For almost twenty years the AEC software world was centred around Autodesk Revit and its definition and workflow of BIM. The concept was to ideate, model detail designs and create all the necessary drawings in one monolithic platform.

But software typically has a lifespan, where it needs to be rewritten or rearchitected (for OS changes, new hardware, and to clean-up years of bloat).

Find this article plus many more in the March / April 2025 Edition of AEC Magazine

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Following open letters from customers concerned at the lack of Revit development Autodesk explained that it was not going to rewrite Revit for the desktop, but instead would develop a next generation AEC design environment on the cloud, branded Forma (N.B. Carl Christensen, the Autodesk VP in charge of delivering Forma, will be presenting at NXT BLD on June 11).

This gap between Revit and what will come next has presented an opportunity for new software developers to rethink BIM and its underlying technologies, to bring the AEC design software into the 21st Century. Investors have become equally excited and NXT BLD and NXT DEV will provide a unique forum for multiple startups—Snaptrude, Motif, Qonic and Arcol—to present new commercial BIM 2.0 products, with more firms in stealth, probably in the audience!

While the velocity of the startups is impressive, we need to temper expectations by pointing out that competing against established desktop BIM applications, which are 20+ years old, will take years (and millions of dollars). Over the coming years, expect to see these tools become more feature comparative.

While BIM 2.0 shifts the focus away from producing drawings, there’s no escaping their continued importance to the AEC industry. That’s why there’s also a big focus on autodrawings, as this AI-powered technology promises to massively reduce the time spent doing the mundane boring work. Autodrawings could also mean fewer licences of BIM software are required. Both Snaptrude and Qonic have developments here. However, it’s quite possible that autodrawings and AI will become cloud services that don’t need to be in an all encompassing BIM platform.

At NXT BLD / DEV you can meet and engage with all these firms, plus many more individuals innovating in the AEC space, such as Antonio González Viegas of ThatOpenCompany and Dalai Felinto of Blender bringing the benefits of impressive Open Source tools to our industry. We hope that you will join us.

NXT BLD 2025
London
11 June 2025
www.nxtbld.com

NXT DEV 2025
London
12 June 2025
www.nxtdev.build

Arcol

Based in New York, Arcol is headed up by Irishman, Paul O’Carroll, who brings a games development background to BIM and 3D. One of the earliest to profile its approach as ‘Figma for BIM’, the company has attracted investors such as chief executives of both Procore and Figma.

Arcol has focussed heavily on concept design for its initial offering, enabling live in-context modelling with building metrics and data extraction and collaboration built-in. The software supports complex geometry, an easy to learn UI, board creation for presentations (which can be shared by just sending a link), live plans and sheets. It integrates with Revit, SketchUp and Excel. Reports are highly visual and Arcol see it as a replacement for PDF as well. The solution is aimed at architects, developers, general contractors and owners. Arcol will be officially shipping by the time of NXT BLD.

Motif

Motif is headed up by former joint CEO of Autodesk, Amar Hanspal, who has assembled the old gang to finish off a task he started in 2016 – the rewriting of Revit as a cloud application.

Motif is also pitched as Figma for BIM and is backed by Alphabet (Google) with a sizeable war chest. In stealth for the last two years, the company has been working with signature architects to learn what a BIM 2.0 application should be able to do – the idea being that by catering to the most demanding customers, the software should benefit everyone.

The company has just launched its first version but recognises the journey will take many years. The feature set of version 1 lends itself to design review and client presentations, taking aim at Miro, but with some Speckle and Omniverse like capabilities.

Qonic 

The origins of Ghent-based Qonic go back to TriForma, a BIM system which co-founder Erik de Keyser created and licensed to Bentley Systems. de Keyser then created BricsCAD and Bricsys – a DWG and formative BIM tool, which was later sold to Hexagon.

Many of the Bricsys team then started up Qonic, a cloud-based BIM 2.0 competitor which initially (and uniquely) focuses on the model and data interface between architecture and construction. Qonic can load huge Revit models and lets users fly through them with butter smooth refresh rates on the desktop or mobile. The program also has powerful solid modelling core for geometry edits, as well as supporting IFC component labelling. The initial release is exceptionally easy to use to see, manipulate and filter BIM data, as a CDE on steroids. The team is working on architectural tools, smart drawings and a range of features to expand capabilities.

Snaptrude

Snaptrude has the accolade of being the first BIM 2.0 startup that AEC Magazine discovered. CEO Altaf Ganihar was first to demonstrate cloud-based collaborative working on Revit models and has gone on to raise $21m in VC funding.

The New York-based company seeks to be a one stop shop for conceptual, detailed design and drawing production, while linking to all the common tools – Revit, SketchUp, AutoCAD, Rhino, as well as Nemetschek’s Archicad. Snaptrude currently offers the widest range of BIM 2.0 features from concept to AI renderings and drawings and looks as if it will probably be first with feature parity to Revit for Architecture, with plans to also support MEP and structural. With the biggest development team in the BIM 2.0 space the company is moving at pace to deliver on its aims. The company is soon to announce a range of major new features.

Main image caption: Antonio González Viegas, CEO of That Open Company, the creator of free and open technology that helps AECO software firms and practitioners create their own AECO software, will be speaking at NXT DEV again this year.

The post Future BIM voices at NXT BLD / DEV appeared first on AEC Magazine.

Planning is already underway for AEC Magazine’s annual, two day, dual-focus conference, NXT BLD (Next Build) and NXT DEV (Next Development), in conjunction with Lenovo workstations. The event will be held on 11 and 12 June 2025 at the prestigious Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre in London.

Year on year, the NXT experience has grown in reputation, and we now attract design IT directors from multiple continents, together with a plethora of innovative start-ups looking to push the industry forward to next generation workflows and BIM 2.0.

NXT BLD brings innovative industry ideas, in-house development, new workflows and bleeding-edge technology to two conference stages, plus an exciting exhibition. Presentations range from design IT directors sharing insights into their processes to the latest in workstation, AR and VR technology.

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

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NXT DEV addresses the fact that the AEC technologies we use are at a crossroads. The industry is reliant on old software that doesn’t utilise modern processor architectures, while the benefits of combining cloud, database and granular data await with the next generation of tools. AEC professionals can’t leave it to software developers and computer scientists to deliver change and need to help shape what comes next. NXT DEV is a forum for discussion, a great way to meet the start-ups, venture capitalists (VCs) and fellow design IT directors who are eager to find more productivity and smarter tools.

AEC Magazine is inviting you to come, get inspired and join the discussion.

For more info visit www.nxtbld.com and www.nxtdev.build.
Early bird tickets with 20% discount are available until 15 April 2025.

Topics

We are early in the planning stages for the events but you can be sure that we will be talking about BIM 2.0, Autodrawings, AI, Generative Design, AR and VR, GIS and BIM, Open Source, Rapid Reality Capture, Expert Automation Systems, Digital Fabrication, the future of data and API access.

Talks

There will be inspirational presentations from Heatherwicks, Alain Waha (Buro Happold), Patrick Cozzi (Cesium, now Bentley Systems), Lenovo, Perkins and Will, Augmenta, Finch3D, Ismail Seleit (LoRA and ControlNet AI rendering), Antonio Gonzalez Viegas (ThatOpenCompany), Qonic, Snaptrude, Arcol, Gräbert (Autodrawings), Autodesk, Foster + Partners, and Jonathan Asher (Dassault Systèmes) – to name but a few.

More speakers will be announced in the coming weeks, as we shape the two-day NXT 2025 program. The editorial team are looking forward to seeing you there!

The two days of NXT offer an intense dive into the future of the industry. Simultaneous stages offer a breadth of topics and areas of interest, plus there’s plenty of exciting new technologies to see on the show floor. You would certainly benefit from bringing a team to ensure you don’t miss anything important.

NXT BLD 2025
Wednesday 11 June 2025

NXT DEV 2025
Thursday 12 June 2025

Queen Elizabeth II Centre
Westminster, London, UK

NXTAEC – inspirational presentations on demand

Presentations from previous NXT events are available to view free on our dedicated website – NXTAEC.com
Here are some highlights

The future AEC software specification
Aaron Perry
AHMM

Transforming the future of home construction
Bruce Bell & Oliver Thomas
Facit Homes

10 things you should know about developing AEC software products
Amar Hanspal
Motif

Synthesising design and execution
John Cerone
SHoP Architects

The post The NXT 2025 experience appeared first on AEC Magazine.

These back-to-back conferences continue to be a focal point for technology in the AEC sector, and a unique oppportunity for AEC professionals and software developers to chart the course of next generation BIM software.

“After 20 years of ‘BIM as a means to produce drawings’, we are entering a new era, where design software will actually aid the design process and automate repetitive tasks and deliver real productivity benefits. NXT BLD and NXT DEV brings everyone together to influence and guide that development and connect the agents of change,” said NXT BLD / NXT DEV event director, Martyn Day.

“We must break down the silos, disrupt the old workflows and rethink what BIM could be. Technologies like the cloud, expert systems, DfMA, autodrawings and of course AI/ML are going to impact company tech stacks, workflows, data management, collaboration, data lifecycle.

“Software companies face business challenges as licence-count sales will be replaced by intelligent services and automation. NXT BLD and NXT DEV is the forum for that discussion.”

Tickets for NXT BLD and NXT DEV will be available in the new year.

Meanwhile, the presentations from NXT BLD and NXT DEV 2024 are available to view on AEC Magazine’s dedicated video website – www.nxtaec.com

The post NXT BLD / NXT DEV return to London in June 2025 appeared first on AEC Magazine.

1. Architecture is getting closer to fabrication

There’s huge push to link architecture with fabrication. At NXT BLD, six leading firms shared their ground-breaking work.

WSP is optimising ‘Kit of Parts’ workflows to streamline industrial construction, aiming for repeatable, efficient results. Bouygues Construction has teamed up with Dassault Systèmes to develop ‘Bryck’, an expert system that can take a Revit model, break it down, and produce all the fabrication drawings and costs.

SHoP Architects in New York is closing the gap between design and construction using tools like Revit, Rhino and the 3D Experience Platform. Intel’s modular approach is speeding up its global silicon fab construction.

