Trimble steps up

Architectural detail drawings for a dance studio in America, demonstrating the high quality plans sections and elevations that SketchUp Pro is capable of producing

The AEC design technology market has a handful of key software developers; Autodesk, Bentley and Nemetschek are the main volume players. However since the mid 2000s Trimble, best known as a GPS provider, has acquired its way to compete with the established players.

by Martyn Day

In 1978 Charlie Trimble left HewlettPackard and set up a marine navigation and location system based on the new GPS system, which used 24 orbiting satellites to locate positions on the surface of the earth. It was not long before Trimble applied this technology to surveying, mining and mapping. By 2003, the company was into 3D laser scanning and had partnerships with Nikon and Caterpillar. Since then, it has been on an aggressive acquisition path.

As an industry observer it has been quite incredible to watch. Big names such as StruCAD, Tekla and Google SketchUp have all fallen to Trimble’s insatiable growth. Trimble has a broad plan to have its own building ecosystem and to become a player in the Building Information Modelling (BIM) market with a portfolio of solutions.

Trimble describes its acquisition strategy as “principally a mechanism to establish beachheads in new market spaces, fill in product line gaps, or add new technologies to our solutions portfolio.”

Now with over 500 products, the company has revenues of approximately $2 billion making it three times bigger than Bentley Systems and rivalling companies like Autodesk. However, when it comes to working out exactly how Trimble will approach the market and integrate these many tools, the company has kept its cards close to its chest.

The first sign that a cohesive message was coming out of Trimble came a few months ago with the appearance of the Trimble Buildings website (buildings. trimble.com), which highlights its industry solutions covering: Architecture, Structures, MEP, Contractors, Owners and Site Preparation. The company has focused its messaging on what it calls the Design Build Operate Lifecycle choosing to steer away from jumping on the BIM branding bandwagon, with the exception of the Tekla Structures product and Tekla BIMsight for project collaboration.

The website is certainly a statement of management director, SketchUp, at Trimble intent, Trimble has a very impressive and Paul Davis, senior communications suite of tools, from concept to facilities manager, Trimble Buildings. management and with its long history in According to Mr Bacus, SketchUp is the GPS surveying and site preparation has key product for architects in Trimble’s very close links to fabrication and con- building portfolio. Looking at the competistruction that Autodesk, Nemetschek and tion, Mr Bacus said that Revit and Bentley do not have. MicroStation were very good documenta-

The biggest and most recent surprise tion tools for design, great at costings and was Trimble’s purchase of Google scheduling but difficult to learn and poor SketchUp in 2012. Market rumours were at the conceptual phase. He admitted that such that Autodesk and Dassault Systèmes Trimble wanted to push SketchUp further were interested but Trimble got the deal. down the process, to schematic design and

Google originally bought SketchUp development but wanted to concentrate on from @last software, a small, quirky design not the production phase. Boulder, Colorado company, which set out Both Mr Bacus and Mr Davis were to create an easy to use 3D modelling tool. guarded about making any specific By plugging into Google Earth, SketchUp forward looking statements but indicated provided an easy way to add 3D buildings that later this year there would be a to the maps. clearer vision explained, but only when

Google bought the company in 2006 the technology and integration of and started to give away the base applica- Trimble’s technologies were ready. tion for free, with the addition of a low However, there is an internal roadmap cost professional version. The fact it was to better integrate the broad range of cheap and easy to use meant that SketchUp become an industry standard, with a copy on most architect’s machines. It also eased ‘‘ SketchUp has always been the AEC industry into seeing the benefits of 3D modelling and impressive and and despite accelerated BIM adoption. languishing under Google for The downside was that, due to its price point and ease of use, SketchUp was not seen as a proa number of years it is clear that Trimble has big fessional tool, yet it is very much development planspart of today’s design software armoury. Having recently purchased ’’ high-end structural BIM applications, the Trimble building products. Trimble interest in SketchUp appeared SketchUp Pro has only been slightly confusing to industry watchers. In an rebranded with the addition of the current interview with aecstrategies website, year. Mr Bacus admitted that under Google Trimble’s Sector vice-president Bryn the product had suffered, in the later years, Fosburgh gave some indication as to how with lack of new functionality but under SketchUp will be a platform level product. Trimble this will no longer be the case.

When asked about the synergies between In the latest release, the following new the many acquisitions and SketchUp, features have been added: Fosburgh replied: “SketchUp provides an integration point between architect and • Extensions Warehouse designer and designer out to field. It’s com- • Pattern fills plementary to all of our acquisitions over • Copy array the last five years.” • Faster vector rendering

On the new Trimble Buildings website, • Page numbers in the pages panel SketchUp Pro, the paid for version (approx • Curved label leader lines £322), is stated as being for concept devel- • Smarter toolbars (Windows version) opment, visualisation, communication and • Increased zoom in capability planning. Over the free version, which has • HD video export been renamed SketchUp Make, Pro is both a 3D modeller and competent 2D drafting Out of these the key additions has been package enabling designs to be modelled the Extensions Warehouse. SketchUp has and documented. had a number of developers adding functionality to the core platform using the SketchUp 2013 Ruby API. To find out more about Trimble Buildings The Extensions Warehouse is a place and the company’s SketchUp strategy and where all these products can be accessed, product I talked to John Bacus, product bought and downloaded. At the time of writing there were 158 extensions that had 129,000 downloads.

There are many architectural specific add-ons, such as IES’s analysis application, Openstudio (energy analysis), lightup (light analysis), skelion (solar), gModeller (energy), totalstation point importer and Buildedge Plan, which created walls doors and windows with parametric-style editing in a very impressive way. Mr Bacus estimated that 40%-45% of users already have extensions downloaded.

SketchUp is very much a platform technology here and Mr Bacus explained that by adding a layer of specific AEC tools, it would clutter the interface and push the core product in a direction that would put off other users.

Complex geometry is also seen as a deep vertical by Mr Bacus. The API/ warehouse route allows users to add more focused tools and deep vertical capability. So, Trimble is still keeping true to the generic nature of the core platform. With this view, I suspect that Trimble will be developing its own add-ins for the Extensions Warehouse, as opposed to building a dedicated product for architects. SketchUp has had the 3D Warehouse for some time, which has probably the largest selection of 3D content for any application. With the news that BIMObject will be looking to provide BIM content, it is pretty clear that SketchUp’s future will compete more directly with Revit and ArchiCAD in providing the Information part of ‘BIM’. Conclusion SketchUp has always been impressive and despite languishing under Google for a number of years it is clear that Trimble has big development plans.

Google was always secretive about SketchUp’s usage, but Mr Bacus did tell me that last year there were over 30 million individual sessions of SketchUp started and in a week can hit as many as 2.5 million. There is no doubting the penetration of this product and this is certainly one of the reasons that Trimble was interested in acquiring it.

Mr Bacus says the low price does not tell the story of SketchUp, but concedes it allows many in the industry to claim that it is not a pro-level product, in spite of its popularity on many real-world projects. With literally millions of users, a growing extensions ecosystem and Trimble’s impressive acquired back catalogue of AEC products, I am expecting to see some serious competition for the established BIM developers.