Architosh BOS

This is our 12th year of judging what we saw at AIA as “BEST of SHOW.” These honors are aimed at directing our global readers’ attention to both interesting newcomer applications and critical trends that impact technology adoption. On this last note, the history of our selections for these honors is notable. Put another way, if our AIA BEST of SHOW were investment picks, Pete Evans and I would have done exceptionally well, financially.

MORE: AIA26: AI and Automation Shine in San Diego — Some Highlights

Just a few representative examples include Gehry Technologies’ GTeam (winner in 2013), which was later acquired by Trimble and is now Trimble Connect. Then there was IrisVR (winner in 2015), which merged with The Wild and was later acquired by Autodesk. We can say similar things about some smaller companies, which, perhaps not acquired (or recently acquired), have grown into powerhouse brands in AEC.

Honors and Prizes

For this year’s announcements, we are going to jump directly into the winners and write about our award categories, criteria, and thematic issues at the end of this article. We also always publish a “Perspectives” companion feature, but last year we switched that to a recorded discussion (video). Look for a forthcoming piece.

So let’s focus on the honorees. Without further ado.

Congratulations to the 2026 Architosh AIA ‘BEST of SHOW’ honorees!

BEST of SHOW — EMERGENT TECHNOLOGY Category

Winner: SketchUp (w/ Claude integration)

Trimble SketchUp has long been the standard for easy conceptual modeling in the early stages of design. Contractors also gravitated to this platform as it offered rapid visualization, which could be used for 4D visualizations and project realization. “This year, SketchUp transforms its accessible capabilities into a built-in, real-time collaboration space for teams and clients, a cloud-connected, multi-user workflow focused on the middle of the project delivery,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh. “It builds on its legacy of ease-of-use with an in-app chatbot for workflow assistance that can also generate 3D objects from text prompts and images, and likewise generate photorealistic images from models and text prompts.” 

More radically, it also introduced its first (Trimble-based) MCP connector, the “SketchUp Connector for Claude,” to open AI workflows more widely to vibe modeling. Pete Evans, AIA, Architosh, notes, “This multi-pronged AI approach includes a built-in intelligent core, but complements that with open, interoperable workflows and ease-of-use that SketchUp has forever been famous for by opening up and staying at the forefront of AI capabilities.” This is on top of other new features now built into the core of SketchUp, like the Analysis Hub and Lab tools, with specialized extensions such as Daylight analysis, which provides daylight metrics, illuminance data, heatmaps, and “right-of-light” submission capabilities. Live components also added more parametric-like capabilities for more powerful modeling alongside powerful cloud collaboration as part of its 2026 release. “At the heart of our decision to place this in the emergent technology winner category is the agentic AI interface with Anthropic’s Claude,” adds Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Architosh. “MCP and agentic AI workflows embedded into popular industry tools today are at the very heart of what is critically emergent in AEC tech in 2026.” 

Winner: Bluebeam Max

A mainstay in the AEC/O industry gained a new superpower thanks to agentic AI, coupled with both acquired and in-house-developed AI capabilities, in Bluebeam Max. “There are several different AI technologies in the Bluebeam Max product offering, but the Claude integration with the integral MCP server in Revu is the tech that has users exceptionally excited,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Architosh. “Bluebeam Revu workflows in AEC are naturally highly repetitive, so Claude’s ability to automate these functions is a force multiplier in efficiencies. Moreover, the Smart Review AI features are already being used by GCs to find discrepancies in drawings within a day, which typically reveal themselves slowly over many weeks or months during the construction phase. As a result, it behooves AE professionals to deploy Bluebeam Max as part of their workflow prior to releasing drawings for bid or construction, so they find these errors first.”

Criteria Notes: The novelty of MCP with AI orchestrators like Anthropic’s Claude showcases a dramatic shift in how architects can work with existing desktop-era tools like SketchUp and Bluebeam, enabling users to experience a tremendous speed-up in software workflows. AI can request specific tools or data “on-the-fly” based on evolving tasks rather than operating on a pre-defined set of constraints. Claude powers both tools, revealing just the beginning of agentic AI’s capabilities. This speaks to our emergent technology award category at multiple levels, representing both convergence and a thematic change for practice. 

BEST of SHOW — INNOVATION Category

Winner: Kestrel Labs

“Kestrel Labs’ new compliance platform focused on building codes was one of AIA26 San Diego’s biggest highlights with respect to digital tools,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Architosh. “While other AI code tools exist, Kestrel’s solution puts their compliance engine directly inside the design and documentation environment, whilst also having an intelligent web-based code analysis space for its users.”

An added unique feature of Kestrel’s strategy and implementation is the notion that your project’s “code work” moves with the project through different tools over different phases of the project’s lifecycle. While not all of this is available today, as Kestrel develops its solution for tools like SketchUp next and other BIMs, this unique feature will benefit its users. “Kestrel’s implementation is also particularly strong for a new application,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Architosh, “with a visually appealing GUI and brand identity that speaks to architects in a similar way that Monograph’s award-winning app does as well. “Every few years, maybe around every five, a brand new tool comes out that really has the ability to capture a critical beachhead—that Omaha Beach moment—where we just know a tool and its strategy is super strong and will have rapid success. We believe Kestrel is that,” adds Frausto-Robledo. 

Criteria Notes: Innovation winners often herald “new directions” in digital technologies often solving age-old pain points. Kestrel’s AI-powered compliance platform is a rather textbook example. The quality of attack on addressing code review in practice is particularly impressive, as is its implementation at version 1.0

BEST of SHOW — BIM Category

Winner: Arcol

Arcol short-circuited development by deeply connecting to Rhino3D instead of developing its own complex geometry engine. Today, this is a live feature in Arcol’s second year at the AIA conference. (Arcol won this award last year.) Arcol embeds live Rhino3D geometry in its modeling environment, where, if changed (remotely), it is continuously updated as native Arcol geometry within the data-rich collaborative web environment. Pete Evans, AIA, Architosh says, “Adding Rhino as a live, two-way directional bridge allows a new, very strong accelerator to data-rich modeling form that is unlimited.” Another distinct area of acceleration is in its tables and boards for team members beyond presentation. Specific data tables can be “soft time-stamped” to hold a state for a specific view, but they can be updated while still connected to the underlying project data.

This provides a contractor, for instance, with a more static view of a table that doesn’t dynamically change with model updates. This table can then be updated, but this clear communication shifts from static versioning and archiving, as in today’s practice, to an Arcol project that contains a live, data-rich core and narrative from start to end for continuous updates and shared decision-making. “We also like how Arcol, as both a company and a BIM 2.0 application, is gaining traction in the market with large general contractors and real estate developers,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, “as this indexes Arcol’s stated goal of creating a BIM 2.0 application for the entirety of the industry and not just architects.” Finally, the company’s goal for agentic AI “agents” operating with IP knowledge from various industry leaders working alongside human designers is a compelling future vision. “This future aspect of the app isn’t factored into our award decision,” adds Pete Evans, AIA, “but it sharpens our watch on what we believe is the market forerunner on BIM 2.0 outside of Autodesk’s own similar tools.”

Criteria Notes:  While the BIM category winner can be new or old, Arcol (as a 2nd-year “Best of Show” winner) continues to rapidly expand its BIM capabilities and attack multiple pain points with its novel approach, and underpins that power with a full embrace of future agentic BIM (see notes below). Critically, this release includes Arcol’s ability to solve a critical pain point in advanced modeling integration with Rhino 3D, plus its worksheet functionality (bi-directional linking to Excel files like xRefs) to address the needs of large GCs (and we know of several as early customers), addressing longstanding cost-control issues in the AEC industry, by bringing these cost management functions up to the front of the process. 

The ability to corral multiple AI agents for its early-phase design includes costing, zoning, and structural agents, with a perspective that builds on the core real-time collaborative nature of Arcol. “Intelligent by default” positions Agentic BIM as a massive shift in the Macleamy curve itself, enabling a collaborative jumpstart with buildable information in a radically shorter timeframe.

BEST of SHOW —  CLOUD Category

Winner: Morpholio Trace

“Morpholio Trace has always been a special tool in the AEC universe,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Architosh. “But a tight integration with this particular BIM authoring tool (Vectorworks) seems like the perfect match-up that will yield special advantages for both Vectorworks users and established Morpholio users.” While the sister brand Vectorworks acquired Morpholio, we don’t see Morpholio staying connected only to Vectorworks in the long term. “In addition to bringing the sketching-thinking process closer to an advanced BIM tool—where there are so many layers of interaction opportunities—Morpholio can serve as the ultimate first step to sketch-to AI-rendering and animation,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA.

Strategically, Morpholio Trace is a significant net benefit to the entire Nemetschek Group because sketch-to-AI visualization workflows are currently the highest accelerators in the industry. “Nothing in AEC is currently moving faster than AI-based rendering, and nothing is better to steer and control this kind of AI rendering than using a pen and digital paper,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “Given that Nemetschek also owns Maxon with its rekindled interest in archviz, the next steps for where to take Morpholio Trace seem super obvious to me.”

Criteria Notes: Cloud-first and mobile-first solutions are those that drive at full utilization and maturing cloud-to-mobile or cloud-to-web tech stacks. Morpholio, with its new integrations with Vectorworks’s hybrid CAD/BIM environment, seems like it has found its ultimate dance partner. Morpholio Trace is strategically positioned to converge with AI visualization, and its underlying sketching environment is poised to drive such workflows. In the meantime, Morpholio Trace has so much to offer to the sketch-to-BIM concept at Vectorworks. 

BEST of SHOW —  VISUALIZATION Category

Winner: Chaos Veras

Chaos Veras 4.0 introduced a new AI rendering engine powered by Google’s Nano Banana Pro, which improved geometry fidelity, material realism, and lighting accuracy. Accuracy improvements were alongside reduced image artifacting and “AI hallucinations.” This creates better control and precision for both image generation from reference sketches or prompts, but also using a model as the underlying design to create more valid visual results. New capabilities also introduced 2D to 3D visualization with floor plans to generate spatial renderings and the ability to construct multiple perspectives from an initial view, without rebuilding geometry. Animation is also a new capability from a static image while controlling camera motion, animated entourage such as cars and people, time of day, and different weather conditions. Pete Evans, AIA, noted, “Veras is a whole new level of storytelling that invites more technically-based architects as well as non-technical designers, such as an office principal, to a new, rapid visual idea layer for interactive project visualization.

Veras radically reduces the need for a technically accurate, time-consuming 3D model during early-stage ideation. This frees up valuable resources for creative visual iteration and communication.” “The time-savings and yield advantages of AI rendering tools like Veras are major force multipliers in practice,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “While there are numerous options in the market, we see future advantages of Veras being a part of Chaos beyond just its integration with all of Chaos’ tools.”

Criteria Notes: Chaos continues to challenge and transform the way architects approach the visual landscape of architectural visualization. The release of Veras 4.0 this year presented significant and compelling materials for seeing architecture in unprecedented ways. This tool’s advancement easily meets the criteria for this category (see below), especially in implementation quality and the acceleration of solution quality. 

BEST of SHOW — The Economics Prize

Winner:  Chaos Veras

The Economics Prize is awarded to solutions that reflect substantial process improvements even through “creative destruction.” Chaos Veras is a leading mature AI visualization tool in the industry, Uber-izing a known process: photo-realistic 3D renderings and animations. “While Veras is a worthy winner of the Economics prize for the sheer speed-up of its abilities to produce useful visuals deployable to different purposes in the design communication process, it is also disruptive to established archviz professionals who have painstakingly developed advanced visualization and animation skillsets,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Architosh. Architects today are finding Veras a force multiplier for securing client buy-in and for design exploration prior to it. “It’s not hard to see why Veras, and tools like it, are so incredibly popular,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “They accelerate both sides of the visualization coin: the part that helps us design as architects and the part that helps us sell our ideas to our clients.” 

Criteria Notes: Veras delivers sizable process improvements to a common industry deliverable: photorealistic renderings. The “Uber-ization” part of our comments relates to the accessibility of what Veras produces and the three-point superiority factors: cost, speed, and quality. The cost of final images is multiple times lower; the output speed (via the process) is multiple times faster than traditional rendering; and the quality is solid and fit for purpose.

Award Categories and Criteria

Our award categories are designed to be broad and flexible, enabling us to honorably note a product across multiple categories if warranted.

• Emergent Technology (emTech) Category Award — acknowledges industry potential for novel or bleeding-edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice or create convergent technology paths and drive synergistic directions for the industry.
• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the “most promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative “new directions” in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the “BIM workflow” industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (d) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and toolchains are social and democratized to their fullest extent, and (e) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Cloud Category Award  — acknowledges technology solutions (software or hardware) driving at full utilization of synergistic and maturing “cloud-to-mobile,” “mobile-to-cloud,” and “cloud-to-web” technology stacks, exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality and novelty, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing pain-points in AEC, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Visualization Category Award  — acknowledges the “most compelling visualization solutions” and technologies that are “transforming the architect’s workflow,” heralding new ways of seeing architecture for all stakeholders and not just clients, accelerating design optioneering, material, and light discovery, design problem solving, and design collaboration, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, including rendering speeds and image qualities, (c) quality of attack at addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and addressing synergist directions in the industry.
• The Economics Prize — reflecting an important shift within the architectural industry to acknowledge the extent of poor economics for architects and a newfound demand for better working conditions and pay, the Economics Prize is awarded to digital technology that shines in the direction of better economics for architects, as measured by: (a) sizeable process improvements to common industry deliverables via creative disruption (ie, Uber-ize a known process), (b) notable value disruption by a vendor via license cost comparison without “bundling,” (c) notable outsized release update delivering exceptional value increase for users, and finally (d) performance capture due to innovative, leading-edge software or hardware solutions.  

Congratulations to the 2026 Architosh AIA ‘BEST of SHOW’ honorees listed below.

The post AIA26: Architosh 12th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for digital technologies at AIA San Diego appeared first on Architosh.

This year, only five members of the press were invited, including Architosh, to an event at the Corinthia Hotel with an announced attendance of 500-plus, including Graphisoft customers, partner resellers, user presenters, software partners, distant and local members of the Graphisoft organization, and the parent company, Nemetschek. Clearly different, and to say that there was energy at this event would be an understatement.

An Origin Story

One very notable guest this year was Gábor Bojár, who founded Graphisoft in 1982. Bojár was recognized at the opening of the conference by Graphisoft CEO Daniel Csillag and spoke later at a reception back on the company campus, where he told the origin story that has become Graphisoft lore and helped to orient the event in a very meaningful and important way… even 43 years later after the company was born.

Back in 1982, using a cash award from the Hungarian Ministry of Power for solving a planning challenge for the installation of a Soviet nuclear power plant, Bojár and István Gábor Tari, an assistant professor in Budapest, wrote their fledgling software “RadarCh” for the Apple Lisa. They met Steve Jobs in 1984, where Jobs encountered this precursor to Archicad at the CeBIT international trade fair in Hannover, Germany. Jobs was so taken with Graphisoft’s 3D software that he subsequently supported its development for the original Macintosh, one of which had to be taken apart and smuggled into Hungary through Hanover, Germany, during the Cold War.

Jobs saw an early version of Archicad (called RadarCh) on the Apple Lisa computer in Germany and became a supporter of the company from that moment on. Not only is Graphisoft forever grateful for Jobs and Apple, but it is also a passionate study of the company’s innovative ethos, which they skillfully embrace in Budapest. (Image: Architosh)

Bojár had a vision of Budapest as the Silicon Valley of developing Central Europe. And the communist economic climate of Cold War Hungary was poised to accelerate Graphisoft with young talent eager to work with Bojár. Graphisoft grew from a small two-person company to an international BIM software company in the AEC industry, where growth outperformed a strong design market in 2024.

This origin story echoed in the introductory remarks of Graphisoft CEO Daniel Csillag, Nemetschek CEO Yves Padrines, and others throughout the conference. Clearly, the legacy and development with Apple continues to be central in the company’s vision and DNA. Daniel started the event by discussing what Graphisoft hoped to achieve with its software: giving architects the freedom to design.

He said, “Archicad feels more like dancing than wrestling.” This belief and focus on the user was inherited from the beginning with Apple, and central and true as Steve Jobs himself would have argued that the customer experience should be the starting point. 

Nemetschek Group CEO Yves Padrines followed Daniel on stage, giving a brief history of how Professor Nemetschek started out as a small engineering company and grew into what is today the second-largest software company in Germany (behind SAP of Walldorf, Germany) and one of the largest software companies in Europe. 

Complimenting Daniel’s perspective, Yves noted that this is “no time for business as usual.” He stated that the construction industry was facing many challenges and needed to be more proactive, efficient, and sustainable. For Nemetschek, all brands, including Graphisoft, were advancing with generative and agentic AI solutions. Yves also noted that Bluebeam recently integrated AI and is currently collaborating with Stanford University on Facility Information Management (FIM). And most importantly, echoing the dance metaphor Daniel mentioned, AI must be ethical, trustworthy, and complementary to enable and enhance “augmented” professionals, in which AI works for the professionals and the users remain central and in total control.

Danial Csillag, CEO of Graphisoft, speaks on stage at Graphisoft IGNITE 2025 about the company’s origin story, with its roots firmly planted in Steve Jobs’ landmark Mac computer. An audience of over 500 listened, many of them hearing this story for the first time.

Yves said now was the season of intelligence, and that it was central to the Nemetschek Group, which has over 7 million users worldwide. That growth and scale were apparent in the work they brought to the conference to share, and the impact, responsibility, and opportunity were clear. “Go to San Francisco if you want to wrestle!” Yves joked.

Even here, Nemetschek and Graphisoft demonstrated strong alignment in their vision for AI—one grounded in a user-first, human-centered philosophy. Their focus remains clear: advancing the “software-to-customer” experience, where delivering the best design experience is both the mission and the measure. Graphisoft stands today as a vigorous design-technology company, carrying forward the rebel spark of Steve Jobs’ Macintosh era and the bold, risk-embracing spirit of its founder, Gábor Bojár.

Nemetschek Group CEO Yves Padrines, when talking about AI-augmented professionals, had a term for it, calling such professionals “Dual Athletes.”

In closing on comments about AI, Yves said, “We are not here to replace human expertise, but to augment it.” From this perspective, the company is being patient with AI in a manner that feels careful, calculated, and measured. Throughout the conference, they noted the disruptive force AI has become, but their unfaltering focus on the user experience is acting like a governor on exactly how and how fast AI features are arriving for its users. The message was clear: keep the designer at the center, even as algorithms advance.

The Best Design Experience

While there were no surprise software release announcements from Graphisoft, there were many presentations that built on the theme of “the best design experience” and then integrated the current software, highlighted in customer presentations. 

Guest speaker and moderator, Fred Mills of The B1M, kicked off the presentations (he also led two panels discussing design, AI, and current and future challenges) with a very ambitious world tour of amazing projects over his last ten years, and challenged the audience to imagine the next ten years to come. 

Luca Bernardoni from Archilinea, based in Italy, discusses his massive project with Lamborghini at IGNITE 2025. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh)

Luca Bernardoni from Archilinea, based in Italy, kicked off the keynote presentations and presented their projects with supercar companies Lamborghini and Ferrari. These companies presented supercar project expectations, which Luca expressed as extraordinary challenges, including one particular request to switch software design platforms. This request was refused as Archilinea held steadfast on their use of Archicad, not just out of loyalty, but out of a shared passion for what they knew they could accomplish with Archicad.

And Archilinea amazingly delivered a pair of frenetic-paced projects, including building a new firm around a young, inexperienced, yet optimistic and talented team. And the supercar manufacturing projects, which were massive in scale, were delivered successfully on time. (Editor’s note: We believe readers can still watch all these presentations by signing up here.) 

Marko Dabrović from 3LHD, based in Zagreb, Croatia, presented their work that also included a strong emphasis on a supercar facility for RIMAC, a new supercar company in Croatia. The project’s complexity — coordinating over 300 stakeholders — required 3LHD’s “Total Design” philosophy, executed in Archicad with partners BIMCollab and Volum3.

Notably, 3LHD created Volum3 as a common data environment (CDE) itself to solve the communications challenges and inefficiencies they (and the rest of the AEC/O industry) faced. This software spinoff emerged directly from their design practice. Both the RIMAC facility design and the Volum3 software exemplify the same principle: an open, collaborative design experience that delivered remarkable results.

Marko Dabrović from 3LHD, based in Zagreb, Croatia, also presented massive-scale car industry projects, among many other stunning buildings, from Four Season hotels to their own stunning office, which was a brilliant adaptive reuse of an abandoned city theater building.

Both Archilinea of Italy and 3LHD of Croatia showed how Archicad and the rest of Graphisoft’s software portfolio best meet their needs to be design-centric, leading architecture practices serving some of the biggest global clients, from Lamborghini and Ferrari to the Four Seasons Hotels. The scale and complexity of car manufacturing companies, in particular, convincingly demonstrate the capacity of Graphisoft’s Open BIM philosophy, as all projects require working with a vast array of professionals and tools from multiple vendors.

Nick Markham, IGNITE’s emcee and a senior manager at Graphisoft, smoothly integrated several company presentations throughout the day’s keynotes, including Martin Kiss, Graphisoft’s Chief Product Officer, who spoke about the human experience, design, and the ideas of exploration and the importance of protecting the design experience. This brought the recently announced Archicad 29, MEP Designer, and Project Aurora all into the immediate conversation, but with a steadfast user focus. 

AI Assistant and AI at Nemetschek

Later, in a 1:1 interview following the first morning of presentations, Mártin Kiss also emphasized that new products and innovative features were based on pragmatic, user-centered decisions. For instance, AI was not new to Graphisoft, and Project Aurora was built on multiple years of product development, including informal internal company meetups and annual ideation and innovation internal GRID competitions. It also included early collaborations with Nemetschek and Google.

This steady, measured progress in AI resulted in a highly interactive AI Visualizer, originally based on Stable Diffusion, and continued progress with AI through the soon-to-be-released AI Assistant, currently in beta across Graphisoft’s software. Back in 2024, at the AIA National Convention, the company showcased an interactive augmented reality AI interface in a provocative demonstration that matched AI efforts offered on other platforms. Yet Graphisoft understands innovation and demonstration, but not at the expense of its priorities. 

Vice President of AI at Nemetschek Group, Julian Geiger, reviews the key principles of AI within the whole Group. These are core to any daughter company’s view of AI and therefore are Graphisoft’s principles, which overlay their Best Design Experience values.

And the number one priority for Graphisoft is to focus on the best design experience. Graphisoft knows that the AI era is just in its infancy. Taking lessons from history—and the company it looks up to (Apple)—Graphisoft also knows that in the AI era, there likely isn’t any significant “first-mover advantage” like there can be in other aspects of the software and tech industry. If AI is like the Internet, then one can think of AOL and where it is today. If AI is more likely similar to humankind’s mastery of fire (which is what many experts think AI is more equivalent to), then what happens to all of us after AI is a great unknown. Graphisoft has been first many times in the AEC and BIM industry, including back in 2014 with its BIMserver with Delta technology and with BIMx and multi-core utilization. Being first with a specific AI capability today likely means little. As we can already see, in the larger computer industry, AI chatbots are not particularly sticky. That’s because they are not tools in the grand software sense, but more like entities with a nascent sense of agency and a massive sense of intelligence. Therefore, people will seek out multiple agents, and stickiness may come down to more personal aspects.

Julien Geiger said at one point that AI is like an alien intelligence. And humans are deeply curious about alien intelligences, if we want to go down that metaphoric road.

So the Nemetschek Group’s VP of AI, Julian Geiger, outlined the broader AI trajectory underpinning not just Project Aurora and Graphisoft’s AI strategies but those of the entire Nemetschek Group. He highlighted the growing capabilities of AI—generalization, complex reasoning, multimodality, goal pursuit, and even elements of theory of mind—as a shift from a 20th-century to a truly 21st-century model of intelligence. Unlike industries such as finance or manufacturing, where standardization enables faster AI adoption, AEC requires systems capable of deep semantic understanding and flexible reasoning to address the uniqueness of every project.

Nemetschek Group VP of AI Julian Geiger speaks about AI technologies within Graphisoft and the Group, within the larger context of the AEC industry. AI adoption lags behind other industries, which have natural advantages for the adoption of AI, including large and available data sets (Finance) and product standardization (Automotive and Manufacturing), whereas AEC lacks both and actually thrives as an industry that is “anti-standardization.”

AI for AEC really requires more advancement in foundational AI technologies. While inferencing on LLMs can be useful for AEC pros seeking knowledge and advice on things like building codes and how to use their advanced software, for AEC to truly leverage AI requires multimodal agentic AI, deep semantic understanding, and goal-pursuit capabilities. AEC needs AI to truly understand our AEC world, which means breaking down our problems into layers and, at the highest level, utilizing Theory of Mind capabilities.

Theory of Mind means that when two people are talking, they can understand what the other person may be thinking. The “augmented professional” in AEC is thus in pursuit of AI technologies that can, at their highest form, anticipate what we are thinking with great accuracy, and thus anticipate us. AI will be able to do that as well. Here again is Graphisoft focusing on the “best design experience,” even in this focus on AI.

Project Aurora

So Graphisoft’s AI strategy seems clear. And as Daniel Csillag publicly confirmed, Aurora will be released next year in its first phase, but it will also be modular and nimble enough to change, because who knows where AI will be in three years! 

Graphisoft CEO Daniel Csillag is talking about what is confirmed for product and technology releases in 2026. Graphisoft 29 and MEP Designer are now released alongside beta versions of AI Assistant. Project Aurora is rolling out in 2026.

Project Aurora, described by Director of Product Management János Detré as “high-level BIM” and the “GPS for design,” represents the first generation of Graphisoft’s next evolution in design intelligence. In its initial phase, Aurora focuses on early-stage project design and feasibility analysis—bridging the gap between design intent (what should be built) and design realization (what is actually built). The tool aims to guide architects toward more informed design decisions through tightly integrated conceptual logic. While Archicad continues to lead in detailed design, coordination, and documentation, Project Aurora will serve as the intelligent front end of the process—helping architects navigate from concept to clarity.

Project Aurora is cloud-based and will deliver what Graphisoft calls “high-level BIM,” focused on early-stage project design and feasibility analysis. It meets the general definitional terms of a true BIM 2.0 software tool and will have a direct bi-directional connection to Archicad, which will focus future development on detailed design, coordination, and documentation.

So the Graphisoft Design Intelligence Strategy is captured in one key chart from the IGNITE conference. The “Design Cycle” spans two key phases: (1) design optimization and (2) detailed BIM development. High-level BIM is the domain of Project Aurora. Site potential, space design, and sustainability are all major topical domains of “high-level” BIM, with digital capabilities like AI generative design and AI-powered project intelligence. Pushing high-level designs to Archicad then enables architects to develop structures and MEP systems, focus on building components and units, and, of course, architectural details. As shown by the arrow at the bottom of the chart, continuous iterations and refinements are possible in a bi-directional loop.

Project Aurora is due in 2026 in its initial phased roll-out. The cloud-based platform will include CScale’s engine, enabling comprehensive energy and carbon analysis.

We can imagine API connections working inside Project Aurora, powering additional capabilities. As it stands today, CScale’s APIs are the technology behind its energy and carbon analysis features, and if Aurora is to be truly reflective of the metaphor of “GPS for design,” then tools like energy analysis need to act on accurate forms, layouts, and shapes of buildings, and thus bringing Rhino into Aurora seems like the next logical step.

Closing Comments

It will be important to watch Graphisoft’s AI strategy unfold. Julian’s chart on a new generation of AI shows the six domains of capability critical to enabling AEC to leverage AI to the same degree as industries like finance and manufacturing. Since late 2022, we have gone from chatbots to reasoners to agents—that is, AI that can take actions on our behalf. Agents emerged in 2025. Yet, beyond that, Julian showed that in 2026, we will have “innovators”—AI that can aid in invention. He cited Alphaevolve, where AI at Google in May of this year discovered novel algorithms for previously unsolved math problems. As said earlier, artificial intelligence (AI) is likely more akin to the human mastery of fire, an invention with unforeseen secondary effects. AI is far bigger an invention than the telephone, the TV, or the Internet. 

