier this year and now accelerates and streamlines this process even more by laying out drawing sheets for each component in a model and applying a style. Early next year, the technology will be able to recognise standard components like fasteners, remove them from drawing sets, and automatically add them to the bill of materials for purchase.

Once again, this feature will first appear in Fusion, but sources have confirmed plans to extend automated drawing capabilities to Revit—a significant development given the BIM tool’s widespread use for documentation. There’s also potential for autonomous drawings in Forma, although Forma would first need the ability to generate drawings. During the AU press conference, CEO Andrew Anagnost hinted that drawing capabilities might be in Forma’s future, which, if realised, could potentally impact how much customers rely on Revit as a documentation tool in the long term.

Both of Autodesk’s new AI-powered features are designed to automate complex, repetitive, and error-prone processes, significantly reducing the time that skilled designers spend on manual tasks. This allows them to focus on more critical, high-value activities. But, as Anagnost explained, Autodesk is also exploring how AI can be used to fundamentally change the way people work.

One approach is to enhance the creative process and Form Explorer is a new automotive-focused generative AI tool for Autodesk Alias, designed to bridge the gap between 2D ideation and traditional 3D design. It learns from a company’s historical 3D designs, then applies that unique styling language.

Lessons learned from Form Explorer are also helping Autodesk augment and accelerate creativity in other areas of conceptual design.

Project Bernini is an experimental proof-of-concept research project that uses generative AI to quickly generate 3D models from a variety of inputs including a single 2D image, multiple images showing different views of an object, point clouds, voxels, and text. The generated models are designed to be ‘functionally correct’, so a pitcher, for example, will be empty inside. As the emphasis is on the geometry, Bernini does not apply colours and textures to the model.

Project Bernini is not designed to replace manual 3D modelling. “Bernini is the thing that helps you get to that first stage really quickly,” said Mike Haley, senior VP of research at Autodesk. “Nobody likes the blank canvas.”

Project Bernini is industry agnostic and is being used to explore practical applications for manufacturing, AEC and media and entertainment. At AU the emphasis was on manufacturing, however, where one of the ultimate aims is to learn how to produce precise geometry that can be converted into editable geometry in Fusion.

However, there’s a long way to go before this is a practical reality. There is currently no established workflow, plus Bernini has been trained on a limited set of licensed public data that cannot be used commercially.

AI for AEC

Autodesk is also working on several AI technologies specific to AEC. Nicolas Mangon, VP, AEC industry strategy at Autodesk, gave a brief glimpse of an outcome-based BIM research project which he described as Project Bernini for AECO.

He showed how AI could be used to help design buildings made from panellised wood systems, by training it on past BIM projects stored in Autodesk Docs. “[It] will leverage knowledge graphs to build a dataset of patterns of relationship between compatible building components, which we then use to develop an auto complete system that predicts new component configurations based on what it learned from past projects,” he said.

Mangon showed how the system suggests multiple options to complete the model driven by outcomes such as construction costs, fabrication time and carbon footprint. This, he said, ensures that when the system proposes the best options, the results are not only constructible, but also align with sustainability, time and cost targets.

Another AEC focused AI tool, currently in beta, is Embodied Carbon Analysis in Autodesk Forma, which is designed to give rapid site-specific environmental design insights. “It lets you quickly see the embodied carbon impact at the earliest conceptual design phase, giving you the power to make changes when the cost is low,” said Bunszel.

The software uses EHDD’s C.Scale API which applies machine learning models based on real data from thousands of buildings. The technology helps designers balance trade-offs between embodied carbon, sun access, sellable area, and outdoor comfort etc.

Embodied Carbon Analysis in Autodesk Forma follows other AI-powered features within the software. With ‘Rapid Noise Analysis’ and ‘Rapid Wind Analysis’, for example, Forma uses machine learning to predict ground noise and wind conditions in real time.

Autodesk AI is also providing insights in hydraulic modelling through Autodesk InfoDrainage, as Bunszel explained, “You can place a pond or swale on your site and quickly see the impact on overland flows and the surrounding flood map.”

Simple AI

Autodesk is also diving into the world of general purpose AI through the application of Large Language Models (LLMs). With Autodesk Assistant, customers can use natural language to ask questions about products and workflows.

Autodesk Assistant has been available on Autodesk’s website for some time and is now being rolled out gradually inside Autodesk products.

“The important thing about the system, is it’s going to be context-aware, so it’s understanding what you’re working on, what project you’re on, what data you’ve run, maybe what you’ve done before, where you are within your project, that kind of thing,” said Haley.

With the beta release of Autodesk Assistant in Autodesk Construction Cloud, for example, users can explore their specification documents through natural language queries, as Bunszel explained, “You can ask the assistant using normal everyday language to answer questions, generate lists or create project updates,” she said, adding that it gives you access to intuitive details from your specifications that usually require lots of clicking or page turning or highlighting to find.