Meanwhile, in the UK, Facit Homes is scaling up its onsite factory so it can handle housing estates as well as individual homes, while Space Group is developing expert house building systems for Travis Perkins and TopHat.

2. The BIM startups are maturing

We are in the age of the ‘activist customer’, who is turning to start-ups to deliver new capabilities that can be used in anger.

In only the second year of NXT DEV we delivered a ‘world’s first’ on stage, a collaborative effort showcasing the development of a school project from concept to drawings, joined together by new software tools: Skema, Snaptrude, Augmenta, Gräbert, with Esri GIS. Connected mainly through cloud API calls a project was tackled using productivity enhancing applications which crushed the time for: ideation, detail modelling, structural design, automated electrical routing, collaboration, editing and ultimately output to auto drawings.

Plenty of other start-ups showed off their latest developments including ShapeDiver. Spacio, Consigli, Sparkel, SpaceForm and Qonic and Swapp.

3. Community is king

While the presentations are carefully procured, NXT BLD and NXT DEV would be nothing without its amazing community. We would love to thank everyone for bringing their ideas and endless energy.

When navigating the Queen Elizabeth II building, you are never too sure who you’ll meet up with next —an event speaker, past or present, a strategy lead for one of the major software companies, the head of global workstations for Lenovo, the director of research from a signature architect or a specialist investor in AEC software.

Sharing opinions is highly encouraged and you will be surprised at just how many firms share views on technology, product fit, pricing, licensing and what technologies to watch. With your help, we genuinely believe NXT BLD and NXT DEV have become the talking shops for activist customers.

4. Automation is closer than you think

New BIM code streams like Snaptrude, Qonic, and Arcol are leveraging next-gen cloud technology for BIM authoring. Developers are also using AI for automation, as seen with Swapp and expert systems for specific building types like HighArc. Two main tracks have emerged: those aiming to replace Revit and monolithic BIM, and those adding automation to the workflow, reducing timelines and increasing value.

Skema integrates with established BIM tools, allowing users to model with predefined assemblies to achieve detailed models quickly. Augmenta auto-wires buildings and will soon include MEP. The most transformative new tech is auto drawings, led by Swapp and Gräbert, and also being developed by Bentley, Autodesk, Nemetschek, and EvolveLab, potentially halving drawing production work. NXT DEV united the key players in this field.

5. Panelists not afraid to speak their minds

There is nothing worse than going to an AEC technology conference where every talk is a product pitch. NXT BLD and NXT DEV are not about that. If someone is talking about their product or technology, it’s because they are a hot start-up that we rate, or have something very cool in development.

We try to put on panel discussions which include knowledgeable voices from both practice and development. Sometimes we have to address a topic that is negatively impacting the industry and sparks will fly. At NXT DEV this year, the Pricing, Licensing and Business Models panel was a case in point, as HOK, Grimshaw, BIG and Buro Happold let rip.

Check out our other 2024 talking points: Design Automation, Auto Drawings, Open USD, Openness in AEC, AI in general practice, Digital Fabrication and BIM 2.0.

6. Data is becoming granular

A recurring theme each year is data and the conversations are getting more frequent, as firms assess the impact of moving away from files to a data centric world.

At NXT BLD, Autodesk announced its first steps to granularisation of BIM, Greg Schleusner of HOK gave his traditional update on how the industry can harness smarter, open data schemas to take back control, and Julien Moutte, CTO of Bentley Systems reinforced the move to open data for the industry.

While many of the for-profit, publicly listed CAD vendors are speaking about openness, we were honoured to host Antonio González Viegas CEO of That Open Company and Francesco Siddi the General Manager of Blender on hand to add true ‘open reality’ to the conversation.

7. Everyone still loves Star Wars

There’s nothing better to brush off the morning cobwebs than a trip into hyperspace. Emmy award nominated visual effects (VFX) supervisor, Scott Pritchard of Industrial Light and Magic, put a Jar Jar Binks-sized smile on everyone’s face as he revealed the VFX secrets of the Star Wars Universe. Digital artistry and VFX know-how met photogrammetry, green screens, and giant LED walls as he inspired NXT BLD’s Jedis.

Catch Up

Watch all the presentations from NXT BLD and NXT DEV 2024 free on-demand here.

The post 7 things we learnt at NXT BLD and NXT DEV appeared first on AEC Magazine.

You’ve mastered the first generation of BIM tools, now it’s time to push the boundaries with new model-based processes to drive better productivity and higher quality outcomes.

Join us on 25 June for NXT BLD and 26 June for NXT DEV at the iconic Queen Elizabeth II Centre. Let’s get inspired, let’s challenge the status quo, and let’s help bring forward the next frontier of AEC technologies and workflows that promise to revolutionise how we design and build our world.

What’s in store at NXT BLD 2024?

NXT BLD this year covers a broad range of technology areas including automation, generative design, data, openness, XR, GeoBIM, expert systems, design to fabrication, architectural meta-worlds, workstation technology and of course AI and machine learning.

There is a chasm between digital design and fabrication, which is holding back the adoption of modern methods of construction. Several speakers will address the issue from different angles.

Dale Sinclair from WSP is connecting architecture to fabrication. Antoine Morizot of Bouygues Construction has a system that can automate BIM models to BoMs, drawings and cost. Intel’s Jeremy Tully will explain how modular construction is used to rapidly deploy Intel’s next generation of semiconductor fabs. Marty Rozmanith of Skema will look at technologies which can automate architectural BIM to output designs at Level 400.

As the industry moves from BIM 1.0 to BIM 2.0, there is a danger of unleashing another Tower of Babel on the industry with next gen software. The industry is fed up of proprietary lock-ins and data wrangling. So how can this be avoided? Thankfully there is a lot of talk about ‘openness’ and adoption of standards between both new and old software houses.

Greg Schleusner of HOK will demonstrate new interoperability software currently in development. Autodesk’s Virginia Senf and Sasha Crotty will be laying bare the company’s next generation data strategy. Bentley Systems CTO Julien Moutte will be talking about Bentley’s decision to opensource its data schema. Antonio González Viegas wants to level the BIM playing field with a new open-source BIM modeller.

As the BIM 2.0 story develops, it’s becoming clear that not only will there be new design software to work alongside, or replace existing tools, but there will be new expert systems and applications which will crush existing workflows at multiple points and connect design to fabrication. Openness now seems like a base requirement, rather than an afterthought.

We also take a voyage into the fantastical, with Chantal Matar, an architect and artist who uses cutting edge technology for generative design. Working with AI tools like midjourney, and neural networks with NERFs, she explores future cities and new possibilities. Her inspirational work has been driven by technology but still retains beautiful organic, kinetic forms that look sculpted and other-worldly.

NXT BLD 2024 speaker highlights

Patrik Schumacher
Partner
Zaha Hadid Architects

With the advent of 3D modelling, architects have moved beyond designing physical buildings and now create swathes of valuable digital assets in high definition USD. Treasury is a new registry and data vault, for designed spatial assets, which can be licensed for use in areas such as film and virtual meta worlds. It is co-founded by Zaha Hadid Architects, Spaceform (backed by BIG) and Heatherwicks.

At NXT BLD, Patrik Schumacher and Shajay Bhooshan of Zaha Hadid Architects, together with John Manoochehri of Treasury will discuss the benefits of expanding into the new digital frontier of meta and highlight Treasury’s benefits to creators and builders.

Dale Sinclair
Head of innovation
WSP

While at AECOM, as director of innovation, Sinclair pioneered the move to architects using MCAD tools such as Autodesk Inventor, alongside traditional BIM with Revit, to better communicate with fabricators and to model at 1:1 levels of detail. Now at WSP, he has substantially matured that approach and developed and deployed applications within new workflows, to bring a manufacturing mindset into the early design phase of process, optimising the building design, management and computational delivery of varied, large-scale projects.

Chantal Matar
Studio Chantal Matar

Generative architect, Matar has been on the leading edge of both design and design technology. Having worked at Zaha Hadid Architects and Atelier Des Architectes Associés, she has applied art and mixed-media skills to many projects. Matar will explain her methodology and show the results of blending architectural knowledge with cutting-edge digital processes, such
as photogrammetry and NeRFS.

Virginia Senf & Sasha Crotty
AEC design data team lead
Autodesk

The industry is moving away from files and monolithic desktop applications to centralised cloud-databases to aid collaboration and create BIM 2.0 workflows. As the market leader in BIM 1.0, Autodesk will give us a glimpse of the database strategies it will deploy to connect the file-based world with the database-centric universe.

Antoine Morizot
Technical solution architect
Bouygues Construction (Bryck)

Bouygues Construction has been working closely with Dassault Systèmes on an automated expert system which takes in BIM models, rationalises them to components which best optimise Bouygues’ fabrication facilities, creates Level 400 fabrication models, BoMs, drawings and delivers cost estimates in minutes. The system, called Bryck, has impressed the company so much that it’s just signed up for seven more years of development.

Sean Young
Nvidia

It feels like the use of AI is about to explode across all areas of AEC. Young will explore Al solutions for conceptual design, design compliance, and construction, covering everything from Al training, fine tuning, RAG, inference, generative Al, data science, and NeRF into the use of a digital twin for aggregating Al data, training synthetic data, and simulating projects before deployment in the real world.

Bruce Bell
Founder
Facit Homes

With modular fabrication factories shutting quicker than we can think of a witty metaphor, construction’s chances of delivering on the country’s housing needs look bleak. Bell has a successful business building one off homes, fabricating on site. He has been exploring how to scale this up to estates and more.

Greg Schleusner
Principal/Director of Design Technology
HOK

With the industry trapped in data silos, Schelusner is passionate about the need to lift valuable design data to an open database, outside of any single vendor’s control. The aim is to provide a common framework for open collaboration with granular access. Working with BuildingSmart, IDC (Innovation Design Consortium) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA) Large Firm Round Table (LFRT) group, Schleusner will demonstrate the prototype software. Schelusner’s previous NXT BLD talks can be viewed at www.nxtbld.com

Julien Moutte
CTO
Bentley Systems

With Bentley Systems already having made its next generation file format open source, Moutte will address the Future AEC Specification that launched at NXT DEV last year and expand the concept of open schemas into the infrastructure world. Other topics addressed will include AI and its application areas, as well as autodrawings and digital twins.

