What has been in the making for many years now has finally been unveiled by the founders of M-SIX, a team of veteran CAD industry folks behind what is shaping up to be a very promising and ambitious new BIM (Building Information Modeling) technology for the AEC industry.
VEO™ by M-SIX shipped quietly for the market two weeks ago but the company sent out a big announcement only this week and pointed press and those interested to its fully updated website where videos demonstrate how VEO works on both the desktop and Apple’s iOS-based iPad device.
What is VEO
VEO could be described several ways. Categorically VEO is a BIM software tool. But functionally VEO is a project collaboration and document management (PCDM) tool and system for the AEC and FM (facilities management) industry segments. It consist of desktop, server software and software for the iPad. Users can deploy it hosted in the M-SIX VEO™ Cloud, use it on their own cloud, or serve it internally behind their own firewall.
01 - M-SIX's new VEO addresses multiple segments of faulty BIM workflow issues.
The introduction page on the VEO website contains nine distinct areas of explanation for VEO (see image 01 above). As a BIM tool it can handle super-sized projects (something not every BIM tool is good at). With it you can create a complete facilities management archive. It enables contextual collaboration. Importantly, it tracks all model changes and provides a linear time-based history. Users have flexibility in options for deployment. There is complete mobile access via Apple’s iPad but we’ll touch more on that in a second. It provides role-specific views of the BIM model. It provides accelerated communication without the latency of file-based model aggregation. And lastly it works with real-time sensor data. (see image 02-04)
What does VEO Look Like
VEO’s user-interface, from what we can see in the videos on its website, is well organized, clean and modern. It resembles, at quick glance, the interfaces of well-regarded 3D tools like Luxology’s modo and MAXON’s CINEMA 4D, with a scheme of dark and blueish grays with clear accent colors for “mouse-over” and toggle functions of various buttons.
02 - VEO lets you go back in time and review the state of the model at a particular date.
03 - VEO enables you to track and assign coordination issues.
04 - VEO for the iPad allows mobility to the VEO platform.
The iPad app for the VEO tool is more recognizable as a typical iOS application with the classic Apple iOS UI elements. It is not quite clear to us all of the functionality of the iPad VEO app, but one thing we believe is that it does not replicate all the technology of VEO on the desktop. In fact, the iPad VEO app seems more geared towards mobility functions as they would relate to what VEO does as a BIM platform.
[Editor’s note: It is not fruitful to search the iTunes store for the VEO iPad app. We did that and did not find anything yet. In fact TD Ameritrade has an app called Veo.]
VEO utilizes its own 3D engine and file format. The program today is setup to export out model data from popular BIM tool Autodesk Revit. It should be stated that M-SIX has been partially funded by Autodesk and that some of its key members are ex-early Revit Corporation employees. That being said we have heard this directly from them on a few occasions that they understand the world of BIM to be more than just about Autodesk Revit and have ambitious plans to support other tools and platforms.
Today VEO communicated to Architosh an informal list of other BIM authoring packages which they plan to provide VEO exporters for. “Plans are already underway” was the exact message. There are “also plans for an Apple OS X version of VEO” but the statement clearly said plans and not “underway” plans. Also, last year Nemetschek Vectorworks announced a partnership with M-SIX on a VEO connector plugin development, which you can read here. (see our Analysis section below for more).
next page: Some Highlights of VEO
Some Highlights of VEO
To utilize VEO you export out from your BIM (right now that only includes Revit) the data subset you want to push to VEO. Part of VEO’s focus is that you simplify model sharing by focusing on publishing out only revision-specific information. You are also able to review proposed revisions and evaluate options before publishing to the entire team or incorporating those changes.
A strong and important aspect of VEO is that it has tracking for all the changes that are made. It understands the history and context of every revision. You can actually rewind to any date or date range and highlight every change made at that specific date (see images 02).
04 - VEO can do photo-realistic rendering in the cloud.
VEO is also able to allow the user to create custom database tables and share them. You can access, update or share data and documents from within the office or in the field (say iPad) with or without an Internet connection. The company says the iPad app and Excel plugin are coming soon. So those are not yet available today.
VEO also has cloud-rendering and the images we have captured from their videos look pretty good. (see image 04) Lastly, the final item we would like to mention is that VEO has clash-detection and users can create run sets for clash rules.
Closing Details
You can try VEO for free and the kit comes with the installer for the software and a building and tutorial project. There are training manuals and videos that quickly get folks up and running. The trial is free.
M-SIX has already detailed its pricing plans and the options fall into two categories. A per user license is 250.USD per user per month. With that model you get unlimited projects and 25 GB of storage. A per project license is 2,500.USD per month and with that model you get unlimited concurrent users and 500 GB of storage. You also get various compute hours with those plans. You can read the pricing here.
Ultimately what the M-SIX folks want you to understand is that VEO is a platform for BIM. The platform was architected to address what is wrong with the BIM workflow bottlenecks that exist today. To learn more visit them online here: http://www.M-SIX.com/
Architosh Analysis
First off, we’ve known about the VEO project since 2010 when we published our BIM report. We too have been anxiously awaiting to see what VEO would be in the end as we were told it was really BIM platform agnostic but itself wasn’t another multi-platform BIM authoring package. Indeed, VEO is not a BIM authoring package but rather a BIM platform which addresses a core aspect of the BIM revolution within AEC. That aspect is that BIM is actually a process change rather than a software technology change.
Before folks get super excited about VEO for Mac OS X we would caution readers to consider the long list of “plans” statements by companies in the CAD and 3D industry. About ten years ago we published a news report quoting Revit manager Richard Rundell AIA who told us privately that Revit was built from the ground-up to be highly portable and that plans for Revit were not only important but doable. That never happened. And while Revit for Mac may indeed be imminent (and we know nothing official) many BIM users and OS X fans wait patiently.
We have heard statements about native Mac versions of many things over the years and still they always seem to be plans out in the distant horizon. With that word of caution let’s also state that M-SIX is a brand new BIM company and they deserve optimism and praise for their implementation of iOS in their mobility and cloud strategy. Those who are interested in VEO and want to see it on OS X should simply tell them that and then download and use the product on Windows if they can. That is the best way to assure funding for OS X in the future.