Fire was a multi-staged invention. It first led to warmth and cooked food having a profound effect on human health and survival. Eventually, it led to metallurgy, turning ore into metal weapons and metal tools like the plowshare, which revolutionized farming and food production. Fire alone didn’t take mankind out of the Stone Age; it took the secondary invention of using it to melt ore that led us to the Bronze Age. Yves Padrines, CEO of Nemetschek, said AI will transform us into “augmented professionals” and encouraged us to become dual athletes — meaning learning to augment our human expertise with AI.

Julian Geiger discusses the different types of AI capabilities that lie ahead of us.

In closing, Graphisoft IGNITE 2025 brought together many speakers from architecture and design with many different perspectives. From computational design and large-scale projects that would break other software, to exceptional design in which the architect said Archicad wasn’t a noticeable tool in the process, but had developed into a foundational and inseparable way in which they developed their designs. Graphisoft demonstrated the importance of user-centered design and how it has benefited their continued growth and their position today as a leader in AEC/O software. 

And where an industry needs help to advance, Graphisoft and Nemetschek have continuously and enthusiastically supported “open design”— as members of the Open Design Alliance and a persistent champion of Open BIM — to better deliver the built environment around the world. Consistent with this open design ethos is its insistence that its innovations be available on both Mac and Windows platforms, as evidenced by the new MEP Designer, a tool for MEP engineers to go from concept to complete documentation. At the same time, DDScad, BIMcloud, and BIMx have all improved in this fall’s updates. 

The new MEP Designer is a game-changing BIM solution for MEP engineers that works as a module built on Archicad and thus is both Mac and Windows native. Engineers can use it from concept to full CD documentation as their BIM platform for full MEP.

And this open design ethos continues beyond Graphisoft Park. Originally announced last year and updated at the 2025 Graphisoft IGNITE, this effort was also presented as continuing to advance, with a direct connection to Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) and file and issue management syncing. And this includes platform (Nemetschek) unification around BIMx as well. Graphisoft and Nemetschek understand the complexity and continue to aspire to make it a dance for everyone involved, including their sister brands. 

As eloquently expressed in his closing conference presentation, practitioner and BIM manager Moiyez Bush from DKO in Australia/SE Asia, says it takes a community to build a building. Graphisoft starts with its community and continues to innovate around it. They have centered their vision on being the best design experience, user-focused, user-friendly, intuitive, and powerfully integrated into an ecosystem of project design collaboration and productivity. 

The best design experience mixed with a bit of rebel DNA.

Image Credits

Title image credit: MJE House, Jacobsen Arquitetura, Brazil. Photo: ©Leonardo Finotti / Architosh. All rights reserved.

Format equates to “party with copyright” / “party with reserved rights of use.” (eg: image: FJMT / Architosh. All rights reserved.) 

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Architosh BOS

This is our 11th year judging what we saw as the ‘BEST of SHOW’ at the AIA25 Boston. The Architosh AIA BEST of SHOW honors aim to highlight and draw attention to noteworthy solutions for digital practice in architecture and the AEC/O industry as a whole. These awards — which do feature a prize — are only available to products shown on the expo floor or inside a session. Companies that create parallel events during AIA and show off their products in hotel rooms and architecture firms are not eligible for these honors and the prizes that come with them.

Honors and Prizes

Speaking of prizes, all winners of our 11th AIA BEST of SHOW honors receive digital BEST of SHOW placards for display in their marketing materials, are featured in this well-read annual special feature, and are gifted a complimentary advertising package to be used during either Q4 2025 or Q1 2026. Winners will be notified by email or phone call within 10 business days.

AIA25—Thematic Issues

Over the years, we have stepped back and written a “perspectives” feature about the honorees and the trajectory of digital technologies for architects. This year, we are doing a video session instead to be promoted on our new Architosh Official YouTube channel. You can now watch our “Perspectives on Architosh BEST of SHOW awards” below. 

And now the honors for the best tech we saw this year at AIA25 Boston. But first, an overview of our award categories and criteria.

Award Categories and Criteria

Our award categories are designed to be broad and flexible, enabling us to honorably note a product across a range of categories if so warranted.

• Emergent Technology (emTech) Category Award — acknowledges industry potential for novel or bleeding edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice or create convergent technology paths and drive synergistic directions for the industry.
• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the “most promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative “new directions” in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the “BIM workflow” industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (d) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and toolchains are social and democratized to their fullest extent, and (e) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Cloud Category Award  — acknowledges technology solutions (software or hardware) driving at full utilization of synergistic and maturing “cloud-to-mobile,” “mobile-to-cloud,” and “cloud-to-web” technology stacks, exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality and novelty, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing pain-points in AEC, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Visualization Category Award  — acknowledges the “most compelling visualization solutions” and technologies that are “transforming the architect’s workflow,” heralding new ways of seeing architecture for all stakeholders and not just clients, accelerating design optioneering, material, and light discovery, design problem solving, and design collaboration, as measured by:  (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, including rendering speeds and image qualities, (c) quality of attack at addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and addressing synergist directions in the industry.
• The Economics Prize — reflecting an important shift within the architectural industry to acknowledge the extent of poor economics for architects and a newfound demand for better working conditions and pay, the Economics Prize is awarded to digital technology that shines in the direction of better economics for architects, as measured by:  (a) sizeable process improvements to common industry deliverables via creative disruption (ie, Uber-ize a known process), (b) notable value disruption by a vendor via license cost comparison without “bundling,” (c) notable outsized release update delivering exceptional value increase for users, and finally (d) performance capture due to innovative, leading-edge software or hardware solutions.  

Congratulations to the 2025 Architosh AIA ‘BEST of SHOW’ honorees listed below.

BEST of SHOW — EMERGENT TECHNOLOGY Category

Winner: C.Scale

C.Scale, an embodied carbon calculator, has released multiple versions of its toolset integrated into other software on the AIA show floor, including Autodesk Forma and ARCOL, as well as a stand-alone version. “Democratizing access for all projects and users as a company goal is pretty convincing,” said Pete Evans, AIA, IDSA, senior associate editor, Architosh. “And C.Scale delivers a toolset for consequential early project use that becomes more detailed as the project naturally progresses. Being able to look at wall assemblies was quite impressive to compare different building system approaches.” C.Scale has a subject matter expert-designed machine learning model that can impact whole-life carbon from proposals to design, to regulatory submission, to verifying emissions.

Criteria Notes:  Both the novelty and the core technology impact potential thematic change for how practitioners can more easily address the carbon footprint of their building designs. The embedment of the C.Scale carbon engine into tools like Arcol, Forma and Graphisoft’s upcoming Aurora signal the impact and importance of C.Scale’s technology.

BEST of SHOW — INNOVATION Category

Winner: Polycam

Polycam, founded in 2021, shifted its social-media focus over the past two years toward serving the professional AEC industry. The company’s presence at the 2025 AIA Conference marked its first major engagement with the architectural community. Today, Polycam is recognized as the world’s leading 3D scanning platform, enabling users to capture and reconstruct spaces using images or video from phones or drones, integrating LiDAR, photogrammetry and impressively gaussian splat technology. “The capabilities and interoperability of Polycam make 3D scanning feel nearly ubiquitous for capturing existing conditions. It transforms a LiDAR-enabled phone into a powerful AEC tool,” said Pete Evans. 

This open and scalable approach to reality capture allows for rapid project documentation and collaboration, offering transformative value to design and construction workflows. From a 3D scan, users can measure, crop, and generate clean 3D models that can intelligently identify architectural features such as furniture and openings. Polycam also produces accurate 2D plans with dimensions and supports 3D exports in multiple file formats, including USDZ, GLTF, and geo-referenced LAS. Its interoperability extends even further through optional integration with Transform Engine, allowing seamless workflow connectivity to CAD and BIM platforms. 

Recently, Polycam introduced a new Scene feature, reminiscent of Matterport’s viewpoint system, but designed to enable multi-user collaboration. This feature allows integration of multiple objects into spaces or adding adjacent spaces into a unified 3D environment—opening new possibilities for accurate test fits and interactive spatial coordination using separate but compatible scans.

Criteria Notes:  Not only is Polycam a promising young company it is already a dominant player in the democratization of reality capture technologies. It’s implementation quality (a), quality of attack (c) on addressing the paint point of capturing existing conditions rapidly are standout features of the solution, as well as convergent technologies (d) in its Vision Pro compatibilities and more.

Winner: TwinMaster

TwinMaster is a new AI-powered digital twins platform created for the AEC industry that focuses on bridging the gap between design and real-world performance by tapping the power of intelligent AI technologies. “What’s really innovative with TwinMaster is the development of its ‘Arch-e’ multi-agent AI copilot,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Editor-in-Chief, Architosh. “Users can leverage natural language inquiries just like in ChatGPT to interact with 3D BIM models across a range of simulation and optimization topics. The results are both graphic, 3D-based and highly engaging and the system can generate new 3D building models just from prompts.”

The ‘Arch-e’ AI copilot supports workflows that help architects build and model, analyze, decide and explore their designs, using site-specific intelligence. TwinMaster features multi domain-specific AI agents that can intelligently inform on questions ranging from sustainability, cost estimation, carbon emissions, daylight analysis, local zoning compliance and more. TwinMaster can ingest any standard 3D (BIM) model including Revit, Rhino, SketchUp and others.

Criteria Notes:  TwinMaster was quite breathtaking to witness at their AIA25 booth and the company is led by a very impressive team of technology and business leaders. We have to acknowledge that this is a very promising company and solution that we look forward to actually testing out in a product review once it leaves beta later this year. The implementation quality (a) of the solution looks excellent, and the approach to using text prompts and multi- AI agents to address multi-AEC domain pain points in practice (c) appears ahead of anything else in the industry.

BEST of SHOW — BIM Category

Winner: Arcol

Arcol largely made its debut at AIA25 in Boston, and their booth was constantly well-attended,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, Editor-in-Chief of Architosh. “The new pre-design or design intelligence BIM 2.0 software does things that the traditional BIM platforms cannot. Chief among these is the rapid conceptual modeling with fully synced design data, even basic or conceptual cost data,” adds Frausto-Robledo. “Arcol is another BIM 2.0 tool that supports live multi-user team integration, but what sets Arcol truly apart is its advanced modeling capabilities, including lofts, booleans, and more.” 

Arcol version 1 includes live-synced Arcol boards, which are used for presentations, as well as “generative fills” where the software can generate optimal building layouts. “What was also impressive about Arcol was its intuitive and attractive user interface and its speed,” adds Frausto-Robledo. “We saw impressively large urban scenes move very quickly for a 3D tool in the web browser.”

Criteria Notes:  Arcol is attacking the same pain-points (c) that forerunner Autodesk Forma has addressed—the primary one being traditional BIM authoring tools’ poor ability to address intelligent, computation-based pre-design, site test-fitting, and detailed analysis-driven workflows. We applaud its implementation quality (a) at its debut release, especially its appealing user-interface and simplified and early costing controls. Like Forma, it too includes the concepts of presentation boards. 

Winner: Revizto

Revizto had a very good presence at AIA25 Boston though many American architects are unaware of how powerful and beneficial the Revizto cloud-based BIM collaboration platform actually is due. “Revizto is the ultimate BIM “single-source of truth” (SSoT) collaboration and coordination platform,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, Editor-in-Chief, Architosh. “With more than 7 million lines of code built on top of the Unity game engine, Revizto brilliantly leverages Unity and can handle the world’s largest BIM projects—projects so large that they crash every other BIM model viewing platform with the exception of Dalux. 

Able to ingest BIM and 3D models from nearly every single BIM authoring platform across architecture and engineering—plus 3D design software like SketchUp and Rhino—Revizto occupies a rare and important place in the BIM world,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “What makes Revizto stand out is that it solely focuses on BIM and design model coordination, BIM collaboration, and clash detection and issue management. This isn’t a common data environment (CDE) with an inspiring BIM model viewer app, Revizto does integrations with CDEs, not pretends to be one. While CDEs like Asite, Aconex, ACC and Procore can only dream of the power and capability of Revizto’s industrial-strength federated BIM collaboration environment.”

Criteria Notes:  Revizto is addressing the real needs of BIM collaboration, including the fact that no one BIM platform will ever meet the needs of all building and project types and thus supports and encourages an Open BIM philosophy where best-of-breed tools can author and synch to Revizto and all stakeholders can coordinate, collaboration, find clashes and issues and manage the entire multi-disciplinary AEC design process from one platform agnostic environment. Revizto addresses (A-D) aspects of our BIM judging category and it should be especially lauded for its ability to synch up 2D data with 3D model data in a unified view that is quite compelling and useful.

Winner: MEP Designer

Graphisoft introduced the new MEP Designer, which is fully integrated into Archicad. There is also a separate product, MEP Designer for Engineers, that will also be available soon. The main goal of these new MEP tools is to effectively incorporate MEP design considerations into early architectural planning, allowing architects and engineers to optimize building performance,” says Frausto-Robledo. “This goes beyond the old “MEP Modeler,” the new MEP Designer includes automated system design and built-in energy analysis.

Criteria Notes:  MEP Designer represents parts of Graphisoft’s greater push into AI and data-centric design, assisting architects in streamlining MEP to architecture design and coordination and leveraging more intelligent multi-disciplinary workflows. It therefore primarily accelerates parts of the BIM workflow (b) while offering the Archicad user a high-quality (a) implementation for MEP design with energy analysis.

Winner: SketchUp 2025

SketchUp 2025 significantly expands its cloud-based capabilities while preserving the intuitive ease-of-use that has long defined the platform and advancing on better BIM workflow integrations. Key updates include major rendering enhancements such as real-time Photorealistic Materials supporting seamless custom materials generated by users or AI, and advanced environmental Image-Based Lighting (IBL). These features build on the Ambient Occlusion tools introduced in 2024, further elevating the visual quality to higher standards.

“Collaboration is also enhanced, with an intuitive interface mirroring the simplicity of Google Docs,” adds Pete Evans, AIA, “enabling easy tagging, commenting, and content sharing within a shared model environment. The update offers robust interoperability with industry-leading formats, including IFC4, USDZ, and GLB, for both import and export,” adds Evans, “thereby further enhancing the platform’s integration with the powerful Trimble Connect ecosystem as well as other CDE and BIM collaboration tools, like fellow-winner Revizto.”

Additionally, 3D Warehouse now includes support for these new visualization features and integrates AI-driven functionality. SketchUp 2025 continues to evolve into a versatile design toolset—simple enough for beginners, yet powerful enough for advanced users with seamless workflows into V-Ray and beyond.

Criteria Notes:  SketchUp 2025’s IFC import updates are a major solver of existing BIM workflow pain-points, attacking longstanding issues (c) in the industry where many contractors and sub-contractors utilize SketchUp, in addition to architects. At the same time SketchUp further advances collaboration BIM workflows with interoperability with native Revit file import, plus you can now model straight on point clouds to detail existing building scans. (e)

BEST of SHOW —  CLOUD Category

Winner: Upcodes

Web-based UpCodes released their Copilot AI-powered research assistant over the past winter with the ability to solve code compliance across multiple codes and building assembly types, and with respect to local jurisdiction. “The complexity of this task only broadens the value Upcodes brings by drastically democratizing this aspect of the design phase,” Pete Evans noted. “Upcodes Copilot provides an interface to design in compliance with instant inquiries about codes, assemblies, compare related sections, read explanations, perform calculations, and summarize for a better project understanding.”  

Upcodes has also introduced code-compliant product libraries to meet sustainability and assembly requirements with over 270,000 products and 3,000 manufacturers. And Diagrams is an additional compelling high-resolution visual library with powerful filtering for code types, topics and phases. In short, Upcodes is a product the AEC industry has long dreamed of having. 

Criteria Notes:  AI tools like ChatGPT were quickly utilized by AEC professionals to assist in building code research. Upcodes is leveraging this obvious pairing of disruptive AI technologies, cloud technology, and large bodies of public legal text in the AEC industry to address age-old pain-points in the industry. (c + d) What Upcodes also does beautifully is communicate code requirements in clear diagrams and its Copilot can surface diagrams that relate to what the user is researching. (a)

BEST of SHOW —  VISUALIZATION Category

Winner: Chaos Envision

Chaos Envision largely levels up many of the technologies and concepts in Chaos’ popular Enscape real-time visualization solution, but it goes far beyond that. Shown at AIA25 to show attendees, Envision is far more than rendering; it’s storytelling, communication and thus collaboration. “What makes Chaos Envision enticing to architects is the superior visual quality paired with an approachable real-time immersive rendering platform,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “At first blush Envision combines V-Ray-like photorealism with the ease-of-use of Enscape, facilitating the ability to create variation-based animation, show animated people and transportation systems, and you can animate components of the buildings themselves.”

Ingesting CAD and BIM models from a wide variety of resources, Chaos Envision supports robust inter-app workflows including taking scenes created in Enscape and bringing them into Envision to create cinematic quality animations. Cameras can get assigned to paths that are easy to create in themselves and anything the Chaos Anima engine can place on a path (like people) gain not just movement but AI-based behaviors, as in the case with people and crowds. While the step-up in photorealism is not quite equal to V-Ray, it is very close and a noticeable improvement to Enscape imagery.

Criteria Notes:  Chaos’ implementation quality on Envision is very good, scaling up scene complexity while keeping the user-interface (UI) approachable. (a) All architects dream of bringing their designs to life in sophisticated cinematic visuals but that ability has largely required complex DCC tools used by specialists and visualization agencies. (c) Envision continues the democratization process of fulfilling this dream architects have, lowering the accessibility point (c), leveraging AI-based technologies from Anima (d) and generally providing a fuller spectrum of visualization options for AEC professionals. 

Winner: D5 for Teams

Already a standout visualization tool at a very high level of real-time rendering, D5 adds NVidia DLSS 4 Multi-frame generation and ray reconstruction in 2025 for even smoother and faster rendering. A new City Generator with OpenStreetMap and Shapefile integration have also been added with ‘AI Inpainting’ for partial modification of renderings. “The 2025 release of D5 for Teams really stood out with its extensive collaboration capabilities with team asset libraries and cloud workspaces directly from different softwares. This Visualization Collaborative Platform (called a “VCP”) approaches a Common Data Environment (CDE) utility with creative design applications directly, which is novel and impressive,” noted Evans.

This VCP allows collaborators to stay in their native formats (currently supported are SketchUp, 3ds Max, Revit, Rhino, Archicad, Blender, C4D, Vectorworks) and in a common cloud space at the same time. This also opens D5 to designers on Macs, saving their work to the VCP D5 for Teams on the cloud for further work with their team.

Criteria Notes:  D5’s concept of a ‘visualization collaborative platform’ (VCP) unfolds a trend in the larger industry where cloud-connected tools foster newfound abilities to work together. (c-d) This takes the shape of multi-user editing (MUE) which also existed in other BEST of SHOW winners this year like BIM tool Arcol. The concept of the VCP suggests other next-steps for D5 for Teams but overall D5 for Teams begin to alter and transform the architect’s workflow and thinking about workflows. (c-d)

BEST of SHOW —  The Economics Prize

This year we are again not offering this award category. However, if the new AEC software company bimbeats were at the AIA25 Boston show, we would have honored it with this Economic Prize. 

The post AIA25: Architosh 11th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for digital technologies at AIA25 Boston appeared first on Architosh.

Nemetschek Group Continued

Graphisoft had the largest area inside the giant 70-foot-long Nemetschek booth. At one point during a talk inside the booth, I referred to the Nemetschek booth as an “armada.”  The Nemetschek Group booth was certainly a visually and spatially overwhelming show of force, with solid attendance from what we saw during our time inside and around the booth.

Generally speaking, Graphisoft’s Archicad tends to be a big tech destination for AIA attendees, and the Graphsoft team had distributed demo areas for Archicad, BIMx, BIMcloud, and AI Visualizer—along with its fun interactive physical blocks zone with a video camera live-streaming a view on physical blocks and cups (yes, the kind of you drink out of) which attendees were encouraged to play around with and build something.

Graphisoft’s interactive “physical blocks to computer vision to AI visualization” area was fun to engage in. What you see as a castle-like building with a brick red facade is AI generated from the upside-down cups and blocks assembled on the table in the corner.

Once you did that (and while you were playing blocks), an Apple MacBook was running some new experimental AI software that merged computer vision and AI with visualization to craft rendered scenes nearly in real-time. The experience was interesting and provoking because architects used to create physical models much more often than they do now. What’s interesting about the physical models of the AI rendering process is how iterative and fast it could be. Could this experimental technology be rolled up into an AI Modeling Visualization Kit? A kit that came with an array of different-sized modular blocks and an iPhone app that worked your smartphone’s camera and fed into the AI software? It’s an interesting idea because certain faces of blocks could be “coded” by their color to communicate to the AI that they are solid wall materials or glass, for instance, or the coding could be fully programmatic and left up to the user to determine. That’s the kind of experimental tech kit I’d love to get my hands on.

The Graphisoft folks had more than one interactive kit. The team also had the Apple Vision Pro headset and were showing attendees how the award-winning BIMx software works inside Apple’s ground-breaking immersive headset. (we awarded BIMx with Vision Pro and BEST of SHOW award honor this year). (see: Architosh, “Architosh 10th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for digital technologies at AIA National Washington DC,” 14 June 2024)

BIMx is Graphisoft’s award-winning technology that first began on mobile devices. It is the BIM industry’s first app on the Apple Vision Pro, and its implementation and UX are compelling.

BIMx is the first BIM technology to end up inside Apple’s groundbreaking (but expensive!) Apple Vision Pro headset. Those who have tried out the Apple Vision Pro say the device is in a league of its own as a visual and interactive experience. Graphisoft BIMx on Vision Pro enables the user to fully interact with the BIMx application using just their bare hands while wearing the Vision Pro. As we noted in our recent review of Archicad 27 this year, BIMx now features BCF issues capabilities. But with Vision Pro interrogating building design issues in an immersive 1:1 ratio virtual environment gives a user the superpower of being in the planned building before the building exists.

MORE: Product Review: Archicad 27 with BIMx and BIMcloud

BIMx also gained new, accurate sun positioning to demonstrate real natural light in building designs. Shadow studies are now accurate, and users can use sliders to change the date and time of day. The shadow intensity is also adjustable.

As for Archicad 27, AIA attendees watched at the booth to see how the true original BIM solution functions compared to the competition. This year, Archicad 27 introduced Design Options, which we reviewed here back in March. Their new Distance Guides technology is also a highlight feature that veteran Archicad users are delighted to have. There was also an experimental physically based rendering technology in Archicad 3D views, but we didn’t get to see it at AIA24.

Integrated Design Options is a major new feature in Archicad 27. This image is from our recent review.

Finally, Archicad implemented the new AI Visualizer technology first in its BIM solution, and before that, technology arrived in both ALLPLAN and Vectorworks; built to tap the power of Stable Diffusion, users can quickly generate compelling renderings from Archicad massing models in 3D. By combining a massing model with text prompt instructions, AI Visualizer speeds up design iteration and can produce visuals for clients and stakeholders, shortcutting workflows that have traditionally taken weeks.

dTwin

Nemetschek dTwin was also on display inside the Nemetschek Group super booth! dTwin is a major push by the Nemetschek Group to enter the “digital twins” market. Consistent with the Group’s Open BIM philosophies, dTwin is marketed as the AEC/O industry’s “first horizontal and open digital twin platform.”

In other words, Nemetschek’s digital twin strategy is to work with everyone or as many AEC/O vendors as possible for data input and roundtrip synchronization. Digital twins can begin with data integrations with AEC/O design applications, where BIM data is pushed to digital twin systems. This gets combined with reality capture devices during and after construction to synthesize data from multiple sources that speak to building systems often hidden from view while inside buildings (eg: in walls or above ceilings).

Connecting IoT sensors across building rooms, zones, systems, and equipment enables intelligence to be captured and monitored via dashboards and reports. dTwin can bring together CAD/BIM/IWMS and more forms of data with IoT sensor-based real-time streams of operations and merge them into intelligent dashboards. To learn more visit here.

The post AIA24: Digital Tech at Expo Part 2 appeared first on Architosh.

The usual major AEC software companies were not only exhibiting on the show floor but held prime locations in the Innovation Zone itself or right adjacent to it. Chief among those were Autodesk and Chaos, and this year, the Nemetschek Group exhibited a half dozen of their leading brands in architecture in one unified massive booth area. Other key brands included Trimble (SketchUp), Lumion, Newforma, Snaptrude, and Unanet.

MORE: Architosh 10th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for digital technologies at AIA National Washington DC

Here are our highlights from what technology was shown at AIA24 this year.

Nemetschek Group Companies

The Nemetschek Group showed up this year with a massive booth the length of an entire block (from aisle to aisle) with its two dominant BIM platforms—Archicad and Vectorworks Architect—positioned at each end. There was a lot of traffic at the Nemetschek booth and a lot of spill-over traffic from the Autodesk booth sitting beside it.

Not all of these Nemetschek brands were at the Group booth this year but dRofus, dTwin, Solibri, Bluebeam, Archicad, and Vectorworks were all prominently featured. It is possible that these other brands were available to see under a Nemetschek Group section of the booth, but we didn’t have time to explore that fully.

Solibri was one of the first Nemetschek brands we talked to. Solibri is a BIM model checker application and has functional overlap in many areas with Autodesk Navisworks. While Navisworks is much more well-known in the United States AEC market and is part of the Autodesk ecosystem of AEC software tools, Solibri does have several advantages and many AEC customers in the United States actually use both products in their pipelines.

Solibri is the most comprehensive and flexible (rule-based) BIM model checker in the AEC software market. It is often used in conjunction with Autodesk Navisworks even though the two programs overlap and compete in the same space.

Unlike Navisworks, Solibri features a more comprehensive and flexible rule-based system for BIM model checking and lets users custom-define rules and conditions for various checks. This flexibility is Solibri’s superpower; it is the system you want if you wish to do very advanced and customized types of model checking. Solibri has a very nice user interface and model visualization capabilities. Another strength of the software is its ability to produce complex reports and its collaboration features. And Solibri can send issues in BCF (BIM collaboration format) as well as produce reports on issues in PDF, RTF and Excel. And speaking of issues, Solibri benefits from its BCF Live Connector to allows sending found issues to BIM issues managers like BIMcollab and BIMTrack.

The next Nemetschek daughter product we examined was dRofus; this year, we awarded dRofus a BEST of SHOW award in the BIM category. dRofus is used in large BIM projects for data-complex building types, including healthcare (think hospitals), colleges, and corporate buildings. The company is also interested in serving the needs of data centers as they balloon in construction due to AI.

dRofus is seen on the right running on the laptop and also on the left as a plugin inside Autodesk Revit.

As explained in our BEST of SHOW report, dRofus is a planning tool and facilities data tool and helps building stakeholders manage data across every aspect of a building, from its systems to its furniture. It can also connect to the sibling app Solibri. It ships as a standalone Windows application and has a web browser-based version. Architects working in Autodesk Revit and Graphisoft Archicad can install the dRofus plugin and, with that, can manage complex data around all objects inside a BIM model. There is also a mobile app for your smartphone and this enables dRofus to even function as a type of punch tool, as well as highly mobilizes facilities management professionals.

Vectorworks Architect 2024 was being shown at the giant Nemetschek Group booth. This year’s award-winning version boasts numerous interesting BIM modeling and editing features, many of which we covered in our rated product review published earlier this year.

Vectorworks Architect 2024 is seen on the screens. The Vectorworks booth area inside the larger Nemetschek booth saw a lot of traffic at AIA24.

We got a chance to sit down in the booth with Dr. Biplab Sarkar, CEO of Vectorworks, to chat about the future of the popular BIM-CAD platform used across numerous industries, in addition to Architecture. The company is looking at future AI technologies in several places in the application and has already utilized AI in the form of machine learning (ML) in several places. Future updates coming in the next version of Vectorworks include a new user-interface component that will help with 3D navigation—managing where you are in the model.

MORE: Product Review: Vectorworks Architect 2024

Dr. Biplab also mentioned that the Nemetschek Group had launched an AI Hub for all companies in the Group, and each company in the group was tasked with generating AI use cases. In total, more than 120 use cases for AI were generated, from which the most fruitful use cases will be pursued by the team behind the AI Hub. And speaking of that team and leadership, the Nemetschek Group’s AI Hub leadership includes two prominent AI researchers from Google.