Jeremy Tully
Senior director of digital transformation for the fab construction enterprise
Intel Corporation

In a highly competitive tech sector with huge and growing demand, and with global politics forcing some silicon firms to rethink where they build next, Tully will explain how the compressed and complex construction roadmap has forced Intel to look for ways to improve productivity and drive efficiency with so many mega projects underway simultaneously. The company has sought to modularise, use digital twins and apply AI to its construction execution.

Clifton Harness
CEO
Testfit

Testfit is a very fast simultaneous solver for conceptual complex sites. The tool is for property developers but also has useful time saving features for architects. Harness was a practicing architect when he decided to automate his most boring tasks. He has sharp opinions on why architects need to adopt automation tools to be prepared for what’s coming next.

Andreea Ion Cojocaru
CEO and co-founder
Numena

The AEC XR market has moved beyond the hype and there are now multiple professional grade applications and headsets which are being used by leading firms in all stages of the design process. Ion Cojocaru from award winning developer, Numena, returns to NXT BLD to display new creative design tools which enable architectural design in VR and on-site AR experiences.

Mike Leach
Lenovo

With such a dramatic shift across the AEC industry in the use of real-time visualisation, traditional 3D CAD, high-performance computing, and generative AI, there is no one cap fits all when it comes to workstations. Trying to balance IT power increases, tighter deadlines and overall budget cuts means investing in the right technology, for the right users, at the right time has never been more important. Learn how to best to equip your organisation for success, from getting started, to hybrid working, generative AI, and larger global deployments.

Antonio Gonzalez Viegas
CEO
That Open Company

The need to innovate in BIM tools has been apparent for some time. While there is a new batch in development, Viagas, the genius behind IFC.JS, has started ‘That Open Company’, which is working on delivering a free, open (IFC-based), collaborative, cloud-based BIM tool for the industry to utilise in any way it deems fit.

Marc Goldman
Director – AEC Industry Solutions
Esri

The convergence between BIM, GIS, laser scanning, photogrammetry and the metaverse continues. Now AI developments are coming to market to process captured ‘dumb data’ and intelligent GIS tools. Goldman will highlight this year’s converging technologies, offering benefits to all stakeholders in the built environment.

Adam Ward
CTO
Spacegroup

Ward will demonstrate an online design to fabrication platform, built for Travis Perkings, and Tophat Homes. This innovative platform empowers property developers to design and configure multiple houses directly in a web browser. Users can place these houses on sites and, within minutes, generate comprehensive construction drawings, schedules, and detailed Bills of Materials (BOMs) that include costs and product codes, dynamically sourced from the Travis Perkins merchant database. Ward will show the platform has beeen taken one step further for TopHat homes by not only automating the construction information, but by also controlling the KUKA robotics that drive the factory without any human intervention.

NXT BLD
Tuesday 25 June 2024
Queen Elizabeth II Centre
Westminster, London

8:30am – Conference starts
5:30pm – Networking drinks reception
7:00pm – Conference ends

Ticket includes full access to the dual stream conference and exhibition, plus coffee, pastries, quality lunch, and drinks at the networking reception.

NXT DEV
Wednesday 26 June 2024
Queen Elizabeth II Centre
Westminster, London

8:30am – Conference starts
5:30pm – Conference ends

Ticket includes full access to the dual stream conference and exhibition, plus coffee, pastries, and quality lunch.

The post Shaping the future of AEC technology – NXT BLD 2024 appeared first on AEC Magazine.

We have been running NXT BLD, along with our partner sponsor Lenovo, for seven years now, even through the odd pandemic and national train strike. It has proven to be a positive force to build a community of like-minded, future looking design IT professionals from the AEC community. It’s something that the editorial team looks forward to curating every year and we thank you for your continued support and efforts to come along or tune in online. This year we have a bumper load of excellent talks now available to view on-demand, covering all sorts of pertinent topics.

Currently, AEC software development is greatly in focus. There is an accelerating trend for medium to large firms to develop their own in-house applications and capture process knowledge in bespoke tools. In the general CAD market at large, we can clearly see change is coming to the tools we use, and the fundamental underlying architecture on which they are based.

With more focus on the cloud and databases, the life of the file looks to be coming to an end. At AEC Magazine we’re calling this transition BIM 2.0. Over time, it will mean new generations of design tools are coming.

Presentations from NXT BLD this year continued to look at in-house development but there were also a good number of talks on artificial intelligence-based applications in the industry.

Find this article plus many more in the July / August 2023 Edition of AEC Magazine

Subscribe FREE here

Nurturing new AEC software

For this year’s event we decided to expand the scope, adding an additional day, with a new focus on future software development. We called it NXT DEV.

Over the past year AEC Magazine has put the spotlight on a growing number of start-up firms looking to create solutions for the design phase of AEC.

These exciting tools have looked to replace or complement existing and market-leading applications, as well as introduce new technologies such as artificial intelligence to take the drudgery out of some of the existing workflows.

With an obvious wave of new tools, we thought it was important to create a forum where the developers could hear from AEC practices about their pain points and the holes in their tech stacks.

We also added members of the Venture Capitalist and Enterprise business fraternity to the mix.

With the three pillars of NXT DEV being design IT directors, software developers and financiers, everyone can learn from each other’s perspective and hopefully we will see more targeted applications and investment in a wider spread of solutions.

The format of the day differed from NXT BLD in that there were a series of panel discussions covering: next generation AEC requirements, the need for sustainability tools, what can be learned from the many off-site construction insolvencies, the impact of AI and VC investor advice.

Simultaneously we ran a full day of start-up presentations, the only event where you could see these new firms back to back.

Enjoy the videos from this year’s NXT BLD and NXT DEV conferences. Planning is already underway for 2024! Hopefully we will see you there.

All of the presentations from NXT BLD 2023 and NXT DEV 2023 are available to view on-demand, completely free. So grab a coffee and dive in. You’re welcome.

Register for NXT BLD 2023 on-demand

Register for NXT DEV 2023 on-demand

NXT BLD 2023 presentations

Data-driven
Martha Tsigkari, Sherif Tarabishi & Adam Davis // Foster + Partners

Foster + Partners’ Advanced Research & Development (ARD) group is responsible for complex geometry creation, fabrication, performance-driven design, optimisation, AI/ML applications, IoT, digital twins, Robotics and XR.

At NXT BLD, Martha Tsigkari, who heads up the group, along with her colleagues Sherif Tarabishi & Adam Davis, delivered a compelling presentation under the theme of data: “What’s common behind all our endeavours is data,” said Tsigkari. “It’s the underlying data that drives decisions and our designs and can help us build better buildings for the future.”

The keynote presentation demonstrated how, by creating, collecting, sharing and analysing, ARD contributes to Foster + Partners design process.

Part 3: Assemble
Greg Schleusner // HOK

Schleusner built on his previous two NXT BLD presentations, which outlined the problems with today’s BIM data silos and presented some ideas on how the industry could do something collectively to solve them.
This year, Schleusner explained how the plan has developed further, with the backing of 39 firms from the American Institute of Architecture’s (AIA’s) Large Firm Roundtable.

Product design and engineering – form and function
Cathal Loughnane // Aston Martin & Jenni Ramsay // Lenovo

If you thought Lenovo’s new ThinkStation PX workstation looked familiar that’s because the front panel was inspired by the iconic grill on the Aston Martin DBS sports car.

Cathal Loughnane and Jenni Ramsay explored the collaboration between Aston Martin and Lenovo that led to the development of this powerful new workstation. Beyond styling, there are parallels in thermal dynamics. It turns out the same cooling principles can be applied to CPUs, GPUs and memory as they are for gearboxes, brakes, oil and radiators for V12 engines.

The rise of digital master builders
Chun Qing Li // Kreod

Traditional BIM workflows prescribe modelling to produce drawings. Chun Qing Li’s firm, Kreod, uses mechanical CAD software Catia to model everything at fabrication level detail, to be in complete control of the projects they have undertaken. Li gave us an insight into his journey to develop his model-based workflow, with project examples and incredible high accuracy Catia models.

Towards sustainable design technologies
Michael Drobnik // Herzog & de Meuron

In a talk framed around Herzog & de Meuron’s sustainable design technologies objectives, Drobnik explained how his design technology group addresses the challenge of applying technology to design within the firm, from Rhino and traditional BIM to XR-based design. He says that the core challenges are data, standards, complexity, interoperability, the use of AI and sustainability, Here, the team develops its own easy-to-use solutions for the firm’s designers, and provides tools ‘where the data lives’. Drobnik also calls for more open data.

How GIS is accelerating much needed change in AEC
Marc Goldman // Esri

For the first time as a topic at NXT BLD, we asked Esri’s Marc Goldman to look at GIS development in the context of convergence with AEC tools. GIS systems are designed to handle huge datasets and are now becoming more BIM friendly, allowing integration of 3D design data and 3D spatial information which are helpful for digital twins and asset management. Goldman showed how Esri is using experimental AI tools to ‘grab’ real world assets to bring into FM systems, creating synthetic city data sets and using knowledge graphs (which provide system-level definition) to generate Revit models.

The future we aspire to build
Senthil Kumar // Slate Technologies

If we are trying to use AI to predict the future, can we control and create an alternative future? AI expert, Senthil Kumar looked at how AI tools can be applied and amplified with augmented intelligence, meta technologies and Web 3.0. With construction needing the choreography of many moving parts, both operational and physical, the answer is to produce ‘digital rehearsals’ in construction, together with AI looking ahead to identify impediments to delivery and chart an optimum course.

From 3D scans to insights with AI
Martin Bach // aurivus

Laser scanning has played a key role in AEC for many years. The issue is the data these machines produce are simply a collection of dumb 3D points. To the human eye we can easily identify walls, doors, windows and buildings in these point clouds, but how hard is it for AI to also see objects in this point data? Martin Bach’s firm, aurivus, is one of the first to experiment and deliver on the challenge of truly delivering scan-to-BIM, by applying AI to recognise standard building components through point clouds.