Getting connected

Like most software developers Autodesk is harnessing the power of LLMs or vision models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini. “We can use them, we can adapt them, we can fine tune them to our customers’ data and workflows,” said Haley, citing the example of Autodesk Assistant.

But, as Haley explained, language and vision models don’t have any sense of the physical world, so Autodesk is focusing much of its research on developing a family of foundation models that will eventually deliver CAD geometry with ‘high accuracy and precision’.

Autodesk’s foundation models are being trained to understand geometry, shape, form, materials, as well as how things are coupled together and how things are assembled.

“Then you also get into the physical reasoning,” added Haley. “How does something behave? How does it move? What’s the mechanics of it? How does a fluid flow over the surface? What’s the electromechanical properties of something?”

According to Anagnost, the ultimate goal for Autodesk is to get all these foundation models talking together, but until this happens, you can’t change the paradigm.

“Bernini will understand the sketch to create the initial geometry, but another model might understand how to turn that geometry into a 3D model that actually can be evolved and changed in the future,” he said. “One might bring modelling intelligence to the table, one might bring shape intelligence to the table, and one might be sketch driven, the other one might be sketch aware.”

To provide some context for AEC, Autodesk CTO Raji Arasu said, “In the future, these models can even help you generate multiple levels of detail of a building.”

AI model training

Model training is a fundamental part of AI, and Anagnost made the point that data must be separated from methods, “You have to teach the computer to speak a certain language,” he said. “We’re creating training methods that understand 3D geometry in a deep way. Those training methods are data independent.”

With Project Bernini Autodesk is licensing public data to essentially create a prototype for the future. “We use the licence data to show people what’s possible,” said Anagnost.

For Bernini, Autodesk claims to have used the largest set of 3D training data ever assembled, comprising 10 million examples, but the generated forms that were demonstrated — a vase, a chair, a spoon, a shoe, and a pair of glasses — were still primitive. As Tonya Custis, senior director AI Research, admitted there simply isn’t enough 3D data anywhere to build the scale of model required, highlighting that the really good large language and image models are trained on the entire internet.

“It’s very hard to get data at scale that very explicitly ties inputs to outputs,” she said. “If you have a billion cat pictures on the internet that’s pretty easy to get that data.”

The billion-dollar question is where will Autodesk get its training data from? At AU last year, several customers expressed concern about how their data might be used by Autodesk for AI training.

This was a hot topic again this year and in the press conference Anagnost provided more clarity. He told journalists that for a generative AI technology like Bernini, where there’s a real possibility it could impact on intellectual property, customers will need to opt in.

But that’s not the case for so-called ‘classic productivity’ AI features like sketch auto-constrain or automated drawings, “No one has intellectual property on how to constrain a sketch,” said Anagnost. “[For] that we just train away.”

This point was echoed by Hooper in relation to automated drawings, “Leveraging information that we have in Fusion about how people actually annotate drawings is not leveraging people’s core IP,” he said.

To help bring more transparency to how Autodesk is using customer data for training its AI models, Autodesk has created a series of Autodesk AI transparency cards which will be made available for each new AI feature. “These labels will provide you a clear overview of how each AI feature is built, the data that is being used, and the benefits that the feature offers,” said Arasu.

Of course, some firms will not want to share their data under any circumstances. Anagnost believes that this may lead to a bifurcated business model with customers, where Autodesk builds some foundational intelligence into its models and then licenses them to individual customers so they can be fine-tuned with private data.

AI compute

AI requires substantial processing power to function efficiently, particularly when it comes to training. With Autodesk AI, everything is currently being done in the cloud. This can be expensive but, as Anagnost boasted: “We have negotiating power with AWS that no customer would have with AWS.”

Relying on the cloud means that in order to use features in Fusion like auto constraints or drawing automation, you must be connected to the Internet.

This might not be the case forever, however. Arasu told AEC Magazine that AI inferencing [the process of using a trained AI model to make predictions or decisions based on new data] could go local. She noted some of Autodesk’s customers have powerful workstations on their desktops, implying that by using the cloud for compute would mean a waste of their own resources.

All about the data

It goes without saying that data is a critical component of Autodesk’s AI strategy, particularly when it comes to what Autodesk calls outcome-based BIM, as Mangon explained, “Making your data from our existing products available to the Forma Industry Cloud will create a rich data model that powers an AI-driven approach centred on project outcomes, so you can optimise decisions about sustainability, cost, construction time and even asset performance at the forefront of the project.”

To fully participate in Autodesk’s AI future, customers will need to get their data into the cloud-based common data environment, Autodesk Docs, which some customers are reluctant to do, for fear of being locked in with limited data access only through APIs.

Autodesk Docs can be used to manage data from AutoCAD, Revit, Tandem, Civil 3D, Autodesk Workshop XR, with upcoming support for Forma. It also integrates with third-party applications including Rhino, Grasshopper, Microsoft Power BI and soon Tekla Structures.

