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Industry news 6
Ai automates construction progress tracking, Xgrids turns Gaussian Splats into Revit models, Resolve brings Revizto issues into VR, plus lots more
Workstation news 12
Lenovo simplifies access to remote workstations, HP gives ZBook Fury G1i laptop big power boost and AMD launches new pro CPU and GPUs
Arcol unleashed 14
We explore the recent launch of the BIM 2.0 start-up that has an initial focus on collaborative conceptual design
The future of Revit 36
Forma is not the replacement for Revit is the latest messaging from Autodesk. We analyse what this might mean
NavLive: ‘scan to drawings’ 40
With all the progress being made to convert point clouds to 3D models, ‘scan to BIM’ is fast becoming a reality. This UK startup is addressing one step before that
Ai & design culture (part 2) 42
Keir Regan-Alexander explores how architects are using Ai models and takes a deeper dive into Midjourney V7 and how it compares to Stable Diffusion and Flux
What your models forgot and why it matters 49
Marty Rozmanith talks BIMnesia, as he explains how Skema is rethinking the system of record in AEC
NXT BLD / DEV on-demand 18
Couldn’t make it to London for NXT BLD / DEV? You can now watch every presentation on demand, free of charge. Join thousands of AEC professionals from 79 countries and experience the insight, innovation, and spirited debate that bring our unique and inspiring community together each year
Ai turns Gaussian Splats into Revit models
X
grids has launched LCC for Revit, a new plug-in co-developed with Autodesk that brings SLAM-based 3D Gaussian Splatting technology directly into Autodesk Revit workflows. According to the company, the technology delivers 70-90% efficiency improvements in BIM modelling while maintaining survey-grade accuracy.
LCC stands for Lixel CyberColor (LCC), Xgrids’ proprietary technology which combines LiDAR and visual data with 3D Gaussian Splatting. According to Xgrids, this fusion enables the automated construction of highly realistic 3D spatial models that deliver both photorealistic visualisation and geometric precision.
LCC automatically generates spatial models from single scanning sessions using Xgrids’ integrated spatial cameras. Xgrids explains that with ‘seamless Revit integration’ users achieve real-time alignment between BIM models and LCC spatial models.
Using ‘intelligent Ai’ the plugin boasts one-click generation of elements such as walls, doors, and windows. According to Xgrids, this dramatically accelerates the modelling process while maintaining design intent and structural integrity. It removes the need for the traditional manual process of importing the point cloud and modelling on top.
“LCC for Revit doesn’t just digitise spaces — it understands them,” explains Mindy Li, Xgrids product manager.
“Our Ai recognises spatial elements,
structural relationships, and spatial hierarchies, transforming raw scan data into intelligent BIM components.”
Xgrids offers both software and hardware, including the Lixel series of professional scanning devices, LCC Studio software for point cloud processing, LCC for 3DGS modelling, and now LCC for Revit.
Xgrid
Lixel LiDAR scanners
Xgrids makes two handheld, portable laser scanners. The Lixel Kity K1 (around €13k) is a compact hand scanner, which features two 48 MP cameras and a ‘360’ degree multi-SLAM LiDAR device, capable of capturing to 1cm accuracy using 200,000 points/ second, at a range of up to 40 metres.
The Lixel L2 Pro (around €22k) is another SLAM device, this time heavier, with a rotating LiDAR sensor, a bigger hard drive, the same two 48 MP cameras as the K1, and provides geo-referenced, post processing onboard.
Accuracy is 3cm from the on-board processing but when combined with Lixel Studio, the company claims it’s possible to get increase the point cloud density to 5mm point cloud thickness, at 1mm point intervals using its own algorithm to bring out structural details with an equivalent of 1 cm accuracy via a 1 million points/m2 interpolated point density.
■ www.xgrids.com
Vectorworks
previews Ai Assistant
Vectorworks 2025 Update 5 introduces a preview of Ai Assistant, a new tool designed to provide users with instant and accurate answers to their Vectorworks-related questions.
Available through the Help menu and the Vectorworks Home Screen, the built-in Ai assistant is designed to give customers quick, context-aware answers to their questions helping them learn new features or seek guidance.
■ www.vectorworks.net
Bluebeam expands integrations
EC software developer
ABluebeam has launched an Integrations Directory, designed to provide a centralised hub for Bluebeam users to connect with thirdparty tools such as Procore Documents, SharePoint, Autodesk Construction Cloud, and Vectorworks.
Bluebeam Integrations cover a broad range of connection types — including plug-ins, API-driven integrations, and document management systems.
Bluebeam has also enhanced Bluebeam Revu, its tool for markup and collaboration on PDFs, drawings and documents. Revu 21.6 now runs natively and 30% faster on ARM-based devices such as Microsoft Surface, and via Parallels on Apple Macs. It also introduces new features to help better communicate project issues, such as Markups on Capture – where users can now draw directly on photos taken in the field to pinpoint issues with greater clarity.
■ www.bluebeam.com
Ai automates construction progress tracking VC leads investment in CalcTree
Reality capture specialist DroneDeploy has launched Progress Ai, a ‘visual intelligence’ solution for automated progress tracking from both aerial and ground capture data.
Progress Ai uses vision-language models (VLMs) – a step beyond traditional large language models (LLMs) – to interpret real-world visual data from drone flights and 360 walkthroughs. According to DroneDeploy, the Ai understands what it sees. ‘Structured insights’ are then generated automatically.
“With Progress Ai, superintendents can get a complete view of progress across every floor, every trade, in minutes, not hours,” says CPO James Pipe. “Beta customers have already used Progress Ai to
track project milestones, validate pay apps and reduce trade conflicts without adding headcount or complexity. We expect these capabilities to scale rapidly as the solution rolls out across more project sites.”
In addition to automatically generating structured progress reports, Progress Ai allows teams to ask natural-language questions about site conditions using voice or text. From superintendents verifying trade progress to project executives validating schedule risk, answers are delivered instantly – without waiting for status meetings or chasing reports.
“The superintendent can simply ask, ‘Where are we behind on drywall this week?’ and Progress Ai will surface the facts directly from last night’s site capture,” adds Pipe. ■ www.dronedeploy.com/product/progress-ai
Newforma launches Info Track
Newforma has launched Info Track, a new module for its AEC information management platform Newforma Konekt, designed to enhance team collaboration.
According to Newforma, Info Track centralises every project conversation, file, task, and decision, empowering distributed and multidisciplinary teams to collaborate and stay connected, wherever they work.
“Modern design and build firms need to use information management and project coordination to get a competitive advantage or risk being left behind,” said Peter Cannone, CEO of Newforma. “They must
move faster, collaborate seamlessly, and maintain accountability across distributed teams — and they need to do it as easily as a kid starts playing with a toy on Christmas morning: no manual required.”
One of the key features of Info Track is centralised communication, allowing team members to ‘Instantly access’ every project conversation — emails, Teams messages, notes, and more — in one place.
There’s also a connected file ecosystem for organising, sharing, and auditing all project documents with built-in connectors for SharePoint, Autodesk Docs, Azure, Panzura, Nasuni, and more.
■ www.newforma.com
oundamental, a Berlin-based VC firm with a focus on AEC technology investments, has led a €2.3 million pre-seed round in engineering calculation platform CalcTree.