Cloaked in bureaucracy:
The Emperor’s new clothes in the world of BIM?
Jens Majdal Kaarsholm // BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group)

When Jens Majdal Kaarsholm came out of university, he felt ‘a blind love’ for BIM. Now he feels there are too many unnecessary deliverables being built around industry frameworks, that things are getting too complicated. A tidal wave of BIM requirements, death by abbreviations, standards that supersede other standards, and more compliance. It seems like clients and BIM consultants simply copy and paste requirements from project to project. Kaarsholm gives an impassioned talk about getting a more pragmatic mindset to BIM deliverables.

Small robots for architecture
Maria Yablonina // University of Toronto

At NXT BLD 2022, Yablonina gave her presentation from Canada over Microsoft Teams. This year we managed to get her to London. As a robotics genius, Yablonina looks at construction automation and details her inspirations for construction robots which she has built. These include filament-weaving robots, wall climbing robots, façade clamp installation robots for façade design and various projects where robots work together to complete tasks.

(Re)joining nature – architectural symbiocene
Abhinav Chaudhary, Jenya Andersson, Michael Polisano //
PLP Architecture

By fusing the natural characteristics of fungi and engineering of 3D printed timber shells, PLP Architecture’s Labs team has constructed, or rather grown, modular mycelium building blocks. Unlike concrete and steel, mycelium bio-composites are renewable and biodegradable. They can be grown and harvested with minimal environmental impact, are lightweight, fire resistant, and have good insulation properties. PLP’s Labs team explained the development process and the search for new recyclable materials.

Enabling design interaction for clients and partners
Alvise Simondetti & Giulia Simone // Arup

Simondetti presented a project that enables clients to interact with design data for the MTR Admiralty Station in Hong Kong. By using an interactive model, Arup’s designers can understand the interactive decision making that passengers would apply when navigating the station. It was fascinating to see the ‘slow down points’ displayed in the model, to show where passengers pause while looking for signage to make decisions. Simone followed with a demonstration of Arup’s use of Nvidia Omniverse on master plan projects for a science campus of 400 buildings which will be built over 50 years.

Technology Revolution for Next Gen Building Tools
Mike Leach // Lenovo

Lenovo’s Mike Leach placed workstations in the context of AEC workflows. He introduced the magic quadrant (see left), explaining how different AEC applications place different demands on workstation components. “No two users are the same, therefore no two workstations are configured the same,” he said. He also talked about flexibility in how AEC technology is accessed. “Your toolbox doesn’t have to come with you all the time. If you’re using a laptop, you are able to pull in the big power of a desktop. You just pixel stream the content,” adding that desktop workstations can be rack mounted.

Mixed reality: the next frontier in design & collaboration
Johan Hanegraaf and Hilmar Gunnarsson // Arkio

While we all might be familiar with Virtual Reality, new generation headsets, including the Apple Vision Pro, are also pushing the boundaries of Mixed Reality. Johan Hanegraaf and Hilmar Gunnarsson talk about the advantages of using Mixed Reality headsets in the context of AEC design, with a live demo featuring the Queen Elizabeth II Centre, the very building NXT BLD delegates were gathered in!

Architecture in the age of AI
Tim Fu

With the advent of AI-based conceptual tools like mid-journey and DALL-E, it’s now possible to create stunning conceptual designs through text-based descriptions. Tim Fu has become an internet sensation, as he has built these 2D tools into modelling workflows to produce useable 3D designs. With each new iteration of the AI tools, Tim quickly masters their new possibilities.

Technology development for design and construction
Charlie Dunn // DPR Construction

In a lively interactive presentation, Charlie Dunn brought audience participation to new levels as he quizzed the audience on their feelings towards AI and project delivery. “The language you use to describe your projects are the results of your choices about technology and behaviours that you allow to exist in the room. The industry’s fundamental lack of trust.” Dunn hopes AI produces trust and understanding that tap into the flow of creative people.

Data Driven Performance
Dr. Sarah Surgeoner // Creative Building Performance

Sustainability and net zero are already going to be key drivers in future design but one assumes that this is going to accelerate. In a highly pertinent talk, Dr. Sarah Surgeoner pointed out that while sustainability has been an issue for 30 years, what is now imminent is a ratcheting up of government regulation in the real estate market, and one leads to another, impacting AEC design and construction.

Nvidia Omniverse: Open Industrial Metaverse for Advanced Computing
Cobus Bothma // Nvidia

From RTX to Omniverse and now AI, Nvidia brings real-time graphics to many industries through autonomous machines, robotics training, and factory design, as well as providing the processing power for simulation and collaboration in AEC. Bothma highlighted how the company is using the open file format USD to allow never seen before capabilities, collating models from different software, from different people in different geographic locations to deliver a real time rendered experience on an iPad. But that is just the start.

NXT DEV 2023 presentations

Future design software ‘shopping list’
Aaron Perry // AHMM Architects

Talking on behalf of a collective of medium-to-large AEC firms, Aaron Perry gave a masterful presentation on the ‘Future Design Software Specification’ – a document which has its origins in the Open Letter Groups both from the UK and the Nordics, which were backed by global entities, such as HOK, BIG, Grimshaws etc.

While trying to provide feedback to Autodesk to shape Revit development, it was clear that the scope to make major core changes was not on the table.

Thinking bigger and broader, Perry’s talk addresses the whole software development community and provides a level of customer insight that, quite frankly, is not available anywhere else. What is the future of our industry from a digital design point of view? It starting with the database and data framework requirement and then went much further. This is a talk not to be missed should you be developer, VC or an AEC practitioner.

NXT DEV intro: BIM 2.0
Martyn Day // AEC Magazine

Our very own Martyn Day gave a compelling introduction to NXT DEV. AEC Magazine’s new event highlights new AEC design software developers which are helping to define next generation ‘BIM 2.0’ capabilities, while connecting leading industry practices with AEC software developers and venture capitalists / business angels to discuss the future needs of the industry.

In his view, BIM 2.0 means moving from files to databases, embracing AI / ML, advanced modelling, automated 2D drawings, openness, link to digital fabrication and built in sustainability tools. Watch out for the slide that hates itself.

AEC technology market trends
Jay Vleeschhouwer // Griffin Securities

Vleeschhouwer is MD of Griffin Securities, a Wall Street-based research driven investment banking firm. We have been friends with Vleeschhouwer for decades and meet regularly at CAD events around the world, though he goes to the analyst sessions, and we’re with the press. He is without doubt the most CADfocussed analyst on Wall Street, regularly writing reports about MCAD, AEC and EDA players and markets. For NXT DEV, he graciously came to London to deliver some very fresh research and analysis on key AEC financials, specifically looking at the revenues, R&D spend and outlook for the main players.

KOPE
Mark Thorley

Building buildings in a factory is very different to doing it the traditional way, from the design process through to fabrication. Starting off by supporting volumetric modular, Kope has built a ‘productisation’ platform which now caters to many types of off site construction. Thorley explains how the company’s two components, Kope Market (instant tender, costing, supply chain insight) for products and Kope Construct (automation engine) can be used to test and optimise how prefabricated components work together.

Panel discussion:
AEC design technology

This brains trust representing Grimshaw, HOK, BIG and AHMM discussed the limitations of the current tools and what they want from the next generation. Addressing an audience that included the developer community and investors wondering where to spend their money, the panel explained that it’s down to the customer to set out where they need the software to be, so there is incentive to head in that direction. There was also talk on the need for open data standards, because the databases being developed by AEC vendors for the next generation were essentially proprietary, again.

Panel discussion:
How can this industry sustain its commitment to sustainability?

The AEC industry needs to hit stringent sustainability targets in just over five years. Our disparate group of sustainability experts discussed the challenges faced. Topics included: why firms develop their own sustainability applications, reinventing the wheel; how sustainability tools fail to integrate with current workflows; specialist software for nerds vs tools for generic designers to get people on board; and where are the new start-ups? How early should accurate sustainability tools be used vs results that give colour indicators. Old habits need to be challenged and benchmarks need to be established.

Panel discussion:
How much are we learning from prefabrication failures?

In light of a string of major off-site construction firms going bust, we hosted an expert panel to have a frank discussion on what’s gone wrong and what we can learn. DPR’s Charlie Dunn said, “Automation can be a real burden if it’s not purchased correctly and if there’s no real engineering process for manufacturing.” Fabrication knowledge is not manufacturing knowledge. Kope’s Oliver Green explained where it is going right, “Bathroom pods, precast stairs, wall cassettes are really taking off, that’s super exciting. Prefabrication failures are largely flash in the pan, modern high-risk volumetric.”

Panel discussion:
AEC Venture Capital and development

One of the key pillars of NXT DEV are the Venture Capitalists, Business Angels and Enterprise Investors. Tom Kurke from Bentley Acceleration Ventures identified that there was a massive slow-down in the venture market, started in later stage investments. A correction is coming in terms of valuations and prices. His advice to start ups was “Preserve your runway for 18 to 24 to 30 months as we don’t know how long the downcycle will last.” Shubhankar Bhattacharya from Foundamental thought it was a fantastic time to invest and that while some correction was going on, it was perhaps correcting too much.

Panel discussion:
AI in AEC

In a far ranging discussion on AI, we covered lots of topics. “AI is the fastest, dumbest intern you have ever had”, said Anthony Hauck. While Amar Hanspal said that “In a 15, 20, 25-year horizon it’s probably the most fundamental new technology in the AEC space.” Martha Tsigkari explained that training AI is a problem in AEC as we don’t have the standardised datasets or documentation like the legal profession. Will every firm have their own pet AI trained on their data? What will this do for employment? Plenty of food for thought in this discussion.

Finch
Pamela Nunez Wallgren & Jesper Wallgren

already has over 12,000 people signed up for the beta of its building design performance and optimisation tool which leverages graph technology. NXT DEV managed to coax the two founders over to London to give a bit more insight into what Finch3D is and what is coming. The software identifies potential errors and gives optimal solutions during the initial phases of the design process. It’s all real-time and should streamline building designs.

Swapp
Adi Shavit

Swapp is causing waves with its cloud-based tool which aims to take sketches to fully detailed models, then produce project documentation in minutes using AI. Shavit delved into the influence of AI on AEC, exploring the diverse methodologies employed by Swapp, including mathematical optimisation and ML to streamline design development and construction documentation. By automating these processes, less time will be wasted on repetition, while reducing project timelines. It will empower architects to do more design and less documentation, which in turn will allow firms to handle multiple projects with a high level of consistency.