The starting point for all of this is files but, over time, with the Autodesk AEC Data Model API, some of this data will become granular. The AEC Data Model API enables the break-up of monolithic files, such as Revit RVT and AutoCAD DWG, into ‘granular object data’ that can be managed at a sub-file level.

“With the AEC Data Model API, you can glimpse into the future where data is not just an output, but a resource,” said Sasha Crotty, Sr. Director, AEC Data, Autodesk. “We are taking the information embedded in your Revit models and making it more accessible, empowering you to extract precisely the data you need without having to dive back into the model each time you need it.”

Crotty gave the example of US firm Avixi, which is using the API to extract Revit data and gain valuable insights through Power BI dashboards.

When the AEC Data Model API launched in June, it allowed the querying of key element properties from Revit RVT files. Autodesk is now starting to granularize the geometry, and at AU it announced it was making Revit geometric data available in a new private beta. For more on the AEC Data Model API read this AEC Magazine article.

Autodesk Docs is also being used to feed data into Forma Board, a digital whiteboard and collaboration tool that allows project stakeholders to present and discuss concepts.

“Forma Board lets you pull in visuals from Forma and other Autodesk products through Docs, and now you can demonstrate the impact of sun or noise, ask for feedback on specific concepts, and much more,” said Bunszel.

Revit also got some airtime, but the news was a little underwhelming. Bunszel shared her favourite Revit 2025 update – the ability to export to PDF in the background without stopping your work. Meanwhile, manufacturing customers were being shown the future, with new features coming to Inventor 2026 such as associative assembly mirror and part simplification.

In the press conference Anagnost reiterated how Forma is different to Revit. “It is driven by outcomes,” he said. “We not trying to redo Revit in the cloud.”

Anagnost added that Forma is going to start moving downstream into things that Revit ‘classically does well. “It doesn’t mean it has to swallow all of Revit, and you know that would take a long time, but it can certainly do things that that Revit does today as it expands,” he said.

An iterative future

Autodesk is beginning to add clarity to its AI strategy. It is addressing AI from two angles: bottom up, bringing automation to repetitive and error prone tasks, and top down with technologies like Project Bernini that in the future could fundamentally change the way designers and engineers work. The two will eventually meet in the middle.

Autodesk is keen to use AI to deliver practical solutions and the automation of drawings and constraints in Fusion should deliver real value to many firms right now, freeing up skilled engineers at a time when they are in short supply.

We expect automated drawings will find their way into Autodesk AEC products soon, but it’s hard to tell if Autodesk has any concrete plans to use AI for modelling productivity.

As to pushing data into Autodesk Docs to get the maximum benefit out of AI, the fear that some customers have of getting trapped in the cloud is unlikely to go away any time soon.

Meanwhile, it’s clear there’s still a long way to go before the AI foundation models being explored in Project Bernini can deliver CAD geometry with ‘high accuracy and precision’.

While Bernini is starting to understand how to create basic geometry, the 3D models need more detail, and Autodesk must also work out how they can be of practical use inside CAD. With rapid advances in text-to-image AI, one also wonders what additional value text-to-CAD might bring to concept design. One could also ask whether product designers, architects or engineers would even want to use something like this to kickstart their design process. As the technology is still so embryonic it’s very hard to tell. It’s also important to remember that Bernini is a proof-of-concept, designed to explore what’s possible, rather than a practical application.

Meanwhile, as Autodesk continues to develop the complex AI training methods, there’s also the challenge of sourcing data for training. It will be interesting to see how Autodesk’s trust relationship with customers plays out.

While Autodesk’s long-term plan is to get multiple foundation models to talk together, this doesn’t mean we are heading for true design automation any time soon.

At AU Anagnost admitted that the day where AI can automatically deliver final outcomes from an initial specification is further away than one might think. “For those of you who are trying to produce an epic work of literature with ChatGPT, you know you have to do it iteratively,” he said. That same iterative process will apply to AI for design for some time to come.

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For mature BIM customers, having content at the tips of their fingers can lend productivity a major boost. It might be content – created for previous projects that they need, or new content created for ongoing projects that needs to be shared among teams. Managing this kind of content can be complicated, however, and there have been numerous technologically-based attempts to tackle the issue.

The big issue here is that the Internet was, and still is, a Wild West when it comes to downloadable content. Customers looking for BIM component data that doesn’t already exist in their own internal, managed repositories are forced to deal with issues around file size and quality and then incorporate these ‘foreign objects’ into well-managed BIM processes.

It’s been a challenge for the software industry. Take, for example, Autodesk Seek, a content website from the software giant that demonstrated exactly how disparate the quality of downloadable content can be. In early 2017, Autodesk ended up handing over the operations and customer support obligations relating to Autodesk Seek to BIMobject , a Sweden-based company that has taken on the gnarly task of encouraging AEC manufacturers to provide managed content and developed a high-end database to store it, at first for its own use and then later, for fee-paying BIM customers. In the UK, meanwhile, we have BIMstore, among many others.