CalcTree helps engineers turn complex calculations into trusted, reusable templates and workflows — reducing the risk of costly errors on large-scale engineering projects, where manual, time-consuming methods often lead to mistakes and expensive rework.
The software helps teams consolidate tooling and data, which is traditionally scattered across niche software packages, Excel, code, PDFs and handwritten documents.
■ www.calctree.com
Leica
uncovers underground utilities
As the network of cables and pipes grow more congested in urban spaces, underground detection systems have become more important for reducing risk before breaking ground.
Leica Geosystems reports that its new DS4000 utility detection system identifies underground assets up to 60% deeper than traditional detection methods.
By incorporating IDS GeoRadar’s patented Equalised Scrambling Technology (EsT), the four-wheeled unit is said to provide clearer detection of underground utilities at both shallow and greater depths, even revealing smaller objects that might have been missed. Leica says the DS4000 is lightweight, portable and easy for a single person to transport and operate.
■ www.leica-geosystems.com
Resolve brings Revizto issues into VR for review ROUND UP
Sustainable housing
The Nemetschek Group has partnered with Iowa State University on the Iowa Innovative Housing Project to help deliver cost-effective and sustainable housing. The project is utilising 3D construction printing and Nemetschek dTwin digital twin technology
■ www.nemetschek-dtwin.com
Rapid energy models
Arup has adopted the Pollination Revitto-IESVE plug-in from IES, to streamline the creation of energy models for building performance simulation.
The plug-in allows users of IES Virtual Environment (IESVE) software to import Revit or Rhino models directly to reduce modelling time
■ www.iesve.com/software/pollination
Quality control
Erith Group, a specialist UK contractor, has selected PlanRadar as its new group-wide standard for digital quality assurance and documentation.
According to PlanRadar, the strategic move is driven by Erith ’s growth, requiring a greater amount of project records across all areas
■ www.planradar.com
Steel fabrication
PowerPack for Advance Steel –Release 2026, the latest release of the plug-that extends the capabilities of Autodesk Advance Steel for steel model design and fabrication, includes enhancements for railings, cage ladders, and balanced stairs, plus a new Turnbuckle macro ■ www.graitec.com
Carbon collective
Built environment consultancy Arup and Autodesk have announced a collaboration aimed at transforming carbon management across the AECO industries. The firms will particularly target asset owners and investors as ultimate decisionmakers in the built environment
■ www.autodesk.com ■ www.arup.com
V-Ray for Blender
Chaos has launched V-Ray for Blender, bringing its production rendering technology to the open source 3D creation tool for the first time.
According to Chaos, V-Ray for Blender enables everything from photorealistic scenes to stylised animations ■ www.chaos.com/vray
Anew integration between Resolve — the real-time spatial collaboration platform — and Revizto, the BIM collaboration software, enables teams to review BIM issues from Revizto in both VR or web browser.
The goal is to enhance existing Revizto workflows by making it easier for a wider range of stakeholders to engage with and understand BIM data throughout the construction lifecycle.
With the new integration, teams can collaborate in Resolve in real time across browser and Meta Quest headset, wirelessly, without a PC tether.
Users can ‘instantly’ view all Revizto-
tracked issues directly inside Resolve’s multi-user workspace and teleport to their locations in the model context.
Issues identified in Resolve can be annotated and escalated to Revizto’s issuetracker, including support for Stamp issue workflows. Teams can then review and edit open issues together in real time keeping coordination aligned.
“This new integration gives all project stakeholders – from design teams to facilities managers – a collaborative and immersive space to identify and resolve issues early in the process,” says Arman Gukasyan, founder and CEO of Revizto. ■ www.resolvebim.com ■ www.revizto.com
Motif introduces Ai-powered rendering
otif has added a new Ai rendering technology to its AEC collaboration platform. The renderer is intended for earlystage design exploration or more developed design presentations.
Motif explains that unlike generic Ai rendering tools, its technology is specifically optimised for architectural visualisation, and understands the nuances of building design, materials, and spatial relationships.
The new tool aims to simplify rendering by offering single-click generation of architectural images. The idea is to allow architects to generate multiple options much quicker than is possible with traditional rendering workflows.
The renderer works directly with 3D
models streamed from Revit or Rhino. Alternatively, it can take input directly from a sketch or image of a physical model, allowing architects to quickly transform simple ideas into rendered images in a matter of seconds.
Motif’s Ai rendering technology focuses on maintaining original geometric designs while interpreting material properties and environmental contexts. From any given view, renders can be created with a single click or multiple rendering styles applied. Renders can be refined further through simple modifiers for environments, weather and time. For more control, users can define open ended text prompts, to add colours, materials, or augment with people, and foliage.
■ www.motif.io
Esri launches ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma
sri has released ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma, a new integration that brings Esri’s geospatial reference data into Autodesk’s planning and design software, providing users with a single design environment without having to switch between platforms.
ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma will also streamline the sharing of designs enriched with GIS data from Autodesk Forma to Autodesk Revit.
ArcGIS for Autodesk Forma will serve
Buildots debuts Portfolio Dashboard
as an Autodesk extension, incorporating geographic data and geospatial services to enable greater analytics and insights. According to Esri, it will give professionals a deeper, more holistic understanding of projects connected to the social, built, and natural worlds, and give direct access to maps, layers, and other spatial data.
Included are Esri’s ArcGIS basemaps and select data layers from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.
■ www.esri.com ■ www.autodesk.com/forma
Egnyte addresses AEC with Project Hub
E
gnyte has launched Project Hub, an Ai-powered project data solution designed to solve documentation and coordination challenges by giving AEC teams visibility and control over data throughout the project lifecycle.
“The Project Hub acts as a central repository for all project data, providing users with real-time, comprehensive insights into their projects, storing
everything from design files to field data,” said Prasad Gune, CPO, Egnyte.
“From project kickoff to closeout, Project Hub’s streamlined workflows, including standardised project setup and integrations with essential platforms like Autodesk Construction Cloud and Procore, help eliminate versioning conflicts and duplicate work so our customers can focus on project delivery, not managing data.”
■ www.egnyte.com/products/project-hub
Nemetschek invests in Ai startup
N
emetschek has invested in Handoff, a US-based platform that uses Ai to automate operations for contractors
Handoff is designed to help re-modellers and small construction businesses
streamline estimating, proposals, client management, and invoicing. It uses realtime pricing data from suppliers to automate back-office tasks and deliver ‘accurate project estimates instantly’.
■ www.handoff.ai
onstruction software firm Buildots has launched Portfolio Dashboard, giving construction teams a standardised, datadriven overview of their projects — along with Ai-driven insights and early warnings of potential risks.
According to the company, Portfolio Dashboard enables construction executives and site teams to work together more effectively, expedite collaborative data-driven decision-making, and improve cross-portfolio project outcomes.
The aim is to provide a clear view of project status, progress trends, and concise updates from project leaders. When deeper investigation is needed, teams can work together to see and understand which specific activities are driving delays and what mitigation plans are or should be in place.
■ www.buildots.com
New platform to liberate Revit data
KINDAutomatic, which launched in beta this month, aims to streamline BIM workflows by offering Revit users and AEC software developers a faster, more intuitive way to access data in Revit (RVT/RFA) and IFC files — bypassing the need for traditional desktop tools.
The cloud platform delivers a ‘comprehensive set of tools’ for extracting, processing, and parsing BIM data.