Spaces (now called Codesign)
Martin Sheehan

Architectural conceptual tools have tended to be blocky desktop affairs. Spaces, now rebranded Codesign, is the first purpose built conceptual tool for the iPad Pro and pencil accessory. It has powerful 3D modelling tools, does sun studies, imports surrounding context, offers data driven design and has plenty of features to explore variations on ideas.

Augmenta
Francesco Iorio

Toronto-based start-up Augmenta uses AI to automatically build and connect routed systems in BIM models uploaded to its cloud service. Already capable of wiring up electrical devices such as lights, to a ‘power room’ in a BIM model, the system also estimates cabling / wiring / piping, minimising waste. Augmenta is in the process of adding auto-routing plumbing and MEP ducting to its capabilities.

Hypar
Anthony Hauck

Hypar is a cloud-based platform that uses generative design and automation to streamline and enhance the AEC design process. The platform offers powerful tools for creating, analysing, and iterating building designs and has a chatGPT interface, where buildings can be described via text and the software auto-generates a response, based on a given envelope and parcel definition. Hauck delved deep into the capabilities and showed the incredible level of modelling detail that the system now works to, with fully engineered roof drainage systems, embedding manufacturers knowledge. It took a few years, but Hypar really is finding its stride.

Snaptrude
Altaf Ganihar

Snaptrude i s a brand new BIM platform with cloud at the core. This enables new capabilities for real time collaborations and data sharing, removing the data interoperability problem. At NXT DEV, the company exclusively showed the forthcoming version 2. While browser-based, it’s highly performant and does sketching, parametrics, push / pull modelling, live room calculations, support for families, import and export RVT data, load maps or city data. This is the ‘Figma for BIM’ or Google Docs, and allows other users to log in and comment, markup or model. Snaptrude is showing exemplary development velocity.

Qonic
Erik De Keyser & Tiemen Strobbe

After 20 years of modern BIM, Qonic thinks that there is not a system that can really offer a cradle to grave workflow. There is no single BIM model, there are many — design, construction, facilities management (or digital twin). BIM tools need to go from concept to fully detailed model, not just a part of the process. We need to stop reworking and reinventing the wheel, said De Keyser. Qonic is a collaborative cloud platform to uplift BIM from design through to detail. It is based on IFC, so everything is owned by the customer with no proprietary file format. Strobbe demonstrated how fast the system is with large models.

Blue Ocean AEC
Marty Rozmanith

Blue Ocean has been developing green tools for building design and construction for some time. But now with industry veteran Marty Rozmanith on board, the company is aiming to make advances into design automation. Rozmanith demonstrated the capabilities of a new product, Skema, aimed at rapidly resolving site, context, massing, sustainability, blocking, stacking conditions with meaningful metrics. The company is also designing SkemaBIM, a BIM Knowledge Reuse Engine, which can generate LOD 350 BIM data from Skema masses and site layouts.

Accelerating AECO Software Development
Cobus Bothma // Nvidia

In his NXT DEV presentation, Bothma explained how users and developers can apply the Nvidia tech stack to accelerate AECO software development. Nvidia offers GPU /RTX, SDKs and Omniverse, providing non-destructive layering of imported data, custom schemas, data storage and Hydra for custom renderers. The stack of SDKs offers deep learning super sampling, voice to application capability, deep neural networks, path tracking, edge compute and text to 3D to highlight just a few (there are 350). There are a tonne of really useful tools for developers in AEC. Omniverse hardly scratches the surface.

Founders stories #1
Eric De Keyser // Qonic

An architect turned serial CAD software entrepreneur, De Keyser created Triforma, Bricsys / BricsCAD and now Qonic. He has gone through pretty much everything an entrepreneur can go through, building BIM products, bad deals, the euphoria of taking a firm public, the horror of losing it all in a crash, rebuilding, selling out and starting yet again. Listening to De Keyser talk you get to know the character of a man that doesn’t give up and the determination that eventually led to a successful sale to Hexagon. With Qonic, which is mainly self funded, Erik and the co-founding team still believe that BIM can be done better.

Speckle
Jonathan Broughton

In an AEC world full of silos there have been few answers to data portability. Speckle is open source and isn’t constrained by proprietary formats in its ability to grab BIM data and freely distribute it to applications from different vendors. It is becoming a popular tool for seamless interoperability at an object level. Jonathan Broughton took us through the world of Speckle.

Urbanly (CityCompass)
Federico Fernandez

Federico Fernandez is the CEO of start up Urbanly. He flew in from San Francisco to demonstrate CityCompass, the company’s tool for exploring urban decision making. The software can be used to check public policy through a scenario-planning interface and allows the modelling of macroeconomic variables like inflation rates, interest rates, and market shocks for the simulation years. Sounds like the software is coming at just about the right time!

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We all know the construction industry needs to change. And many agree that industrialised construction is the answer (or off-site construction, design for manufacture and Assembly (DfMA), Modern Methods of Construction (MMC), call it what you will). The question remains, how do we get there?

One man who has experienced the many challenges first hand is entrepreneur and investor, Michael Marks, one of Katerra’s original co-founders. We are deeply honoured that he will be delivering the keynote at NXT BLD this year to share what he has learnt from investing in disruptive construction technologies.

Regular readers of AEC magazine will have noticed our recent focus on exploring the many new start-ups coming to the industry, looking to take on the old guard. It’s great to see so many fresh ideas each month. Having clearly identified the pain points and limitations with the current BIM products and methodologies, the next generation of developers are sublimating their ideas.

Fresh ideas are also coming from industry itself. At NXT BLD 2022, Greg Schleusner, principal / director of design technology at HOK, will give a second instalment on his vision for better and more open data workflows. At last year’s event he identified the problems; now he has coded solutions and invites you to join him on the journey.

Elsewhere on the speaker roster we have another excellent and diverse selection, covering robotic fabrication and assembly, VR design systems, 3D printed interiors, applications of AI in construction work flows, off site modular construction of factories, the future of IFCs and open working, the latest in powerful workstations and a very special appearance by Oskar Stålberg, the developer of digital town building toy, Townscaper.

Event details

Tuesday 21 June 2021
Queen Elizabeth II Centre, Westminster, London.

(FREE livestream for those outside the UK)

For all the latest information click here.

Exclusive 2-for-1 offer for AEC Magazine readers

For readers of AEC Magazine, we are offering a strictly limited number of tickets on a special 2-for-1 offer to attend the London event. Simply use the promotional code 241AEC and you can pick up a pair for £69.

Tickets include full access to the conference and exhibition, refreshments, lunch and drinks at the networking reception. When they’re gone, they’re gone! www.nxtbld.com/tickets-2022

Speaker spotlight

The Day After Tomorrow: Transforming building production

Michael Marks

Celesta Capital

In Michael Marks’ experience, market disruption centres around the question, “Why not?” Large, mature industries are usually set in their own ways of doing things: thus the reason that companies he has invested in or led such as Tesla, GoPro, Flex, and Katerra have had the opportunity to disrupt these billion-dollar industries.

This session will cover Michael’s experience as an operator and an investor, leveraging patterns in businesses and industries that are ripe for disruption. From driving hypergrowth at Flex, interim leadership at Tesla, early investment in GoPro, and spotting unlikely successes, such as Crocs shoes, Michael has helped to transform entire industries.

He will share what he has learned from investing in construction technology, and why he firmly believes that industrial methods, coupled with innovative software, might deliver buildings in months, not years.

Designing [with] Machines

Maria Yablonina

Assistant professor, University of Toronto

Designing [with] Machines aims to investigate and establish design methodologies that consider robotic hardware development as part of the overall design process and its output. Through this work, a design practice emerges that moves beyond the design of objects towards the design of technologies and processes that enable new ways of both creating and interacting with architectural spaces. The practice specifically focuses on the development of task-and task-specific robotic devices and systems that are inherently suitable for in-situ fabrication as architectural intervention within the context of existing building stock.

Scaling Pre-Fabrication and Repeatable Design to Intel’s Semiconductor Manufacturing Mega-Projects

Reda Masarwa

Intel

With surging demand for semiconductors, Intel is thinking differently about the way it engineers and constructs its factories. Masarwa, VP of global construction engineering, will explain how scalable pre-fabrication and repeatable design are being applied to Intel’s semiconductor manufacturing Mega-Projects.

“It’s a model, Jim, but not as we know it”: Information models and the future of IFC

Emma Hooper

Bond Bryan Digital

Associate director of Bond Bryan Digital, Hooper’s expertise in information management and OpenBIM is second to none. She believes that the use of standardised data models is critical for us to have any chance of coping with, and connecting to, the huge amount of complex data which is coming our way. The future is open.

Presentation Content TBC

Felipe Manzatucci

Skanska

Tasked with improving productivity through the adoption of new technology, Manzatucci oversees the digitalisation journey of Skanska UK. In leading the Innovation Strategy, he engages with forward thinking developers. He will explore how technology can improve real-time decision making in construction projects.

Presentation Content TBC

Mollie Claypool

Automated Architecture

Claypool is a leading architecture theorist, focused on automation in architecture and the built environment. She is director of AUAR (Automated Architecture), a spin out from the Bartlett School of Architecture. Claypool will highlight AUAR’s work on robotically assembled dwellings.

Harness the power of Omniverse Enterprise to enhance your existing workflows

Chris Mcleod

Nvidia

Mcleod, a senior solutions architect on Nvidia’s Professional Visualisation team, will present the latest updates in Omniverse Enterprise (VR, measure tool, Navigator, etc.), explore how simulation data can be tied into your design, and demonstrate how you can collaborate in real-time on any screen.

Circular Architecture-as-a-Service

Hedwig Heinsman

Aectual / DUS Architects

Creative director & Co-founder Aectual co-founder Hedwig Heinsman will show how the company’s proprietary parametric design software, combined with advanced manufacturing with XL robotic 3D printers, can enable designers and builders to create tailor-made architecture on any scale in a sustainable way using bio-based and recycled materials.