In my view, getting companies in the AEC industry to provide up-to-date, high-quality, modern digital deliverables that represent their entire product ranges is probably never going to happen. The task is too huge, and I think we may have to wait for AI to take it on.

Welcome news

That said, the recent announcement that Autodesk has reworked the technology acquired in its March 2023 acquisition of Unifi and integrated it into its own cloud stack is welcome news.

Unifi was founded in Last Vegas in 2010 by engineers Dwayne Miller and Ken Gardener, in response to the huge expansion of building programmes in that city over the past two decades, as well as in the Middle East and Asia. The goal was to give back to BIM users all the time they wasted searching for and downloading content.

In essence, Unifi was built as a library for collaging and managing company and project content, providing control of virtual assets for firms looking to deploy consistent standards across project teams. Offering cloud accessibility, in-Revit access, intelligent search and browse and a stack of other management tools, Unifi gained real momentum quickly and inevitably popped up early on Autodesk’s radar. Getting into buying mode and negotiating a deal took time, but it was clear that Unifi was a product from which all Autodesk customers could benefit and which could easily be included in their subscription fees.

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Since the deal was signed, Unifi has been reworked to fit into Autodesk’s cloud stack and rebranded as Content Catalog, a part of the Autodesk Docs subscription at no extra cost and manageable via the Autodesk Construction Cloud Admin. This means that users of numerous Autodesk products have free access to Content Catalog (including ACC, AEC Collection, BIM Collaborate, Collaborate Pro, Autodesk Build, Autodesk Takeoff), as well as those with an Autodesk Docs stand-alone subscription.

Meanwhile, customers using the most recent release of Unifi Pro are secure and Autodesk has no plans to retire this product. In fact, Content Catalog doesn’t offer the full functionality of Unifi Pro, with a number of key features omitted. These include content ratings, content requests, personal saved searches and support for Revit legends, Revit Material and Fill Pattern. Also missing are the preview image generator, automatic users management for group syncing with SSO or Active Directory, the ability to create new shared libraries, manufacturer-provided content (channels), shared parameter management, APIs and Project Analytics.

It’s expected that many of these capabilities will be added over time. Project Analytics, for example, appears to be something that Autodesk is working on in a more general capacity within its cloud stack and the company plans a release of new management tools, with a separate licensing framework.

In conclusion, Unifi has the potential to be a big crowd-pleaser, especially with customers that have not yet implemented a content management system of their own. And in many ways, content management within Autodesk’s BIM products is long overdue, as are industrial strength management-level tools. The inclusion of Content Catalog in the Autodesk stack and the possibility that the company is working on additional management reporting tools is likely to be well-received.

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Cesium, a specialist in 3D geospatial technology, has launched its AECO Tech Preview Program, with the aim of improving workflow and capabilities that place architecture, engineering, construction, and operations (AECO) content in a 3D geospatial context.

The company has made two new technologies – Design Tiler and Revit Add-In – available for early access, to transform IFC and Revit files into 3D Tiles, an open standard developed by the Cesium team for streaming and rendering massive amounts of geospatial data.

AECO 3D Tiles includes metadata for querying, filtering, styling, and analytics, for efficiently streaming massive datasets to the web or through project-centred applications via Cesium’s geospatial platform.

According to Cesium’s Dave Braig, with IFC data as 3D Tiles, there is greater performance, increased interoperability, and less manual effort to optimise this rich content for viewing and distribution. 3D Tiles from Revit files include the metadata, materials, and textures.

Cesium has been testing these capabilities with AECO projects containing over 4 million individual objects and 800 million mesh triangles.

3D Tiles are compatible with Unreal Engine, via the Cesium for Unreal plugin, which allows developers to stream, visualize, and interact with large-scale geospatial datasets in real-time within the Unreal Engine environment.

3D Tiles are also compatible with Unity, Nvidia Omniverse, Bentley Systems iTwin platform, and other engines / platforms.

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WiseBIM, a French software startup, has launched a new add-in for Revit that uses AI to turn 2D plans into Revit models. The tool is primarily aimed at design offices, architectural firms, construction companies, and heritage managers.

WiseBIM AI for Autodesk Revit takes 2D architectural plans in vector and raster formats (DWG, DXF, PDF, JPEG, TIFF, PNG) and turns them into Revit elements. In this first version, the generated elements are walls, doors, windows, and slabs.

The software uses AI to detect elements. According to the company, detection takes a few seconds for a plan of 100m² to approximately two minutes for a plan of 3,000m².

Before initiating the detection process, plans must be scaled. Users must also define several parameters to confirm which elements are to be detected and the default values that should be applied to reconstruct the elements. Parameters must be set for walls, windows, doors, and slabs.

Walls are mandatory for detection. Their height is defined either by the upper constraint of the level or by setting a default height value. The lower constraint is the current level for all walls. Each wall is associated with a family and a generic type whose name depends on the type (Interior/Exterior) and thickness.

Default types must also be selected for windows (sill height and opening height), doors,  (default height under the lintel) and slabs (representation and default thickness).