Bluebeam was also a popular visit inside the giant Nemetschek Group booth. Bluebeam is the Nemetschek Group’s largest company in terms of actual license seats, with over 3 million users utilizing the product in over 160 countries. Bluebeam Revu is the company’s flagship desktop application and is used by architects, engineers, and construction professionals rather equally. It is arguably the only AEC industry PDF markup tool in existence of any stature, and so when the company announced it was stopping support of Bluebeam Revu for Mac a few years ago because they were pushing their solutions to the cloud, it rather upset a large set of Mac-based architects and other AEC professionals.

Look carefully; this is a 3D view of a building on a 2D drawing inside Bluebeam Cloud. But 3D Drawings is real 3D inside Bluebeam technology and is shown in the image below.

I spoke to Don Jacob, the company’s chief information officer and one-time CEO. Ron Close, the vice president of global marketing (who was recently in a similar role at Graphisoft), was also present. Jacob didn’t say much about the future of Bluebeam for Mac users, but he did acknowledge that the company is monitoring the situation with the rise of ARM-chip-based Windows PCs and the slew of new laptops emerging this year branded Microsoft Copilot+ PCs. Those computers—all mobile laptops for the most part—will be powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Elite ARM chip and will rival and, in some cases, exceed the performance of Apple’s industry-leading MacBook line of computers. What this means, without really saying it, is if these ARM-based Windows computers take off and Bluebeam decides to re-write Bluebeam Revu for them natively (converting Intel X86 code to ARM code), it is conceivable that they might do the extra work to reach ARM Macs.

But here is something that Don Jacob and Bluebeam leadership need to listen to. While at AIA24, we visited the Dell booth—yes! Dell was the lone hardware vendor at the show, and they had a nice display of some great hardware (mostly laptops). In talking to the Dell folks, they said their new ARM-based Microsoft Copilot+ PCs are coming mid-summer, and they are tremendously powerful. In other words, much faster than any Intel-based mobile laptop computer with battery life that is up to 3x longer than what Intel can actually deliver. The ARM Windows laptops are “game changers” and will sell in huge numbers and begin to change the Windows ecosystem.

Back to Bluebeam. Microsoft is making a big push with the new ARM-powered Microsoft Copilot+ PCs. Windows on ARM will ship with its own version of an Intel emulator (think Apple Rosetta 2 for Windows), and so, depending on how fast that emulator is, Bluebeam Revu may actually run rather okay without being converted to ARM code. If that is the case, expecting a native return of Bluebeam Revu for Mac is rather hopeless.

I have to admit, seeing 3D Drawings inside Bluebeam Cloud was exciting. It also reminded me of the way 2D drawings are shown inside the transition between drawings and the BIM model in BIMx.

Today, Mac users are expected to leverage Bluebeam Cloud. Don Jacob said that upcoming improvements to Bluebeam Cloud will give more power to markup and measurement inside the Cloud. At the moment, you cannot calibrate and measure in Bluebeam Cloud. There is also no compare feature in Bluebeam Cloud. While the markup tools in the cloud are rather solid, there is still too much missing to make it a real substitute for Revu on the desktop. Jacob also showed us 3D Drawings for Bluebeam, which was rather exciting to see. Essentially, 3D Drawings—which operates in Bluebeam Cloud—automatically coordinates 2D drawings like exterior elevations and building sections and places those vertically in a 3-dimensional view, along with plan drawings. (see image above). From there, users can get a more comprehensive view of a building, which aids in coordination.

Architosh now wants to explore 3D Drawings in Bluebeam Cloud fully so we can understand its benefits more fully.

This completes our first report from the show floor. In our second report, we’ll cover Graphisoft’s Archicad, BIMx, and its AI exhibit. Plus Autodesk. Stay tuned! 

next page >  More Nemetschek Booth companies and Autodesk (link coming up!)

The post AIA24: Digital Tech at Expo Part 1 appeared first on Architosh.

Winners of these small honors receive digital BEST of SHOW placards for display in marketing and promotion, placement on Architosh’s BEST of SHOW winners roster page, and a complimentary advertising package to be used during either Q4 2024 or Q1 2025. 

AIA24—Thematic Issues

Over the years, we have stepped back and written a “perspectives” feature about the honorees and the trajectory of digital technologies for architects. This year we are publishing that feature on the same day as the BEST of SHOW announcement. 

Our perspectives feature has three themes relevant to this year’s conference as well as to the state of digital technology for architecture. You can read more on that here [link soon!] and as we touch on themes in the notes on the winner below. 

And now the honors for the best tech we saw this year at AIA24. But first an overview of our award categories and criteria.

Award Categories and Criteria

Our award categories are designed to be broad and flexible, enabling us to honorably note a product across a range of categories if so warranted.

• Emergent Technology (emTech) Category Award — acknowledges industry potential for bleeding edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice or create convergent technology paths and drive at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the most “promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative new directions in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the BIM workflow industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (d) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and toolchains are social and democratized to their fullest extent, and (e) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Cloud Category Award  — acknowledges technology solutions (software or hardware) driving at full utilization of synergistic and maturing “cloud-to-mobile” and “cloud-to-web” technology stacks, exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality and novelty, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing pain-points in AEC, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Visualization Category Award  — acknowledges the most compelling visualization solutions and technologies that are transforming the architect’s workflow, heralding new ways of seeing architecture for all stakeholders and not just clients, accelerating design optioneering, material, and light discovery, design problem solving, and design collaboration, as measured by:  (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, including rendering speeds and image qualities, (c) quality of attack at addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and addressing synergist directions in the industry.
• The Economics Prize — reflecting an important shift within the architectural industry to acknowledge the extent of poor economics for architects and a newfound demand for better working conditions and pay, the Economics Prize is awarded to digital technology that shines in the direction of better economics for architects, as measured by:  (a) sizeable process improvements to common industry deliverables via creative disruption (ie, Uber-ize a known process), (b) notable value disruption by a vendor via license cost comparison without “bundling,” (c) notable outsized release update delivering exceptional value increase for users, and finally (d) performance capture due to innovative, leading-edge hardware solutions.  

Congratulations to the 2024 AIA BEST of SHOW honorees listed below.

BEST of SHOW — EMERGENT TECHNOLOGY Category

Winners in this category represent emergent technologies (emTech) that are far from “center-market” and much closer to “edge-of-market.” This means they have the potential for bending the trajectory of technologies near them—including creating a convergence of disparate tech—or offering completely alternative thematic change within the industry. An example of such a thematic change would be node-based visual programming tools like Generative Components or Grasshopper when they first emerged. They both bent the trajectory of existing technologies and offered a wholesale thematic change in terms of how architects can work.

Winner:  Graphisoft BIMx on Vision Pro

The Emergent Technology (emTech) category award winner this year provides a clear example of what is embodied in this honor—a focus on a bleeding-edge technology implementation capable of a thematic change for practice. Building on a prior multiple award-winning application in Graphisoft’s BIMx platform, Graphisoft continues to push the boundaries of this tool by being the first to implement a 3D AEC tool on the new Apple Vision Pro immersive technology platform. BIMx BIM Experience was available within one week of the release of the groundbreaking Apple Vision Pro this year. As demonstrated on the floor of the AIA24 Expo, the software company continued exploration and development around immersive technologies for AEC/O. 

Graphisoft wins the BEST of SHOW award for Emergent Technology for BIMx on Apple Vision Pro.

“As a new spatial computing platform, the Apple Vision Pro sets a new bar for an immersive operating system with a groundbreaking user interface and user experience, says Pete Evans, AIA, Senior Associate Editor, Architosh. “Graphisoft was able to showcase how a nimble AEC industry software developer can deploy BIMx’s unique capabilities into new areas of computing and visualization. BIMx advantages the 2D and 3D capabilities of this spatial platform, fluidly wrapping the immersive 3D view from the 2D layouts. Graphisoft did something really exceptional here,” says Pete Evans, AIA, Senior Associate Editor, Architosh. “Being able to rapidly deliver BIMx and exhibit its potential through this brand new technology from Apple is compelling.”   

BEST of SHOW — INNOVATION Category

Innovation category winners deliver novel formulations around existing technologies or synthesize established technologies with emergent technologies. We also look for convergent technology paths and solutions, and directions that drive synergistic outcomes for the profession. This broad category allows us freedom to acknowledge interesting directions, as duly noted in our award to the Nemetschek Group this year. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the core of this honor. 

Winner: Nemetschek Group — AV Visualizer Technologies

The Innovation award category heralds “promising” new directions in AEC software and hardware technologies, including “driving at synergistic directions,” and this year, both Autodesk and the Nemetschek Group announced a new API sharing partnership that will help teams working across large projects work more seamlessly together across both companies’ tools. While nothing concrete has been announced yet, the Nemetschek Group itself has taken a similar internal approach within its Group of Solutions.

The Nemetschek Group wins the BEST of SHOW award for Innovation for its “cooperation + competition strategy” within and outside the group and AI Visualizer as its first example.

“We want to acknowledge and encourage this burgeoning era of ‘coopetition’ (cooperation + competition) because the whole industry knows that data translation and interoperability are the AEC/O industry’s biggest roadblock to more efficient days ahead,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “The Nemetschek Group is already demonstrating this spirit with its AI Visualizer technologies that began at Graphisoft and are being shared with both ALLPLAN and Vectorworks, offering users cutting-edge AI-powered visualization features. This diffusion of ‘lighthouse technologies’—tech and features that can draw in prospective users and signal safe harbor in fast-changing times—amongst relevant Group solutions is a brilliant and long overdue strategy.”

The Nemetschek Group aims to leverage and diffuse newer emergent technologies like artificial intelligence. As echoed in the Autodesk + Nemetschek Group API announcements, the diffusion and sharing of key technologies signal less interest in moving firms to other platforms and more emphasis on enhancing the workflows they currently have. “This honor is really directed at the Group’s strategic shift as much as the AI Visualizer technologies themselves,” adds Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “Nemetschek has signaled confidence and maturity that puts customers first both internally amongst its own rival daughter companies and outward with its API partnership with Autodesk. An era of ‘coopetition’ is an era that not only indexes market maturities but points to a possible future where tools become more specialized, effective, and interoperable with all other tools.”

Winner: Autodesk Forma

Autodesk Forma is another winner in the Innovation category, winning a nod two years in a row. Representing the era of BIM 2.0, Forma democratizes access to key new technologies being delivered in the cloud. “Autodesk Forma continues to plow ahead in the areas of sustainable design with new embodied carbon capabilities, helping architects further understand the energy impacts of their building designs at the stage where they can make the largest changes,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh. 

Autodesk Forma again wins the BEST of SHOW award for Innovation for its industry cloud for AEC/O, delivering compelling early design stage comprehensive analysis with API connectivity to industry-leading design tools like Rhino plus new embodied carbon analysis.

Forma has added many new features since last year, including a growing set of API connections, new labels for leaving notes in collaboration with stakeholders, and more detailed analysis information. “Thanks to Forma’s APIs, architects can connect Rhino design workflows and push that geometry into Forma for environmental impact and site analysis, better informing their designs,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief. The editors of Architosh are hopeful that the new Autodesk + Nemetschek Group API partnership begins with Forma connections to BIM stalwarts in the Nemetschek Group, where legions of architecture firms could leverage Forma’s early design stage analysis tools along with energy analysis features. (see our Perspectives feature for further discussion around “coopetition” as a theme change in the AEC IT landscape.)

BEST of SHOW — BIM Category

As noted before, BIM solutions today are quite mature and, in some cases, based on extremely mature underlying technologies. We are mindful of the industry’s frustrations with the pace of innovation in this area and are ever more concerned about looking for areas of progress speed-up. As noted last year, this can come about by chip transformations, GPU accelerations, or new connections to the cloud (for desktop legacy BIM in particular). With a slew of promising new Windows for ARM (Microsoft Copilot+ PCs) flooding the market this year, 2024 is not yet the year to lay emphasis on underlying chip optimization, as next year will be more interesting. We look instead to ‘value’ and ‘expertise’ touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve. 

Winner: dRofus

This may have been the first year we have seen dRofus at AIA convention, and the application is very impressive. dRofus is unlike any other solution in the AEC/O software market, focusing on the “I” in BIM and thus providing a data-centric approach to BIM workflows to meet the needs of building owners (particularly public building owners). dRofus helps building owners/operators and their design and engineering teams to better plan for their facility, capturing client requirements down to the smallest of details. Managing the data for facilities begins by utilizing smart modules that organize data into room overviews, room data sheets, items, finishes, systems, function program, procurement, delivery, and IFC/BIM. Used extensively in healthcare facilities, colleges, and corporate campuses, dRofus has become essential for building owners and is a key component of Nemetschek’s digital twins strategy.

dRofus wins the BEST of SHOW for BIM for its industry-leading data-centric BIM solution supporting the data management needs for large and complex building types, including future support for data centers and super connectivity to Revit and Archicad and IFC-based cloud-connected tools.

The application—which has one of the more attractive and well-laid out user interfaces we’ve seen—runs on the desktop (Windows only) or on the web (dRofus Web), and plugins for Autodesk Revit and Graphisoft Archicad provide data panes inside these BIM solutions so when you work with objects and rooms inside BIM models your dRofus data attached to these items is fully displayed and able to be managed. “dRofus is impressive for its comprehensive focus on data-centric BIM with sophisticated plugins that bring in that data management inside leading BIM authoring tools,” says, “Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “Users gain 3D BIM model viewing inside the dRofus app and on the web version. There is even a mobile version for smartphones that enables dRofus to even function as a punch list tool while in the field.” “With the embedded property panel, dRofus data can be accessed directly inside other BIM tools with IFC support, including tools like Solibri,” adds Frausto-Robledo. “What distinguishes dRofus is that nondesign tool users can play a significant role in BIM data, enriching the BIM model through a simplified approach to data management.”

Winner: Vectorworks Architect 2024

Vectorworks 2024 is very deserving of the BIM honor this year, already scoring a Superb 5/5 review score at Architosh plus a “Best in Class” Architizer Award earlier this year. “BIM authoring platforms are quite mature in the industry and the Revit versus Archicad rivalry—reminiscent of Windows versus Mac in bygone years—has the tendency to underestimate other BIM developments and players, including Vectorworks Architect. Version 2024 was not just feature-packed but introduced really cool and very useful features, with the Viewport Styles and implementation of the new modern UI updates being chief standouts,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh. 

Other notable features in version 2024 included the industry-first bidirectional and cross-platform Excel support in a BIM platform. Its Wall Closure Sets technology is also very interesting and useful, even in its first pass stage. 

Vectorworks Architect 2024 wins BEST of SHOW for its complete and innovative BIM features built on top of an industry-leading technology stack designed to leverage the best technologies from Microsoft, Apple, and Google across a range of devices. This is the BIM most likely to first arrive natively on the new powerful Microsoft Copilot+ PCs on ARM processors.

“What’s noteworthy about Vectorworks is how solid their underlying technology is, having led the entire industry in the ARM-chip transition,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “Parasolid, Unity, ARM and Intel, Mac and Windows, iOS and Android, everything they have built is ready for the fast-changing future we are now facing. And that is not something you can say about some of the biggest tools in the industry. Having listened to some of the huge enthusiasm from the Dell folks over at the Dell booth at AIA24 this year about their upcoming Microsoft Copilot+ PCs—which are ‘Windows on ARM’ machines—we think that “readiness” to address and leverage key developments in the computer industry is a standout feature.

BEST of SHOW —  CLOUD Category

Due to the cloud, architectural practices have been liberated from CAD/BIM workstations and desks to anywhere, anytime, on any device access to your data or SSoT (single source of truth). Of particular note, this category evaluates CDE (common data environment) applications that are central to democratized access to a single source of truth (SSoT) as well as new forms of collaboration for remote teams and stakeholders. In this last regard, our sole winner is leveraging the cloud for exactly these kinds of workflows but also distributing innovative visualization and superb interactivity for 3D visuals. 

Winner:   SketchUp 2024

This year’s Cloud Category Award goes to 2024 Trimble SketchUp. “The SketchUp team has significantly advanced its 3D engine, resulting in an 8X performance improvement,” says Pete Evans, AIA, Senior Associate Editor, Architosh.  “This enhancement notably impacts web and mobile computing for large AEC designs and models. The latest release also introduces impressive new visualization and collaboration features, showcased at AIA24.”

In a cloud-based “link share,” designers and clients can collaborate beyond traditional screen-sharing. The model is accessible for sharing scenes, with navigation controlled by the designer through a scene-based slideshow or directly by the client. This advanced spatial communication via SketchUp remains user-friendly. Designers can adjust the geometry and re-save it to the cloud, with updates appearing for the client within moments, depending on internet speed. The designer controls the link, which can remain live for client review until the designer ends it. This dynamic allows designers to manage the link while providing clients with extended access to investigate the 3D model through “saved scene-based navigation.” 

Trimble Sketchup 2024 wins BEST of SHOW for the Cloud honor for its innovative cloud-based collaboration features and excellent new graphics engine updates.

SketchUp’s new graphics engine delivers impressive new ambient occlusion with various degrees of visual impact, all controlled through simple slider interface widgets. Users can adjust the distance and intensity in 3D view, giving designs a deeper sense of space. While ambient occlusion has been available in advanced rendering engines for several years, SketchUp’s implementation showcases significant advancements possible with AEC/O tools over the internet (cloud). Furthermore, in a private meeting, we were treated to further impressive future advancements in rendering technology due to the completely new graphics engine along with future cloud benefits.

“These new capabilities from SketchUp are powerful and seamlessly integrated into its intuitive interface, providing robust communication tools for web and mobile releases as a core part of the SketchUp ecosystem. It’s an impressive implementation!” says Pete Evans, AIA, Senior Associate Editor at Architosh. “What we saw today and what’s coming soon highlight the ongoing advantages SketchUp offers in visualization and cloud-based collaboration.” 

BEST of SHOW —  VISUALIZATION Category

Architectural visualization continues to benefit from stronger real-time technologies and deep integrations throughout the larger ecosystem of design tools. The real winners in the industry are the users who have a plethora of choices. However, in terms of real-time interactive renderers, there are only a few games in town, with Enscape, Lumion, and Twinmotion dominating this sector of the market. While AI-based visualization tools are growing in usage, they are still immature and cannot fully meet the needs of architecture firms who need full spectrum capabilities—from early-stage visualization done by architects to cinematic-level animations done by dedicated archviz studios. There is more to visualization than just the look of the building and spaces; visualization can focus on “energy visualization” and Radiance-level “light visualization.” 

Winner: Chaos – Enscape

Chaos delivered Enscape 4 earlier this year, announcing its first true cross-platform Mac-Win release, scoring kudos for democratizing its leading-edge interactive rendering technologies for Mac-based architects. But the big news was the enhanced integration with the entire Chaos ecosystem via the new V-Ray scene exporter. This technology breaks down the barriers between architecture and visualization professionals (or between “design” and “creative,” to use Chaos’ terms). Known as (.vrscene), architects working in Enscape can package up all model data, including assets, lights, and materials, and send them on their way to more photoreal workflows done by other professionals, inside or outside the architecture firm.

Chaos Enscape wins the BEST of SHOW for Visualization for its bridge technologies connecting real-time rendering (Enscape) to more photo-real rendering pipelines with its V-Ray Scene technology, plus upcoming AI features and IES energy visualization later this year.

“The Chaos Enscape team is solving common visualization workflow challenges at multiple levels, “says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “by democratizing archviz to more design professionals through an ‘Enscape everywhere’ distribution, and then by enabling a superior handoff to DCC (digital content creation) tools used by dedicated visualization professionals.” V-Ray scene files can be imported into top DCC tools like Autodesk 3ds Max or Maxon’s Cinema 4D. This builds on the Enscape to V-Ray bridge connectivity Chaos already delivered to the market. Furthermore, Chaos showed us upcoming (in-development) features, including IES-based energy visualization (building performance viz) and AI technologies that up-sample people and plants, areas that traditionally suffer in renderings. “Chaos’ partnership with IES is interesting and will help architects understand energy impacts from their design thinking early on in the building design process,” says Frausto-Robledo. “The integration of building performance visualization with general visualization puts this all-important subject front and center into the design workflow where it needs to be top-of-mind for all architects.”

BEST of SHOW —  The Economics Prize

This new award category will go to only one winner each year, delivering to market a product that can prove its economic value across one or more of the metrics defined for this honor. 

Winner: No winner this year. 

[Editor’s note: We wish to make clear that there are multiple winners in some categories, and we eliminated the honorable mentions this year. See our show reports for more apps seen at AIA24, starting with this first report here.]

The post AIA24: Architosh 10th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for digital technologies at AIA National Washington DC appeared first on Architosh.

The Marina Bay Sands Integrated Resort in Singapore was again host to Bentley’s 2023 Year in Infrastructure – Going Digital Awards conference. The architecturally stunning hotel tower and overall complex make a highly suitable venue to discuss using advanced digital technologies to plan, design, engineer, construct, and operate infrastructure assets from buildings to smart cities. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh)

The international focus for US-based Bentley (Pennsylvania) was clearly presented in the keynote by Greg Bentley, showing top infrastructure value and growth maintaining just above half for Asia (excluding China), China, Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) as compared to the Americas. Bentley’s Infrastructure 500 top owners were responsible for nearly USD 20 trillion with current exchange rates. This global reach, impact, and growth around infrastructure garnered much attention and mindshare worldwide for important energy, resource management, and sustainability concerns today and going forward.

ES(D)G – Empowering Sustainable Development Goals

Singapore, the host site and City State is a global leader in adaptive urban areas. It also had a prominent place in the conference as its host site and as an exemplar in its infrastructure posture.

Greg Bentley introduced Dr. Victor Khoo, the Director of Survey and Geomatics, who presented and discussed the Singapore Green Plan for the Singapore Land Authority. He described the use of the digital twin (Bentley’s iTwin) as a collective (of the entire city nation)—a 4D resource for planning and operation management that was continuously updated (since 2012) with new datasets for the best integrations from subsurface, land, air and space in a full GIS compatible and OGC/ISO compliant framework. This year, with Bentley’s iLab, the framework became an advanced interactive demonstration titled Advancing Singapore 3D Reality Mapping for a Changing World.

A presentation slide from Dr. Victor Khoo, Director of Survey and Geomatics, from the Singapore Land Authority, discussing the Singapore Green Plan and projects focused on empowering sustainable development goals. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh)

The conference context—Singapore—helped to frame the energy, resource management, and sustainability focus that Bentley advances its product delivery around, and this was further underscored in the keynote discussing the importance and focus of ES(D)G – Bentley’s specific combination of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the concept of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals to be Empowering Sustainable Development Goals, or ES(D)Gs.

Another ES(D)G slide from Dr. Khoo’s presentation on Singapore’s Green Plan. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh)

And one final ES(D)G slide from Dr. Khoo’s presentation on Singapore’s Green Plan. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

A series of slides illustrated the emphasis Bentley’s customers and particularly the award submissions, placed on land and water resources, healthy communities, clean energy transitions, climate action and resilience, and finally, how Bentley’s ES(D)G clearly supported COP27 2022 priorities around adaptation and even presented decarbonization and climate resilience with digital solutions.

Toward Infrastructure Intelligence

Greg Bentley further presented the 2023 conference theme, Toward Infrastructure Intelligence, with multiple iterations on an acronym wrapping technology around engineering, information, and operations in ETITOT.

Greg Bentley on stage. In view Bentley Infrastructure Top 500 owners data on “Infrastructure Value.” One can easily see progressive growth in global infrastructure value since 2013, with notable growth rates in Asia (excluding China) as well as in China from 2013 – 2018. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

This concept was central in that all things Bentley Infrastructure now incorporate a digital context (OT – auto sensors), chronology (IT – maintenance history), and components (ET – infrastructure models) across a full life-cycle and, importantly, all in and through iTwin.

Focused on this core technology for Bentley, Greg also showed how integral and growing iTwin is to this strategy in the 2023 award submissions as a reflection of the evolving base of Bentley solutions and advancing infrastructure. In 2023, 35% of 302 submissions and 64% of 27 finalists relied on iTwin. This was on top of substantial  5x-7x growth in the use of iTwins Capture and Synchro in the 2023 submission from 2022.

iTwin technology adoption and growth rates among Bentley YII award submissions and winners. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

Essential to this theme were also the top winners’ measurable gains, showing this growth as critical to infrastructure design and engineering. While this emphasis showed gains in the usage of iTwins, the direct gains by the top winners also reflected an 18% hours saved median efficiency. Greg Bentley went on to show how these direct gains in efficiency accumulate and then compound. He also showed a growing backlog of work putting firms at capacity, including a measured 23 minutes of additional work required in 2023 by Infrastructure Engineers. This illuminated the challenge faced today by the work and the solutions Bentley is offering with their tools today.

Data from Bentley’s sources reveal that Infrastructure Engineering firms are at capacity with one open position for every 10 FTEs (full-time employees). (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

Supporting this focused emphasis on infrastructure intelligence was a series of executive appointments that were presented at the conference. Kristen Fallon joins Bentley as Chief Marketing Officer with a background at GE Healthcare with work in the area of social, environmental, and economic development work in Asia and Africa. She succeeds Chris Bradshaw, now working in a newly created Chief Sustainability Officer role. Colin Ellam, CEO of Cohesive, advancing digital integrations and enterprise asset management for Bentley. Oliver Conze joins as Senior Vice President for Bentley Infrastructure Cloud (introduced in 2022) built on iTwins to unify teams, projects, and data across design, building, and operating for full lifecycle.

Percentage of hours saved by the winner’s use of Bentley’s iTwin technology. Infrastructure intelligence that shows direct gains and accumulates and compounds over time for firms benefitting from iTwins.  (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

New acquisitions and partnerships were also key to advancing Bentley’s Infrastructure Intelligence. Flow State Solutions adds to Seequent’s robust subsurface modeling toolset with geothermal simulation capabilities around reservoir, wellbore, and surface network optimization and well performance.

Bentley also presented Teralytics human mobility analysis capabilities with Streetlytics mobility solutions from Bentley, targeting growth in North America and Europe and as an iTwin Ventures company.

Looking forward, AI (artificial intelligence) in Bentley’s vision was presented by Greg Bentley, discussing Keith Bentley’s work on Bentley Copilot and generating the work through Github as an accessible Early Access Program publicly available testbed. This open posture, along with Bentley’s open applications platform, was further described with Copilot stewarding user data, where the goal is to improve output and the enjoyment of work through the Bentley Infrastructure Cloud while being locally trained and owned by the user for the effectiveness of local solutions.

Three main points delineated this commitment to users: (1) help derive value from all the engineering data secured in Bentley Infrastructure Cloud, (2) Maximize data for generative AI, and (3) retain all access and control of data and only “you” explicitly direct the use of data for generative AI.

The Awards, Jurying, and Innovation

There are 12 categories of Going Digital Awards, including Bridges & Tunnels, Construction, Enterprise Engineering, Process & Power Generation, Rail & Transit, Road & Highways, Structural Engineering, Subsurface Modeling & Analysis, Surveying & Monitoring, Transmission and Distribution, Water and Wastewater, and the Facilities, Campuses & Cities category.

Going Digital Award Categories. Architosh editors have participated for multiple years in supporting these awards as jurors in the Facilities, Campuses & Cities award categories. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

Architosh has participated for multiple years in supporting the Bentley Year In Innovation Going Digital Awards jury work for the Facilities, Cities, and Campuses awards category. This jury work provides an additional lens into the direct ways in which innovative project approaches are being realized at a very high level.

VRAME CONSULT GMBH won Facilities, Campuses & Cities for its Digital Campus Twin in Berlin – Siemensstadt Square project. (Image: Bentley)

With many great submissions this year, the finalists stood out significantly, advancing digital work in infrastructure. Two projects (the winner and the alternate finalist) exemplified the use of eco-district design with digital twins underlying constituent involvement toward maximized community advantage as a digital foundation for future development. Another finalist integrated a novel method for capturing existing development work to align with modernized code and safe housing requirements as a maintainable digital twin. The other finalist created a digital twin of port authority assets accessible to all stakeholders for advanced planning, maintenance, and operations.