Designing through the Magic Lens of Real-Time Tools

Dr. Fang Xu

Foster + Partners

Xu is an associate sustainability designer / analyst at Foster + Partners. He is concerned with person-environment relationship research, computational design, and real-time design technologies. He will present on in-house development of Project Fission and Downtown Explore to enhance the design process.

Presentation Content TBC

Conor Black

Arup

Black is an associate computational design engineer at Arup. He specialises in techniques for the simulation and generation of the built environment and believes computational optimisation is due a step change in approach for pushing the boundaries of how we design for better, more sustainable outcomes.

Technology Revolution vs. Evolution

Mike Leach

Lenovo

Learn from Lenovo and its performance engineering team, how to maximise new workstation investments, avoid mistakes, optimise the latest hardware setups for modern AEC workflows, and best enable your workforce with an ever-increasing movement to mobile and hybrid working.

On a Road to Nowhere?

Greg Schleusner

HOK

Schleusner returns to NXT BLD this year to deliver the second installment of his 2021 presentation about the need for better and more open data.

In his presentation this year, entitled ‘On a Road to Nowhere?’, he will explain how AEC is at an inflection point. It’s clear that something is wrong. The industry is awash with proposed paths but where do they lead? It turns out we don’t have to invent a path. We just need to copy and adapt it to AEC. Schleusner will focus on the path to copy, how to adapt it to AEC and where to start.

Presentation Content TBC

Richard Harpham

Slate.Ai

Originally an architect but having worked at Revit, Autodesk and Katerra, he has seen the construction market from all angles. He will join Skanska UK’s Felipe Manzatucci on stage looking at the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in streamlining the construction process.

A tour of Townscaper

Oskar Stålberg

Townscaper

A look at the technology, design and aesthetics behind Townscaper, the colourful digital town building toy. Block by block, build the town of your dreams with curvy streets, soaring cathedrals, small hamlets, canal networks, or sky cities on stilts. Perhaps some of it might even be useful in real world?

Convergence: the intersection of reality with the virtual

Ken Pimentel

Epic Games

Pimentel is AEC Industry Manager in the enterprise team at Epic Games, the developer of Unreal Engine. With real time visualisation now a reality and Unreal Engine 5’s capacity for large world models, Pimentel will predict where architectural visualisation is going next.

Architecture-Specific Distributed Robotic Systems

Samuel Leder

University of Stuttgart

Autonomous construction using distributed robotic systems features a large number of small, agile construction robots that can produce complex, functionally adapted assemblies from individual parts in highly parallel processes. This represents a fundamentally different approach to the current trends of automating individual predigital construction machines. As such, the application of distributed robotics systems on construction sites, where the machines required can fit in a suitcase, would require a shift in the current state of building construction. The system comprises a team of single-axis robots which leverage timber struts for locomotion, manipulate materials and assemble architectural structures.

Moving beyond DfMA to Design for Constructability

Joel Hutchines

Slate.ai

How to build what you’re designing, is emerging as a new baseline of knowledge for an architect. Understanding the physics of moving materials, labour resources and equipment needs to make your design easy to construct, now has a profound impact on decisions that can leverage industrial preconstruction methods. Getting the right decision data in the right people’s hands, as early as possible, is fundamental to the success of DfMA. In this session, Hutchines, former founder of Splash Modular, will share his experiences of providing the correct, quantified and unseen contextual data before, during and after prefabrication decisions, and the resulting success in adopting IC/MMC solutions successfully.

Get hands-on with the latest technology

NXT BLD isn’t just about its inspirational conference; it’s an incredible opportunity to get hands on with the latest technology in our exhibition.

Whether you’re starting out in arch viz / VR, want to push your workflows to the limits, or simply explore new tech for collaboration and more, then you’re in for a treat. Here’s a rundown of the key exhibitors you’ll see on the show floor.

Lenovo will showcase the latest in powerful desktop and mobile workstations, including the new ThinkPad P16 with 12th Gen Intel Core HX processors and Nvidia RTX GPUs.

Unreal Engine is the ‘world’s most open and advanced’ real-time 3D tool.

Oasys has more than 40 years in software development within three product areas: structural engineering, geotechnical engineering, and pedestrian simulation.

Enscape is a real-time rendering and virtual reality plug-in for Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, Archicad, and Vectorworks.

Arkio is a collaborative design tool for working together on buildings, interiors and urban plans using VR, AR, PCs and tablets.

Sensat is on a mission to revolutionise the way the industry plans, builds and manages construction and infrastructure.

Topcon provides end-to-end business solutions by integrating high-precision measurement technology, software and data.

Kenesto helps customers with document and file management problems that could not be solved with traditional methods.

Xinaps specialises in software solutions for AEC, including Verifi3D, a cloud-based (SaaS) model checking solution.

Graphisoft says its award-winning solutions provide unrivalled open BIM workflows.

Alice Technologies is an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered construction simulation platform.

Cadline’s Digital Engineering team specialises in engineering consultancy, delivering 3D design and BIM to customers.

3D Repo will show how its digital construction platform can transform workflows using live collaborative tools in a web browser.

Spaces by Cerulean Labs is bringing sketchbased conceptual design to the iPad.

Revizto is an integrated collaboration platform that helps teams drive accountability, mitigate risks, improve timelines and maximise savings.

Gamma AR brings Building Information Models directly to the construction site through augmented reality.

For more info visit nxtbld.com/sponsors-2022

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At NXT BLD 2021, we invited Greg Schleusner, director of design technology at global design, architecture, engineering and planning firm HOK to come over from New York and give a presentation on some of his R&D projects.

Schleusner has been exploring how the digital tools we use today act as barriers for collaborative design and pondering if something can be done about it

In his insightful talk he looked at inefficiencies in creating 2D representations, problems with annotation, the massive amount of data duplication, lack of knowledge capture and reuse, and the lack of openness.

There’s this fundamental problem where our data needs to become distributed but not particularly owned. The way it works today just enforces an inefficient linear process

If you have not seen the presentation, it’s probably a good idea to watch this now, as the rest of this article is a continuation of that thought process, based on Schleusner’s subsequent research.

When most people talk about their frustration with BIM tools, it usually concerns speed, the need for workarounds and the cost of ownership. But if we are to seriously address the problems the industry faces today, we have to take a lower-level approach. We should not just expect faster evolution of tools used commonly today but question the very data structures on which they are built.

We have plenty of formats; we also have plenty of incompatibility, data loss, data overshare, data wrangling and data in proprietary silos that inhibit collaboration.

“Our data functionally doesn’t work with our process. It’s all built for throwing over a fence in a very linear, transactional process,” explains Schleusner. “But, in reality, in design construction you have this overlap, where construction planning needs to start during design phase and yes, unfortunately the design is going to change.

“These iterative changes set off a series of continuous updates to files. In the way our world works, every one of these updates is a copy and, every time something changes, we end up with potentially having to redo our work downstream because you’re not in control of that data.

“Our solution for this technology problem are legal agreements. This is a counter productive way to think about how we can solve our issues, literally hoping to change the legal system.

“This leads to discussions about better contracts, and the hope that high-level trust agreements can be signed, where you let other firms access and edit your data, which only works in a very small number of cases.”

Data distribution

Schleusner sees all kinds of problems with the technology solutions we have today for collaborative working, defining rules on partitioning, as to who can do what and who can change what.

Today’s platforms can’t properly audit changes, there’s no global track history of who did what. “This approach is a poor match for technology, and we should never have to rely on these sort of arcane overlays of ‘let’s be friends’ to get a project to work”, explains Schleusner.

“There’s this fundamental problem where our data needs to become distributed but not particularly owned. The way it works today just enforces an inefficient linear process. I’m wondering if we can get the software to work independently of the way people work.

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“What we really want is to have a feedback loop, which we can’t do at all today, because of all sorts of limitations – the very nature of files, proprietary formats, incompatible applications, deeply siloed data, poor interoperability… the list goes on. We have to think differently.

“What’s happening to our world is it’s becoming unbelievably highly packaged, where everything is highly recursively related, as the project progresses, each discipline requesting changes to the design through the phases.

“This process is accelerating, but our data structures and everything else are structured to support a linear process. There’s still no easy way for a contractor to suggest a change that’s easily adopted by a design team.

“Changes come in many scales. It could be a material choice or it could be as complex as redesigning a whole roof structure or a façade system.

“If you look at something as simple as a door, in our current design process even that has a sort of recursive nature. You place a door, you have an external driver that client has a preference for – frame styles or particular hardware. Then, the building code or egress needs drives other functionality drivers on that door, which might need to update the door capabilities and other design issues might feed in which mean you have to go back in time to change the style. The point being – this is a nonlinear recursive process.

“Now add construction into the mix and you just get more of the same. We need to think about how to handle the fact that this is a distributed problem; not one person, there is no single entity that owned that door completely through the project. In fact, it has five pieces of data which have been owned by different groups. We have this distributed responsibility problem which we haven’t really addressed.

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“My best example is architectural finishes , products and materials. There are at least thirteen different places they could show up in project data, with unique representations and or owners.

“In the US the specification will describe its finished quality, its testing criteria, and so forth. It shows up in the product list, cost, what it looks like in a rendering, its environmental capability or impact etc. Just this one material has so many representations. Then you get a problem where the way we handle this, is to use humans as the interoperability layer.

“Every representation of that data exists in some application-specific format that basically then has to be interpreted and recreated by a person. The chance of errors multiplies with the complexity of the project.”

External framework

Schleusner thinks there are many things that should be part and parcel of how data works: distributed decision making, linked datasets, information distribution, change control and versioning.

Today’s software creates ownership through representations. For example, a Revit version of a slab is owned by the architect, but slabs are also owned by other disciplines. “There is a need to separate ownership and existence out from these representations,” explains Schleusner. “Design systems need a concept that sits external to all this, a root object slab, without the geometry. It’s not any particular discipline’s representation, it’s just a node telling the world that if you want to describe me further, this is what you attach to.

“You may want to imbue it with spatial addressing, to automatically associate representations from two separate software tools, but then you can hang all these interdisciplinary, internal and external pieces of data on top on it. Even for something like a slab, a material specialist might own the LCA [Life cycle assessment] information about associated materials, the architect might be responsible for life safety attributes beyond the geometric representations.

“As you build this out, there’s at least three or four structural representations or design representations, classifications and building codes and all the good stuff.