Through API integration, data can be seamlessly fed into existing software, while custom workflows enable the automation of data extraction.
■ www.kindautomatic.com
Workstation news
Lenovo Access to simplify remote workstations
Lenovo has introduced Lenovo Access, a new highperformance remote workstation solution that it claims delivers superior performance and a more seamless user experience than traditional public cloud or VDI services.
According to Lenovo, Lenovo Access delivers flexibility, performance, and security for remote workers — without compromising user experience. In short, users get a desktop workstation-like experience wherever they work, even when using demanding 3D applications.
Lenovo’s solution includes a series of ‘easily deployable’ reference architectures, or ‘Blueprints,’ that pair Lenovo workstations with software and services.
The first Blueprint is powered by seven rack-mounted Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF workstations in a 5U shelf, running the Mechdyne TGX remote graphics protocol. According to Lenovo, the setup offers a real-time responsive screen, as well as control sharing, where multiple users can collaborate for design review and training.
■ www.lenovo.com
AMD updates Threadripper
AMD has launched the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series and Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series processors, based on the latest AMD Zen 5 architecture. Both families offer high core counts, high memory bandwidth, and are built for multi-threaded workloads like simulation and rendering.
The Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9000 WX-Series is designed for workstations and supports eight channels of DDR5 memory. At the top of the range, the Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX features 96 cores and 192 threads. Other models are available with 64, 32, 24, 16, and 12 cores.
The Ryzen Threadripper 9000 Series is aimed at high-end desktop (HEDT) users. It supports quad-channel DDR5 memory and includes SKUs with 64, 32, and 24 cores.
■ www.amd.com
AMD launches 32 GB Ai GPU
A Lenovo updates ThinkStation P2 and P3
Lenovo has refreshed its ThinkStation P2 and P3 desktop workstation lineup with four new ‘Gen 2’ models featuring Intel Core Ultra 9 (Series 2) processors and, coming later this year, Nvidia RTX Pro Blackwell GPUs.
The mainstream ISV-certified workstations span a variety of form factors, including compact towers (ThinkStation P2 Tower Gen 2 and ThinkStation P3 Tower Gen 2), small form factor (ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2), and micro (ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2).
The ThinkStation P3 Tower Gen 2 is the most expandable of the new models and is fully ‘Ai-ready’. It features an Intel
Core Ultra 9 processor (Series 2) with integrated NPU and, by Q3 2025, will offer up to an Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 Blackwell Max-Q Workstation Edition GPU (96 GB) .
The ThinkStation P3 Ultra SFF Gen 2 features a space-saving 3.9L form factor, significantly smaller than a traditional mini tower and compact enough to mount under a desk. It’s also datacentre-ready, making it a key component of Lenovo Access (see above). Up to seven workstations can fit in a 5U rack, and each one can be configured with a ThinkStation Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) for out-of-band system management.
■ www.lenovo.com
MD has introduced the Radeon AI Pro R9700, a new workstation-class GPU with 32 GB of memory, built on AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture.
As the name suggests, the card has a big focus on Ai and with double the memory of its consumer counterpart can be used for local inference, model finetuning, and other data-heavy workflows
It features 2nd Gen AMD Ai accelerators which are said to deliver up to 2x the throughput of the previous generation.
Of course, the Radeon AI Pro R9700 can also be used other GPU-accelerated workflows, such as visualisation and simulation.
The card is available from multiple manufacturers including ASRock, Asus, and Gigabyte.
■ www.amd.com
HP ZBook Fury G1i gets power boost
P has shared more details about the HP ZBook Fury G1i, the latest generation of its high-end mobile workstation, now available in a new 18-inch form factor alongside the familiar 16-inch model.
According to HP, the ZBook Fury G1i delivers a significant performance boost over its predecessor, the ZBook Fury G11 — thanks not only to its choice of nextgen Intel Core Ultra 200HX Series 2 processor and Nvidia RTX Pro Blackwell GPU, but also due to its higher power envelope.
The 16-inch model now supports up to 170W Thermal Design Power (TDP), while the 18-inch pushes that even further to 200W, compared to just 145W in the G11. To manage this additional thermal load — and to maintain optimal acoustics — HP has introduced a new ‘hybrid turbo-bladed’ triple-fan cooling system.
Naturally, power delivery also gets a boost: the 16-inch model peaks with a 280W PSU, and the 18-inch a 330W unit, both up from 230W in the G11.
The ‘Arrow Lake’ Intel Core Ultra 200HX Series 2 processor is considered ‘desktop class,’ and the top-end Core Ultra 9 285HX features 8 Performance cores, 16 Efficient cores, and a Max Turbo Frequency of 5.5 GHz on the P-cores.
Its integrated Neural Processing Unit (NPU) delivers 13 TOPS of INT8 Ai acceleration — typical for Arrow Lake chips — but this falls short of the 40 TOPS NPU requirement for Microsoft’s Copilot+ Ai PCs.
However, in high-end mobile workstations like this, the bulk of Ai workloads
are expected to be handled by the discrete GPU. The top-tier Nvidia RTX Pro 5000 Blackwell (24 GB GDDR7) is said to deliver up to 1,824 TOPS of FP4 performance — making it suitable for high-performance Ai inference and training
The ZBook Fury G1i supports up to 256 GB of RAM—the highest ever in a ZBook—via four user-accessible DIMM slots, with tool free access enabling future upgrades.
For storage, the system offers up to 16 TB across four PCIe Gen4 NVMe M.2 SSDs. To maximise read/write performance, one of
those slots also supports a high-speed PCIe Gen5 NVMe SSD, available in 1 TB or 2 TB capacities.
There are several display options on the 16-inch, going up to a 4K (3,840 x 2,400) HP DreamColor OLED – 120Hz, 500 nits and 100% DCI-P3. The 18-inch is limited to a WQXGA (2,560 x 1,600) LED with 500 nits and 100% DCI-P3, plus a ‘high frequency’ 165Hz refresh rate – a first for mobile workstations, says HP.
The HP Lumen RGB Z Keyboard takes a professional-focused approach with per-
What AEC Magazine thinks
For years, major OEMs have played it safe with power, typically capping the TDP of top-end mobile workstations at around 145W.
However, with chipmakers increasingly leaning on power to flex processing muscle, sticking to conservative limits has meant a lot of potential performance
has been left on the table. HP is now bucking this trend with the ZBook Fury G1i. Both the 16-inch and 18-inch models break new ground, with the latter pushing the TDP to 200W — clearly taking advantage of its larger chassis. HP claims this delivers a 30% performance boost.
key LED backlighting that can highlight only the keys relevant to specific tasks such as editing, modelling, or design.
It comes preloaded with default lighting profiles for popular applications like Solidworks, AutoCAD, Illustrator, and Photoshop. Users can also customise and program their own colour-coded hotkey combinations to suit other software workflows.
The three-button touchpad is designed to aid 3D modelling, where the middle button can be used to control certain application functions such as moving or rotation.
Other features include an integrated power and optional fingerprint button, a Thunderbolt 5 port with USB Type-C and a singling data rate up to 120Gb/s, and a 5MP IR camera with 88° wide field of view and support for Windows Hello.