The outstanding awards and the winner, VRAME, for their outstanding work on Siemensstadt Square, Berlin, provided transformative views into a near-future aspirational standard of project work, from design delivery to the stakeholders and constituents thriving through in a new advanced and innovative infrastructure. 

iLab Exhibit

Innovation at Bentley exhibited through the awards directly at the conference, was also exhibited and demonstrated throughout the conference at a very active iLab exhibit. Through a partnered and highly advanced digital twin view of the host site, Singapore, exemplary examples were shown around planning, sustainable energy potential and usage, transportation, construction, and water usage.

iLab at the conference showed Singapore in advanced “digital twin” model views, enabling viewers to see examples around planning, sustainable energy potential and usage, transportation, construction and water usage. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

Within these rich interactive experiences, iLab leaders, Bentley executives, and attendees propelled conversations to intriguing intersections around AI, sustainability and regeneration, DfMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly), 4D planning and immersive workspaces, NERF, and even Guassian splatting in iTwin.

A closer view of Singapore in advanced “digital twin” model views. (Image: Pete Evans / Architosh).

Conversations, whiteboards, and sidebars on additional work demonstrations provided substantial interactions and firsthand customer feedback loops that accentuated the GitHub and open applications mentality that Bentley is advancing its infrastructure toolset around intelligence.

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The Graphisoft core customer connection was immediately apparent as a top priority. This was evident with direct work with close customers prior to these current formal releases, which preceded the final software updates and conference. This work involved a formal pivot from their 2022 Product Roadmap, where this year, Graphisoft introduced a technology preview program about a month prior to release in September. This was essentially an early release candidate for a limited customer group to finalize and improve the software functionality for release while allowing customers to weigh in, have a preview of the new release, and prepare their own office rollout strategies. Numbers from this new technology preview program effort were 14,000 hours logged, 3000 customers involved, and 100’s of issues resolved, which Graphisoft presented as a successful and effective path to this year’s software releases.

A presentation to the media this year at the launch event in Budapest—noting the new accurate shadows and positioning technology in BIMx workflows.

While not a lot of new “major release” announcements were made at the Graphisoft 2023 Building Together | Connect Conference, there were significant advances to the Graphisoft ecosystem presented and demonstrated, and the intentional idea of connection was again quite clear and intentional, as stated by Marton Kiss, VP, Product Success: A connection to the core customers building the products together (with the early, limited release), open connectivity between the core products to provide the best workflows for any project, and helping customers connect with the latest technology for better efficiency and improved results. Across all four core products, these connections resonated and centered on improving the designer’s work experience for efficiency and value with architecture at the center. Huw Roberts, Graphisoft CEO, captured the company’s spirit with this work, stating, “This is about enhancing your creative expression to infinity while taking the boring out of design.”

Core Ecosystem Advancements

ArchiCAD 27’s largest new feature was around design optioneering. A unique approach in the industry that allows very efficient use of options within the same file and with the same elements to provide early insights and informed, data-driven decisions early in the project where they have the most value. Powerful new smart guides also dynamically provide parametric placement dimensions from objects or walls to grids or related elements.

Integrated Design Options is a major new feature in Archicad 27 this year, where users can quickly develop design alternatives in a very efficient workflow dedicated to iteration.

This new feature resonated, and additional dynamic guides that go even further are already in internal development (more to come!) to extend these powerful new guides to additional objects and with elements such as 2D drawing elements. Enhanced attribute management was also shown to have extensive customization while providing an intuitive and even easier path for authors to navigate. Here, connecting the designer to powerful optioneering, management, and insights across the project was a clear motivation for Graphisoft to improve the user experience in measurable ways.

New Distance Guides technology (blue lines in image) showing distances between elements from the element you are placing or manipulating.

BIMcloud has also been improved to be faster and more secure for online collaborations to include multi-factorial authentication and additional high-level security features, with security being a central concern for customers. The importance of connecting customers was also shown in the new Pro subscriptions to have ArchiCAD and BIMcloud together, but with multiple options for licensing (perpetual and subscription) that provide users choices depending on the situation and project requirements.

New improved BIMx enables users to markup conditions they find in the field on BIMx (for iOS and Android) and send those issues through BIMcloud to users on Archicad to resolve matters. (see image below)

BIMx‘s new release also revolved around collaborative improvements and unified across the desktop, mobile, and cloud. From this unified quality of “presentation to collaboration” was shown with the new streamlined revisioning that BIMx can now empower. Issue creation and messaging that is Building Collaboration Format (BCF) 3.0 compatible while also interfacing with ArchiCAD’s issue organizer on iOS can happen today (with other platforms coming soon). BIMx also now includes sun positioning and dynamic environmental skyboxes. Impressively, users can also access BIM data from layouts through interactive labels that are associated at the BIM element level. New features are available to all BIMx users that include unlimited 3D file size, Favorite saving and presentation compiling, and print layouts and 3D views. Additional new features are available to BIMx Pro users that include issue creation, the ability to customize BIMx with extensions, and integrated messaging for extra collaboration at no additional charge.

Back in the office, issues marked up in BIMx appear inside Archicad 27 with one-click navigation to the model view taken in BIMx so architects can align their understanding of what needs to happen to resolve discovered issues.

DDScad 19, as a core Graphisoft offering, complements the architectural toolset at a high level to perform peak building performance. This extended seamless collaborations for MEP design with integrated calculations and comprehensive design solutions. Important product data technology and manufacturer data are accessible out of the box. Aligned with Graphisoft, this is in an Open BIM workflow for engineers to experience greater collaborative freedom and flexibility. Today, through a streamlined data connection, even the design option power in ArchiCAD 27 at the front end of a project becomes more powerful with DDScad with advanced engineering integrations, even more so in the near future.

Open Connections

Not just multiple mentions and themes around connections but open and seamless connections were on full display at the conference. First, the general BIMcloud accessibility through licensing was a benefit all ArchiCAD subscription members can leverage for enhanced collaborations. Next, the extension of FBX import and export, in addition to strong interoperability with ODA and OpenBIM support with IFC4 and BCF3.0 format exchange and GDL improvements, speaks to a very open and extensive data environment that Graphisoft sees as important for a robust and collaborative design community.

New improvements in Archicad 27 allow the manual editing of structural elements in the structural analytical model, plus simple exporting of analytical models to structural applications with just one click.

Part of this philosophy from Graphisoft also extends to the emphasis around the current collaborative and project management feature releases (design options, smart guides, and enhanced attribute management) where the “stretch continuum,” as Huw Roberts described this idea during the conference, of customers advancing through different levels of CAD and BIM workflows (“overlaps and gaps”) that benefits enormously from this broad-connected user focus and attention that Graphisoft insists upon for its toolset—a high priority around added value to the architectural design process they described as “embedded industry knowledge” in the software. This is also reflected in the RVT RVA v24 support, where the expansion of the manufacturer libraries will significantly grow as this “industry knowledge” capacity is realized within ArchiCAD and DDScad libraries for rapid data-driven decisions and insights.

A preview image of Archicad 27’s rendering prowess shown to press attendees at Building Together | Connect in Budapest. We discuss this AI-based imagery in the next section (Looking Forward) below. (Image: Powered by Stable Diffusion.)

Lastly, on open connections, the advancement of usable, open, and well-documented APIs means that more modular extensions like “One-Click LCA” for advanced sustainability work and “One-click RESA” structural work (in addition to Rhino Inside) and similar integrations are very sustainable and able to advance with the connected tool and with the core Graphisoft products advancing and integrated very efficiently and modularly.

Looking Forward

Currently, there are quarterly Graphisoft Innovation Days (GRID) in which internal company employees across the company brainstorm in interdisciplinary teams to build product ideas for discussion, presentation, and feasibility. These can be as simple as UI tweaks or as complex as a whole new feature set or even a new tool. This internal process brings the development and product advancement closer to the customer and the product itself in a very organic way. Exciting things will come from this practice.

AI developments enable improved visualization. (Image: Powered by Stable Diffusion.)

And it would not be 2023 without a little AI to discuss. Graphisoft’s approach follows this connected and modular extensioning structure, and the conference saw pre-production tests that use Stable Diffusion for early concept development and iteration. “Stay tuned to the social media channel” was the message, but here were a few of the images on display and things to look forward to as Graphisoft continues to accelerate design processes and insights.

Another AI-empowered rendering image from Archicad 27. (Image: Powered by Stable Diffusion.)

In closing, this year’s Building Together event showcased Graphisoft’s steady march on its development strategy outlined a year ago, increasing openness and connections to both other Nemetschek Group tools and technologies and third-party tools, including cutting-edge AI technologies like Stable Diffusion. All of this will no doubt benefit customers and intrigue AEC pros unhappy with their current solutions.

Learn More

To learn more, visit Graphisoft online here.

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Tooey Courtemanche, Founder and CEO of Procore, kicked off the conference with a keynote focused on Procore’s construction management advancements in their technologies and strongly focused on the theme of transformation. Being a company focused on advancing construction management technology, from pre-construction to closeout, the idea of a digital technology transformation may not sound surprising. However, the complement to a digital technology transformation, emphasized equally by Tooey Courtemanche in his keynote and several additional conference presentations was one of cultural transformation.

A Cultural Crisis in Construction

Courtemanche’s keynote started with an acknowledgment to the host city of Chicago and noting the advanced position the city leads around the built environment led by luminaries such as Jeanne Gang, lead and namesake of Studio Gang in Chicago responsible for the Aqua Tower, which at the time, was the tallest women-designed building in the world, in addition to the more recent and taller St. Regis Chicago tower, among many additional well recognized and awarded projects by the women-lead design firm.

Procore’s new AI-infused Copilot technologies will bring the power of artificial intelligence to assist users of the Procore construction platform.

This recognition was quickly followed by forecasting a daunting challenge facing the construction industry around a need for 300 million housing units and USD 57 trillion identified in infrastructure work, and with an aging workforce, 41% of whom will retire from the construction industry by 2031. This, on top of the construction sector, being among the worst for mental health and suicide rates across industries.

This critical introduction underlined the message from Procore about industry transformation, and they intend to lead on both fronts—digital and cultural change. Procore stressed this cultural aspect at several points around their direct support of the “Get Talking” initiative, diversity, and women in construction. 

A “Culture drives business and business drives culture” motto was directly and literally the center focus for the conference, with a Culture Lounge anchoring the exhibit hall. “Thinking differently” and “transforming building into the future” both align with the cultural transformation Procore sees necessary to “meet the next century of building.” 

New Products Announced at Groundbreak

During Courtemanche’s keynote, which included several ‘product line” leaders, product announcements highlighted a shared digital and cultural transformation. 

The first was a notable technical change that allows all Procore customers to share and collaborate on critical construction documents directly from their own Procore account, greatly reducing double data entry for customers working across multiple projects. 

Procore Copilot

Alongside this shift was the announcement of Procore Copilot, AI-powered for guidance through the platform and paired with partner support from MS Azure. Both account orientation and Copilot became supporting announcements to Procore Connect, opening a new level of collaboration and communication across the platform.

Procore’s new 3D BIM Take-off tool leverages BIM technologies which Procore says must be open for the industry to succeed.

Dave McCool, Director of Product, introduced an advanced 3D takeoff tool and AI-driven 2D takeoff, walking through the bid board, bid leveling, and reconciling from estimate to actuals through the newly AI-enabled Procore Connect platform. This round trip construction management example was essential around the transformative power of a technology-supported iterative process far different and with great potential versus the traditional linear (and often adversarial) process.

Unearth-GIS

The keynote presentation continued with the acquisition announcement of Unearth, a GIS map-based project management tool being integrated into Procore. “Construction happens in time and space,” said Wyatt Jenkins, Chief Product Officer. Demonstrations of GIS-based markups, RFIs, and project reports illustrated the powerful and intentional advances into a spatial/digital twin of the physical project being built and accessible by all stakeholders and evolving to a product called AI Locations, presented by Julian Clayton, Vice President of Product for General Contractors with the Procore product-line to continue to build construction intelligence supported by AI.

More AI

Rajitha Chaparala, Vice President of Product, Data and AI, discussed the AI implementation in Procore, further discussing how it might “nudge” the team across project/company policies, benchmarks, and insights that would involve natural language questions and even team conversations suggesting contacts, situations, and/or related locations for resolving project protocols. 

Procore Conversations

She also announced the availability of Procore Conversations for direct messaging through the platform and, in the near future, how Copilot and Conversations will be integrated, teeing up project options and accelerating team solutions for potentially huge savings in time and money. 

Wyatt Jenkins added that through a very open API, integrations would be capable of many optimizations for rapid change order bid packages (recall integrated bid board and balancing) for a major transformation. Even paying subcontractors as part of the process was being integrated and optimized, with Eliza Marsh, Group Product Manager, Pay, presenting Procore Pay as the digital pay mechanism for payouts and lien waiver management. These digital transactions were supported by partner Goldman Sachs, Apple’s financial partner with Apple Card partner. 

The end of Day One was a keynote by Michael Steep around disruptive technologies and opportunities. Steep’s extensive 35-year background around technology invention included operations, consulting and executive experience at Apple, Microsoft, HP, Xerox PARC, and Stanford University. 

His informed and prescient disruptive technologies and opportunities included the forces driving change impacting construction, some real-world case studies, and strategies to embrace the ongoing disruption to leverage into opportunities today. Highlighting the presentation were approaches to artificial intelligence, a latency for a hired professional, such as an engineer, whose expert knowledge would be out-of-date within three years, and a recognition toward external engagement (outside the office and business).

Day One and Day Two of the Procore Groundbreak conference included awards interspersed through the keynote presentations. These were competitive, with 27 finalists among 200 entrants, which included three finalists per award. The awards spanned diverse areas of project performance, including innovation, sustainability, owner, community, workforce development, general contractor, specialty contractor, safety, and finally, the Groundbreaker of the Year! These meaningful awards were recognitions of the high level of work and the caliber of customers and collaborators that Procore celebrated as transformational industry partners.

Laita Ali and Michael Phelps

Laila Ali started Day Two with a motivational keynote around her many powerful transformations from the daughter of a world boxing champion to a world boxing champion herself. Ali talked about the importance of preparation and focus around a mindset, knowing limits are set by training, and even noting how 21 of her 24 undefeated career wins were by knockouts. Ali reflected that this aspect was about controlling what you can control and not leaving it up to the judges.

Gold Medal swimmer Michael Phelps and Fred Mills of B1M, led a conversational keynote to end the conference around a powerful discussion on mental health. They challenged the conference and industry to face the mental health crisis together and recognize it as a real problem, noting construction having the highest suicide rates in occupational groups in the US and UK. 

Laila Ali delivered a powerful keynote on Day 2 about the importance of focus and preparing and controlling all the things you can control as part of a strategy to win.

Phelps and Mills highlighted the “Get Construction Talking” campaign B1M and Procore partnered on as one of the evident cultural transformations central to this year’s Groundbreak conference. Better mental health and better well-being lead to better productivity, emphasized Mills. Phelps and Mills repeatedly challenged the group that this effort must be done together.

Closing Thoughts

The conference theme of transformation was around digital technology and cultural transformation, as integral at this moment in history.

In separate 1:1 interviews with senior leaders, it was clear that these ideas of transformation, digital technology, and cultural transformation were very much together. From both interviews, one more oriented around Procore’s cultural transformation initiatives led to areas that were deeply entwined and dependant around today’s advancing digital technology, and similarly, the more digital technology interview recognized the intentional cultural diversity involved in today’s digital technology construction and project management work going as far as saying how their federated approach in BIM has to be open—so open as to host the 2023 Spring buildingSMART Assembly at their Procore campus in California.

Procore is shifting hard to lead a compelling best-in-class offering of tools for cloud-based construction project management and execution. This has been a transformation from a more traditional set of desktop application technologies to cloud and mobile, which require a very open and accessible space for all project collaborations to advance.

For Procore, it means leveraging AI technology smartly throughout their cloud platform, enabling the new Copilot and Connect tools to aid in streamlining processes and generating acceleration in work processes to improve the construction environment for all. Doing so will improve work-life balance and health for all industry professionals, enabling construction professionals to meet the daunting needs of the future. 

Editor’s Notes

You can learn more about Procore Groundbreak 2023 by clicking here and read more about Procore’s AEC industry technologies here.

The post Architosh Covers ‘Groundbreak’ 2023—Procore Adds Copilot AI Tech and More appeared first on Architosh.

Winners of these small honors receive digital BEST of SHOW placards for display in marketing and promotions and placement onto Architosh’s BEST of SHOW winners roster page.

A companion “perspectives” article—as in previous years—will provide an overview narrative behind this year’s winners as well as discuss the larger themes of technology in architectural practice. Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh, walked the show floor, consulted with Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief, and attended several key meetings, and spoke to various industry peers in an effort to suss out what technologies were most deserving of focus and attention this year in Chicago. 

Preface

This year was very noteworthy in the history of the Architosh BEST of SHOW awards program. Coming out of the pandemic, there was a question as to the direction the AIA22 conference would take in person and how the exhibit floor would take shape. With virtual and hybrid work taking hold, a lighter conference and exhibit floor presence was expected. This was not exactly the case while the program and exhibitors did pivot.

This year there was a strong focus on cloud capabilities for both the profession’s work itself and access to the instruments of service for all stakeholders. This manifested with more technology solutions present in software for connectivity and flexibility than in hardware itself. The ability to be mobile, work anywhere and through the cloud resonated with technology solutions for collaborating at a distance.

AIA22—Thematic Issues

Since our last AIA attendance, the world has confronted a global pandemic and now a significant European war—both focusing attention on matters of resiliency and performative issues. AEC as a sector still lags all others in real productivity, a topic we touched on in the latest Xpresso monthly newsletter. And just prior to the pandemic year, Robert Ivy, FAIA, stated at AIA19 the importance of inclusiveness and diversity in the architectural field, saying—”We are going to see a lot more collective genius. …no single brain will be big enough to master the body of knowledge required to lead the future.”

This year President Obama echoed similar themes. He recalled leading cabinet meetings with the intentional effort to call on random aides in the back of the room, “Hey you, what are you thinking about (the current discussion)?” In President Obama’s view, this sent a signal about the importance of the diversity and quality of ideas from everyone in the room. 

We both agree that cultural and practice issues impact the social performance of the practice of architecture (externally and internally). And they also have a relationship with the sector’s technologies. In the past few years, we have seen a significant Open Letter movement and now in the United States, the industry is facing a unionization movement. Both hit hard at the field’s troubling economic and productivity picture.

At the same time, the AIA’s 10-point plan has also impacted our thinking about digital technologies. The complexity of design in the 21st Century requires comprehensively informed decision-making where every project can be “a platform for addressing big problems and creative solutions”.

All of this will be further discussed in our AIA22 Perspectives on BEST of SHOW feature article coming up next week. Until then, onward with the winners of this year’s BEST of SHOW awards from AIA22 Chicago. 

Award Categories and Criteria

This year we have adjusted our award categories, adding a new award and changing the name of another older award. An important principle in our BEST of SHOW honors is that the democratization of user data and access to that data are important measures of evaluation in these awards, but not to the entire detriment of sheer innovation and disruption. As we have said before, new solutions often take time to expand and serve the broadest diversity of audience—especially among startups. On the flip side, large established players who fail critical strategic investment to support diverse architectural practices in the connected age of anywhere, anytime, and device access fail to win us over in these award honors.

This year we renamed our old Mobile+Cloud+Web category simply “Cloud” category. And we added a “Visualization” category that focuses on all technologies that help us see with our human eyes—from state-of-the-art renderers to AR/VR to the future metaverse tech.

Our award categories are designed to be broad and flexible, enabling us to honorably note a product across a range of categories if so warranted.

• Emergent Technology (emTech) Category Award — acknowledges industry potential for bleeding edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice or create convergent technology paths and drive at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the most “promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative new directions in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the BIM workflow industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (d) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and toolchains are social and democratized to their fullest extent, and (e) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Cloud Category Award  — acknowledges technology solutions (software or hardware) driving at full utilization of synergistic and maturing “cloud-to-mobile” and “cloud-to-web” technology stacks, exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality and novelty, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing pain-points in AEC, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Visualization Category Award  — acknowledges the most compelling visualization solutions and technologies that are transforming the architect’s workflow, heralding new ways of seeing architecture for all stakeholders and not just clients, accelerating design optioneering, material, and light discovery, design problem solving, and design collaboration, as measured by:  (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, including rendering speeds and image qualities, (c) quality of attack at addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and addressing synergist directions in the industry.

Congratulations to the 2022 AIA BEST of SHOW honorees listed below.

Architosh AIA 2022 BEST of SHOW Awards

BEST of SHOW — EMERGENT TECHNOLOGY Category

Winners in this category represent emergent technologies (emTech) that are far from “center-market” and much closer to “edge-of-market.” This means they have the potential for bending the trajectory of technologies near them—including creating a convergence of disparate tech—or offering completely alternative thematic change within the industry. An example of such a thematic change would be node-based visual programming tools like Generative Components or Grasshopper when they first emerged. They both bent the trajectory of existing technologies and offered a wholesale thematic change in terms of how architects work.

Winner:  T2D2

Created in the Thorton Tomasetti CORE Studio and launched in fall 2020, T2D2 leverages AI and computer vision with a massive image library for predictive building analysis. “With today’s priority around maintaining and extending the life-cycle of existing buildings further, this technology introduces a new toolset and pathway for facility management and understanding, “ says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor. “This is a huge leap for property management to reduce deferred maintenance and automate and prioritize work around geotagged PDF inspection reports.” T2D2 software provides continuous monitoring and inspection workflows with AI that detects, classifies, prioritizes, and groups building conditions for informed planning and action. Multiple inputs can be leveraged such as drones, phones, and actual cameras. AI and computer vision—clear emergent technologies in AEC—are combined and now applied and pointing to measurable new values in AI and computer vision for the built environment.

BEST of SHOW — INNOVATION Category

Innovation category winners deliver novel formulations around existing technologies or synthesize established technologies with emergent technologies. In particular, we look for application makers to leverage core innovations from operating systems, new types of devices, support for new hardware technologies like GPU and CPU processors (chips), or leverage new API technologies to deliver added value in workflow speed-ups. This year’s winners reflect much of these aspects while delivering technologies on mobile devices where in the post-pandemic context mobility is even more paramount. 

Winner:  SketchUp (2022) Ecosystem

Although not new to the AIA conferences and profession, Sketchup came to AIA22 with a trio of significant advances creating new workflows and pathways for digital design. Sketchup released a revolutionary toolset for design on the Apple iPad, re-introducing Sketchup as a full-featured design tool for a new generation. “An amazing design user interface and full-featured application to the iPad leveraging the Apple pen and gestures in ways eclipsing Sketchup’s famous push-pull logic,” notes Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor. In addition, Sketchup demonstrated and released a set of powerful Scan Essentials for the use of point scans in the recognized Sketchup ease-of-use paradigm. “Also new in 2022 is native support for Apple’s energy-efficient but powerful M-series (ARM-based) processor-based Mac computers,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. “This means users can power through very large models more easily while using fewer energy resources—a form of “green modeling” if you will.”

Winner:  Spaces

Spaces is a powerful new (October 2021) anywhere/anytime conceptual design tool immediately competing with other leading intuitive 3D digital design tools on the iPad. Integrating the Apple Pen and iPad sketching interface potential, Spaces integrates powerful computational design, parametrics,  and data melding on an Apple iPad. Cerulean Labs founder, Campbell Yule, a veteran of the AEC tool design community, has created a compelling Apple Pen-driven user interface (UI) for sketching conceptual buildings in 3D, and has combined this UI with building intelligence provides comprehensive space planning, sun studies, notetaking and a sketchbook with snapshots (where you can trace over with options). “Spaces provides a creative, pen-driven, rapidly iterative, and intuitive UI on the Apple iPad with BIM-accurate high-level information feedback for reporting,” observed Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor.

BEST of SHOW — BIM Category

This year we have multiple winners. BIM solutions today are quite mature and in some cases based on extremely mature underlying technologies. We are mindful of the frustrations expressed in the industry at the pace of innovation in this area and ever more concerned to look for areas of progress speed-up. With the computer industry going through a chip transformation wherein ARM-architecture chips are now taking over Intel X86 architecture chips in both data centers and especially portable desktop computers (laptops)—because they lead in performance per watt by a wide margin—we especially applaud solutions that are gearing up for or are now supportive of additional ARM chip architectures and other types of GPU-based acceleration technologies. 

We are also looking at an impressive acceleration of quality of solution (judging criterion), particularly in reference to convergence themes. The convergence of real-time rendering, itself helpfully benefitting from AI technology and new chip designs, into BIM solutions via integrations is a huge win for end users. The more internal and integrated solutions the better for users. 

Winner:  Vectorworks Architect 2022

Vectorworks Architect 2022 wins the BIM award in large measure due to its alignment with convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions. In more plain English, the company is ahead of the industry in supporting the underlying technologies of the immediate future in such areas as ARM-based SoC chip support and cross-platform optimization of low-overhead graphics APIs—both critical in addressing speed up of system response time when working with BIM models. “As a BIM platform, Vectorworks Architect with its Parasolid geometry engine increasingly offers users both simplified yet powerful modeling capabilities, such as its direct-editing modes on their new Walls technology,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. “Its direct stair editing and wall component controls further enable architects and designers to respond to the nuances of design while benefiting from parametrics,” adds Frausto-Robledo. Vectorworks 2022 also benefits from specialized sector support for BIM in the landscape and entertainment design space, with these tools having cross-over benefits for architects. Vectorworks feature increasingly powerful and sophisticated site modeling and grading control objects. And version 2022 saw a significant acceleration of solution in the linear, area, and volumetric take-off features.

Winner:  Archicad 25

Always a consistent winner in this award, Graphisoft does it again with Archicad 25. Dozens of new features pack further advances into this leading BIM solution including tools designed to aid firm migrations from Autodesk Revit to Archicad. “Archicad 25 crushes existing pain points in practice with innovative new abilities like its Quick Shift between 2D and 3D set of features. Another area that blew the lid off the competition is new features aimed at Overlay texture, patterned fills, and software shadows aimed at all kinds of elevation views and surfaces in sections,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. “These features add nuanced depth to how architects can decide to present ideas to clients and work out design direction internally.” Archicad 25 also advances its structural analytical model technologies, an area of clear industry leadership since Las Vegas 2019. “While not as far as its sibling Nemetschek Group company in support for new chip technologies,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “Archicad has embraced Apple’s low-overhead Metal API fully enabling faster workflows for its customers on the Apple Mac platform. Support for Apple Silicon should be imminent.”

BEST of SHOW —  CLOUD Category

Perhaps no other category reflects the underlying digital revolution that is mobile+cloud in the Cloud Computing Era. Cloud computing and smart mobile devices have revolutionized all of computing. In AEC they have sped up and created novel new workflows increasing client expectations and shortening project delivery schedules. Architectural practice has been liberated from CAD/BIM workstations and desks to anywhere, anytime, on any device access to your data or SSoT (single-source of truth). Of particular note, this category evaluates CDE (common data environment) applications that are central to a democratized access to a single source of truth (SSoT), though this year we chose to focus on practice management applications. 

Winner:  FactorAE

In a crowded field of practice management solutions, FactorAE stood out from the crowd in its simplified A/E industry focus. “Its impressive KPI (key performance indicators) dashboard with the ability to compare year-over-year and annual goals performance stood out for a solution this affordable and this simple,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, Architosh. “A simple SaaS solution at affordable pricing can make an impact on firm economic performance where data-driven knowledge-based decisions can help firm leaders know where the attention needs to go,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP.  FactorAE keeps to the essential features such as time recording, project timeline, project planning, budgets and fees, and sub-consultant management. While it offers invoicing functionality, it also features QuickBook integration. “FactorAE’s KPIs are the key ones architects at a minimum need to pay attention to, such as gross margin, realized rate, and achieved multiple,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP.

With pressing economic and productivity performative issues in the architectural industry, we have placed emphasis this year on practice management software solutions that can help architecture firms learn how to become more profitable, more stable, and more competitive. 