Once the elements are created in the project, it is possible to change the family for one or more elements through the display of classic properties.

“The time savings obtained on these initial, generally tedious modeling steps allow Revit users to have an even greater added value by focusing their skills on the complex parts of the digital models,” said Tristan Garcia, president and co-founder of WiseBIM.

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The AEC industry has a reputation for being slow to adopt technology. Some reports even place it behind farming. The reality is, while construction has lagged, design has been on an inexorable path to total digitisation since the 1980s.

3D modelling, the adoption of BIM and innovation in digital fabrication is ultimately going to lead to modern methods of manufacturing buildings.

This is not just a technology play; it’s borne out of necessity. The construction industry lacks skilled labour, many economies desperately need new housing, historic poor productivity needs to be addressed. Furthermore, everything from the design, material choice, and location to the fabrication of buildings needs to reflect the carbon climate challenges that will only become more prescient.

Today’s BIM tools add width to the chasm that separates design from fabrication, as they were created to deliver scaled drawing sets, not detailed 3D models for fabrication

To connect the digital thread, this industry needs new tools, new workflows, new fabrication methodologies. In short, and to coin an overused phrase, we need to rethink construction.

However, it’s not just construction that needs rethinking – it’s everything from what we design, through to how it’s fabricated, and how it’s assembled. We need to rethink AEC.

Buildings should be designed in the full context of how they will be fabricated, broken down into assemblies and a ‘Kit of Parts’. Today’s BIM tools add width to the chasm that separates design from fabrication, as they were created to deliver scaled drawing sets, not detailed 3D models for fabrication.

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When one tries to add that level of detail, the models swell in size and become unusable. Autodesk has arguably done the most to try and connect BIM and manufacturing CAD, but this has taken years and many attempts to get right.

The current solution boils down to proxy swapping of predefined components between BIM software Autodesk Revit and mechanical CAD (MCAD) software Autodesk Inventor, which lends itself to working with a ‘Kit of Parts’ mentality. This solution, while innovative, is a partial ‘band aid on a bullet wound’, trying to overcome the integration limitations of two products that were never intended to work together.

Those who follow the offsite construction market, will know that it has become a bloodbath in the US and UK. Many fabs have shut down. It’s all too easy to find examples of how not to do it, rather than ones that are making it work. But this time of failure will pass, and lessons will be learnt.

The convergence of design and manufacturing in AEC is going to be an ongoing experiment and it’s going to need some projects that require scale to prove out. This is happening, but it’s not necessarily joined up. The future is everywhere, it’s just not evenly distributed.

At AEC Magazine’s NXT BLD and NXT DEV last month we brought together some industry change makers, who presented the projects and processes that they are refining to connect architecture to construction and deliver digital design to fabrication. Dale Sinclair from WSP, Antoine Morizot from Bouygues Construction and John Cerone from SHoP Architects were three that stood out, taking us from London to Paris to New York.

WSP – London

Dale Sinclair first started experimenting with design at 1:1 construction detail level while at AECOM. At the time AECOM was working closely with offsite fabrication firms and Sinclair wanted to ‘talk the same language’ as the fabricators. He eschewed Revit for architectural design on modular projects, and instead adopted Inventor to take an assembly approach.

Now at WSP, Sinclair has continued his research into the convergence of construction and manufacturing, developing new processes and looking at the whole workflow from the construction end of the telescope, bringing ‘systems thinking’ to design.

At NXT BLD, he pointed out, “Construction in its current form, cannot continue, because we have all tried but we haven’t moved the dial. We haven’t reduced the cost. We haven’t reduced the time to deliver buildings. The quality is variable, and productivity is static.

“How do we change? We keep putting things together that have never been put together before. The number of new systems are increasing, adding complexity.

“We should be using offsite manufacturing. There is no downside to using factories. We have better safety, bring in more diverse people and get the benefits of scale. We should be leveraging the benefits the manufacturing sector has had for years. But the one thing we have not cracked with offsite is cost and this prevents us from scaling up offsite.”

Sinclair explained that adopting a ‘Kit of Parts’ approach in design is phase one. The next step is to mobilise offsite, by taking a small number of large components to site (panelisation not modular).

This can then be followed by adopting a broader ‘program mentality’, using fabrication-level details at the start of a project, pushing manufacturing information upstream and adopting configurators. “We have flipped the entire process on its head, so we are coming from a manufacturing first [approach] and it’s a game changer,” he said.

Sinclair believes off-site has to be explored at a country level. He thinks that offsite fabrication spaces should be distributed throughout the UK, in all the places there is unemployment, and hopes the UK Government wakes up to the benefits of doing something like this. I suspect we will have to wait to see it work somewhere else first.

Watch Sinclair’s NXT BLD talk here

Bouygues Construction – Paris

From the other side of the channel, construction giant Bouygues Construction has been on its own digital journey. It has similar challenges, but instead of focusing on the original architectural design, it concentrates on how to connect its clients’ design information to the Bouygues fabrication and cost estimating system.