“What’s nice about this approach to data is, if you externalise the concept, any one of these representations can calculate the graph [model]. The clash filtered variant will show what kind of clashes for classification can be done. Fabrication geometry could be another representation. Using this tree graph structure, the other benefit is you don’t have to keep it up to date all the time. Let’s make our data capable of working independent of ‘a product’.

“There are advantages at working at a file per object level,” explains Schleusner. “This way, you can assemble the required representation, such as requesting to see the structural model or run a query ‘what elements changed this week?’ It’s representation on demand.

“The really important thing is, if we were to output a single IFC file it’s just too latent to be useful. “If we go granular and move to a partial IFC file per representation, we can do close to real-time exporting of just changes, not full monolithic files.”

Looking at a demonstration, Schleusner showed me a Revit user in an office, using a plan view to move furniture around, while at home, another session of Revit is updating in real-time as it receives a stream of partial IFC updates. This is a proof of concept and doesn’t have to be the same BIM system, or discipline.

Game changer

To me, this as a concept seems to be a fundamental game changer. Early visions for BIM were all about the single building model. A concept that seemed to make sense but in retrospect was flawed because it meant shoving all data, from all disciplines, into one file.

These files were proprietary and got very large, very fast and the systems were not even originally designed for teamwork. All of today’s BIM systems are designed to ultimately produce drawings and, as a result, the industry has managed to drown itself in those.

Near future requirements of the industry go significantly beyond this and links between BIM and digital fabrication are embryonic, and that’s another silo problem to throw into the mix.

The AEC industry is unfortunately too broad to have ‘one format to rule them all’. Externalising the data framework from today’s monolithic tools can lift the data out of the proprietary silos and be used to connect disparate applications via a distributed link to a multi-part, multi-graph solution.

In his research, Schleusner is also not looking to completely reinvent the wheel and seeking to embrace open formats and services: IFC, IFC.JS, USD, MaterialX, GBxml and Speckle, to name but a few. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, but they offer ways to extract information now from today’s proprietary tools.

Looking at Speckle and IFC.JS, it’s now possible to have ‘mini-servers’ as plugins, broadcasting every design change from each application to a Common Data Environment (CDE) or straight to another enabled application.

For instance, IFC.JS can ‘live broadcast’ BIM geometry changes from Revit to Archicad, streaming IFC component information and updating the models in real-time. Schleusner is looking to combine this with an external multi-representational granular graph representation to disrupt the current limitations on collaborative working by having a shared representation, which doesn’t require editing each other’s models or drawings.

He envisages the system will also track all changes across a project at a granular level. And, once you get all that data out of these proprietary systems and hold it externally, there is potential to do all sorts of interesting things.

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Development

HOK is pushing ahead with fleshing out and developing Schleusner’s in-house concept, and the global firm is connecting to many of the developers that offer open solutions who are interested in addressing this fundamental issue, or who they can learn from. For instance, this granular by object approach to data is how firms like Epic Games can get incredible performance on massive datasets in Unreal Engine 5, which can be seen in the recently released Matrix city.

For now, Schleusner is building proof of concepts, while fleshing out the functionality of the external system. There are immediate issues that he is looking to address in HOK’s own internal workflows with Revit and other applications, and so will be their own proving ground. Schleusner says, “The goal then will be to start a global discussion with firms that are interested in developing this further.”

Conclusion

As an industry we are in interesting times. While the construction industry rushes to digitise its entire end-to-end processes the tools on which this is being built are already creaking and built on concepts of file-based data which creates silos.

Looking at the cloud-based systems these are just enhancements to the current document-based workflows which are one of the fundamental reasons the industry is so inefficient. For now, ensuring a worker on site gets the right PDF is progress but everything up until that point does not flow smoothly.

HOK is first looking to address internal workflows with Revit and other applications. The goal then will be to start a global discussion with firms that are interested in developing this further

CDEs are a necessity because we live in a land of Babel. Models need to be broken down because we are trying to stuff too much data into archaic schemas. The contractual and legal issues strangle collaboration and, even then, there is little trust between parties, causing rework and the creation of multiple BIM models.

While products like Revit are 20 years old and there are no 2nd generation plans, it’s easy for the industry to fixate and look for the ‘next Revit’ or evaluate other BIM solutions. Here, Schleusner’s opinion is that we have to address the problems at a much lower level than ‘authoring tool’ and establish data structures that fit the way the business works bypassing the productivity-killing problems that the current generation of tools have bequeathed us.

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The beauty of his approach is that there are early wins with the current generation of tools. It will even help those who are just using one in-house BIM system, make integrating tools from different vendors less of a headache, enabling parallel development without the project file merry-go-round and actually having all project teams working together to flesh out the model definition, with a full transaction log.

The industry needs to look forward to an open approach to data as soon as possible. Ultimately an external database, using open formats, will help break the bonds of deeply resented proprietary lockins, draining the silos and levelling the playing field. While HOK is developing this to smooth its own data flow issues, it’s great that it recognises that the industry at large could benefit and is driving for practice collaboration on its development.

Check out Greg Schleusner’s NXT BLD 2021 talk.

He also gave a recent presentation on this topic to buildingSMART.

The post BIM is bust: how should AEC data work? appeared first on AEC Magazine.

AEC Magazine has been at the forefront of promoting BIM for almost 20 years. A few years ago, it was becoming clear that the amount of development work being put into many leading AEC applications was on the wane, so we set an editorial agenda to identify where the next innovations would come from, and examine how the industry would have to adapt — mapping itself from current processes to new digital workflows.

NXT BLD is the physical embodiment of our mission to explore new technologies and boldly go where no industry events had gone before!

Topics include VR-based design, robotic assembly, offsite construction, 3D printed buildings, digital twins, photogrammetry, robots on construction sites, real-time rendering, collaborative design, knitted buildings, generative design, mixed reality, city modelling and blockchain.

Topics and speakers, almost entirely come from the research we do for editorial, or from recommendations from people in practice, who may be part of ongoing R&D, either in-house or with a university. While in the past, technology had tended to be dictated by vendors, we are now seeing a much more hands-on approach to tech stack and workflow development from leading practices, something we covered in our January / February 2021 cover story.

Now, as the AEC industry moves to complete digitisation, academics, startups and established mature BIM customers have been looking to converge tools and processes, to meet their future needs

At our November event, which is now available to view free on-demand, we were lucky enough to have a stellar line up of industry heavyweights. This includes speakers from the Foster + Partners Advanced Research and Development (ARD) group, Cobus Bothma, director at KPF, Greg Schleusner, director of design technology and innovation at HOK, Dr Marzia Bolpagni, head of BIM International at Mace, and Emily Scoones, business and project lead at Ramboll.

These practices didn’t present case stories about their use of procured technologies, but showed their in-house developments and shared their goals.

This trend can also be seen in previous NXT BLD talks from the likes of Woods Bagot, Facit Homes, Gensler, Skanska, Herzog & De Meuron, Katerra, Laing O’Rourke, to name but a few. Expect more next year and an increase in the amount of AEC firms collaborating together in software development.

Automation has always seemed a great fit for construction. Even at our first NXT BLD event we had a prototype robotic assembly system from Arup and the amazing Arthur Mamou Mani.

Two years later and NXT BLD 2019 heralded the first appearance in Europe of Boston Dynamics’ SPOT robot, marking its launch into construction. That year we had R&D teams from laser scanning firms flying in with 3D printed mounting plates to try out their laser scanners on the robot, as it was their first opportunity to see SPOT in the ‘flesh’.

Foster + Partners also met SPOT for the first time at NXT BLD 2019 and this year the R&D team presented their findings on the potential of the robot for use on live projects and in the future. Meanwhile, Trimble’s Construction Robotics Lead also talked about the growth in robot adoption on construction sites.

As workstation CPU and GPU capabilities forge ahead, the ability to handle more complex geometry, on a city scale, in real time has finally become a reality. This isn’t just helping those involved in arch viz, but also virtual reality and augmented reality.

The AEC sector is also taking influence from beyond. This year we took a bit of a gamble asking Aston Martin to present, but it really paid off. Cathal Loughnane did a great job of explaining the Aston Martin design team’s philosophy which applied to everything from cars to residential buildings, to watches. As the AEC industry looks to change its workflow, it can’t remain an echo chamber. So we will continue to bring in speakers from other industries to see what we can learn from their digital design to manufacturing processes.

While NXT BLD examines early market trends, it also has the opportunity to follow these developments as they flourish and adapt. But, more importantly, how they are seen through the eyes of technology savvy users and within the context of real projects.

For future NXT BLD conferences, expect to hear more on the connection between architectural design and digital construction. This is a huge topic with a long way to run. There will certainly be more AEC firms discussing their own inhouse and collaborative developments, as the call for industry openness and productivity improvements grows – against the background of a seemingly slow-to-react commercial software market which is focussing elsewhere.

In the meantime, all of the presentations from NXT BLD 2021 are now available to view completely free on-demand, so grab a coffee and dive in. You’re welcome.

Location independent design – collaborative design

Cobus Bothma, KPF

Today’s leading architectural practices are experimenting to develop their own bespoke solutions, using the exploding resources of open-source components. Bothma demonstrates a number of tools he has created for use on KPF projects, connecting designers with different skill sets to enhance the internal iterative design process.

Other challenges included: ‘How to get a full BIM model, Grasshopper model, and 40km2 of modelled London at 150mm accuracy in front of a user, with real time capability, when we can’t control their hardware?’ The answer: Nvidia Omniverse. Bothma has expanded this to mixing Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis with real time graphics and virtual reality (VR).

Changing perspective and changing vision

Cathal Loughnane, Aston Martin Design

Aston Martin is a classic British sports car brand which blends its racing heritage and craftsmanship with the latest digital design technology.

As the AEC market looks to other industries to learn, Loughnane gives us his insight into how Aston Martin has expanded its design practice to motorbikes, helicopters, watches and residential development.

A key take away is that even with all the new digital technology at Aston Martin’s disposal, nothing is held in more esteem than the hand-crafted 1:1 clay model of the car – keeping true to the 108 years of Aston Martin DNA.