Honorable Mention: Unanet

Honorable Mention: BigTime Software

BEST of SHOW —  VISUALIZATION Category

Due to exciting chip and hardware advancements and their tight marriage with software, the AEC industry is benefitting from much faster and more compelling rendering technologies. These advances are reshaping entire workflows and heralding new ways of seeing architecture for all stakeholders. In the past, we would have placed our irisVR and similar virtual reality winners in this category, but this year our winners are both compelling rendering technologies with very broad support for a variety of leading tools. In the future, this category will continue to note AR/VR/XR technologies, plus some technologies related to the metaverse.  

Winner:  Enscape

One of the industry’s fastest-growing renderers is German-based Enscape which showed up at AIA22 demoing its new native macOS version along with its new version 3.3 features. Enscape, fresh from a recent merger with visualization leader Chaos this January, uniquely embeds its real-time technologies into host applications (it’s not a standalone tool) offering a more intimate connection between design activities and visualization. “Enscape’s integrated workflow is its unique strength,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh. “Their new Mac push democratizes this technology and will further exploit powerful advantages of ARM-based processors vis-a-vis Apple’s M-chips. All stakeholders benefit from this seamless project visualization.”  “Enscape is also leveraging NVIDIA Deep Learning Super Sampling to improve images, a convergence trend where AI interfaces with traditional rendering technologies,” adds Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh.

Winner:  Twinmotion

The latest release of Twinmotion (22022.1) delivers compelling new features to a previous BEST of SHOW winner in the Innovation Category. We created a new Visualization Category so we can focus more fully on how new visualization technologies are transforming the architect’s workflow for the better. “The new Path Tracer and HDRI Skydome features greatly boost the quality of this software solution’s image quality,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, editor-in-chief, Architosh.  “In addition, Twinmotion Cloud multiplies the benefits of these new rendering workflows accelerating overall AEC processes.” “EPIC really pushes on both the ease-of-use entry points pairing TwinMotion with several BIM and CAD tools directly, and opens the door to a very powerful Unreal Engine for an advanced immense opportunity space for the visualization of 3D design and architecture,” adds Pete Evans, AIA, associate senior editor. This release also adds the ability to load and display point clouds, which further enhances new ways of seeing architecture and design.

Honorable Mention:  Lumion

More at the companion annual convention “perspectives” article which will be published in the days ahead. Please also look for our AIA show floor and technology session reports coming up later this week. This article had contributions from Anthony Frausto-Robledo.

[Editor’s note: We wish to make clear that there are multiple winners in three categories and no honorable mentions in Emergent, Innovation, and BIM categories.]

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IT’S HARD TO TOP THE OPENING DRAMA FROM the 2018 Conference in London when it was announced that Hexagon had acquired Brics. And Erik De Keyser, CEO of Bricsys, quickly put to rest any anxious concerns about the 2019 Conference by immediately announcing very positive first-year findings from this acquisition: (1) access to Hexagon customers, (2) new synergies with internal Hexagon partners such as Leica (more about this later), (3) credibility in global markets, and importantly that (4) the Bricsys DNA was unchanged to continue with its highly autonomous and synergistic spirit. A win for both parties as Bricsys continues to roll out a deeply integrated suite of tools for both the AEC and MCAD markets.

As the Bricsys 2019 Conference kicked off one very noticeable Dark UI was on clear display, evidencing the company’s ear to its customers’ needs.

Erik De Keyser also provided a quick summary of the upcoming conference sessions, which included a wealth of improvements (almost 400) over the past year, additional Machine Learning / Artificial Intelligence developments, and a laser focus on the market going forward, “One Platform for all Disciplines” within a larger family of specialty applications built on Bricsys defined as “The Collective.”

More details from the conference below.

BricsCAD V20

As the conference turned to the rollout of BricsCAD version 20, it was clear Bricsys valued its growing customer base. Robert Green, Director of Implementation, acknowledged this importance, describing how the company was very responsive to user requests through many listening sessions. By far the most requested feature which was promptly demonstrated was the Dark UI (user-interface). This was quickly and warmly received at the conference.

Bricsys V20 includes an interactive sweep tool along dynamically selected edges of complex shapes.

Then many new features were demonstrated live by Heidi Hewett to include Launcher improvements, UI improvements (many options and optimized for workflows (programs)), improvements to blockify (with library detection / replace), array and pattern detection (and automatic replace) and parameterize. An impressive new “copy guided” feature that detects context when copying and then applies to fix orientation and placement in acceptable options. 2D Auto-constraints and Flip parameters were also built into a block attribute panel along with constraints and states which can be animated.

Hans De Backer demonstrated some drawing refinements focusing intentionally on the importance of drawing as a natural and important function often missed in computer-aided design. He also continues this focus showing improvements to the user interface and the overall experience. Here he said, “best commands are those that you never enter,“ (showing new ways to understand the distance between two lines and, “In BricsCAD, you can draw lines!” and rectangles around dynamic UCS very intuitively.

A 3D scene with a virtual rotation point to orbit intuitively and maintain focus on the intended geometry.

He also showed maximizing viewports and a new toggle from model-to-drawing. Hans also demonstrated some dramatic performance improvements with a 500,000 line drawing translated on screen at full resolution and very responsively. There were also improvements to the 3D user interface for better user experience with virtual rotation points for orbiting around geometry to maintain an intended focus.

BricsCAD V20 features a new default point cloud rendering style where the size of the scan points are sized based on the viewing distance. This is an awesome feature!

One new 3D feature was an interactive sweep wherein the 3D operation, the sweep was dynamic for even picking the path along contiguous intersections. PT clouds also appeared an innovative BricsCAD v20 feature with dynamic points that were sized based on viewing distance with any effect that was quite impressive and artistic. Hans also noted how PT Cloud friendly BricsCAD v20 was for many variant types. And this efficiency also made BricsCAD v20 very image file friendly for many types and for massive files up to petabytes—especially important for stitched-drone images. And 24/7 was built in for BricsCAD for all maintenance users.

next page: Future of the BricsCAD Platform

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A World-Class Software Organization

With 4 offices and 90 internal employees and programmers—including some of the best mathematicians in the CAD/BIM industry—and 1200 members, the ODA appears to be a healthy and growing non-profit organization. The conference itself also showing growth even while in Milan and with a registration fee for the first time. The conference grew 50% over 2018 with over 150 attendees.

ODA President Neil Peterson reviewing the history, growth, and position of the Open Design Alliance.

Today, the ODA is tackling much more than (.dwg), the CAD file format that initiated its origins. The current ODA offerings to standard members include a “technology stack” (a unified collection of high-level SDKs) which ODA President Neil Peterson introduced as Drawings, Architecture, Visualize, Publish and Web.

The ODA’s conference site in Assago, Italy, a small 30-minute drive from Milan, Italy.

In addition, SDKs for BimRv (Revit), BimNv (Navisworks), C3D Modeler, Civil, Map3D and Mechanical are also available at an additional cost. Several of these technologies were presented at this week’s conference with more information below.

New Partnership with buildingSMART (bSi)

The ODA DevCon’19 Conference in Milan started with a significant announcement: buildingSMART (bSi) and ODA were forming a strategic partnership around technology supporting open standards for BIM. IFC and RVT support have been a recent top request of ODA membership and this year ODA has responded. IFC is a part of an interoperable workflow solution for BIM across software applications and platforms.

ODA President Neil Peterson presenting the ODA Technology Stack.

A central part of the strategic alliance between ODA and bSi is to establish a strong process and production standard that ODA can help develop and test prior to final standards are set and an ISO standard is completed. The standardization and implementation of IFC historically have been problematic across individual software with many solutions competing and conflicting. This will not be the case going forward with IFC4.2 (currently supported with ODA) and with a more robust and standardized IFC5 published within the next 1-2 years for both bSi and ODA.

Jeffrey Oullette, Assoc. AIA, IES, buildingSMART International discussing the mutual benefits of the strategic alliance between ODA and bSi and the trajectory of Open BIM and IFC.

Opening the BIM workflow involves a 2nd generation of building software tools where the ODA has become a critical enabler for the industry. These SDK tools become parts of manufacturer software tools and design software authoring solutions. In addition to these direct BIM workflow tools, ODA is creating a significant pathway for today’s cloud-based efforts as well. Several developments supporting BIM and cloud-based workflows were presented during the conference with timelines for additional improvements over the next year. (see next pages on cloud).

next pages: Modeling Developments, Open Cloud, Revit and Navisworks

The post ODA DevCon ’19—Coming Full Circle in The AEC Industry appeared first on Architosh.

The Value of Knowing Our Location in History

Since every great surge or TEP has two distinct halves with a turning point phase, we explained last year that we are largely somewhere in the latter years of that turning point. As Perez says, we turn from Installation (of the new paradigm-shifting technologies) to a period of true mass Deployment (of the new technologies). (see image 01 below) What largely seems to be happening this time is the first half, the Installation phase, seems to be unfolding longer than usual through four distinct sub-periods starting with the Intel chip. The four periods are the PC, the Internet, Mobile and now AI (artificial intelligence). We discuss below Google’s presentation at AIA that calls this AI period as the “fourth big shift” in the era of computing. (images 8 – 11) While the Mobile period built itself on the back of the Internet, which itself was built on the back of the PC revolution, this fourth period (or shift) of AI seems to be developing as a major force multiplier of the first three periods and inventions themselves. (see image 10 below) And consequently, Perez’s TEP model for this fifth Great Surge is protracted beyond the typical 20-30 years. 

MORE: CAD-CAM Execs Make 2019 Technology Trend Predictions

This challenges Perez’s TEP model which fully involves financial factors into technological revolutions as a single theory model. Are we in fact inside the Deployment phase or not? How does one explain AI, VR, AR technologies within her model? The curious reader is encouraged to read our Perspective from last year or her book itself. Better yet, her talks found on YouTube are a concise intro to her TEP theories. What is important about her theory model is how consist each great surge follows a typical pattern.

In a nutshell, a great invention is born. It fuels a revolutionary way of living and transforms life for all of society. In its first 20-30 years, the revolutionary new technology goes through an Installation period, displacing the old modality. There is consistently economic inequality during this phase as financial capital seeks profits in the new technologies while workers in the old technologies suffer de-skilling and depreciated prospects in their vanishing ways of working. The consistent turning point phase leads to war or economic depression or both. Society and governments reorganize after these crashes and socially recalibrate society for more equality, meanwhile institutionalizing the new ways of working. The Deployment phase is another 20-30 years of complete diffusion of the new technologies that initiated the revolution, to begin with. (see image 01)

01 – In each great surge (technology-economic paradigm) or TEP society goes through four key phases or periods, plus a 5th turning point phase.

Knowing our place in this TEP theory model is valuable, even if one disregards the economic and social aspects of it (the ebbs and flows of economic equalities). It instructs most powerfully that societies don’t go backward; de-skilling is a fact of life when revolutionary new technologies emerge; entire generations of workers naturally resist the new; the young consistently learn and embrace the new; old ways of doing things always eventually succumb to the new ways of working. If you begin a career while young in the Installation phase, by the time you are retiring you will have ridden the longest wave possible without having great disruption. If you begin your career in the Deployment phase, you will be hit with a new techno-economic paradigm (TEP) shift in your later working years and face “de-skilling.”

This is the larger framework but within this, we look at the entire AEC industry and see a series of related fourth shift innovations in the Digital Era. While AI may be the larger one, we also see VR/AR/MR technologies, drones, 3D printing, and robotics. We collectively refer to these fourth shift group of technologies as emergent technologies or (emTech) as stylized inside our new emTech-focused newsletter INSIDER Xpresso.

In the AEC industry, we seek to understand technology transformation from the 64,000 foot view using large economic history models like that from Carlota Perez, while bringing analysis down to the specific technologies and their localized and trade-specific implications. To use Perez’ term of “diffusion” we acknowledge that BIM, without the underlay of AI, has pushed quite fully into diffusion. But how will VR/AR/MR and AI affect BIM? How will BIM reach full deployment? What institutional factors will bring BIM to full maturity and are we 20 or 30 years away? These questions fascinate us and help us develop frameworks for understanding the smaller movements within technology. And they also help us evaluate a specific technology or company or product against this larger framework. 

The Master Builder’s Mind — One Mindedness Among the Many

This year we want to look at our framework in the most distilled way possible. The existential crisis facing humankind is our climate change crisis. But we also face a crisis of division, a crisis of consensus, a crisis of truth. Against this larger backdrop, the AEC industry is still struggling to reset itself in a post-Taylorism world. While flexible production abounds, it has done little to realign the AEC industry to solve its natural hyper-fragmentation and “information silos” problem. We need new technologies that drive at bringing multiple parties together, help multiple stakeholders arrive at consensus around issues and solutions, and insert evidence and science into a set of professions that have long held sway based on simply trust backed up with years of experience.

MORE: Master Builder 2.0—GRAPHISOFT Shapes Its Future Around Integration

As we look ahead we see the need to reimagine the AEC industry through the eyes of the Master Builder period, prior to the Renaissance—prior to the separation of design and construction into two different individuals. (This idea was gained from the GRAPHISOFT KCC 2019 event.) But no one person can do it all, so we must build systems that enhance single minds working in single teams while fostering tools that enable multiple minds and multiple teams to work as one. We need a One Mindedness philosophy of technological transformation—meaning being able to self-examine our beliefs in this industry about the limits and powers of the individual—gaining advantages of the mind of the Master Builder while simultaneously capitalizing on the inputs, values, and geniuses of many minds. 

The 2019 Firm of the year, Payette, a Boston-based firm also reflected these collective values through a broad leadership with professional and community service as part of its DNA in concert with its innovative and recognized architecture. During their award presentation, it was also clear how the younger, diverse voices of the firm contribute to key firm positions integrated deeply into the practice early.

02 – Payette of Boston, 2019 AIA Firm of the Year Award recipient. Payette not only develops bespoke technologies tools but diffuses them freely throughout the industry. Even brand new employees are encouraged to share their views and perspectives through a strong culture of inclusion.

We also saw multiple keynotes that celebrate the importance of getting all minds to be heard, represented and contributing to the great enterprises of life—from empowering girls who code so they can learn bravery and ambition, to the importance of universal access—not simply to enable the physically handicapped to enter and exit buildings but to get those with access needs to contribute to the profession itself by being members of it. 

If a new kind of one-mindedness represents the Master Builder’s mind made up of a collection of minds, to build that framework to accommodate and excel with many (if not evermore) minds is an idea worth pursuing. If those with physical disabilities have greater spatial awareness due to those disabilities, why are such folks with great spatial awareness not involved more in the creation of space itself? Why are they not architects?  We see that a greater breadth of access brings wider viewpoints and skills to the table. As such, access to tools and technology that are approached from more—not less—device types, platforms, and positions in the world, are of increased value to us all and worth propagating. 

Boiling this down to specifics, tools that talk to each other with APIs, more universal file formats, and use more technologies and methods that support the common good, will provide the greater pathway to wider and richer contributions from the diverse and the many. 

We saw this theme of one-mindedness in not only in the award winners but also throughout the conference. We will work through two themes which do cross-over but provide some focus across the awards.

Architecture or Gaming?

The first theme, Architecture or Gaming, was quite a phenomena this year. We had seen gaming companies at previous conferences, but not at this year’s level. Both Unreal and Unity had a significant presence on their own, and several additional companies (some previous award winners) continued their strong presence. The clear picture was that this seemed to be the year that gaming technologies and AEC software really came together. That was obvious with the innovation awards and even BIM awards this year. Unity Reflect showed a serious tie into the industry through Autodesk and Revit, and Epic showed its hand with its recent acquisition of TwinMotion that was also being shown in ARCHICAD 23 and released this fall. Vectorworks also had a strong lead into this convergent space with its partnership with Lumion. These solutions exhibited federated live-linking with multiple (BIM) software stakeholders (with the data) and the capability to export to almost any device for interaction with the design in a game-like environment. This capability really adds to the collaborative democratization of AEC data for all stakeholders on many platforms anywhere, anytime. This is a significant advance for the industry and profession. The Common Data Environment (CDE) is getting that much closer when the prominent game engines are the platform that connects…

03 – A Revit model is inside Unity Reflect, another democratizing technology that will bring BIM to more participants in the design-build-operate domains.

Another part of this anytime anywhere experience is also continuing to engage the extended reality (XR) industry which encompasses, virtual reality (VR), (AR) and even mixed reality (MR). Many of the companies previously reported on were present, but the biggest splash at A’19 was the arrival of Magic Leap One. The booth had reservations the entire conference. It was quite impressive and worthy of award this year and only framed the importance of these tools for the AEC profession and industry. Another XR platform, Station IX, also a new exhibitor at A’19 was also demonstrated with a high very demand throughout the conference. Reflected Reality (their appropriate description) really changed the immersive experience at a very high fidelity (near retinal resolution). The viewing surface is a mirror, which from the center of the display made for a very rich, convincing and exciting experience. With the resurgence of VR recently with lower cost headsets, it’s promising for AEC to be able to leverage this super high-quality immersive display, a newer technical immersive solution, for communicating high-quality design.

Additional examples in this crossover gaming and media space were shown at A’19. The new Oculus Quest and Rift S were both shown. Exciting hardware built by Reification was demoed on the exhibit floor shifting from VR to MR experiences on the fly. Even the award winner VIM AEC was connected to this XR theme directly being partnered with Magic Leap as an exclusive partner and media device for their CDE platform.

04 – Reification’s HTC Vive headset is a hacked MR device from a company offering a compelling mixture of VR and MR. Gaming technology is democratizing technology as this technology will eventually fully diffuse.

The ability for AEC to transport users between design ideation and user experience in an extended reality is clearly effective and important. New technologies to watch continuing to push XR over the next year will be these award winners and others not yet (visibly) on the conference scene such as OTOY/Octane Render 3 and Varjo. How we exist in these digital twins, these extended realities, provide thick conduits for effective understanding of how a design works and functions, and in the all too familiar perception of reality. What looks to be exciting with the gaming convergence, in its easy plug-and-go iterative live-linking (potential CDE), is that the information and deeper data will be accessible in new ways to see and make “design” even better in this complex world of today for all involved.

Bespoke Apps, APIs, and Big Data

The second theme pulling the awards together at A’19 was data. There were discussions of big data and open data and even data exchange, extending ideas of an open BIM at a deeper and finer granularity. This is important as the profession attempts to identify itself in the 21st Century. Clearly, things have changed, and the complexity of the built environment is a multitude more complicated than days prior. Again, thinking about the Master Builder with 21st Century tools, but this year’s conference made it clear that in almost every case and as Robert Ivy, FAIA described, a “collective genius” will win the day with the best solutions. Evermore, data and technology and presciently called in Session SA 220 “Designing in an Age of Technology, Data Visualization & AI” the “computational collective.”

05 – Graphisoft offers a glimpse of the granularity of data and BIM and new modes of connectivity and inter-app design and performance.

And speaking of computation, GRAPHISOFT’s ARCHICAD 23 continues its deep integration with McNeel’s Grasshopper, opening up the BIM application to the full spectrum of Rhino + Grasshopper ecosystem of applications such as Ladybug. The company also has future technologies (not shown at AIA but shown at their KCC in Vegas just days before AIA) that accelerates data exchange in AEC through a deeper more extended definition of BIM. (see: Architosh, “Master Builder 2.0—GRAPHISOFT Shapes ITs Future Around Integration,” 20 Jun3 2019). The company’s upcoming BIMx features a next-gen streaming engine and its own API bringing the power of BIMx to the web browser. This will undoubtedly have ripple effects for the company as BIMx is unrivaled in its user-experience (UX) between drawings, models and BIM data. 

VIM AEC also exhibited an approach to data exchange where the data throughout the experience is highly streamlined through game engine technology. VIMaec’s relationships with Unity and Magic Leap puts data and data visualization central in the CDE that covers the design to construction to facilities management.

07 – Bentley’s LEGION pedestrian simulation technology shown in action here on this screen helps architects design safer, more efficient and effective transit buildings. From the Bentley booth at AIA 19.

And Bentley’s Open Buildings Station Designer leverages a heavy-weight simulation solution (Legion) for a specific building typology design tool. While still BIM, this data-rich simulation environment (a dynamic digital twin) aims to improve user experience and infrastructure effectiveness in meaningful ways. It was a bespoke approach to creating a design solution, or a design application for a specific purpose that is really intriguing–even the heavy-weight establishment is moving rapidly toward bespoke and open technology solutions.

Layer App, born from an Architecture firm in the middle of the US, has deep development into project workflow communications and integrations into BIM (Revit currently). Designed to catch project communication errors early, it excels with an advanced interface and modern web tools such as hashtags and JSON APIs. This approach is aimed at both complex projects and small offices–a tool more open, flexible and accessible. Thematically spot on for this year’s conference.

08 – AI, history of technology in architecture, evolutionary solvers, neural networks and generative adversarial networks.

In multiple conference sessions, the advances in machine learning, robotics, solvers artificial intelligence and even generative adversarial networks reinforced the data to design theme. Firms are taking the initiative by supporting in-house R&D groups. HDR, Ennead Architects, Payette, Buro Happold, and others exhibited progressive transdisciplinary forays into technology and its relationship to the built environment. Buro Happold has created an open, mass-participation tool development space ( http://bhom.xyz ) to share applicable building design code. They are specifically targeting difficult challenges with these co-created tools as measuring behavioral and qualitative input and output.

09 – Fitness scores and the use of AI to transform the application of architectural design methodology.

Google also presented a session on their AEC vision in the frame of the 4th shift in computing technology (PC, Web, Mobile, and now AI) and circled around 4 factors they see revolving around how people live in the built environment: (1) voice as the new input, (2) cutting the cord, (3) on-demand services, and (4) smart home technology and how people build in the built environment: (1) drones & package delivery, (2) autonomous vehicles, modular building, and (4) Smart buildings. These are major shifts in how the population will exist and Google incubator (X) companies seem to be at the inflection point of data and AEC with major changes forecast.

10 – The fourth big shift in the era of computing. PC, Web, Mobile and now AI. Unlike past TEPs (techno-economic paradigms) the current 5th great surge has come in a series of linked waves that build on top of each other like Lego blocks. AI appears to be like the Lego board that grounds the three prior blocks and provides connectivity and linkages among all the previous three.

One other related keynote to touch on was Zipline ( https://flyzipline.com ). As if to bring home the Google message about drones and delivery, Zipline showed how they had developed an entire ecosystem around phone based technologies and a drone they developed to bring emergency medicines and blood throughout Rwanda and Ghana, Africa. Their system, so successful, is becoming a model for the US and FAA to test such services in the United States—potentially this year. The message of their work was already powerful, but then considering how open, collaborative and innovative they were to create this technology system and how it is now a model for others to develop around (right now) only emphasized how quickly these “developmental bumps” will be moving technology solutions forward and how it will impact the work that the AEC industry will do.

All told, meaningful and measurable work around developing data and technology is happening right now, which the Architosh 2019 Best of Show award winners clearly exhibited at an exciting and innovative level in Las Vegas at A’19. 

Conclusion

In the “Learning from Las Vegas,” site and theme of AIA 2019, the lessons were people voting with their feet. Today, innovative firms and organizations are seeing deeper, focusing on things that matter, moving the status quo through dedicated R&D groups, incorporating diverse voices and younger voices for forward progress and fighting the status quo. The continued changes and innovations we saw this year at A’19, the development bump, recognizes a wider and broader approach to solving architectural and design problems with integrated technologies and processes. 

11 – From Noise to Wisdom one must gather Data, organize into Information, transform into Knowledge, build Understanding and accrue Wisdom through its application.

Solving these complex challenges at a community level (and higher), for resilience, for cultural nuances, for universal access, even with robots as users, requires all the computational collective genius possible, to elevate the use of data and information to synthesized higher level solutions. 

(editor’s note: Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, also contributed this article.)

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BEST of SHOW Introduction

The BEST of SHOW awards are designed to recognize the most interesting and promising technologies, making an impact on architectural practice in the United States and globally.

Winners of these small honors receive recognition and digital BEST of SHOW placards for display in marketing and promotions and permanent placement onto Architosh’s BEST of SHOW winner’s roster page.

A companion “perspectives on BEST of SHOW” feature article—as in years past—further discusses and highlights the winning solutions within the context of a broader set of themes about technology in architectural practice and AEC in general. Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief, and Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh, walked the show floor, attended technology-centric sessions and events, and spoke to various industry peers about the trends pushing technology forward in architecture.

Brief Preface

AIA 2019 seemed to naturally build on the Architosh BEST of SHOW analysis (Perspectives) from 2018 around the work of Carlota Perez which we will discuss in the upcoming perspectives article. The innovations and developments this year also reflected the AIA 2019 conference theme as well. We witnessed a lot of evidence showing technologies extending BIM, CDEs, VR/AR (XR), AI/ML, PIM (and more) to the broadest definition of stakeholders and at a finer level of data than seen before.

Robert Ivy, FAIA, in his closing remarks in Las Vegas, noted the significance of this theme, “We are going to see a lot more collective genius. …no single brain will be big enough to master the body of knowledge required to lead the future.” This year’s awards reflect the collective, the inclusiveness, and diversity required, the granularity of data and information required to elevate design to its highest potential.

Award Categories and Criteria

We have maintained our award categories this year from last year—acknowleding that tools on specific platform types are not as important in the age of connected anywhere, anytime, any device access. The democratization of user data and access to that data are important measures of evaluation in these awards, but not to the entire detriment of sheer innovation and disruption. New solutions often take time to expand and serve the broadest of audiences—particularly coming from startups.

Our award categories are designed to be broad and flexible, enabling us to honorably note a product across a range of categories if so warranted.

• Emergent Technology (emTech) Category Award — acknowledges industry potential for bleeding edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice or create convergent technology paths and drive at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the most “promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative new directions in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the BIM workflow industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (d) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and toolchains are social and democratized to their fullest extent, and (e) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Mobile+Cloud+Web Category Award  — acknowledges technology solutions (software or hardware) driving at full utilization of synergistic and maturing “cloud-to-mobile” and “cloud-to-web” technology stacks, exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality and novelty, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing pain-points in AEC, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.

Congratulations to the 2019 AIA BEST of SHOW honorees listed below.

Architosh AIA 2019 BEST of SHOW Awards

BEST of SHOW — EMERGENT TECHNOLOGY Category

Winners in this category represent emergent technologies (emTech) that are far from “center-market” and much closer to “edge-of-market.” This means they have the potential for bending the trajectory of technologies near them—including creating a convergence of disparate tech—or offering completely alternative thematic change within the industry. An example of such a thematic change would be node-base visual programming tools like Generative Components or Grasshopper when they first emerged. They both bent the trajectory of existing technologies and offered a wholesale thematic change in terms of how architects work.

Winner: Magic Leap One

Magic Leap One, the augmented reality (AR) headset, was shown at this year’s AIA and draw massive lines of folks wanting to put it on and give it a spin. AIA attendees signed their names on big wait lists to get a chance to see how this long-awaited and much-hyped headset worked. Unlike VR devices, Magic Leap One places 3D objects inside your physical world in the same manner as Hololens but without the bulk. The device feels like wearing glasses and the hardware schema relative to your body is compelling—no tethers, no base stations. “As an exhibit demo, Magic Leap was very impressive. There were three of us simultaneously manipulating a model—moving, removing, grabbing, collaborating—very cool!,” said Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh. “We were taking apart an engine and the light field rendering technology and (inside out) tracking felt quite natural and remarkable.”

Magic Leap invested and partnered exclusively with VIM AEC (honored below) which indicates another vector forward for headset development and the AEC industry. “The Magic Leap system has been a critically held development (unicorn?) only recently commercially available and looks to be quickly making an impact in its utility and opportunities,” added Evans. “What’s interesting about the trajectory of this system is that the compute engine sits holster style on your hip with a shoulder strap,” adds Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “Long term this engine will get quite small and light and what this means is we are really looking at a full computer system in an entirely different form-factor, one very suitable for human mobility and for AEC industry job site work.”

Winner: Station IX  

Station IX is a complete physical environment similar to a VR cave but entirely different technologies. It supports sizes of different groups and the visualization was stunning and compelling. The sense of physically moving was very strong without the physical separation and discomfort inherent in headgear. Even without stereoscopic projection, the use of mirrors as the project surface creates a fidelity of reality unique to VR/AR collaborative technologies. “The photographic color depth, contrast, and resolution was really impressive with this high-end solution,” said Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh, “being able to display ideas through this new immersive solution provides a new level of realization and clarity of understanding.”