The decision to digitise and automate has led to a multi-year consultancy engagement with Dassault Systèmes – creator of the leading MCAD brands Catia and Solidworks – to create an expert system for Bouygues called ‘Bryck’.

Bouygues’ strategic vision is to head towards metamorphosing building sites to a place where products are assembled – unlike the current process, which requires the onsite transformation of materials. Antoine Morizot of Bouygues explained, “The products could have been prefabricated or assembled in micro factories near the site, but the idea is not to standardise the products, it’s to standardise the processes.”

The concept that Bouygues is adopting is not dissimilar to the ones which Dassault Systèmes has proven many times in the manufacturing space for aerospace and automotive. Here customers build a virtual digital mock-up or in common CAD parlance, a digital twin, which contains all the details of what is to be manufactured, to simulate the method of construction, the construction site and the as-built.

Morizot stated that BIM has failed to give the result the industry was expecting. By modelling in 3D, there was an expectation that, like in MCAD, this data could be connected to fabrication systems. BIM data conveys the idea, but not from an engineering or construction point of view. To achieve this, Bouygues has built a ‘productised’ system which covers all these bases, using Catia and customisation to produce a predictable, systemic view of project data.

RVT or IFC models are brought in and converted to productised Catia components such as groundwork, structure, covering, partitioning, finishes, MEP, equipment and prefab modules.

This template-based system also offers a library of parametric templates, which pre-define multi-disciplinary parametric modules for central cores, CLT floors, façade design, electrical components, MEP etc, which can adapt to any complex geometry, or imported IFC or Revit files. These ‘products’ adapt to the architectural model, through the use of generative design, adding tags, attributes, dimensions, 3D annotations, surface treatments, manufacturers’ catalogue part numbers, integrating a lot of data making calculations, and even defining the installation order.

Morizot demonstrated that by simply clicking on the raw geometry of a floor in a model, Bouygues can apply a product, in this case a CLT floor, and a complete, highly detailed CLT floor is created, adapting to the new model, ready panelised to fit the capabilities of Bouygues’ in-house fabrication machines. These can then be edited in multiple ways, such as orientation and installation order.

This was a rare outing for Bouygues to explain the level of detail it has achieved with its construction expert system. It means the firm can be given an IFC or a Revit model and in minutes get a fabrication level digital twin, with the exact cost and all the fabrication drawings. Bryck has impressed the company’s board so much that another long-term deal has been signed with Dassault Systèmes, with more capabilities to come.

Watch Morizot’s NXT BLD talk here

SHoP Architects – New York

New York-based SHoP Architects is a relative latecomer to the NXT BLD roster, but principal John Cerone has been a long-time advocate of embracing digital fabrication and going beyond the limitation of delivering drawings.

Cerone is certainly in the architectural camp of wanting to get rid of drawings and move to a pure modelling paradigm and the practice is doing its utmost to define its own process to connect architecture with modern methods of construction. He defines his firm as ‘Production Architects’ as they focus on materials, process and how the buildings they design are made.

Cerone is on board with offsite manufacturing and the concept of a ‘Kit of Parts’, sub-assemblies and how these Cover story work in the design as a whole. SHoP is not a fan of the plan, section and elevation approach to define its schemes but places itself in the Ikea approach to communication.

Cerone stated, “Architecture, with a capital A, can be designed and manufactured. To do that, you need to understand the processes, who/what is reading the instructions and how the materials are being processed. When you do that, the deliverables are not the flat orthogonal drawings, we can be much more diagrammatic.

“We operate in this industry with the mentality that there’s an opportunity to leapfrog and take advantage of advanced manufacturing techniques in our projects. If you come to our office in downtown Manhattan, in the Woolworth Building, the first thing you’ll notice will be model planes, boats, cars – they are everywhere.

“And for us, one of the principles behind that, is how you can design simulate, coordinate, execute a complex project in a digital format. To do that, you have to get outside of the traditional tools of the AEC industry.”

SHoP Architects is a big fan of Rhino and Catia and builds a lot of its own tools for geometry solvers which are used at scale. The firm has cut its teeth working on projects with complex geometry that were built off site. This involved talking with manufacturers at the concept stage to start optimising for fabrication.

Information, such as optimal steel sheet size helps reduce waste, lower cost, and act as design constraints early on in the process. This means the final design does not need reengineering once all the work is done. SHoP then makes reuseable templates for the assemblies it creates.

From this, SHoP has got heavily into the fabrication side of things, sometimes bypassing the drawing phase and even just delivering the model and the G-code, whilst keeping track of job tickets through factories. On site the firm uses laser scanning to ensure the assemblies are to specification and communicates installation through screen shots of the model.

With all this experience in offsite and manufacturing, SHoP Architects creates a ‘cousin’ company called Assembly OSM to deliver modules for high-rise residential buildings (12 to 30 floors), all based on templates for building systems, including mechanical.