The webcam sensor is ‘Ai-enhanced’ enabling several smart features designed to boost privacy, security, and power efficiency. It can detect onlookers behind you – prompting you to activate HP SureView or blur your screen – automatically dim the display when you’re not paying attention, and lock or wake the device as you walk away or return. Meanwhile, for a better conference call experience, Ai-based noise reduction filters both inbound and outbound background noise – like dogs barking, paper rustling, and sirens
The 16-inch HP ZBook Fury G1i measures 359 × 249 × 27 mm and starts at 2.43 kg, while the larger 18-inch model comes in at 403 × 289 × 27 mm with a starting weight of 3.52 kg.
■ www.hp.com
While that’s a significant leap forward, it may still fall short of what you might get from a gaming-inspired system. In the past MSI has packed workstation-grade components into laptops with combined CPU/GPU power pushed as high as 270W. Still, one must not forget that
the ZBook Fury G1i is a true enterprise-class machine, where performance must be carefully balanced with thermals, acoustics, reliability, and portability.
HP’s new triple-fan cooling system will be key to maintaining that equilibrium — and one to watch closely.
Arcol unleashed Cover
BIM 2.0 start-up Arcol officially launched its product at the start of June and presented at our recent NXT BLD conference. With an initial focus on providing a browser-based environment for collaborative conceptual design, the software is already attracting a growing fan base, writes Martyn Day
While the idea of BIM 2.0 is exciting, there is a lot of confusion among BIM users as to how new code streams should manifest themselves. If the intention is to compete against Revit, then surely rivals should resemble Revit in terms of user experience and offer comparable features?
Not necessarily. Revit, after all, is 25 years old. It covers a wide range of design phases, including concept, detail design, rendering and documentation/ drawings. It also provides tools for multiple disciplines, such as MEP and structural engineering.
In contrast, the BIM 2.0 software developers are all opting to drop in and develop products at different points along the design phase. Their aim is to provide something useful, quickly, and then grow out their applications over time, adding breadth and depth to the tools along the way.
Take, for example, Arcol: the leadership team at this start-up has chosen to start specifically at the conceptual phase. That makes sense, since it’s the start of the AEC process.
Support
ciently compelling for its buzz to be heard above the general noise.
Origin story
Arcol was the original ‘Figma for BIM’ protagonist. Its founder and CEO Paul O’Carroll was already a huge Figma fan and recognised how it was possible to make a generic web-based, collaborative interface design tool. His father, meanwhile, is an architect, so he has always been attracted to the industry and understands its frustration with the lack of innovation and collaboration in the current generation of BIM tools.
With a background in games development and experience of running a design agency that built custom tools for clients, O’Carroll felt these were challenges he could tackle. In 2021, he founded Arcol in order to build a 3D, sketch-based, collaborative design tool. He quickly raised seed money from a cast of industry nota -
‘‘
opened up the product for a free trial for one week last year. Most of the beta testing, however, was conducted with trusted architectural firms. In late 2024, the company attracted a further round of VC funding, of an undisclosed amount, on top of its original seed funding of $5 million.
Arcol presented at NXT BLD this year (www.tinyurl.com/Arcol-NXT) and has been actively hiring all summer. Its plan now is to build on its newly commercialised code base and start expanding its concept capabilities, as well as begin to address more complex modelling centric issues.
Core capabilities
Arcol is a next-generation, cloud-native BIM 2.0 modelling system for architects. As it’s all web-based, it eliminates the need for downloads, installations or specific client operating systems. But being web-based doesn’t mean it’s slow. In fact, it’s remarkably zippy on large context models (although the level of detail it currently supports is not complex geometry).
for more complex detailed modelling is under development. Deep integration with Rhino and Grasshopper is also in the works, with Arcol working closely with McNeel, according to O’Carroll
However, this is also an extremely busy segment of the market, boasting many established players as well as so many start-ups that we have lost count.
Obviously, the 800lb gorillas of this segment are SketchUp and, at the highend, McNeel Rhino with Grasshopper. But then we also have Autodesk Forma, which is essentially ‘given away’ as part of the company’s AEC Collection.
Simply put, customers are not short of options and some capabilities are already offered in the boxes of tools for which they’ve already paid. In software terms, this is a tough neighbourhood. Any start-up that wants to elbow in needs to be able to offer a product suffi -
bles. These include Craig ‘Tooey’ Courtemanche, founder of Procore, and Amar Hanspal, ex-joint CEO of Autodesk and now CEO at competitor Motif (but that’s another story), along with some core Figma alumni and VC firms. With that funding tied down, O’Carroll moved from Ireland to New York and started building out Arcol’s young team.
Four years later, having taken a cautious approach to publicly showing exactly what Arcol was developing, O’Carroll deemed that the product had enough features to address key pain points and was ready to charge for subscription.
Prior to its June 2025 launch, Arcol
As mentioned, Arcol primarily focuses on pre-design and early-stage design and offers real-time, multi-user collaboration, complex modelling and seamless data integration, along with integrated presentation tools – and all within a webbased environment. A single version of the truth is shared and collaborated in real time between teams. The user interface is fresh, simple to navigate and easy to use, with a very low barrier to entry and gentle learning curve.
For now, the capabilities of Arcol break down to Boards, Modelling, Metrics and Collaboration. In some ways, Arcol is a combination of SketchUp, TestFit, Miro, InDesign, Slack, and Figma, all in one package. Concepts can be modelled in context. Building metrics can be derived from multiple com -
plex design decisions made by teams and then used to develop presentations that can be shared internally or to clients to sell architectural designs.
First, let’s take a look at Boards. From very early on, O’Carroll wanted to address the architect’s need for presentation tools. While lockdown saw the growth of Miro (www.miro.com) and Mural (www.mural.co) , Arcol was the first BIM 2.0 tool to recognise that AEC-specific mood board creation and presentations should be a core function. That’s a capability that we have since seen copied by Motif and Snaptrude in their applications.
Arcol boards are ‘live-synced’ and presentation layouts automatically update as the building changes. These boards can include 3D model views, design-related data, mood images and external content such as client project briefs. Sharing of boards is performed via a web link and users don’t need a paid licence for Arcol if they’re just there for viewing purposes. Arcol wants to replace static PDF exports.
Another key capability is Arcol’s presentation to users of a single version of truth. Being cloud-based, data is centralised and shared amongst collaborators. Only one version of the model and its related data exists, so users don’t have to worry about multiple files or navigating a revision management system. Every user, in every browser, gets access to the same data. It’s always consistent.
This also extends to the comments capability. In order to keep communication connected to a design, Arcol has a built-in commenting system, linked to dropped bubbles in the design space, so that teammates can add their input to designs. Clicking on a bubble brings up complete
related threads in the sidebar. When problems are resolved, users hit the check mark and the comment gets hidden.
At NXT BLD, the team gave a demonstration that involved one user in the UK modelling the bottom half of a building, while a colleague in New York modelled the top half. This was all done in the same session, using the same drafting tools. Meanwhile, a third user was working on the presentation layout of the yet-to-be-completed building – all in one continuous stream of collaborative work.
Modelling and metrics
Modelling in Arcol is deceptively easy. Deceptive, because under the surface, there’s a lot of complexity being masked from the user. Each modelling operation exists in a live, editable history graph, so users can adjust past steps at any time and the model regenerates. Due to the constraints of working in-browser, this must be done quickly and with memory efficiency.
Arcol can be used to create lofts, push/ pull edits, sweeps, extrudes and Booleans. It supports custom drawing planes and parametrics and comes with a range of architectural primitive elements, covering all the basics.