“What they call a ‘true to life’ experience reminded me of the wonders of Disney technology at different times of my life. It offers a natural way to experience immersive environments with other colleagues, albeit at a completely different price structure,” said Frausto-Robledo. “This technology might be very appropriate for large distributed companies, for towns and cities and their urban community planning and review, and institutions of learning.”

Honorable Mention:  No honorable mentions this year in the Emergent technology category.

BEST of SHOW  —  INNOVATION Category

Innovation category winners this year are introducing both brand new types of technologies, implementing superior quality of attack on known pain points using new innovative means, or demonstrating convergence within the industry that heralds promising new directions. The AEC industry is clearly in the midst of the “installation phase” of paradigm-shifting technologies. To round out a Carlota Perez set of terms, the full “deployment phase” of these technologies are still years out as the AEC industry waits for various convergences to play out their disruptions and settle fully. Once such convergence is the set of gaming technologies infiltrating the world of AEC pro software—what we dubbed the “game-ification” of architecture back in 2015. Gaming giants Epic and Unity are both heralding promising new directions in CAD industries.

Winner: Unity Reflect

Unity Reflect is the first big product coming out of the Autodesk and Unity partnership detailed from last year’s Autodesk Univerity. Both gaming giants—Unity Technologies and Epic with its Unreal Engine—have entered the professional CAD markets in the past year or so with an intensity not seen in the AEC industry since the first VR headsets. Multiple convergences of technology are layering on top of the AEC space and the game engine developers are best positioned to provide this layering. Game engines solve the pain point of getting BIM models into as many people’s hands as possible for greater stakeholder engagement and higher design resolution feedback and confirmation.

After installing the Unity Reflect plugin into Revit, with a single click of a button Revit BIM models is highly democratized for a project. Unity Reflect is an app for every device imaginable, including VR/AR headgear, offering full-spectrum engagement modalities for stakeholders. “Unity has put together packaged (vertical) solutions for AEC and ATM (Automotive Transportation Manufacturing) and the results are impressive,” said Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh. “They are serious about AEC. These moves are vital to the democratization of BIM and easing workflow toward more valuable iterations and prototypes of digital design…even training ‘naturally’ in the environment before it exists. It’s very powerful.” reflected Evans.

Unity Reflect brings over metadata and geometry data from Revit into its clients, offers federated models support for AECO discipline engagement, full element and layer support for viewing exactly what you want and can easily move around 10 million polygon models in real-time. “Unity’s roadmap looks impressive for Unity Reflect,” added Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “The company will deliver APIs that will enable more applications to interact with the Reflect environment, and plans for voice and annotation will enrich concurrent BIM model viewing with physically dispersed stakeholders on a variety of devices.”

Winner: GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD 23 and BIMx

GRAPHISOFT held its own key client conference (KCC) in Vegas just ahead of AIA and did a full unveiling of the latest version 23 release, including updates to its mobile platform, BIMx. Their upcoming releases for this year were also in their booth at AIA Vegas. This year we have awarded specific technologies for their innovations and power to herald new directions for the solution’s clients and the industry in general.

In particular, we are deeply impressed with the next-gen BIMx engine and direction to take BIMx to the web browser. GRAPHISOFT has also gone deeper with integration to Rhino and Grasshopper, enabling Rh+GH to access element surface geometry back in ARCHICAD to power more complex interactions through visual scripting and tap into the vast ecosystem of Rhino+Grasshopper extensions and tools—like Ladybug which performs detailed environmental climate analysis for building performance.

Firstly, the next-gen BIMx is a product of BIMx Lab. The app is actually available today for use, parallel to the current version of BIMx and BIMx Pro. The big innovation in the nex-gen BIMx Engine technology and its support for essentially unlimited BIM model sizes. BIMx Lab app is tremendously faster at loading BIM models because its new 3D engine uses “geometry streaming” technology. This means it streams into memory only the part of the BIM model that is visible, handling this dynamically in real-time. Even three-year-old iPad minis can load 50 million polygon models. Today’s powerful iPad Pro tablets will be able to vastly improve on that. If that isn’t enough, GRAPHISOFT is bringing BIMx to the web browser with the same features as the mobile version. “Seeing BIMx’s patented dynamic drawings to BIM model section technology working on the web browser was exciting. As mentioned when BIMx has first introduced years ago, it makes the relationship between drawings and BIM models extremely tangible,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. BIMx in the browser will also support game console controller support, but it massively democratizes BIM while simultaneously supports game-ification features that make the experience of interacting with BIM models very charming and engaging.

Honorable Mention: Unreal Game Engine (Epic) 

Epic deserves honorable mentions at AIA Vegas, the company only weeks ago announced its acquisition of Twinmotion (an Architosh BEST of SHOW winner last year) and has hundreds of thousands of downloads of its Unreal Studio product for CAD industries.  “Unreal’s acquisition of Twinmotion this summer reinforces the game-ification and real-time advantages of game engines and tools for AEC that will have serious consequences for both industries going forward,” said Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh. “The importance of gaming technology was very clear and present at the AIA conference this year. ” Both Epic and Unity have product release plans for this fall. Unity Reflect is releasing in the Fall. New versions of Unreal Engine technology are also releasing this fall. The AEC industry has two titans from the gaming industry in an arms race of sorts fighting to win over the best software product lines and their customers in AEC. The big winner from all of this is the entire AEC industry but architects, in particular, will soon be experiencing a democratizing of visualization skills. That will importantly benefit building owners who pay the price (bills) for not understanding project plans, make changes, and paying for expensive change orders.

BEST of SHOW  —  BIM Category

This year we have multiple winners. Last year we focused a bit on “design-to-fabrication,” a convergence theme that on Gartner’s Hype cycle (see chart image here) is arguably farther back than the game-ification of architecture. The popularity of VR headsets and Apple’s ARkit technologies in their iPhones—consumer technologies first, pro technologies second—means game tech has moved off the edge-of-market and entering mainstream use by architecture firms. Therefore, in looking at the BIM tool suites, we have turned our attention to convergence themes farther along in the adoption cycle. We are also looking at an impressive acceleration of quality of solution (b criterion), particularly in reference to convergence themes. 

Winner: Vectorworks Architect 2019

Vectorworks Architect 2019 has struck a high-point this year, particularly after its mid-year updates. The BIM application, often revered for its industry-leading 2D graphics capabilities, was early to market with IFC 4 RV V1.2 certification. It also advanced its Revit import capabilities, added BCF, and integrated, via a plugin, real-time interactive rendering with the industry’s leading and most popular interactive rendering package, Lumion. It also added 3D site model sculpting and direct editing of contours, along with AR tools in its mobile app, Nomad, in addition to immersive rendering technologies that work in democratizing environments like web browsers. “Vectorworks 2019 this year produced a very nice blend of updates, but the addition of live-linked connections to Lumion coupled with a suite of Open BIM and Revit support features truly boost this package’s appeal to architects and other design professionals,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, Architosh. “Vectorworks is attacking the convergence themes at every angle, including AR tools in its mobile app, but a killer new set of features may be getting lost in the mix and this involves their site model sculpting features—highly useful to landscape architects, urban designers, and architects in general.”

Winner: Bentley OpenBuildings Station Designer

OpenBuildings Station Designer introduces a thematic change in BIM tools—”building type” specific BIM design packages. In this case station design for rail and metro. A one-stop shop delivers comprehensive BIM technology formerly called AECOsim, combined with LEGION pedestrian simulation technology, a critical need for this building type range. Additionally, the product can support all AEC disciplines in a single package, supporting deliverables using the foundational Microstation technologies embedded in the solution, coupled with its native Generative Components for generative, computational design. “Bentley’s new OpenBuildings Station Designer combines AECOsim technology based on Microstation with LEGION modeler for pedestrian simulation, giving architects and other design professionals planning rail and metro stations comprehensive analysis and simulation tools for this complex building type,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief, Architosh. “Unlike a generic BIM tool, OpenBuilding Station Designer contains workflow and assets specific to rail and metro station design, including connections to OpenRail and OpenRoad for coordinated design integration with connected infrastructure. Bentley’s new direction reflects its ambitions to provide digital twin technologies to the infrastructure market.”

Winner: GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD 23

GRAPHISOFT has delivered several innovations this year that make its BIM software notable. In regards to convergence themes further along in the adoption cycle, AC 23 this year advances its BIM’s connections to the leading algorithmic visual-scripting modeling tool in Rhino-Grasshopper. Deeper connectivity with Rhino-Grasshopper enables BIM element “surface geometry” values to communicate back to Rhino-GH, from which the node-based visual-scripting tool can computationally generate both new forms but more importantly connect to Grasshopper’s vast ecosystem of plugins and extensions. This means tools like Ladybug, for example, which performs environmentally-informed design analysis on building designs to help architects develop more energy efficient structures, can become integrated into the ARCHICAD 23 workflow. “Architects on ARCHICAD 23 will gain a substantial computational design ecosystem from the world of Rhino+Grasshopper, with world-class analysis tools and much more,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, Architosh. “This may help more architects embrace computational design and the many benefits that come with it,” adds Frausto-Robledo.

Honorable Mention:  No honorable mentions this year in the BIM category.

BEST of SHOW —  Mobile+Cloud+Web

Perhaps no other category reflects the underlying digital revolution that is mobile+cloud. Cloud computing and smart mobile devices have revolutionized all of computing. In AEC they have sped-up and created novel new workflows increasing client expectations and shortening project delivery schedules. Architectural practice has been liberated from CAD/BIM workstations and desks to anywhere, anytime, on any device access to your data or SSoT (single-source of truth). Of particular note, this category evaluates CDE (common data environment) applications which are central to a democratized access to a single source of truth (SSoT). 

Winner: Layer App

Layer is a brand new app and is highly engaging in its use of mobile+cloud+web technologies, using portable Javascript (Angular JS) tools to enable rapid implementation and support on multiple platforms. Layer supports JSON API for integrations with tools such as Asana or other SaaS in the browser tools and integrates deeply into Revit for real-time data flow between spaces in Revit and data for those spaces. Supports all three AEC players from Design, Construction through Operations. Excellent use of UX/UI and modern web social technologies and methods of working (eg: hashtags, etc). Works on a per-element basis for pricing with unlimited projects, or buildings. “I had the good fortune of attending the session that explained the history behind this brand new application, developed with remarkable clarity of focus,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. Architosh. “Layer is one of the smartest applications I’ve seen in years, making great use of modern technologies in both modern hardware and software, offering a flexible project management system that works from design, construction, down to operations phases,” adds Frausto-Robledo.

Layer app can function on its own but works best through a plugin extension to Revit, connecting it to a BIM application. The company said it could connect to the BIMs in the future. Clicking on “spaces” in Revit, Layer instantly loads all valuable building data, including photos, files, and tasks associated with that space. It also features smarter meeting minutes, with Layer Smart Docs which let you hashtag elements and people in your notes. Clicking on those hashtags takes you directly into the Layer app system displaying relevant data around the element or person tagged, even if the notes have been copied into email. “An amazing aspect of Layer is the ability to custom it to your exact needs, creating any type of data field to be filled out, complete with UI/UX data field options like sliders or text input fields,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. Architosh. “Layer is an interesting new application that is fundamentally in the CDE category, it’s customizability is just one aspect, among several others, that sets it apart. We are excited to watch this app grow.”

Winner: Autodesk BIM 360

BIM 360 is aiming to be the preferred backbone for connecting everyone from design to owners in one place in an SSoT (single-source of truth) CDE. Autodesk has also acquired PlanGrid a popular SaaS tool with new BIM features recently added. Among both systems, Autodesk BIM 360, has deeper tools and more nuanced workflows, including more mature BIM model capabilities. “BIM 360 provides comprehensive role-based functionalities for the entire AECO team,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, Architosh. “Design package coordination and change visualization are superbly worked out in BIM 360, enabling users to understand multi-discipline changes over time.” Autodesk BIM 360 is a CDE (common data environment) that is optimized for Revit users with its BIM viewing tools. Other document types are supported within the CDE itself for both drawing sheets and backup data like photos, cut sheets, etcetera. Earlier in the year BIM 360 introduced construction cost management tools, making it more attractive to contractors.

Honorable Mention: VIM AEC

VIM AEC aims to completely democratize BIM and has an exclusive partnership with Magic Leap. Their booths at AIA Las Vegas sat side-by-side. The system uses the Unity engine and aims to automatically create the lightest weight BIM models that can be shared to all platforms, device types, including VR/AR headgear. When viewed through a web browser, VIM AEC presents BIM models that provide viewing control, transparency, white-mode, and data from objects. Users can adjust lighting levels and add Vnotes to the BIM environment. Magic Leap has made a significant investment in VIM AEC, the latter making a commitment to support Magic Leap’s spatial computing platform. Skender is an important early customer and user.

More at the companion annual convention “perspectives” article which will be published in the days ahead. Please also look for our AIA show floor and technology sessions reports coming up later this week. This article had contributions from Anthony Frausto-Robledo.

[Editor’s note: We wish to make clear that there are multiple winners in all four categories and no honorable mentions in Emergent and BIM categories.]

The post AIA 2019: Architosh awards 7th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for software and technology vendors at AIA National in Las Vegas appeared first on Architosh.

Introduction: Bricsys Is Now Part of Hexagon AB

Erik De Keyser, founder, and CEO of Bricsys started the conference with quite an announcement that captured the attention of all present. Hardly a minute into the presentation talking about the story of Bricsys, the Hexagon acquisition announcement caught the audience by surprise and truly changed the dynamic of the conference.

MORE: Breaking: HEXAGON Just Became World’s Largest AEC BIM & CAD Company

Erik talked about how Bricsys was at a pivot with its maturing CAD, BIM and MCAD products and that Hexagon was the ideal partner to move forward confidently. This announcement was followed by a Hexagon “Shape Matters” video and a short presentation by Rick Allen, President of Hexagon PPM, with a reassuring message that Briscys was part of a strategic and natural move into AEC for Hexagon with great alignment to its plant and process design products—CADWorx. Allen handed back to Erik who said he was, “Here to Stay!” allowing all to breathe a bit easier after not knowing exactly what the announcement might mean. (see: Architosh, “Hexagon Now Has End-to-End AEC solutions Platform with Acquisition of Bricsys,” 27 Oct 2018)

01 – CEO Erik De Keyser introducing the acquisition of Bricsys NV into Hexagon AB portfolio. (image: Pete Evans / Architosh. All rights reserved.)

Echoing the “Here to Stay” mantra with (.dwg), “We make BricsCAD a platform with technological leadership (around innovation, automation, and a contemporary GUI.)” with (.dwg)’s legacy itself many decades old, this seemed an admitted challenge. But a quick summary of the 2018 conference sessions included advancements in BIM around smart curtainwalls, model slicing, detail propagation and more. Advancements in MCAD capabilities include sheet metal modeling and automatic parameterization, just to begin.

02 Bricsys’ thematic conference announcement summarized and delivered.

03 – Bricsys thematic conference announcement summarized and delivered.

De Keyser also tied these bold statements with an elegant theme he described as “2xMies: 1. Less is More & 2. God is in the Details” which he attributed to a design engineering article by Jim Eyre & Eames Design to philosophically frame BricsCAD development, today and forward. This strategy is the linchpin to why Bricsys and their developments around (.dwg), BIM and MCAD are so powerful today—this year’s V19 of BricsCAD attacks 2D drawing, 3D modeling, BIM and MCAD all with a streamlined updated UI and in the universally accessible (.dwg) format.

04 – Jim Eyre to Eames: Standard products and purpose-built components. Bricsys BIM & MCAD: advanced, complementary and (.dwg).

A significant advancement on the toolset from the prior year, this release ambitiously brought machine learning into the BIM environment. As a way to integrate 3D CAD into BIM, Bricsys added tools that don’t just query—they layer intelligence into the model through auto-classification…3D solid modeling geometry becomes BIM objects such as columns, beams, walls, doors, etc..

BIMIFY (the CAD)

And not just BIMify: the Bricsys toolset sharpens further by being able to localize and understand detail conditions to replicate them throughout the model. Bricsys calls this Propagate (formerly “BIM Suggest”) and a manual detail change that takes the Level Of Detail (LOD) from 200 to 400 / 450 (for example) can propagate throughout the model automatically. The Propagate tool gives the user the chance to say yes or no for each potential instance, and then automatically proliferates that detail and its condition to every other similar scenario in the model. In the demonstration, that was a pretty powerful idea about what machine learning, CAD and BIM together can accomplish.

05 – Propagate takes a detail condition in context and finds all other conditions in the design to implement the detail—a roof coping in this case.

Additional demonstrations of tools like QuickDraw, Smart Curtainwall, TIN site construction, and multi-slicing showed what BricsCAD® BIM V19 could accomplish. These tools allow for the production and automation of the BIM process to create “Intelligent Collaboration” between designer and machine.

In amongst these demonstrations, one of the projects was populated by Revit family, (.rfa), files directly. Subtle, and in the spirit of open file formats that Bricsys has been championing for quite a while. The import of (.rfa) files is based on the work of the Open Design Alliance, the consortium that provides (.dwg) file compatibility libraries to Bricsys and other CAD system providers.

24/7 (the Cloud)

Another important tool Bricsys also spent some time presenting was Bricsys 24/7 —the Bricsys cloud collaboration solution. Drawing viewing, markup, and model management with access were demonstrated through a complex tunnel project involving over 2,000 drawings, 21 groups, and 140 users with metadata intact. Targeted next steps with 24/7 include IFC upgrades, WebGL in alignment with ODA’s BIM and DSF format and the support of (massive) AR/MR/VR models.

When Architosh published its special report and listings of CDEs for architects—that is common data environment tools for architects—the folks at Bricsys were quick to point out that they too had a CDE in the works called Bricsys 24/7. As a CDE, this is a tool that we will monitor closely in our future reports on CDEs in AEC in general.

A Couple of Perspectives (why, ROI, data structure & parameterize)

Day two of the conference started with a talk about switching from AutoCAD® to BricsCAD®. Robert Green and Heidi Hewett both presented quantitative and qualitative reasons for switching and how to reflect on that. From directly showing ROI and the ease of migration of such things as config files, CUIs and LSP files (very nuts and bolts) to talking about how it actually feels ( familiar, innovative GUI and still (.dwg)) it is clear that Bricsys is after disaffected AutoCAD users and sees the potential success. Hexagon sees that too.

MORE: Ultimate List of CDE (Common Data Environment) Apps for Architects

Robert hit hard the ROI with this diagram. The year 2 & 3 show costs for “All-In Maintenance” which Bricsys provides upgrades and support to the customer on top of a perpetual license. These differences from a particular CAD package subscription model create a convincing cost-benefit analysis that Bricsys and Hexagon see as very powerful going forward.

06 – BricsCAD ROI providing options and payback.

With this, Heidi demonstrated some of this innovation from her perspective as an AutoCAD® user. Data-linking (XLS), a single DIMension complex and nearest distance tools all showed small but powerful tweaks to workflows offered by BricsCAD V19. One particular tool that jumped out was called BLOCKify, where a selection of geometry was the basis for a complete drawing search and automatic creation of Blocks. This was shown in 3D CAD models as well, reducing a 35MB file to one-tenth the size in just seconds. And then, Heidi demonstrated Parameterize, where a simple 3D CAD design was turned into a parametric object automatically.

BricsCAD V19 was doing some impressive machine learning algorithms in the background. This tool was shown in a couple demonstrations and really hit home what power and potential BricsCAD V19 was sowing into the CAD/BIM and even MCAD continuum. BricsCAD V19 was able to predict what the parameters were from a “dumb” model, turning it into one with parameters and constraints.

07 – Parameterizing 3D geometry into a controlled design. Note “length, width, height and additional automatic parameters (that could be animated) with bodies and constraints.”

Hans De Backer, head of software development also demonstrated alongside Heidi showing some very robust developments around UI customization, PDF underlays, solid slicing, nearest object distance (even object to sub-object), point clouds and parametrization. Taking a one-line mechanical (diagrammatic CAD line), Hans was able to show how mechanical ducting and design took advantage of parameterization to the point of illustrating collisions—often a BIM mainstay—and something BricsCAD V19 leverages back to CAD simplicity with metadata (parameters and constraints) provided by impressive machine learning.

ODA Perspective

Open Design Alliance (ODA) President Neil Peterson took the stage and spoke to the history and future of open innovation. The ODA, a non-profit organization, has a 100-year commitment to prevent data obsolescence for future generations, based around file formats such as (.dwg), (.dgn) and working toward Navisworks and Revit as well. He spoke to the leading contribution that Bricsys has played in the development of the ODA’s Drawings API (formerly known as Teigha). As a founding member of the ODA, Bricsys is responsible for a lot of innovation in the Drawings API and remains a major contributor (and beneficiary) of the ODA’s work.

MCAD (Mechanical)

Bricsys has sold the combination of BricsCAD Platinum and Sheet Metal for several years. It is also, naturally built around the (.dwg) file format. Dimitri Ushakov, CEO of Bricsys Russia, presented the V19 release, combining these two products as BricsCAD Mechanical (MCAD) for product design and manufacturing. There was a strong sense that Bricsys was aiming to make a contrast between existing MCAD platforms with a non-history-based, direct-modeler with constraints, parameters, and a modern UI (user-interface). For those who are not aware, “direct modeling” technology has been all the rage in recent MCAD discourse.

As demonstrated earlier and as powerfully again, the “parametrize” capability to create an intelligent model was impressive. It was impressive on the AEC side with a 3D model intended as a parametric block, but also in the MCAD side of design. With these capabilities built on top of the historic and ubiquitous strength of (.dwg), Bricsys has created a compelling intelligent design platform covering both MCAD and AEC (BIM) spaces.

The UI for the Parameters and data structure managers were equally impressive. Topping that off was a demonstration of opening and editing Solidworks part files directly in a BricsCAD Mechanical assembly. Again, this showed a philosophy and vision toward interoperable file exchange, and one that powerfully crossed AEC to MCAD. Dimitri Ushakov described this philosophy through a series of “4-Why’s” that drive Bricsys MCAD development: 1- model freely (no history trap), (2) automated drafting, (3) use any data, and (4) parametric components (that are animated). The success of this vision was apparent when editing (a Solidworks part in an assembly) and copying features directly from one version of a design to a second version.

08 – Copying features from one body to another directly in BricsCAD Mechanical.

A very impressive series of features were shown including a constrained and parametric kinematic animation, and automated exploded representations with automated BOM & smart annotations. (see images 09 – 10 below)

09 – A complex drive assembly shown (auto) exploded representation.

10 – Drive assembly (auto) annotated detail key & BOM.

Also using this large demonstration model (which a new part was created in a top-down direct model generation), all sheet metal was batch-exported within about 3 minutes with a report that showed which parts were or were not manufacture-ready. Based on this report, the model was subsequently updated and re-exported, ready for manufacturing.

The Future

To close the conference, a session on where Bricsys saw its future was presented. First, managing expectations around artificial intelligence (AI) and further defining the idea of a focus around intelligent collaboration between the designer and the machine (CAD). Bricsys continues to see itself as responsible for solving the main geometry and relationship challenges—opportunities as the core for the Bricsys products with third-party API developers taking on the specific disciplinary toolset opportunities.

11 – Bricsys’ focus on the future of CAD+AI.

Erik de Keyser stressed the continued growth for 2D, 3D with continuously improved workflows leveraging machine intelligence. The 24/7 tools continue to quickly evolve with full BIM, PLM and PDM—envisioned including VR, AR, and MR “unlimited in project size”. These products would evolve as a black box for streaming content, and connecting all stakeholders in an open format and on one platform—(.dwg)—then building on open BIM formats (BCF and IFC4).

Even more tantalizing are the potentials Bricsys sees as the next thing while maintaining these extensive open standard toolsets. Bricsys is pushing the potential for machine learning (ML) and contextualization in design forward, for both “direct modeling” details and further elevating the context and semantics for meaningful design data.

And going forward with a big boost from Hexagon, for sure!

Conclusion and Analysis

One of the more interesting twists to the (.dwg) format is its range. It is a legacy format, an open one now, but one that was instrumental in establishing the CAD revolution and standards for (AEC) digital drawing, design, and drafting. CAD drafting, in particular, had become a documentation mainstay which evolved many offices’ creation of project documentation as a primary instrument of service. This primary business tool, in turn, redefined a generation of content creation in AEC. It extended to reach the ancillary markets for documentation and design around AEC, Civil, MCAD, and GIS, for instance, with new proprietary formats being defined to contain the metadata around the geometry drawn in CAD. And generally speaking, BIM is metadata with geometry as well.

It bears repeating the conceptual vision that CEO Erik de Keyser presented—the potential where BricsCAD V19 is capable of a “2xMies” (1. Less is More & 2. God is in the Details). A CAD tool capable of spanning big ideas simply (direct non-history-based modeling; intuitive, streamlined and smart UI) across boundaries with attention to the details (in BIM and MCAD to start…) with powerful, innovative capabilities such as BIMify, Parameterize, auto-constraints, and Propagate.

An intelligent collaboration was the theme bringing together the BricsCAD BIM V19 and BricsCAD Mechanical V19 toolsets. Many examples were shown leveraging machine learning, design and data. The (.dwg) file format might have been considered outdated except for the intelligence woven in from the tools shown at Bricsys 2018. Based on what we saw, it’s clear that (.dwg) has a renewed lease on life and strong future potential as seen by both Bricsys and Hexagon. Intelligent collaboration—an intelligent digital model database around open (.dwg) to enable very innovative ideas combined with impressive possibilities and results available and desired toward an accessible Internet-based, data-driven world.

Notes

* CAD as an inclusive and traditional Computer Aided Design includes CAD, CAM, CAE, and even BIM. In particular, Bricsys using the veritable standard (.dwg) CAD format for these variations and forward-looking formats offers a fresh take on Computer Aided Design.

The post INSIDER: Bricsys 2018: CAD + Machine Learning Equals Intelligent Collaboration appeared first on Architosh.

The BEST of SHOW awards are designed to recognize the most interesting technologies making, or destined to make, an impact on architectural practice here in the United States and abroad.

Winners of these small honors receive digital BEST of SHOW placards for display in marketing and promotions and placement onto Architosh’s BEST of SHOW winners roster page.

A companion “perspectives” article—as in previous years—will provide an overview narrative behind this year’s winners as well as discuss the larger themes of technology in architectural practice. Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief, and Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, Architosh, walked the show floor, attended several key meetings, and spoke to various industry peers in an effort to suss out what technologies were most deserving of focus and attention at this year’s show in and around New York City.

Preface

This year was noteworthy in the history of the Architosh BEST of SHOW awards program as there was not a continued surge this year in emerging new technologies as 2016 recognized solutions for augmented reality, virtual reality and algorithmic design. This year there was a maturation, iterative growth and coherence to the software and technology presented at this year’s AIA National. Therefore, after some discussion the categories were refined for this year to include three categories: Innovation, BIM, and a new refined category we are calling Mobile+Cloud+Web. This year’s “more developed” theme also appears to support larger ideas discussed and presented in the upcoming companion “Perspectives” article.

Award Introductions and Criteria

We have changed our award categories this year by eliminating the Desktop category. With data and workflows no longer bound to particular device types but instead dispersed across devices and workflow scenarios—thanks to the cloud—we have replaced the Desktop category with a category named Mobile+Cloud+Web. This essentially retires the older Mobile category award as well. Additionally, this year we found no technology at AIA National worthy of the Emergent Technology Award. This year’s award categories and criteria are below.

• Emergent Category Award — acknowledges industry potential for bleeding edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice or create convergent technology paths and drive at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the most “promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative new directions in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the BIM workflow industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (c) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and tool chains are social and democratized to their fullest extent, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.
• Mobile+Cloud+Web Category Award  — acknowledges technology solutions (software or hardware) driving at full utilization of synergistic and maturing “cloud-to-mobile” and “cloud-to-web” technology stacks, exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing pain-points in AEC, and (d) fitting convergent technology paths and driving at synergistic directions for the industry.