Watch Cerone’s NXT BLD talk here

Conclusion

There are no off-the-shelf solutions to link digital architecture to digital fabrication. Every firm that has made progress connecting the two worlds has done it through belief, investment, experimentation and sheer bloody-mindedness. However, it doesn’t mean that this situation won’t change as lessons learnt by these pioneers will eventually find their way back into features in standard software. The use of Inventor and Catia for defining architectural design is currently niche but there is a chance that next generation BIM tools will have the underlying technologies required to span the design to fabricate chasm.

Defocussing from technology solutions for a moment, it’s clear from Sinclair, Cerone and Bell – all architects – that to wholly embrace the process, the industry needs to start thinking about the design of buildings differently.

If designs are to flow from concept to construction, the ‘Kit of Parts’ approach appears to have the longest legs, mimicking automotive and aerospace. But this still puts a lot of work upfront to design flexible parts with construction-level detailing. As Sinclair points out, less project think and more of a program mentality, spanning projects. Bell has done this with the Facit Homes’ adaptable chassis (see below), where every house is a variation on a tried and tested theme.

Facit Homes – bringing the factory to the construction site

Bruce Bell has a long connection with AEC Magazine and NXT BLD. His UK company Facit Homes uses vanilla Revit with its own family of parts, which are optimised to create highly defined BIM models. Through a secret sauce, they are flattened and G-code is created to fabricate on-site via a router in a shipping container.

In a way, Bell has developed his own expert system that is designed for houses out of mainly one material, that is cut up on site and nailed together to make box sections. Every building created for individual clients is a variation on a long-tested system.

With a deep central resource database of the common products used in fitting out, Facit can predict the cost of its buildings within 1%. As the company also manufactures and assembles the building, that reduces risk and means the company’s fee spans design, construction and delivery. What is incredible is that this all done with off-the-shelf software.

Recently Bell has raised his aim and is looking to develop a giant robot which can cut and stack enough panels to build out entire estates. His talk at NXT BLD highlights the journey he has been on and the solution that he will be bringing to market, which features an onsite micro-factory.

Watch Bell’s NXT BLD presentation here

The post Connecting architecture to fabrication appeared first on AEC Magazine.

In AEC software, the last forty years have been about buying branded tools and creating associated proprietary files. Compatibility has been achieved by basically buying the same software as your supply chain and sharing the same proprietary files.

The next forty years will be all about the data: where it’s stored and how teams can access it. Monolithic desktop solutions will be replaced with discrete cloud-based services. These will provide different ‘snapshots’ of project data (different disciplines, project activities, meta data), which will be accessed through seamless Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

The advantages will be no longer needing to send data around in big lumps, caching huge files, or cutting models up. Being centrally sourced, collaboration can be built-in from the ground level and granular data opens new data sharing opportunities, with greater insight into projects.

The key issue for the main software industry players, and their customers, is how do they get there? For companies like Autodesk, this is a significant challenge. It’s the market leader by volume, so has a lot to lose if it gets it wrong.

The company is currently developing Forma as its next generation cloud-based platform for AEC. Today, it may look like just another conceptual tool but there is a lot of engineering work taking place ‘under the hood’. In June, the day before AEC Magazine’s NXT BLD event, Autodesk announced the first downpayment on opening up the RVT file to new levels of granularity with the general availability of its AEC data model API. (cont…)

Find this article plus many more in the July / August 2024 Edition of AEC Magazine

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The API is still in development and, for now, it only accesses metadata, without geometry, but this can be used to build dashboards or access design information that can be tabulated. Geometry will be the next layer of capability added to the API. At the time of release, Autodesk stated: “Through the AEC data model, we look to deliver a platform that prioritises a transparent and common language of describing AEC data, enabling real time access to this data and ensuring that the right data is available to the right people at the right time.”

Over time, Autodesk will continue to build this capability out, allowing developers to read, write, and extend subsets of models through cloud-based workflows via a single interface. There will not be a need to write custom plug-ins for individual desktop authoring applications like Civil 3D, Revit, Plant3D and other AEC connected design applications. The filebased products will store their designs as files on Autodesk Docs and will be, on demand, ‘granularised’ to meet customers’ requirements. However, in order to make AEC data more accessible / interoperable everything must be restructured (converted) enabling the data to be remapped and connected across AEC disciplines. The company sees that the key delivery of the AEC data model API technology will lead to enhanced support for iterative and distributed workflows.

AEC data model API capabilities

As mentioned earlier, this is just an initial instalment of granular capability. The API allows the querying of key element properties from ‘published’ Revit 2024 and above version models – published meaning that the files are stored on Autodesk Docs.

The AEC data model API exposes these properties through a simple to use GraphQL interface, tailored to the AEC industry. GraphQL is an open-source data query and manipulation language for APIs and a query runtime engine.

Using GraphQL users can access Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) accounts, projects and designs and retrieve element and parameter values. It’s possible to retrieve different versions of a design and query for elements at a specific design version. Users can search for elements within a design or across designs within a project or hub using specified search criteria. It’s possible to list all property definitions and query elements based on their properties such as categories (doors, windows, pipes, etc.) or parameter name + Value (area, volume, etc.), materials.