Masses can be divided into floors, to generate plans that then feed into the metric calculations engine, providing information on areas, costs and parking needs, for example. Materials can be added and shadow studies created.
Site context and DWGs can be imported to anchor an Arcol model. These Arcol mass designs can be exported to Revit, which brings the geometry in as native
Revit masses. At this moment in time, Arcol’s role is preRevit detail design, and is therefore competitive to massing in Revit, Forma or SketchUp. It’s also possible to export GLTF for game engines and arch viz tools.
In terms of metrics, Arcol currently offers the following analyses: Site Zoning, Floor & Building, Cost Estimation and Shadow Studies. It connects the results with any live associated documents, updating not just related presentation board layouts and the physical model in a board view, but also any related text, such as area and cost.
In its right-hand panel, Arcol displays any relevant building metric data, supporting a range of building, site, environment and cost metrics. For building information, it calculates total floor area, number of floors, floor area ratio, gross internal area, unit count and floor height. For site information, Arcol calculates site area, percentage coverage, setbacks, landuse allocation and parking counts. Costwise, the software performs construction cost estimates, cost per unit or per floor, and envelope area.
To generate a shadow study, the user simply enters a project’s geolocation, date and time. Again, using the boards function, multiple sun studies can be compared. The team can’t be far off delivering daylight studies, as the reverse of this.
Pricing and future plans
As with most software today, Arcol is offered on a subscription basis. There is a free version available for solo users, although this comes with some omissions, such as Revit Export, and some limitations,
Arcol’s user interface is fresh, simple to navigate and easy to use, with a very low barrier to entry and a gentle learning curve
in terms of project numbers. A Team subscription costs $100 per user, per month, with a few extra perks for subscribers who pay annually. There are ‘editor’ seats for those who design, and ‘collaborator’ seats for those who only need to view and comment on designs. While editors need a licence, collaborators (such as clients or contractors) do not and simply get access via a shared link.
Arcol is looking to address the architect’s need for presentation tools though ‘Boards’, which can include 3D model views, designrelated data, mood images and external content such as client project briefs
It’s worth noting that, at present, Arcol doesn’t support Apple Safari and recommends Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge.
What strikes us about Arcol is that O’Carroll’s vision hasn’t changed since the first day we spoke to him. The aim is to build on top of Arcol and eventually compete against Revit by offering everything from concept to detail design and on through to documentation.
While his team could take shortcuts and licence OEM technology in order to build out faster, O’Carroll has already got ideas as to how Arcol should implement features such as the creation of drawings. As such, he intends to chart his own path, relying on internal development effort, rather than bolting on third-party generic capabilities. He explains that he wants to build trust with customers in the early stages of design before tackling drawings.
Either way, Arcol looks set to carve its own niche in the AEC space. It is clearly currently a conceptual tool and blends a number of features to help solve a variety of competing design requirements, while also giving teams a new way to work together and create and present schemes to clients. There is an argument that Arcol could pay for itself by replacing a number of seats of various tools, such as Miro,
SketchUp, and InDesign, although SketchUp is more of a design and drawing environment.
Arcol’s interface is sleek and its graphics really are eye-popping. While geometrically, models look fairly simple, it does offer parametrics, curves, push/pull and Booleans for massing. Support for more complex detailed modelling is under development. Deep integration with Rhino and Grasshopper is also in the works, with Arcol working closely with McNeel, according to O’Carroll. This will open up Arcol to more advanced architectural practices where Rhino is the core design environment.
While the obvious target market for Arcol is architects, O’Carroll tells us that he’s excited at the traction the company is achieving among contractors. Here, we guess, the company’s close links with Procore could be of serious benefit.
For developers, there are a range of feasibility tools that enable real-time costs to be displayed as a model is updated. This data is just as useful to architects as it approaches the floorplan level of detail. It’s obviously not as fully featured for site development as something like TestFit Site Solver, which costs $8k a year for a full seat, but I think the target markets are slightly different.
Since Arcol’s launch and its presentations at both the AIA annual conference and our own NXT BLD event, the company has received a lot of attention from investors and competitors.
By focusing on a very identifiable phase of the design process, the team has developed a product that is easy to compare and contrast with other well-known products. This is something that’s very
hard to do with offerings from other BIM 2.0 startups such as Snaptrude, Motif, Hypar and Qonic.
The fact is that, by choosing to develop software that would compete in an overheated and over-serviced market where ‘freemium’ models are commonplace, O’Carroll took a big risk. In fact, we’d bet that he probably got bored of hearing that warning, over and over again.
But through a hefty dose of self-belief, a clear execution strategy, surviving the occasional shower of shit and a strong streak of bloody mindedness, Arcol has arrived. What’s been delivered is very impressive and strikingly close to what O’Carroll described to us at the company’s earliest stages. With new investment and new additions to the team, we expect to see the velocity of development accelerate sharply in months to come.
■ www.arcol.io
At AEC Magazine’s NXT BLD, Arcol’s Aaron Fife & Mike Buss demonstrated how the browser-based design tool can unify model, data, and presentations in a real-time, multiplayer environment using designers located in London and New York www.nxtaec.com
NXT BLD / DEV on-demand
Couldn’t make it to London for NXT BLD / DEV? You can now watch every presentation on demand, free of charge. Join thousands of AEC professionals from 78 countries and experience the insight, innovation, and spirited debate that bring our unique and inspiring community together each year
NXT BLD and NXT DEV are more than just conferences — they bring together an unparalleled global community of digital pioneers from all across AEC. This year’s in-person event in London welcomed delegates from 28 countries, making it one of the most internationally diverse AEC technology gatherings anywhere. As one attendee put it, it delivers “the highest density per square foot of digital transformation experts and digital innovators in AEC.”
Another delegate, who travelled all the way from Uruguay, summed it up perfectly: “Even the best online conversations can’t compare to connecting in real life with others in the industry… having honest talks about the challenges we’re all facing.”
A huge thank you to everyone who joined us and helped make the event so special.
Of course, we understand that attending in person isn’t practical for everyone. That’s why we’ve made every presentation available to watch on demand — completely free — at www.NXTAEC.com.
The response so far has been phenomenal, with virtual viewers tuning in from 79 countries — from architectural innovators like Foster + Partners, ZHA, SOM, HOK and Gensler to construction giants such as Bouygues, Lendlease, Suffolk Construction, and China State Construction Engineering.
To pique your interest, the next few pages include highlights of all 60+ presentations. Each talk features a unique QR code (for our print readers) or a clickable play button (for our digital readers) that takes you straight to the video.
So grab a coffee, tune in and immerse yourself in the future of AEC technology — entirely on your schedule. ■ www.nxtaec.com
Conference highlights
The theme of this year’s conference centred on the coming to market of nearly all the BIM 2.0 players. There are now six firms dedicated to developing new code streams for designArcol, Qonic, Hypar, Autodesk, Snaptrude and Motif. And for the first time anywhere, we had all six on stage to showcase their approach to BIM 2.0 in 20 minutes! With cloud-based solutions and continual development, this is a snapshot of what’s available today.
Within the subset of BIM, we continued our focus on the evolving market that is autodrawings, with the promise of huge productivity gains in the documentation phase for all practices. We had Graebert, EvolveLabs and Qonic demonstrating their current tools, along with an expert panel. Expect this segment to start delivering benefits to the industry this year.