Congratulations to the 2018 BEST of SHOW honorees listed below.

Architosh AIA 2018 BEST of SHOW Awards

BEST of SHOW — INNOVATION Category

Innovation category winners this year are both innovative and promising, shipping now or imminently available. This is technology—even if beta—that can often be put to use today. This honor looks at quality of attack at identified or known pain points in practice in addition to other criteria, such as quality of implementation. In particular, this innovation category showed a supportive expansion to a now more mature and central workflows–complementary in ways that both support ideas in the latter parts of the Gartner Hype curve, described as the “Plateau of Productivity” that Architosh incorporated in the 2016 Perspectives and appropriately dovetails into this year’s theme with Carlota Perez’s “Smart Green Future” that she locates in today’s precarious global economy (?) as a 5th technological revolution and potentially at the early part of a “Deployment Phase” which will be further articulated in the companion 2018 Perspective article.

Winner: Vectorworks Architect 2018

Vectorworks Architect 2018 accelerates the architect from the beginning of an idea through a comprehensive BIM process in a very open and creative workflow, uniquely, within a single software. This is an ideal example of the power an innovative software that can provide even a small firm, which can then collaborate in powerful ways with very extensible support for open standards and direct support for several softwares for design, analysis and construction. Vectorworks Architect 2018 innovations are enhanced design modeling, workflows (including extremely dynamic UI drawing views), and Macbook Pro Touch bar support, Web View (across all devices for anytime anywhere model review) in 3D and 360 VR, revamped Renderworks and improved cloud services. “Vectorworks Architect 2018 boasts an impressive new multiple viewports technology plus an array of enhancements including new API integration with sister company Bluebeam’s cloud-based “sessions” technology,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. “The qualities of the implementations of new features in version 2018 make Vectorworks Architect 2018 a standout product at this year’s AIA.”

Winner: Abvent Twinmotion 2019

A brand new release the week of the AIA 2018 convention, Abvent presented a strong upgrade to Twinmotion. Several functions that were native and impressive to Twinmotion already were incorporated into VR menus for control within the environment. It was noted by both Architosh editors how impressive it was to have the motion-based vegetation, people and even environmental conditions (including rain and snow!) to enrich the feeling of the design in its intended place. A parallel improvement released with this new version also added the geo-location and compass information as well as the correct virtual horizon and distant surroundings. Pete Evans, AIA commented, “This is pretty amazing to be able to author a BIM model and provide this rich, dynamic context for experiencing design ideas. Twinmotion is well beyond just a technically correct immersive environment.” “I am just deeply impressed with the visual quality for a real-time renderer,” adds Frausto-Robledo. “At the heart of this innovation is the leading use of the Unreal Game engine in an AEC industry app, a smart move that enables Twinmotion to focus its resources on features useful to architects rather than on development resources focused on 3d visualization engine technology.”

Honorable Mention: IrisVR

Drag and drop plug-in level virtual reality presence at the convention was strong again with multiple vendors present and the innovations were incremental, but important steps for the technology and AEC community. IrisVR stood out as addressing a multi-user approach to VR through a very clean user interface and experience. This multi-user approach posed simple avatars representing the users each other with audio adding to sense of immersion in the model. On the exhibit floor, IrisVR had both Architosh editors in a shared environment that proved fluid and intuitive enough to convince us that this might be a rapid, iterative and collaborative project meeting space for teams especially when distant. “Today, the project experience in VR can be social and not solo, and that is significant,” said Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA. “Despite the hoopla about AR being more important than VR, we see VR collaboration becoming a de facto way of teams working together to solve a multitude of problems in AEC.”

BEST of SHOW — BIM Category

This year the BIM category acknowledges tools serving the BIM workflow transformation, including design to fabrication. Some tools that impact the BIM workflow may be awarded in other categories. Winners here emphasize the quality of attack on pain-points in BIM workflows and/or to commitments to Open BIM philosophies. The maturity of BIM workflows is fairly apparent this year which ties directly into Carlota Perez’s “Deployment Phase”—to be discussed in the upcoming Perspectives article. We seek BIM authoring tools that reach the widest set of users, across various toolchains and an emphasis on data fluidity across competing vendor ecosystems.

Winner: GRAPHISOFT ARCHICAD 22

ARCHICAD 22 has really pushed the possibilities of curtain wall design in BIM today. Curtain walls, a complex BIM family to manipulate, show just how powerful ARCHICAD’s solution will be for both traditional and algorithmic workflows for design and realization. GRAPHISOFT presented working demonstrations with McNeel’s Grasshopper for algorithmic integration for BIM curtain walls that were “live” in both softwares and could be manipulated from both softwares. The approach for GRAPHISOFT to work so tightly in a bi-directional manner with Rhino Grasshopper workflows illustrates the power and opportunity across any number of BIM opportunities that will greatly impact design and the production of buildings. Algorithmic design, a growing area in AEC, in this innovative solution, really showed the future potential today for an algorithmic integration into a mature and open BIM workflow. “The fluidity and elegance that ARCHICAD 22 implemented in the curtain wall toolset was very impressive,”  “The deepening connection to core BIM element tool chains to the leading algorithmic design software is just the most visible achievement,” adds Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “but lurking behind the surface is continued leading edge programming skills with the integration of ‘machine learning’ into ARCHICAD 22 for the benefit of the user.”

Winner: AutoDesk Revit 2019

Autodesk focused much effort into the broader discipline releases of Revit for 2019. The power of this integrated product approach is clear when you realize there are full Architectural, MEP, Civil releases and across the project lifecycle. This includes fabrication, which positions the architect from design (and others like structural detailing) into new areas of design realization. The power of this vision, architect as (direct) producer, was illustrated in multiple sessions at the convention this year and echoes the theme we Architosh editors felt was prevalent. “Autodesk’s vision of design-to-fabrication is at the heart of new construction methods and the “modernization of production”—to use Carlota Perez’s key terms which we will discuss in the Perspective feature coming up. This new dimension to our views about BIM brought refocused attention to Revit this year,” adds Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “Revit 2019 improves IFC 4 support and Rhino geometry is now supported, two areas we want to discuss in the Perspectives piece coming up.”

Honorable Mention: None  (no honorable mention in this category this year)

BEST of SHOW — Mobile+Cloud+Web Category

This redefined category recognizes both new and maturing products and technologies that solve both broad and narrow pain points in practice. Mobile+Cloud+Web continues to redefine an expanded practice anytime, anywhere, and any device. Being able to connect into project information at different levels of interaction or immersion for many purposes also supports the maturity of the general practice tools with broadened capabilities and efficiencies. Of note, this is the category Architosh will evaluate CDEs (common data environments) applications now and in the future. 

Winner: AutoDesk BIM 360 Design

The integrated approach Autodesk offers with its AEC portfolio is impressive and BIM 360 this year takes that potential to another level. As a common data environment, all models can be aggregated and documents can be viewed from the beginning of design to the functional operations of the building impressively as a “Change visualization.” BIM 360 pulls this together, albeit from an integrated portfolio, into a realized and continuous single point of truth for a project where it is possible to see the project at any point and understand the management and process of decisions and steps that produced the resultant building… or more succinctly the why. As a tool that captures the potential of productivity as envisioned by Perez, BIM 360 delivers. “Common data environment (CDEs) tools are major accelerators of productivity and sharp attacks at existing pain-points in the industry,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “and answering the ‘why’ of things when problems arise in projects is the mother of big pain points. The AEC industry moves faster than ever and will continue to accelerate and so an easy-to-use timeline interface that shows you clear packages of documents alongside reflective model states is core to addressing this. Autodesk BIM 360 Design delivers this beautifully. The next step is packaging the written communication (documenting who said what and why) along with docs and model states, which apparently is in the making.”

Winner: Bentley ContextCapture

Although Bentley’s ContextCapture software has been in existence for years, “reality capture” technology is now hitting the mainstream due to converging innovations. Helsinki’s work with Finnish software company Umbra has the latter massively compressing a 700 GB texture-mapped mesh model into something that will stream to a iPad or VR headset device. In that case, a gaming technology innovator is targeting the AEC industry. ContextCapture can produce mm accurate 3D mesh models, fully texture mapped, from both photographs, video and point-cloud data or all of the above. This data can be further integrated and checked against GIS and CAD data.

“What we recognize now is that multiple target devices, from VR gear to high-tech construction hardhats will emerge as destinations for two important overlapping 3D datasets,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. “One dataset is the captured 3D model while the other will be the authored BIM model. The uses for how these two models will interact will inform AECO professionals in a multitude of ways across the building lifecycle.” Bentley’s ContextCapture is arguably the most powerful and extensive reality modeling system in existence with flexible solutions for desktop, mobile and the cloud as a service.

Honorable Mention: Modelo

Described as a design asset management platform for everyone, Modelo has produced a web-based solution for the complex AEC world for true anytime anywhere ability. With web collaboration, markup capability and presentation capability–all through the browser (including animation and VR for Google cardboard with hyperlinks), Modelo has produced a significant central design hub for teams in the cloud—one that can be embedded in a web-page as an HTML object on a typical webpage. “The narrative experience of telling stories (in design) comes across strongly with Modelo as it is vital in how architecture is sold, understood and packaged to stakeholders in the industry,” describes Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP.

Honorable Mention: Datacolor Color Reader

A new attendee at the AIA conference, Datacolor demonstrated two ColorReader models on the exhibit floor. These ColorReaders exemplify the potentials converging hardware and software for a new generation of tools for the AEC profession and industry. It puts the architect into a new relationship with their environment in a analogous way to when laser distance measuring tools became available. Now architects in almost any office, can have a tool in their pocket or toolkit which can capture on demand color on stone, synthetics, or other contextual design cues. This hardware combined with software connected to the cloud bringing several paint families and color definitions in a very open and prosumer/professional manner allowing color families and local brands to enhance project color management. An exciting aspect this award recognizes is the potential to cross the physical environment into digital as Pete Evans, AIA noted, “Datacolor’s ColorReader technology brings a design previsualization even closer to the intended realization. Color and texture are really important parts of the design and ColorData have really addressed this elegantly.”

More at the companion annual convention “perspectives” article which will be online shortly.

[Editor’s note: We have updated this article to make it clear there is no honorable mention in the BIM category award and there are two winners in the BIM category award. There are multiple winners in other categories. 

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01 – The 2017 Graebert Annual Meeting was held in the DZ Bank building by Frank Gehry.

This October’s meeting was held in the AXICA Conference Center designed by Frank Gehry and completed in 2001. This context was intentional as part of the story of a small upstart company with new ideas and one that is now reflecting and ready for the next steps forward. The dynamic vision which Graebert sees its place as an innovative leader in the CAD industry today was evident in this choice of venue.

02 – Inside the Frank Gehry designed conference facilities in Berlin, Germany.

03 – Another view of from within the atrium looking at classic Gehry-esque form-making.

Grabert organized this year’s conference to show its new, refreshed, and upcoming products. Graebert also invited its partners and customers to show their work and tell their stories using Graebert CAD products in various ways. Two of the principle announcements were about the new versions of ARES Commander (2018), its flagship desktop application and ARES Kudo, the cloud-based CAD solution from Graebert, both of which were reported on at the time of the conference.

MORE: ARES Kudo Cloud-Based CAD—Now Released and Growing

Wilfried Graebert started off the conference with a recap of the company’s year that included growth across the organization. It was noted that the market doubled in Japan for Graebert and that 3 of the top 5 contractors were using Graebert products. India was also a rapidly growing market segment with Graebert responding with road shows happening still this year across India in New Dehli, Bangalore, and Mumbai. Wilfried noted internal staffing growth in India to support this work as well as a new floor for the home office in Berlin to support more Graebert growth.

Besides the announcements of ARES Commander and Kudo, other Graebert announcements included updates on ARES Touch, the company’s mobile solution. Rather than an annual release, the mobile ecosystem has a different pace for updates around 6-8 weeks which Graebert is evolving ARES Touch around. These coordinated yet different platforms also provide Graebert with another way to work with customers. The “Trinity of CAD” platform approach allows a flexible platform that is less dependent on controlled simultaneous releases; it is partial to a company’s internal software strategies such as MDM (mobile device management), where the company may choose to stay with a version until a point at which the company needs to migrate to a new version.

ARES Map and Mechanical were also presented and shown as custom variations of ARES—vertically extending Graebert as a tool builder in the mechanical field and areas utilizing GIS. In both applications, specific industry tools and workflows are tailored on top of core ARES CAD tools to provide user-centric assets such as mechanical resources, engineering standards, mechanical block libraries, GIS data management and GIS feature highlighting.

04 – ARES Sketch is an all-new tool as part of the Trinity of CAD system by Graebert.

Graebert Sitemaster was presented by Felix Graebert similarly as a continuation of ARES and CAD into a specific domain with a customized industry workflow benefiting the user. One of the most important announcements with Sitemaster was the expansion to iOS and Android in the first quarter of 2018. This expands from the original Windows mobile platform where Sitemaster started. This adds to the “Trinity of CAD” offering in a couple of ways: (1) the advances in Sitemaster with distance laser input and touch drawing conventions add to ARES Touch and (2) ARES Kudo provides cloud support and file exchange to Sitemaster. Graebert’s “Trinity of CAD” gets stronger from this product and the product becomes another industry solution for the “Trinity of CAD” strategy.

05 – Another view of ARES Sketch which will run on Windows.

While 3D has not been a central focus for Graebert, this year, it was also apparent that it is not ignoring this part of its capabilities either. Graebert announced it is supporting a rendering plugin from Unicorn Render ($149EU/YR). This physics-based rendering engine links to the CAD file and can update the rendering in both a quick and full rendering mode. This plugin supports HDRI lighting with CPU/GPU rendering and can output photorealistic renderings, animations, and 360º virtual reality panoramas. This plugin offered a lightweight user interface for ease-of-use for ARES Commander users and was announced as available for OEM versions of ARES in both the quick and full versions.

As a final announcement with many details yet to be finalized, Robert Graebert demonstrated a new tool called ARES Sketch. (images 04 – 05) ARES SKetch can simply be described as a lightweight CAD solution with ARES MAP (GIS) features. This new tool looks to be solving a property assessment opportunity in the United States. The streamlined user interface aims to solve a mobile CAD authoring problem for non-CAD users where the metadata assessors need are easily present as CAD object properties preset into assessment industry formats.

While ARES Sketch seemed unassuming and a quick announcement, it spoke volumes to the strategy Graebert is carrying forward as a company: “We are confident we have a competitive, high-performing CAD solution – one that is stable and easy to deploy (and be repackaged) across platforms (and industries),” said Cedric Desbordes, of Graebert.

06 – Toolmaker Vectoflow utilizes Graebert’s ARES technology as part of an impressive automated workflow.

Graebert partners and customers contributed to this theme presenting their work with unique requirements that Graebert was able to provide. There was a presentation from toolmaker Vectoflow where Graebert drawing was part of an impressive automated workflow for additive SLS metal tool products that gave Vectoflow 10 minute design changes to a product across 5 concurrent models (!) and 4 integral drawing views in Onshape. This triangulation for Graebert providing Onshape with the drawing engine that Vectoflow can leverage to automate its business processes is a win for all included and especially Vectoflow who created a new business based on knowledge and technologies providing powerful customized workflows.

Pentair (further described in my next article coming up), CAFM provider Kessler Solutions (Facilities Management OEM), and Auxitec (3D Piping OEM) also shared their Graebert solutions and successes. This format where Graebert was not center stage again spoke to a partnering conference theme that came across strongly. Importantly, it is not just a theme for a conference but the very real reflection of the German CAD software company’s expanding OEM ecosystem and partnering network.

https://architosh.com/2018/11/not-redundant-but-important-autodesk-paints-a-better-future-under-automation/

(disclosure: Graebert of Germany paid for transportation, hotel, and some meals.)

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The post Alternative to Innovative—Notes From 2017 Annual Graebert Meeting appeared first on Architosh.

This year we decided to turn this “perspectives” feature on the BEST of SHOW at AIA into a conversation. We typically have an intense conversation anyway during and after the show debating merit and the various themes emerging in IT technologies for architectural practice.

This conversation not only discusses various products and technologies shown at the show and highlighted for our readers, it, more importantly, aims to provide our own activities in reviewing these technologies annually additional structure. We used the Hype Cycle as an armature about which we could position companies, their tech, and their products and services. Moreover, it served to highlight points in time (e.g.: edge of reality, edge of market) where technologies become discovered and discussed in the larger context before they are mass adopted. Dead smack in the middle of the Hype Cycle is this point where less than 5 percent of a potential audience has actually adopted a technology fully.

If we were to use the Hype Cycle—which was a concept developed by IT research firm Gartner—and frame a left side and right side analysis overlay on the technologies we saw at the show in Philly, BIM as a mainline authoring platform tool, a backbone technology in a workflow transformation, would be on the right side. BIM adoption is much more than 5 percent. However, technology like AR (augmented reality) is far left side on the chart.

01 – The Hype Cycle, made famous by Gartner. Image: Wikipedia Commons.

In comparing all that we saw, and given the ground we have traveled, we began to see BIM maturing, in light of the reality of boots on the ground with it. This “beyond BIM” view was further reinforced by Neri Oxman’s powerful and gripping picture of the future of designing and making in our world. (watch the video below for a taste of what we saw at AIA).

Discussion

Beyond BIM

Anthony:  I think this year at AIA Philly we clearly noticed a shift was underway within software and technologies in architectural practice, in fact all of AEC. BIM is no longer the center of gravity that it once was. The primary BIM authoring tools, while still advancing, have greatly matured to the point that perhaps the essence of what BIM is really about—process change—is finally making itself clear. And I think it was fitting that Neri Oxman was here in Philly to talk because her work offers a fascinating peak around the bend at where the future of making products, both tiny and massive, is headed.

More instructive still, Oxman’s talk clearly delineated the importance of four key fields that, while incredibly new, when they overlap, power the types of innovations she is interested in in the pursuit of single-material systems in lieu of assemblies of multi-material systems. Working at the intersection of computation design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering and synthetic biology, her pioneering work temps us, as architects, to imagine our roles in society in broader terms. This fit with the AIA’s “take risks” theme this year. And insofar as our editorial tasks involves highlighting new and exciting technologies shown at the AIA National, this widening lens causes one to reframe BIM differently.

Pete:  Yes, it was an interesting phenomena this year to see the maturity of BIM appear almost common and the fringe of seemingly impractical issues take a front seat. Neri Oxman really seemed to be the spark taking the conversation about where the next bend in practice and research might lead. And ironically, it was the transformation of one of the old standards of practice that really brought the maturity of BIM into focus so as to see the forest for the trees.

Anthony:  Yes, you are referring to what Sweets has done internally with their product vision and more importantly their technology and how they see data for them working to serve the market. What they have done, and what they are doing, should get Gen-X architects excited to finally see where the Sweets data can really belong in their workflows. And for Millennials, it should introduce a brand perhaps for the first time.

Pete:  It was also a noticeable growth in the supporting technologies that have been emerging around BIM too. There was some clear culling of the field with some of the AR/VR we saw last year. What we saw this year was really doing the job well. That might have been part of the shift too where things around BIM and connecting BIM have a better place and focus now.

Edge of Reality

Anthony:  Introducing the Emergent Technologies category honor this year makes sense within this context where visions like Oxman’s imagine a more profound role for the architecture field in society. I imagine in the years to come AIA conventions will play hosts to the introduction of technologies that are farther afield, pre-alpha, even visionary early experiments. I think the Autodesk Project Fractal work is in this category.

Pete:  This Emergent Technologies category is a strong addition to the awards where the concepts and ideas are provocative. And it’s really important now as things continue to rapidly change and even accelerate in that change. It took a long time for the evolution or adoption of CAD to get to BIM and to where we are now. The advances in the next few years that will be taking place are important to discuss together as they will again evolve practice even more remarkable than before.

02 – Trimble booth fun…demonstration of new SketchUp technology with Microsoft Hololens.

For instance, what Trimble Sketchup and the Hololens did this year was like a TED talk on the exhibit floor of the AIA. It wasn’t quite ready for commercial adoption, but it was really amazing to experience and think about. It fundamentally changes how we can interact with design—past paper and the desktop screen—which is what we have grown accustomed to in the CAD and BIM era the past 30 years, and that is going to change quickly. The profession as a whole needs to be very aware of the likely change, anticipate the possibilities and be actively involved in that transition.

Edge of Market

Pete:  Continuing with the Innovation Award from last year, and with the introduction of the Emergent Award, there is a clear framework for discussion about where the provocative technologies are now impacting practice. This becomes a great way to recognize where a technology takes root and actually shifts practice orientation… something that is ready to be adopted and move practice forward. One winner from last year, CL3VER, who introduced a very unique WebGL/WebVR technology solution to architecture, was able to show a fantastic example of a client project that could be a template for more projects to develop through these innovative technologies.

Anthony:  Yes, the Innovation category has some flexibility too and that is helpful. Thematically, there are several things going on in practice; we might begin to describe some of these things as pressures or stresses on the discipline or business of architecture. For example, the product design software world has already passed through the phase of rapid high-quality rendering in products like KeyShot. The goal is vastly accelerated iteration time wherein photographic rendering imagery is seen as vital to the iteration loop. This trend is finally hitting hard now in AEC. Hence, the rise in tools like Lumion and the elegant way Chaos Group is taking V-Ray technology and its famed quality and making it much faster to get those results in many other programs. What we are going to see coming up fast and furious is the recognition that a complete loop of iteration in architecture requires photo-realistic rendering. This doesn’t drastically change how practice utilizes renderings—orientation wise—but it puts pressure to squeeze this quality into the iterative loop there today and it begins to changes the nature, and for some, necessity of arch viz specialists.

03 – Vray by Chaos Group integrated as plugin in Autodesk Revit.

What was also very edge of market or “early” is the concept of replacing our standard file systems with sophisticated CMS (content management systems) like AVAIL. Particularly where these architecture CMS systems dovetail nicely with the mainline tools architects use in their workflows—the whole idea is refreshingly innovative. What has to happen next is how AVAIL learns to work and extend out via the cloud so that such CMS systems can travel with the remote professional or deal with multiple offices.

Pete:  And presented together in the booth area (2711) on the exhibit floor, these four technology companies all showed their technology solutions tied into different parts of a project workflow that complemented each other, and showed a subtle but elegant solution in combination that was more about recognizing the need to be nimble and collaborative, to help the actual project improve by removing barriers and working together. It was a neat realization on the exhibit floor of several smaller technologies looking pretty big together.

The Desktop Honor: Not Second Fiddle to the BIM Award

Anthony:  Neri Oxman clearly amplifies or underlines the importance of computational design. If the AEC industry, and architects in particular, were having some second doubts (or perhaps still firsts…?) about whether computational design technologies are just a fad or going to be sticking around, Neri Oxman nailed shut any lingering doubts. What we see in her trailblazing work—and this goes to some of the things that the generative group at Autodesk is doing also—is that computational design technologies are vital—even foundational—for the future of architecture.

In a Thursday morning session titled, “21st Century Skillsets: Assuring Architects and Emerging Professionals Stay Ahead,” by Randy Deutch, AIA, LEED AP, the question of whether architects should know how to actually code or not came up. Randy Deutch, the speaker said, no. “But every architect should know how to communicate with a coder because in the future architects will be sitting side by side with coders in future practices.” That statement is bold, but Randy’s clarification of the issue gets better when the next question gets answered: how do architects learn how to communicate effectively with coders? The answer, or part of it, is learning to code themselves. Learning how to code, as the folks at Robert McNeel & Associates would say, teaches individuals a specific mode of attacking problem-solving.

04 – Marionette has wired nodes and a python backend with direct editing environments, all within Vectorworks 2016, an application whose popularity extends from its history for its ease of use and Mac legacy.

If computational design is going to be so vital to the future of practice, then tools that provide innovative “onramps” to this skill area need to be highlighted and discussed. The Vectorworks Marionette technology comes to mind because it does something really special in this regard: it puts the python code really close to the visual scripter, who, while working with nodes, can allow their curiosity to peak into the world of coding in a way that is non-threatening to the activity at hand. This is a critical reason why Vectorworks Architect 2016 is worthy of being praised this year, in addition to a tremendous acceleration in maturity as a product and the quality of attack on key pain points both inside and outside the edges of the BIM workflow.

Pete:  Yes, I agree. It’s important in recognizing that the desktop winner this year, Vectorworks, really does succeed at making that “onramp” possible for emerging and existing architects too. It’s a very effective way to communicate and understand the power of programming , but not one that is forceful… it’s just there and easily accessible. This parametric and computational approach is important for several advancing areas in the AECOO delivery structure too… again a reason why it’s important for architects to recognize, understand, and find a place for this (programming) capacity around architecture in the 21st Century.

A presentation from SHOP Architecture & Construction a few years ago at Iowa State was on one of their NYC projects. It showed where they created a workflow to parametrically generate and solve the facade panels of a multi-family residence, using SolidWorks. The connection to fabricating the facade was direct and controllable through a combination of accessible functions, relations, constraints, programming and onboard CAM into SolidWorks to realize the project objectives efficiently. Now today, with Grasshopper, Dynamo and specifically Marionette, these capabilities are powerful for both pragmatic and, as important, extensible design solutions. This is why the desktop honor is significant. Vectorworks still has this extensible capability within it, and major kudos too. But in the near future, it won’t necessarily be one application (the BIM application) as other design applications will be effortlessly pulling data from the BIM model information or driving it from completely unforeseen data and information sources. Combine that with Neri Oxman’s keynote and imagine the desktop tools for AECOO of the future…

Anthony:  I see the BIM platform tool as the pipe in the pipeline, and not the fluid traveling down it. I liked Phil Bernstein’s thoughts about putting one’s design data at the center of the process and not the applications. His comment that projects may have 40 to 50 apps involved in the future gets real very quickly when you ask “what counts as an app?” and look at things like the packaged focused tools in Autodesk Project Fractal or the python based plugins that can come out the backend of Marionette in Vectorworks. Bernstein mentioned Revit being the brain or managing a coherent topology. Today BIM workflows are still struggling with data fluidity from one vendor’s ecosystem of tools to another vendors…or even within one vendor. If BIM is going to get stuck around the “I” in BIM then BIM will get usurped by something better.

BIM and Mobile Get Clarified 

Pete:  For several years, the AIA Technology in Architectural Practice BIM Awards really focused on innovation in and around BIM workflows. This was a great recognition for the building industry and profession to recognize the place BIM was taking the industry. Recently it evolved to the “Innovation Awards” instead of the “BIM Awards” to recognize the many toolsets around BIM and the innovative democratization of data that was occurring around AECOO.

And that was very evident this year at the convention. The main BIM authoring tools are all doing great things at improving their workflows, but this year there appears to be real recognizable innovation elsewhere too. The Dodge Sweets app integration does this by becoming a focused filter for product searches and integration into an early BIM workflow. That “focused filter” is super important in today’s abundant returns in a Google search and Dodge solves this “unstructured” data problem by structuring it. This allows a once ubiquitous resource in pre-digital architecture to again find a very productive and useful place in new digital workflow where the “I” in BIM really shines and complements a model that doesn’t necessarily have to be overly defined in an early design phase. And the “I” can still be rich with ideas and information useful downstream in later project phases.

05 – Dodge Sweets apps for AutoCAD and Revit are based on an open SDK that will work with multiple BIM and software tools on the market.

Anthony:  Agreed. And ArchiCAD 20 had some big new features centered around the “I” in BIM as well. I think we need to be honest about this particular letter. If architects loved data or information, they wouldn’t have become architects. But this is going to have to change. Again, going back to computation, the meta data handling and how it can become rather sexy “info graphics” via the new graphic overrides in ArchiCAD 20 suggest how to make data in BIM models very exciting to think about. It is a bit like making Tableau for architects in 3D.

Pete:  I actually wonder what happens when you conceive of an architecture as a livable and functioning 3D information construct…

Anthony:  Getting back to the mobile category, a holy grail pursuit in AECOO is learning how to streamline how we can all work together, so AECOO can be as efficient as say aerospace or Apple’s design to manufacturing operations. From that view, Autodesk A360 and its subset offerings begin to offer the market significant test beds for holistic, all-party, project collaboration. I say test beds because these systems live in the cloud and work necessarily and particularly with mobile devices and both of those domains are extremely new and evolving quickly.