Autodesk expects customers and developers to automate workflows, such as identifying anomalies within designs (quality checking) and locating missing information, comparing differences between designs. It’s possible to generate quantity take offs, schedules, build dashboards and generate reports.

For now, data granulation and viewing the results is free but there are rate limits, based on a point system. Overall, users are allowed 6,000 ‘points’ per minute. Each individual request is limited to 1,000 points per query. If you exceed these requests, Autodesk’s servers will not send you the information. The points system varies on the function – a query return is rated at 10 points, Object info in at 1. There is more information about his online.

Watch Autodesk’s NXT BLD 2024 presentation

For more information watch the NXT BLD 2024 presentation from Autodesk’s data experts, Virginia Senf and Sasha Crotty.

The talk includes details about the acquisition of Datum360, which aggregates and connects multiple data sources together and applies industry standards with compliance reporting.

Open or walled garden?

In recent times, Autodesk has been making a lot of noise about being open and being a better open citizen. It has licensed the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) tool kit from the Open Design Alliance (ODA), the most used IFC creation tools, it has created export services on the cloud to translate between different applications, and signed multiple interoperability deals with competitors, such as PTC, Bentley Systems, Trimble and, most recently, Nemetschek.

But why are interoperability agreements required in the first place? If you are open, you are open and surely permission would not be required? A lot of these agreements are about swapping software, perhaps file format libraries but increasingly it’s about rights to have API access.

This is the big issue for cloud. If you move your data to the cloud, where it might be translated into a proprietary database format, the only ways to get access to your data are via file export or API calls.

The path to granularity

The AEC data model API enables the break-up of monolithic files, such as Revit RVTs and AutoCAD DWGs, into ‘granular object data’ that is managed at a sub-file level in Autodesk Docs on the company’s secured cloud. This data is accessible in real time via Autodesk’s APIs and enable new capabilities.

Today, while it would be great to get RVT, DGN, DWGs out with great file compatibility, in five to ten years’ time, this will be as exciting as getting a DXF. Project information for all disciplines at high levels of granularity will deliver greater collective benefits than relatively dumb files. API access really is at the control of each company and allows firms to wall off their customers’ data to selected developers.

Autodesk’s cloud-based API, which was called Forge but is now Autodesk Platform Services (APS) comes with terms of usage, once of which, 5.3 simply states, ‘No use by competitors – Except with Autodesk’s prior written consent, you may not access or use the services if you are a competitor of Autodesk.’

For me this seems to be the main reason for the agreements, to give express permission to access customers’ data via APS. But this isn’t given to all: it has to be negotiated and I assume it’s on a quid pro quo basis and probably on how much of a threat you are. This is a kind of openness, but it’s going to be highly conditional and could be revoked at any time.

If you move your data to the cloud, where it ‘‘ might be translated into a proprietary database format, the only ways to get access to your data are via file export or API calls

As all software moves to the cloud the API world is also trying to work out ways of financially rewarding the software firms. It is inevitable that API calls will be charged for. All this software is sat on Amazon AWS or Microsoft Azure instances and all traffic comes with associated micropayments. Software firms are examining models to cover these charges while adding their profit margin. In the case of Autodesk these are wrapped into the cloud credit system, covering functionality and the AWS bill. While the AEC data model API is currently free, it is throttled with an associated point system. Metering is an important metric for future business models.

Conclusion

Changing the fundamental technology on which your applications and customers have built businesses on is not for the faint hearted. Keeping desktop software sales alive, while re-engineering filebased workflows to ones that are granular is like changing a car tyre at 90 miles an hour. With the release of this AEC data model API, we now have some insight as to how Autodesk will engineer the data model component.

For now, you can use all Autodesk cloud services as you currently use them. Instead of forcing a translation between every Revit file save on the fly, the granularity of files is handled on demand, for those that want to take advantage of it. The API, now and seemingly for quite a while to come, is all about output from Autodesk Docs (viewing, tabulating, querying) as opposed to doing something to the data and sending it back to Autodesk’s servers. This, I guess, is mainly about security.

Being able to view granular info via a simple interface is obviously a huge advantage over file-based workflows, where a lot of the BIM metadata goes to die. In some respects, this is ‘an openness’ here, enabling the viewing of design data held in proprietary files, held in a proprietary database on a paid for service. The fact is you still need to be an ACC subscriber to generate the granular data in the first place.

The most interesting development will be when geometry can also be output with the meta data through the Autodesk AEC data model API. Will the geometry be Universal Scene Description (USD), or will it be like IFC.JS, with all the granular object data?

With IFC.js and open-source products like Speckle, it’s already possible to make data granular right out of the Revit desktop app, without having to pay to use Autodesk’s cloud services. The battle for granular data mobility has started.

The post Autodesk’s granular data strategy appeared first on AEC Magazine.