Ai is a thread that ran throughout both days and we’re only just starting to understand the application areas and impact it will have on AEC. Keir Regan-Alexander, Martha Tsigkari, Ismail Seleit (Foster+Partners), Sean Young (Nvidia) and others all showed us the huge potential. Leading firms are already starting to develop inhouse LLMs and experimenting with Ai coding. When combined with Open Data Lakes, Ai Agents will start empowering practices to create
their own powerful tech stacks. In the same vein, we also had Buro Happold join us to relaunch BoHM - an open schema for the industry to use as a multi-discipline data lake, a potential database in which Ai agents could flourish.
For the first time we ran a grouped session on city planning and GIS, with some great talks from Esri, Giraffe, Cityweft and Geopogo, and held panel sessions on the future of workstations for Ai, and reality modelling, covering advanced technologies like Gaussian Splatting.
We also had some stellar talks from industry: Heatherwicks, Foster + Partners, HOK, Bouygues, Perkins + Will, and AECOM, all shared their advanced workflows and in-house R&D.
Our event would be nothing without the developers, and we hand pick the most innovative firms, from real-time structural simulation, construction fabrication, Ai wiring solutions, and floorplan optimisation, to co-design with swarm agents, Ai rendering, generative design, data-centric approaches, EULA legalities, sun studies, open source, compliancy, co-pilots, app builders, work packages and scanners!
We have already started planning next year’s event. It will be our 10th birthday, so we intend to pull out all the stops! Hope to see you there! It’s one of the most exciting times to be in AEC.
BIM 2.0
Kill BIM
BIM is dead, long live BIM! AEC Magazine’s Martyn Day explores how Ai and new tools are demolishing traditional AEC software models. From concept to construction, we’re entering a radical transformation where you can become the developer. Forget legacy tools — the future is intelligent, API-driven, and powered by your creativity. “Commercial software firms are now competing with their customers because their customers can also create code just by describing what the problem is, and Ai can then come up with a solution,” he says.
BIM 2.0 startup: Snaptrude
“Snaptrude is what design software should be if it was built in 2020s and not 1990s,” says company founder Altaf Ganihar. The latest release integrates AI for interpreting RFPs, creating program requirements, and space planning. It supports free-form modelling, parametric geometry, and interoperability with tools like Revit and Rhino.
BIM 2.0 startup: Arcol
“The way that AEC works and the tools we use today are Blockbuster in a Netflix world,” says Arcol’s Aaron Fife. “They are single player, while the rest of the world is moving towards multiplayer.” Arcol is looking to change that with its browser-based collaborative design tool, unifying model, data, and presentations in a real-time, multiplayer environment.
BIM 2.0 startup: Motif
Motif is moving the industry from building information modelling to building intelligence modelling. By integrating AI, cloud, and intelligent agents, the company is reimagining how architects create. As Motif’s Greg Demchak says, “What if we could create buildings with intelligence?” This isn’t just software—it’s a radical rethinking of design.
Panel discussion: BIM 2.0
The future of BIM is here! Innovators from Hypar, Autodesk, Motif, Snaptrude, Arcol, and Qonic converge to reimagine AEC software. These visionaries are breaking barriers, exploring cloud, and creating tools that promise to transform how we design, collaborate, and construct. As Ian Keough from Hypar boldly states, “Everybody’s dragging Revit, kicking and screaming back into conceptual design. So we all kind of identified that there’s a weakness there. ...[But] with the power of what we’ve spent the last few years building, we’re going to be able to move to the right — that is towards construction — much more quickly.”
BIM 2.0 startup: Hypar
“Stop fighting your tools and get back to what you love,” says Ian Keough, CEO of Hypar, who is on a mission to revolutionise building design with AIpowered simplicity — think digital Lego. He envisions a future where automation doesn’t just follow intent, but anticipates it, adapts to your standards, and makes every project smarter than the last.
New tech: Autodesk Forma
Autodesk Forma is revolutionising AEC design with a cloud-based AI tool that transforms site and concept design. “We rely deeply on subject matter experts,” explains Karl Christensen. And he wants to make that expertise more available to everyone. Forma isn’t replacing Revit, but reimagining workflows — making complex processes intuitive and collaborative.
BIM 2.0 startup: Qonic
Tired of slow, fragmented BIM workflows? Qonic is revolutionising design tech with lightning-fast performance—opening city scale and fabrication level project models in under 30 seconds. No more waiting, no more simplified models. “It’s a place where designers, constructors, owners, are all speaking the same language at the same time,” says Aaron Perry.
New tech: Project Aurora
“Aurora is the sunrise, the beginning of the day, and it’s exactly what this project is for,” says Holger Kreienbrink, previewing Graphisoft’s cloud-native, AI enabled tool for early-stage design., linked to Archicad and MEP Designer. It supports contextual analysis and sustainability simulations — giving architects new levels of insight and optimisation from the first sketch.
Augmenta: design with AI
Architects and engineers are forced to make key decisions before construction realities are clear. AI will change this, automating the detailed and constructible design of building systems. As Augmenta’s Aaron Szymanski puts it: sketch a plan, set high level requirements and specifications, hit a button, and within hours get back a fully coordinated, fully detailed design.
Spacio: compliant design
Architects are drowning in complexity, spending 40% of their time on compliance and documentation and losing 30% of budgets to rework. Spacio aims to change this with real-time regulation checks, intelligent layout generation, and proactive error detection for early design. “We’re not just drawing lines, we’re building relational logic,” says founder Andre Agi.
Skema: rewiring BIM
Skema ‘is a fast forward button for BIM’, says Skema CTO Marty Rozmanith. He explores how the latest release is rewiring the architectural design process by combining smart toolchain integration, reusable design intelligence, and zero-code generative design into one, seamlessly integrating with SketchUp, Rhino, Grasshopper and Forma.
Extending the reach of BIM
What gets Håvard Vasshaug of AnkerDB up in the morning? Making it easier to get data out of Revit, Dynamo, Archicad, and Tekla — and into the hands of more people. In his BIM 2.0 vision, extended teams won’t be digging through clunky desktop models and messy data. They’ll get clean, online work packages comprising model and non-model data—ready to go.
Environmental analysis
Martha Tsigkari who heads up R&D at Foster + Partners, introduces Cyclops, a real-time environmental analysis plugin for Rhino, which has just been made freely available to benefit other designers. Daylight analysis, artificial light analysis, thermal radiation, and technical reports, are delivered ‘instantly’ thanks to advanced GPU-acceleration.
Culture before code
Beyond tools, ARCmanu’s M. Hank Haeusler and Dr Ivana Kuzmanovska explore the human side of digital transformation. Learn how architecture firms can strategically navigate technological change, understanding that software is more than just a switch — it’s a cultural revolution.
Design with swarm agents
Tektome is creating a knowledge base for agentic Ai to realise co-design with swarm agents. Its platform turns unstructured data into design intelligence, enabling Ai to learn from past projects and prevent costly mistakes. “Because Ai is evolving so quickly, it will be too late to start preparation after it’s already here,” warns founder and CEO Naoki Kitamura.
Panel discussion: Ai
Ai isn’t about a a killer app, says Martha Tsigkari, Foster + Partners, “It’s about understanding how you can improve every process.” Meanwhile, at Thornton Tomasetti, when his engineers question Ai, CTO Robert Otani responds bluntly: “How many times are we going to design the same freaking bays, columns, and slabs over and over again?”