A concern I have is: will these systems find a way to open themselves up to rivals outside their ecosystems? After all, what is the damn point of BIM if we can’t have fluidity of data transfer without harming the democratization of data and toolchains? People want to develop capacity around the tools they are fond of—simple as that.

These collaboration spaces need to be online environments where everyone is welcome and treated the same. After all, this is about solving that single-source of truth issue. It’s like the sword Excalibur in Arthurian legend. Nobody can pull the sword from the rock, nobody can solve this single source of truth issue for all, until one recognizes that to be worthy of that great accomplishment takes something noble. What that is going to take in AECOO is going to have to be figured out, but it can’t start from self-centered aims. The industry has to come first. I’m not holding my breath.

Bringing It All Together

Anthony:  I am thinking a good way to close this talk is to go back to the Hype Cycle. If we were to look at all these award categories and where they might fall on the innovation Hype Cycle, we might say that Emergent technologies are barely on that curve at all. (see image 01)

We might say next that Innovation category winners are going to technologies that are firmly on the curve, have come to industry awareness at some level, and are somewhere closer or beyond mass media hype. VR has been passing through the mass media awareness point over the past 1-2 years, particularly in 2015. This perspective, one that orients and locates the various technologies shown at AIA National around a position on the Hyper Cycle is didactic. It should alert the reader, for instance, to tread carefully around certain technologies. After the Peak of Inflated Expectations comes supplier failures and consolidations. This can mean failure in choosing winner vendors and having to retreat back and choose and learn other technologies.

Yet, the AIA’s wish for us as professionals this year was to take risks. To recognize that risk-taking and building in failure as part of the innovation cycle is necessary—even in the field of architecture where culturally such views have been anathema. Architects are a “risk adverse” bunch. But our survival as a professional species depends now—more so than at any other time—on taking strategic and calculated risks.

06 – Neri Oxman’s presentation at AIA. In this slide we are looking at material modeling and in particular some biomimicry images, analysis of bone structure as densities change to reflect function. Neri envisions a world made up of single-material systems. Imagine a glass skyscraper that is only made of glass with properties that change in response to functional need based on position in architecture.

If we were to look at BIM from the standpoint of the primary authoring tools, Pete, where would you say these tools are? Would it not be the case that 20 – 30 percent of all architects have fully adopted BIM? Certainly some reports point to much higher numbers. Doesn’t this curve, which titles this phase with the use of the world “plateau” further support our early comment about BIM maturing?

Pete:  Yes, great point and I absolutely agree. One of the early studies I saw on the industry driving IT innovation was the lack of continuity or handoff issues of information from one phase to another or one consultant to the next. This was recognized as $15.8B wasted annually due to interoperability issues (NIST 2004). For BIM to be mature, this handoff must succeed at more than “BIM authoring tool to BIM authoring tool”…in a formal sense; the “I” in BIM must be fluidly interchangeable and very open—well past BIM.

The IFC format was there back in the day, and now is a lot more mature alongside developments with Level 2 BIM (in the UK) and more. The Autodesk and AIA DDx initiative and Dodge Sweets app integration really do show that the data ecosystem around BIM is very rich now, mature and in the Plateau of the Hype Curve. What this means to me is that we are definitely in a modern big data arena with massive unstructured and structured data issues. Both Architosh BEST of SHOW BIM winners directly address this with open and democratized-data results.

This may also be why the Neri Oxman presentation really hit home with many attendees. The computational potentials are very provocative and exciting and being at this maturity point, the Plateau in the Hype Curve means these potentials may be real…if only a short distance away in development and time.

The other Architosh BEST of SHOW awards this year show that too. And more so, every year the “time” axis on the Hype Cycle diagram is shortening making it the architect’s responsibility to understand the evolving technologies integrated and around BIM as important to understand and communicate around as ever.

Anthony: It is the architect’s responsibilities to understand the evolving context of technologies in practice and the built environment. We hope the BEST of SHOW series and discussions help the sorting process and stimulate the thinking of our readers.

The post Perspectives on BEST of SHOW 2016: From Edge of Market to Maturing BIM, Framing a New Lens appeared first on Architosh.

The BEST of SHOW honors at AIA are significant annual publishing moment. What is sometimes a sea of confusing technology choices and options—available to architects and exhibited at AIA National—we seek to frame, from year to year, a consistent yet evolving technologies in practice perspective. Our award honors go to companies and products we feel are making, or destined to make, an impact on architectural practice here in the United States and abroad.

A companion “perspectives” article—as in previous years—will provide a more elaborated discussion of the trend line in software and technologies in architectural practice, within an overview narrative that addresses “thematic” change and locates specific tech relative to the Hype Curve. Architosh, as been honored recently, to have hosted prominent international expert voices on the subject of the future of architectural practice and these discussions and published articles contribute to our views. (see: Architosh, “Phil Bernstein on the Changing Role of the 21 Century Architect—The Interview (Part 2),” 17 April 2016)

Winners of these small honors receive digital BEST of SHOW placards for display in marketing and promotions, and placement onto Architosh’s BEST of SHOW winners roster page.

Award Introduction

This year we have five categories of award honors. All five categories and the choices below reflect on our long-range thesis behind BEST of SHOW honors (read more here) yet specifically address key criteria behind each honor.

• Emergent Technology Award — acknowledges industry potential for bleeding edge technology implementations that will offer “thematic” change for practice.

• Innovation Category Award — acknowledges the most “promising” companies and products that are heralding innovative new directions in AEC software or hardware technologies, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, and (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice.

• BIM Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature companies and products serving the BIM workflow industry transformation, touching down at any segment of the MacLeamy Curve where value gets added, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in BIM workflows, (c) adoption, extension and commitment to Open BIM philosophies so that data and tool chains are social and democratized to their fullest extent. 

• Desktop Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature desktop software solutions exhibited or seen (can be shown at private event) at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, and (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice. Award may look at expanded “beyond BIM” view of technologies reframing the future of architectural practice and the activities of architects in society.

• Mobile Category Award — acknowledges both new or mature mobile software or hardware solutions exhibited or seen at the AIA convention, as measured by: (a) implementation quality, (b) acceleration of quality of solution, (c) quality of attack on addressing “pain points” in practice (specifically field-based), and (d) the solution runs on the Apple iOS platform. 

Below is our announcement of the 2016 BEST of SHOW honorees.

Architosh AIA 2016 BEST of SHOW

BEST of SHOW — Emergent Technology

This year we invented this category to address technology that is more bleeding edge and “thematic” in the sense that the technology can foster a theme change for how architectural practice works.

Winner: Trimble SketchUp with Microsoft Hololens AR Technologies

Trimble’s SketchUp division showcased an early alpha level preview of their work with the Microsoft Hololens, an augmented reality (AR) type device that showcases a holographic technology. “The potential degree of stakeholder interaction that this technology promises is quite breathtaking,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor. “This is an immense pivot-point for the AECOO community, a futuristic platform to leverage, that is already showing very impressive potentials today.”

Runner-Up: Autodesk’s Project Fractal

“Autodesk’s Project Fractal is taking algorithmic design to another level, transforming the architect and designer into a curator and editor of multitudes of computation-based results driven on parametric constraints and conditions,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, editor-in-chief. “The fact that it works through the web is also deeply promising and democratizing for users and access.” While maybe not as sexy as the Hololens work at Trimble, Fractal has serious future teeth. (we will be reporting much more deeply on it soon).

Related Post: See our Part 1 report on technologies at AIA to read more about Trimble’s work with Hololens. 

BEST of SHOW — Innovation Category

Similar to the award above, Innovation category winners are both innovative and promising, with shipping or imminently available kit. This is technology—even if beta—that can often be put to use today. This honor looks at quality of attack at identified or known pain points in practice in addition to other criteria, such as quality of implementation.

Winner(s): CL3VER, IrisVR, Vray (Chaos Group) and Avail (ArchVision) – “Booth 2711”

“This was a collaborative effort with clear benefit between four companies who’s innovative technologies all complement each other, resulting in a better whole,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor. “Paraphrasing what Denise Scott Brown said at the convention, ‘sometimes one plus one is more than two.’ In this case, the four together was much bigger than four individual companies.”

ArchVision showed AVAIL, a new approach for a “contextual” content management system (CMS) blending a firm’s LAN and cloud solutions. “AVAIL is an elegant concept, and take, on a CMS made for the architectural industry,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “the deep integration with Revit and its patent-pending Panoply technology all stood out at the show and attendees took notice.”

Chaos Group—the makers of the ever popular V-Ray renderer—showed big UI improvements in its physically-based rendering engine, even advancing that notion for that “easy” button architects yearn for in project visualization. “This came down to implementation quality and its elegant approach to bringing the power of V-Ray into popular programs like Revit and SketchUp,” says Frausto-Robledo. The company also has an updated SDK making it easy for other CAD and BIMs to tap the power of V-Ray.

“CL3VER presented a solution leveraging their web technology for AEC, industrial design, manufacturing and marketing—almost redefining the potentials of the web,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor. “We feel CL3VER, a winner last year, possesses edge of market technology that much of the AEC industry is one day going to grow into.” “The CL3VER and V-Ray partnership showcased at the exhibit booth was a convincing vision of how AEC manufacturing companies can transform the way architects and their clients can discover, learn about, imagine and visualize products in rendered pre-built environments,” adds Frausto-Robledo.

VR is one of those thematic changes confronting the AEC market that truly embodies the term edge of market. At last year’s AIA virtual reality was the biggest tech theme on the show floor. Our decision to award IrisVR an Innovation honor last year, among a crowded field, was based on the quality of their attack on the market.

“There are a lot of VR software companies out there,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “but IrisVR shines above the rest in their focus on serving AEC and for the quality of execution in their technology.” IrisVR presented workflows to mobile VR solutions and to both the major VR headset companies (Oculus Rift and HTC Vive) coming online right now wowing everyone in the crowd.

“In the same way we envision collaboration in BIM,” says Pete Evans, AIA, “allowing mutual benefit, this combined group (ArchVision, Chaos Group, CL3VER, and IrisVR) presented their ideas together about how to solve multiple issues surrounding practice today. Booth 2711 was full of many “big” and innovative ideas.”

Runner-Up:  No Runner Up

Related Post: Read our Part 2 report to learn more about all the companies mentioned in our Innovation section. 

BEST of SHOW — BIM Category

This category acknowledges tools serving the BIM workflow transformation. Some tools that impact the BIM workflow may be awarded in other categories. Winners here emphasize the quality of attack on pain-points in BIM workflows and/or to commitments to Open BIM philosophies. We seek BIM authoring tools that reach the widest set of users, across various toolchains and an emphasis on data fluidity across competing vendor ecosystems.

Winner:  Autodesk and AIA DDx (Design Data Exchange) System 2030 Commitment

“Autodesk and the AIA deserve recognition for this new tool solution in DDx,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP. “The new Design Data Exchange (DDx) system attacks a crucial pain point in BIM workflows that is committed to climate change initiatives. The system is also open source and can be utilized by other energy modeling software providers.” The new DDx system enables firms to report their project and performance data to AIA 2030 Commitment to data reporting system directly from Autodesk Insight 360 and FormIt 360 Pro, which should be acknowledged in this award.

Winner: Dodge Sweets App for Revit and AutoCAD

The folks behind Sweets have completely reengineered their thinking about the famous—but no longer truly ubiquitous—AEC industry manufacturing products catalog system. “What the new Sweets app integrations do is quite interesting,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor, “they are bringing product information knowledge down to the point where young BIM users in architecture practices are making early decisions about elements in buildings but not yet fully understanding how, for instance, a wall is made up. There is a knowledge gap that gets bridged here in this product that is quite impactful, in addition to an elegant data integration between their backend systems of data and specific applications like Revit and AutoCAD.”

The new Dodge Sweets App technology, which is spearheaded by leadership out of the UK, also offers to tap into other vendor BIM and CAD tools though its open SDK structure. Importantly, bringing Sweets data into BIM tools not only provides invaluable information to practitioners, but reasserts the Sweets brand into the digital workflows of architects.

Runner-Up:  ArchiCAD 20

This year ArchiCAD 20 was released with a superbly executed dovetail of two feature systems, combining a new meta-data oriented database system directly in the BIM tool with a new graphical overrides system that taps into the meta data along with geometry data. “The information flow improvements in ArchiCAD 20, going between its new meta data system and say Excel and then back again is excellent,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “but the graphical override system laid on top of this is going to yield innovative uses by their customers.”

BEST of SHOW — Desktop Category

Building on a vision of the future of designing, fabricating, making and constructing our future world, Neri Oxman’s view begins to re-imagine the place and role architects can serve in society. Neri herself is the prime example. From the “beyond BIM” perspective, we have reframed the desktop category award honor.

Neri Oxman’s work lies at the intersection of four transformational fields: computation design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology. From this perspective, BIM is transcended; architects will sit side-by-side with computer programmers in the near future; architects will occupy centers of activity in the fields of materials engineering and additive manufacturing; and architects will engage directly in interdisciplinary teams (they already do but in ones they know well…) that involve experts in cutting edge fields new to them. 

When we look at technology in practice from this view, the Desktop category award suddenly becomes more significant, wider, promising, and more cognizant of these key trends above. 

For the present, what is significant in the context of toolchains at AIA Philly, centers on computational design and its relationship to computer programming as a “thematic” change—not just the field of architecture—but in all its allied fields as well.

Winner: Vectorworks Architect 2016

On the merit of implementation quality, Vectorworks Architect 2016 with its new Marionette algorithmic computational design tools excels. “If Grasshopper is considered by some a type of gateway drug to computer programming,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “then Marionette should be rewarded for the elegance it has brought to its node system with their intimate conveyance of the python code behind each node.” Vectorworks 2016 also earns recognition for its tremendous acceleration—an absolutely massive upgrade—with things like Energos, its onboard energy analysis tools. The company was also showing upcoming technologies to be released in the fall, including VR support technologies.

Runner-Up:  Augment

Augment is an enterprise augmented reality (AR) technology company, headquartered in Paris, France. The Augment App is your pathway to visualizing 3D models in real time environments. It’s desktop solution however is where you prepare your 3D AR ready models.

“Augment is working tangentially to many of the same technologies as at CL3VER,” says Anthony Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP, “Augment for Desktop helps bridge the gap between 3D model solutions and what you want stakeholders and customers to see but it also provides an animation triggers system plus assignment of multiple colors and textures to models.” The Augment Desktop app works on both Mac and Windows and has feature parity.

BEST of SHOW — Mobile Category

This category centers on both new and mature products and technologies that solve both broad and narrow pain points in practice. Mobile plus “cloud” has been, and continues to be, a large field for innovation, but we are less impressed with the carry-over of VR to mobile devices given the tremendous impact of VR headsets. What is more impactful, is the AR (augmented reality) space, particularly in how it can address capacity for decision support in the pre-sales phase. 

We are also intently interested in mobile in respect to the BIM workflow and collaboration challenges—changes that continue to hold up acceleration of decisions making and consensus. When it comes to the collaboration platforms, we see the mobile device as more important than desktop because these device architectures are broader (eg: smartphone, tablet, super tablet, mixed-form factor, large touch-based slates, etc) and represent the “cars” not the “trucks” in the now famous Steve Jobs metaphor about the future evolution of computing. 

Winner: Autodesk A360

Autodesk A360 is collaboration platform that works on both Mac and Windows platforms along with Apple iOS and Google Android for mobile devices. While it is a cloud-based technology with both desktop and mobile access points, we are awarding A360 in the mobile category because such mobile plus cloud solutions offer the coveted anywhere, any device access end users seek.

“Cloud based collaboration platforms like A360 aim to solve arguably one of the biggest challenges in the building industry—finding the single source of truth,” says Pete Evans, AIA. “As practicing architects, we know the frustration personally because it is most demanded of in the field.”

“This solution offers the industry a truly democratized approach to toolchains and data formats,” says Frausto-Robledo, AIA, LEED AP.  “A360 supports everything from SketchUp files to Rhino to IFC to OBJ to DWG and the list goes on. It supports wikis for notes, specs and lists and supports an elegant commenting and collaboration space.”

A360 presently offers users a fuller capacity of tools on the desktop but these features are democratized working equally on browsers on both Mac and Windows platforms and include features like sectioning of models and annotation. Interestingly, A360 is a collaboration offering that spans multiple fields, including AEC, product design and manufacturing. As these fields begin to collide and overlap further—again looking ahead at Oxman’s visions of the built world—this plurality of coverage may drive unique synergies to end users in particular fields.

Runner-Up:  Augment

“Augment has taken mobile AR into an impressive mature workflow. With the multitudes of mobile devices in the field today, Augment makes this robust AR technology available to the AECOO market,” says Pete Evans, AIA, senior associate editor. “This creates new opportunities to create advanced visualization, interactive print with custom markers and importantly improve communications with today’s AR technology for all AECOO stakeholders—anytime anywhere.”

More: (Available!) Perspectives on BEST of SHOW 2016: From Edge of Market to Maturing BIM, Framing a New Lens

The post AIA 2016: Architosh awards 5th ‘BEST of SHOW’ honors for software and technology vendors at AIA Philly appeared first on Architosh.

What is Autodesk University about? Surely Autodesk.

But Autodesk is a very different Autodesk than 5-10 years ago. And it’s definitely not about Windows or Macintosh. Or apparently any other OS or conventional platform anymore. The cloud and Internet of Things (IoT) has ushered in a brave, complex new world for design and technology that Autodesk is well in the midst of and well represented in. Autodesk University (AU) 2015 reinforced this position with a strong, clear message.

AU is also a very interesting conference in strong contrast to several architecture conferences attended previously. AU was extremely diverse in several ways: (1) the tools presented and focused around for some of the conference crossed several disciplines and categories, (2) the industries represented were as varied as the tools, and (3) the attendees and constituents at the conference were also quite varied. The 23rd year for AU is also a growing conference pushing 10,000 attendance in Las Vegas.

And this melting pot only further exemplified the focused message from Autodesk: This is the era of connection, where the cloud changes everything, where the Internet of Things actually happens—barriers break, lines are crossed, innovation happens. Autodesk’s message is: We are the place for the tools, technologies and partners to succeed and innovate through the future. The conference theme was “The Future of Making Things” which was reflected at almost all turns.

Autodesk University Announcements

Scott Reese, VP of Cloud Platforms, introduced the first media session with a couple of the conference themes talking about both the “Era of Connection” and “The Cloud Changes Everything” themes which were reiterated in several sessions attended at the conference. He pointed to newer Autodesk tools that exemplified this theme. Autodesk Fusion 360, PLM 360, Building OPS and 123D Circuits were all examples which crossed the lines fluidly between design, making and using. Reese also pointed to partner Panoramic Power (image 01) that has developed a product for mapping and measuring electrical signal reiterating the theme directly through this Internet of Things (IoT) example for comparing trends and flagging anomalies. This was also a bridge for talking about the immense data coming online with the IoT trend and how that portion of the IoT was being solved at Autodesk.

01 – Autodesk image from AU 2015, featuring talk about partner Panoramic Power.

One central project that premiered on the exhibit floor and centered on the IoT was the Hack Rod from Primordial Research Project, a collaboration between Autodesk and media group The Bandito Brothers. (see image 02) Using a new solver/design tool in the Autodesk Labs called Dreamcatcher, massive captured sensor data was used to measure all aspects of the performance, ride and rider for a generative design solution. This whole process created an optimized frame from the usage data from the prototype described by the team as “networked matter.”

The Era of Dead Things is Over

So around all this pervasive computing and IoT, was the appropriate moment for the formal introduction of Autodesk SeeControl, a very recent acquisition only a couple months old for Autodesk. SeeControl is a new tool for capture and analysis which will provide new advantages to Autodesk customers in many industries looking to leverage the IoT. Things that literally did not have a voice do become animate objects that provide continuous feedback looping and directly informing the design and making stages of their own process and next iteration—continuous prototyping and improvement. Mickey McManus, one of the project leads on the Hack Rod, remarked, “the era of dead things is over.”

02 – A photo showing a mixed-reality image of a Hack Rod surface anomaly back on the 3D digital model in Fusion 360 measured with physical 3D scanner on the AU exhibit floor. (image: Pete Evans, Architosh)

In another example of the IoT, Autodesk demoed their cloud based Fusion 360 with Microsoft’s Hololens. (see image 03 and title image) This integration of design technology creates digital collaborative prototypes that can be fully simulated on the cloud…and in the future done with fully IoT sensor0-based and (or just) controlled real and digital combined designs in a shared “holographic” computing space. In addition to an example on the Hack Rod itself by Autodesk, Microsoft was one of multiple strategic partners which included DAQRI, Intel and Google all demoed augmented and mixed reality projects showing the rapid development in this area of the IoT.

Readers may recall we discussed DAQRI and featured a video on it in our “AIA: Perspectives on BEST of SHOW 2015” feature article back in June. The innovative “smart helmut” represents state-of-the art AR technology. This segues nicely into AU AEC items.

Autodesk BIM 360 Docs was also announced as a new solution for project information management in the AEC industry. As a cloud-based system, also available across mobile iOS devices, this digital document management solution becomes a “single source of truth” for correct project information in the field where it’s controlled, timely and correct.

03 – Autodesk demoing Fusion 360 with Microsoft Hololens.  (image: Autodesk PR Photo)

Autodesk Forge was another announcement at AU with some focus and potency around the IoT with Autodesk priming this “accelerator” with a $100 million funding investment in new Forge initiatives. This platform around the IoT ecosystem encompasses all phases of design, making and using for non-silo’d, collapsed space for innovating for the future of making things—for programmers, designers, developers, inventors and manufacturers in a “frictionless” revolutionary design and manufacturing process.

Autodesk LIVEdesign had a large dedicated demo space on the exhibit floor providing a new pathway and platform for rapidly presenting design content in a game-like environment. Oriented to seamlessly work with Autodesk Revit, 3D MAX, Maya and similar Autodesk products, this solution prepares a design file to be optimized for geometry and textures for a real-time environment simply as a plugin in the design authoring program. Autodesk Stingray and Slingshot become part of an rapid realtime presentation and simulation ecosystem for partners, consultants and clients, similar to the Unreal Engine and Unity, giving Autodesk users a path for visualization and sharing designs across many environments—a rich digital part of the growing IoT—simulated and shared. (see images 04 – 05)

Also Noteworthy

Autodesk Project Dreamcatcher was part of the Primordial Project toolset, as mentioned above for the Hack Rod. It was also mentioned in additional presentations and on the exhibit floor on a number of occasions. But it was hard to make it out as a tangible product. The closest familiar comparison might be solidThinking, especially as its a solver too. But Dreamcatcher seemed to be more elusive in its generative nature where many project qualities would be input, then computerized AI and simulation synthesize a vast number of solutions—both design alternative and performance data in context of a “design solution space” which then allows for a resulting design to be directly fabricated or handed to another software tool for additional work. Dreamcatcher is a research project which seems to share some DNA with (open source) Autodesk Dynamo, which is available for the Mac via GitHub.

04 – Autodesk LIVEDesign (image: Autodesk PR Photo)

Autodesk Project Akaba is another generative program mentioned more than once aimed at planning and architecture using spatial rules and constraints for the building profession. Interestingly, Akaba was presented (in tone) more to contractors as a tool for early project interaction and as potential additional services.

More From the Floor

CL3VER, a winner from this summer’s 2015 AIA National Architosh BEST of SHOW awards, showed updates to their cloud presentation software. CL3VER presented a brand new WebVR engine that works with the current iteration of the Oculus Rift Dev Kit 2. While this brand new VR functionality only works on the Google Chrome browser on the PC, the rest of the application is platform independent. The VR experience works convincingly well on both their existing gallery demos and new projects. This author experienced both a full scale VR experience of an architectural model and an automobile model where it was perceptually clear that the model was built at half-scale. This is one of VR’s strengths—replicating spatial sensory experience.

This capability also exposes opportunities for CL3VER which are in their development pipeline which will further enrich the immersive opportunities that VR presents such as walkthroughs and self-driven navigation. This continues to make CL3VER a very progressive and unique tool for 3D visualization in the cloud—through a browser. Additionally, CL3VER was intentionally adjacent with IrisVR, Chaos Group and Archvision as a potent set of architectural tools for visualization.

We might note here that both CL3VER and IrisVR were joint-winners in our 2015 AIA BEST of SHOW honors in the Innovation category.

05 – Autodesk’s new Stingray Engine based standalone app will power interactive, data-driven scripted real-time rendered workflows in AEC.

Another attendee and a good reflection of the conference theme of the connected cloud and simultaneous fusion of design, make and use was Pluralsight, an online training company. In responding to the growing need for digital training, Pluralsight has expanded its initial capabilities incorporating Digital Tutors and has content for programmers, creative content and new rapidly expanding into the AEC realm. What makes Pluralsight powerful and unique is that the learning module content is knowledge-built and crowd-sourced directly from field-experts (professionals) and highly curated within a company internal educational board. Pluralsight also uses analytics for content direction learning pathways through a “skills assessment engine” being incorporated through the recent acquisition of Smarterer, in addition to short post-course evaluations.

Autodesk and Frame also made a big announcement at the conference by officially supporting Autodesk Revit and AutoCAD through the browser without any plugins. These applications received Virtual Environment Certification for both Frame for Business and Frame Personal on the public cloud through Amazon or Azure further separating hardware platform requirements from traditional software. The cloud performance through Frame exemplified the blurring of lines, crossing of boundaries and barriers that seemed the norm rather than the exception at this year’s AU.

Analysis and Conclusion

Autodesk CEO Carl Bass opened with his keynote talking about “Reframing the problem.” He described the construction of the new Apple headquarters being treated as if it were an Apple product. A precast concrete panel “is treated like it was an airplane part. All parts are prefabricated for factory tolerances and quality… and RFID tagged.” Bass noted that the construction site was essentially an open-air factory which illustrated the converging building and manufacturing industries. Perhaps most important, he wanted to convey that opportunity was there for more than Apple. Autodesk believes that their vision and tools open that opportunity to a wider audience.

This mention of Apple was direct and very complimentary. This brought home that a new era really has been achieved: Autodesk and Apple are partners today. Clearly the plethora of iOS apps, AutoCAD and other apps directly on the OS X platform and pathways do exist that effectively and officially support other very traditionally Windows centric applications. Apple and its users benefit from this agnostic, platform-free, and cloud-centric era of connection. Apple wasn’t directly represented at this conference—as Microsoft was—but it doesn’t look like an unreasonable proposition in the years ahead.

Vicky Dobbs Beck, ILM (Industrial Light & Magic) executive in charge of strategic planning, gave a powerful presentation on storytelling. Looking at emerging and immersive tools such as the Oculus Rift and mobile technologies as iOS devices, ILM is developing new capabilities for storytelling and cinema in this design-make-use era. ILM themed some of their presentation as, “Step inside our Worlds.” The content demo’ed—some existing Star Wars materials—were cinema level, interactive from multiple character perspectives and independently view controllable as well providing a mix of simultaneous viewpoints, direct experience, non-linear and linear story comprehension. Very exciting for a Star Wars fan today, of course, but also for the development of storytelling, which is something that architecture and design does as well. Seeing the mix of immersive, generative, simulation and rapid presentation technologies ILM is addressing, and is present at AU, it’s clear the impact that IoT will have on architecture and our present understanding of design technology tools.

Dace Campbell, AIA LEED AP, Autodesk Customer Success Manager for AEC Global Services, and involved with several current transformational efforts such as LIVEdesign and Stingray, observed that over his tenure with Autodesk, a “transformation” is noticeable. This year’s AU conference really showed the company focused and on message across a very diverse product line and customer demographic—a message that reframed Autodesk less a software company and more a strategic partner—something intentionally very radical and fanatic as noted by McManus for innovation. Autodesk is very vested in a pluralistic innovative future where it can thrive. A place where software is not only a tool but an intelligent partner, an experience simultaneously encompassing design, production, consumption to co-creation, and pervasive in an agnostic cloud-centric world. Autodesk appears to recognize that the complexity of the Internet of Things (IoT) will require it.

(disclosure: Autodesk paid for lodging and some meals at AU.)

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