Creating balance

Greg Schleusner, HOK

BIM has been on the desktop for over 20 years but we have ended up spending more time documenting the design. As the AEC industry looks forward to improve productivity and refine workflows, Schleusner questions historic concepts of BIM tools and makes insightful suggestions as to what BIM needs to be able to do to evolve beyond its current document-centric limitations and ‘dumb’ models.

Silos are a major problem for the industry, data needs to flow more openly and in a more co-ordinated manner, between all tools and workflow participants. Schleusner is calling on AEC firms and developers to work together and cooperate on making the design process flow before AEC gets subsumed with new challenges.

From design to Digital Twin and beyond

David Weir McCall, Epic Games

Epic Games is looking to extend current BIM workflows to add real-time rendering, pedestrian simulation, LiDAR and digital twins. Weir McCall looks at how firms like HOK are using Twinmotion, Unreal Engine, Cesium and 3D Repo to model city-scale projects and co-ordinate design teams and interaction with the public.

Foster + Partners is experimenting with extending its real-time model assets to have Augmented Reality onsite to bring its designs to life. Digital twins means many things to many people but Unreal is focussed on contextualising data, from many different sources, in real time to all be displayed in the context of a model.

Buildmedia’s detailed model of New Zealand is amazing.

The NASA Control Room for Construction

Dr. Marzia Bolpagni // Mace

Bolpagni starts this talk by looking at the limitations of Level of Detail (LoD), acknowledging that different people require different data at distinct phases of a project and that most data created in the design phase is not formatted or useful to construction. She then suggests this can this be improved by using frameworks that are based on the level of information – why, when, who and what.

Mace has also been actively researching and benchmarking an ‘AEC production control room’, like NASA had for each space flight — a design room for project data, collating all project metrics for filtering and display.

Bringing digital twins within hands reach

Greg Demchak, Bentley Systems

Bentley Systems is the biggest proponent of digital twins and has also led the charge into reality modelling. Demchak comes from the research side of the company and has been experimenting and connecting Bentley with both large and small development firms to capture ultra-high resolution photogrammetry to build digital twins. The twins are then hosted in the Microsoft Azure cloud and streamed to collaborative Augmented Reality (AR) sessions, using Hololens headsets with physical hand interaction.

Demchak uses an example of bridge inspection, scanned by drone, automatically modelled in 3D and then used to identify cracks with machine learning, all at 1:1 scale

Collaborative design: Revit, Rhino & SketchUp models

Hilmar Gunnarsson and Johan Hanegraaf, Arkio

From our first NXT BLD to our fifth, we have watched Hanegraaf’s ‘VR design for architects’ concept go from an idea to a shipping product, Arkio. This year, the Arkio team modelled the QEII Conference Centre and the Parliament building area – the location of NXT BLD – and demonstrated the breadth of Arkio’s modelling and collaborative capabilities, together with links to working with Revit and Sketchup.

At one point, they invited the whole audience to join them in a massive, live, collaborative session using their phones!

Autonomous robots in construction

David Burczyk, Trimble and Brian Ringley, Boston Dynamics

How does robot autonomy work on a construction site, a space which changes every day and is unpredictable? The heads of construction from Trimble and Boston Dynamics look at the benefit of flexible autonomy while performing high resolution data capture. Burczyk and Ringley also explore what can be done with robotic data capture, now it can be automated and carried out much more regularly. Trimble extends this concept to show how the data could be used in real time for in-field analysis, such as monitoring slab pours and comparing the as built vs the constructed.

Spot for the AEC industry

Martha Tsigkari and team, Foster + Partners Applied Research and Development (ARD) Group

The ARD group at Foster +Partners is legendary in the fields of complex geometry, AI, VR/AR, performance simulation and IoT. This year we were lucky to have four of the team onstage to talk in detail about their research into digital twins and the use of robots in construction. Foster + Partners sees benefits in not only creating construction twins, but also beyond in operational twins, seeing how buildings are used, monitoring environmental conditions, as well as energy usage. These experiments were carried out on its own campus, as well as on actual active projects

The future of collaboration through Open Source

Dimitrie Stefanescu & Matteo Cominetti, Speckle

Speckle is an open source enabling ecosystem, designed to remove the bottlenecks created by today’s federated and proprietary constrained data environments. We need a more flexible solution to store this data, says Stefanescu and Cominetti, and Speckle delivers an object-based, open source, interoperability platform designed to bypass the current bottlenecks. It’s a rare initiative in this industry that is almost wholly altruistic.

The clamour for openness is growing and many are wondering if having a single BIM model was such a good idea in the first place. Stefanescu summed it up in one sentence: ‘single source of truth is a fallacy, we don’t want one ‘God like’ model’.

Industrialised Construction – transformation through data for manufacture and assembly

Amy Marks, Autodesk

Out of all of the traditional CAD firms, Autodesk is the most vocal about developing a strategy for its customers to cross the chasm between architectural design and digital fabrication. Marks has joined Autodesk after running a successful industrialised construction firm and is looking to educate and engage the industry as an evangelist. She acknowledges that change is hard but this has to happen as the fabrication needs to be considered at the point of design. Her strategy is to design using a kit of parts, to productise the physical and the digital and reduce the production of one-off parts.

The next generation: generative design in practice

Emily Scoones, Ramboll

Ramboll has been looking at how it can take its in-house generative design knowledge and apply it at a more traditional scale, to create tools for designers to enable them to design with competing constraints and iterate faster. As engineers, Scoones points out that, all too often in the existing process they come to a project at a late stage and point out problems.

The company is keen to share its knowledge earlier to avoid ‘well documented designs’ that are problematic. SiteSolve is a productised generative design tool from Ramboll which looks at feasibility for residential massing, looking at competing variables – roads, target mixes, floor heights, topology etc. using built-in engineering knowledge and rules to define overall design options.

The future of architecture: design & code across realities

Andreea Ion Cojocaru, Numena

Numena is a start-up of ‘coding architects’, which is developing a new VR / AR design tool, based on Unity, for architectural experimentation. One of the fundamental features is the system’s ability to display, for the user, 1:1 interaction with the design model, while including traditional scaled digital documents, merging plan and model.

Part of the research asks clients to ‘design their own buildings’ using the VR system, as they respond to the volume and light in the model, which is impossible to realise from 2D plans. This all feeds back into the BIM system.

Twinning it to 11

Robert Jamieson, AMD

AMD Threadripper Pro multi-core processors launched in 2020 and were quickly established as a price / performance challenger to the mighty Intel, especially in high-compute throughput use cases, such as rendering, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and simulation which can make use of the processor’s 64 cores.

The future of processing is more cores and software companies are redeveloping popular tools to access this power, with more cores rumoured to be coming in the next generation.

Research in practice

Francis Aish and Martha Tsigkari, Foster + Partners

Two of the industry’s applied computational giants, Aish and Tsigkari, highlight some of their research work, starting with famous work done on ‘The Gherkin’, from a time when there was no Rhino / Grasshopper, to today, where they are dealing with buildings that require performance-driven complexity over a thousand times greater than the problems they were solving in the 1990s. With every project comes new challenges, “Francis, can you scan the desert?” asked a senior partner! The challenge was to capture the ripples of the sand to be used in the building design, which had to be modular, appear random, interchangeable and be low cost! Well worth a watch, as the pair also talk about Omniverse, machine learning, AR, simulation and in-house developments.

Delivering real-time experiences

Rob Harrison, Epic Games and Murray Levinson, Squire & Partners

A year in to using Twinmotion, Levinson gives an insight as to how Squire and Partners has been using the real-time viz technology in its master planning and commercial, large scale residential and hotel work. The firm employs 16 people in its in-house CGI team and has recently moved from mainly making stills to producing high-end moving animation and VR for projects, as the competition raises the bar.

Levinson nails the current zeitgeist, “Design has become a massive shared event, where you have to talk to everyone.

Scaling remote & hybrid workforces without compromising productivity

Mike Leach, Lenovo

Given the last two years, it was no surprise that our annual update from Lenovo’s workstation expert focused on the latest in ‘work-from-anywhere’ solutions, where performance is key but so is security given the geographically stretched nature of company networks. TGX is a software layer that is installed on Lenovo workstations which means you can connect to any machine, any user, anywhere at anytime, leveraging Nvidia RTX power that firms have perhaps had to leave in an office. Also mentioned is CloudXR which provides VR and AR wirelessly across mixed devices.

An architect in the Metaverse: social VR, NFTs, and new opportunities

Alex Coulombe, Agile Lens

In his talk at NXT BLD Virtual in 2020, Coulombe looked at the mapping of the virtual to the real, having a real mock-up that can be tested with subjects in VR. This year he talked about designing virtual spaces that don’t exist and will never be built, “I guess it’s called ‘the metaverse’”. Alex explored: What is virtual architecture? What is the psychology of virtual architecture? The unique affordances of virtual spaces, how art, film and games can inspire virtual architecture and with the rise of NFTs the commercial aspects of VR architecture. Mind blowing stuff.

Nvidia Omniverse, an open Platform

George Matos, Nvidia

Mentioned multiple times by firms throughout the day, Nvidia Omniverse is the passion and baby of Matos. The platform enables users in different applications, in different geographic locations to be able to share geometry and ‘scene’ information between core AEC tools with active, live synchronisation, all while powered by Nvidia’s cloud GPUs. It’s a game changer in collaboration and underpinned by Pixar’s USD file format. Matos explains that in our locked-in, siloed AEC workflows, Omniverse breaks down the boundaries and connects the 3D data sets from design teams and multi-disciplinary participants with the power virtual super-computer. This is a great in-depth talk on everything Omniverse.

Virtual collaboration and visualisation in AEC

Aleksander Nyquist Langmyhr, Varjo

One of the most impressive VR headsets we have seen in the last two years comes from Finland. The headset was specifically clever in the way it uses a bionic display and tracks the eyes of the user to provide ‘human eye’ resolution at the point of focus.

At NXT BLD Varjo launched a new lower cost headset, the Varjo Aero and TeleportVR  – a metaverse which allows users to ‘drag and drop’ AEC models into their software for collaborative VR review, which it then uploads it to the cloud for sharing. It can also link to desktop apps such as Revit. The system supports multiple manufacturers’ headsets, not just those from Varjo.

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