Transforming AEC with Ai
Forget manual work — the future is agentic Ai that understands your objectives and generates solutions autonomously. As Nvidia’s Sean Young provocatively states: “Are we really going to be moving our hands and typing in ten years, or are we just going to have the Ai do the drawings for us?” He also covers training, fine tuning, RAG, inference, data science, and more.
Deploying Ai in practice
Ai knowledge is often siloed within tech teams, limiting widespread benefits. Real progress comes from sharing it across the business, says Keir Regan Alexander. He also calls for a new consensus on valuesbased fees and stresses the need for a strategic AI approach — covering policy, risk, and culture — to unlock value and boost productivity.
Managing knowledge
“We design buildings, plan logistics, mitigate risk, but we don’t retain the knowledge,” says Ewa Lenart. She aims to change that with Howie, an AI brain for architects, which transforms scattered project data into a secure, searchable knowledge hub, integrates with SharePoint and ACC, cuts research time, and helps firms build lasting institutional memory.
Follow the white rabbit
Like Alice venturing into Wonderland, AEC firms stand at the precipice of a technological revolution that promises both uncertainty and extraordinary potential. “We can either choose to ignore it or go down the rabbit hole,” says Martha Tsigkari, head of Applied R+D at Foster + Partners. Ai isn’t about replacement, but augmentation, as she demonstrates Ai’s power to enhance creativity, not diminish it through examples of surrogate models, knowledge dissemimation, business insights, and design assistance. “Embrace the changes that disruptive technologies bring, and follow the white rabbit,” she says.
Navigating Ai in AECO
Lenovo’s Mike Leach cuts through the Ai buzzwords to help AEC teams harness the right processing power for the right Ai tasks in everyday project environments. He explores how CPUs, GPUs, and NPUs are shaping real-world workflows, explains how the new ThinkStation PGX gives firms greater control over Ai development, and lots more.
Data & AI as an opportunity
Data is transforming architecture’s future. Volker Buscher, ds30, reveals how firms can unlock unprecedented productivity and design quality through strategic data and AI initiatives. “If you don’t understand when you change from files to data, you will no longer be competitive,” he warns. Discover how to reimagine your practice in the digital age.
Panel: workstations & Ai
How are leading architecture firms like HOK and Perkins&Will harnessing the power of AI on workstations — right now and in the future? What trends are technology giants Nvidia, Intel and Lenovo seeing from software developers and forward-thinking customers? Find out in this dynamic panel hosted by AEC Magazine’s Greg Corke.
Business
You signed up to what?
Navigating the digital minefield of software agreements just got easier, as May Winfield, global director of commercial, legal and digital risks, Buro Happold, unravels the complex world of End-User License Agreements (EULAs), AI tool agreements and more. Discover how to protect your data, understand hidden risks, and avoid costly legal pitfalls. As Winfield warns, “ The moment you input into an AI tool, you’ve probably lost it. So I would always caution about putting things in which are very sensitive.”
Startup survival tips
Buckle up for a startup rollercoaster ride with Frank Schuijer. From Revit plug-ins to cloud innovation, this entrepreneur reveals the brutal truths of building a tech company. Learn how listening to customers, embracing iteration, and navigating industry challenges can transform your startup dream into a successful exit.
AEC software futures
Dive into the world of AEC software with Jay Vleeschhouwer of Griffin Securities. Uncover industry secrets, startup dynamics, and tech trends that are reshaping design and engineering. From Autodesk’s massive license volumes to emerging AI agents, don’t miss this Wall Street insider’s expert guide to the latest trends shaping our industry.
Slicing through licensing
Software sales have gone the way of pizza. But forget the simple deep pan - today, it’s all about loaded bundles, layered deals, and complex combos. Richard Harpham unpacks the evolution of enterprise licensing, reveals how vendors bundle products and offers sharp negotiation tactics to help you cut through the complexity and get the best deal.
www.inevidesk.com
Allies
Aros
Augustus
Cagni
Coffey
Corstorphine &
Cowan
Cullinan
Hopkins
Hutchinson
Lyndon
Makower
Marek
Plowman
Studio
Process
Applied innovation
Heatherwick Studio reveals how advanced technology meets human-centered design. By blending AI, 3D and computational tools, the firm transforms architectural innovation from concept to reality. As Pablo Zamorano powerfully states, the goal is to “increase the impact of our values” — creating spaces that aren’t just buildings, but living, breathing experiences.
The project / product gap
Robert Yori of AECOM explores the gap between project and product mindsets in AEC. Using real examples, he shows why digital tools struggle to scale, and urges AEC professionals to rethink how they develop and deploy technology for long-term impact. A sharp look at digital transformation in the built environment.
Shaping digital practice
Perkins&Will is redefining architectural practice with a bold new structure built around four streams: Digital Design & Delivery, Innovation & Development, Education, and Advisory Services. Nick Cameron, head of digital practice, explains how this framework positions the firm to meet client expectations, tackle growing project complexity, and embrace AI.
Instructions for construction
We’re not all carpenters, says Frédéric Gal, technical director of Bouygues UK, but IKEA proves anyone can build with clear instructions. “Why not do the same on site?” he asks. With Dassault Systèmes 3D Experience Platform the construction giant is transforming complex building processes into modular, instruction-driven products, revolutionising productivity.
AI-driven configurator
Peter Harman explores Infinitive’s AI-driven configurator, integrating manufacturing data at the concept stage using a kit-of-parts approach. Demonstrated in the BridgeAI project with Facit Homes and Stora Enso, it’s now advancing with Digital Catapult and Buro Happold, accelerating infrastructure design for Coventry’s Very Light Rail.
Ai vision to fabricated reality
In an era where Ai creates architectural visions instantly, the challenge is turning these designs into buildable structures. Architect Tal Friedman advocates fabrication-integrated modelling (FIM): design becomes data, data becomes geometry, geometry becomes code, and code drives fabrication — seamlessly bridging Ai’s vision and physical reality.
Composing AI imagery
Ai diffusion models feel like a conversation with the computer, says Ismail Seleit, Foster + Partners. They suggest ideas, sparking unexpected inspiration. He explains the benefits of using multiple models — OpenAI, Flux and SDXL — and highlights their power to understand prompts, learn new concepts, and generate rich architectural compositions.
Made to manufacture
Kope’s mission is to productise construction, turning architectural models into precise, configurable real world products. “We do 90% ready for manufacture — we don’t do the 100%,” says Kope’s Oliver Green. “[For that last part] you want very detailed tools like Tekla or Inventor to get every joint exactly right.” Kope integrates directly with both.
Mastering GenAI
Dive into the future of AI rendering with tools like Veras from Chaos, which are transforming both creativity and efficiency. Bill Allen explores the full potential of this exciting technology — from productivity tips to legal and ethical considerations. “You don’t necessarily need to be a prompt engineer,” he says, “Just know the charateristics you want from your image.”
Geospatial & city context
Geospatial visualisation reimagined
Michael Hoppe from Geopogo demonstrates a novel approach to urban visualisation, combining geospatial data, Unreal Engine 5, and Ai to render architectural projects with city-scale context. The Geopogo platform allows designers to import BIM models, adjust environmental settings, and use Ai to enhance visual details, offering a new perspective on architectural rendering and urban design exploration. “We can’t yet render cities at night, but Ai can, Ai totally can,” says Hoppe. “In fact, what you do is just say, ‘turn the sky to night and turn on the city lights.’ And it does such a fabulous job.”
Spatial insights
“I don’t think there’s much more important to an engineer or an architect than context,” says Esri’s Mark Goldman. He explains how GIS is transforming project design, revealing critical insights beyond traditional BIM. From flood simulations to urban planning and infrastructure management, discover how spatial analytics can provide real-time insights.
Real-time decision making
“The reason a lot of senior architects stick with the yellow trace and fat pencil is because it moves at the speed of conversation,” says Giraffe CEO Rob Asher. Giraffe is looking to break down technology barriers with a live common data environment that blends design, planning, finance, and GIS and turns spatial data into a real-time decision-making tool.
Unlock urban design
Tired of spending hours manually recreating site context? Cityweft is looking to revolutionise architectural design with ‘instant, accurate’ 3D urban models, transforming complex data into clean, editable formats across global locations. As founder Alex Groth says, “We want to make site context easier, and crucially, much more accessible to architects.”
Engineering
Simulate in real time
Mohamed Adil envisions a future where structural analysis is real-time, interactive, and effortless. “Imagine an architect asks to change a span, and you just move a slider— and see instant FEM analysis.” His team at Awatif is working on an app, similar to ETABS or GSA, but web-based, open, parametric, faster, more intuitive, and built for optimisation from the start.
Code-free automation
“Only 5% of engineers know how to code,” says Viktor’s Stijn Jansen. But what if the other 95% could automate too? That’s the vision behind Viktor’s new no-code app builder — giving engineers the power to automate complex workflows in minutes. Say goodbye to repetitive tasks and hello to smarter, faster, scalable engineering.
Drawings
The autonomous engineer
Consigli’s Autonomous Engineer is an AI agent built to replicate the core capabilities of human engineers but across multiple disciplines — mechanical, electrical, fire and more. “She’s been trained on everything you need to become a really good engineer,” says CEO Janne Aas-Jakobsen. “And she already has more experience than any human engineer can have.”
Disrupting documentation
Tired of late nights and Dorito-fueled drafting marathons? Ai is revolutionising construction documentation, says Bill Allen of Chaos. Glyph uses generative Ai to automate tedious drawing tasks — from view creation to dimensioning. He quotes economist Richard Baldwin: “It’s not Ai that’s going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use Ai might.”
AI generated floor plans
Finch is aiming to streamline architectural design with its Ai-powered floor plan generator. The software helps generate compliant floor plans in minutes and enables rapid exploration of multiple design iterations.. “We want to spend more time designing and less time on manual, repetitive work,” says Finch CEO Pamela Nunez Wallgren.
One-click auto drawings
Robert Gräbert, CTO of Gräbert, wants to disrupt the legacy desktop era by making drawing creation faster, smarter, and more connected than ever before. Even the best models still require hours of DWG cleanup, but with ‘autodrawings’ Gräbert’s ARES engine now offers one-click DWG sheets generated directly from IFC or Revit, automatically refreshed in the cloud.
Panel discussion: autonomous drawings
The future of 2D drawings are here! In this forward-looking panel, experts from Qonic, Gräbert, HOK, and Chaos explore how Ai and automation are reshaping drawing production, touching on the importance of user control, and the future of model-based communication to reduce the need for extensive manual drawings. As Qonic’s Aaron Perry puts it, “We’ll be automating a lot of simplistic drawings, and therefore be making less drawings, because we’ll be having more model to model conversations.”
Human-centred exchange
“Interoperability, in the eyes of many, is seen as a perfect 1:1 translation of datafrom Revit to Archicad, or Rhino to Revit,” says Speckle’s Dimitrie Stefanescu. “It’s obviously a bit of a pipe dream. You can never achieve that fidelity, and it doesn’t reflect how we actually communicate as human beings. Usually, data is exchanged for a purpose.”
Data lakes
Drawings
Drawings
Drawings
Open digital collaboration
Tired of fragmented workflows and blackbox tools? Discover how BHoM, the opensource framework, is changing the game in design computation. Buro Happold’s Al Fisher and Alain Waha, along with computational design legend Robert Aish, explore composable, collaborative, and AI-ready approaches to digital design. It’s time to break down silos!
Panel: reality modelling
“95% of 2050’s infrastructure already exists, and cutting-edge technologies will be key to understanding, maintaining, and reimagining our built environment,” says Julian Moutte, Bentley Systems. Gaussian splats is one such technology discussed in this expert panel: forget the clunky name — this rich 3D dataset is transforming how we document and analyse infrastructure.
Break silos, build futures
HOK’s Greg Schleusner is on a mission to take control of data, calling for integrated, component-based modelling and richer metadata to connect fragmented information. He warns of API lock-in and proposes a “data lake house” for efficient handling. Showcasing a prototype app for collaboration, he champions open-source tools for more connected data management.
Scanning giants
Dive into the epic world of reality capture with Irene Radcliffe’s jaw-dropping USS Intrepid scanning adventure! From Covid challenges to navigating the massive aircraft carrier, she transforms 15 TB of data into stunning visualisations. Her key lesson: anybody can scan, but planning is everything. A must-see tale of technology perseverance, and unexpected magic.
From pixels to fast 3D reality
Gaussian splatting creates high-fidelity 3D scenes from short videos — faster than traditional photogrammetry. It’s holistic and immersive, so you not only get the main object at the centre of the screen, but all the surroundings in the background, explains Gauzilla Pro’s Yoshiharu Sato. His platform can create dynamic 4D time-lapse for detailed as-built progress analysis.
Software development
Breaking down BIM’s technical barriers
“Rework is a killer in our industry,” declares Antonio González Viegas of That Open Company, challenging the status quo of BIM software development. With Fragments, a groundbreaking opensource format that transforms how we handle massive design models, he’s rewriting the rules of AEC technology. By borrowing strategies from video game development, he’s slashing load times, reducing complexity, and democratizing design tools. Gigabyte files now load in seconds, promising a more accessible, innovative future for BIM.
Openess for all
Julien Moutte presents Bentley’s open platform, leveraging Cesium technology to enable multi-layered digital twins, integrating geospatial data, BIM models, and photogrammetry using open standards. With advanced capabilities like Gaussian splats, AI analysis, and seamless interoperability, developers can build sophisticated engineering applications.
Ai curiosity to Ai action
From Ai to GPU acceleration Nvidia technologies are redefining architectural and engineering computing. Whether you’re an ISV building tools or an inhouse developer, this presentation reveals what’s possible, what’s next, and why now is the critical moment to innovate. From USD technologies to Omniverse digital twins, the future of AEC is here.
Open source, infinite worlds
Dive into the world of Blender with Dalai Fellinto, where open-source meets creativity. Discover how this powerful 3D tool can transform AEC workflows. From architecture to animation, learn insider secrets about Blender’s development, community-driven innovation, and future potential. Essential viewing for developers, designers, and creative professionals.
BBC Television Centre - breathing new life into a cultural icon with technology.
One of London’s most iconic landmarks, the former BBC Television Centre, is a cornerstone of British history. After over 50 years of service, the centre underwent significant redevelopment to breathe new life into this much-loved part of the city’s skyline. In 2013, the site was transformed into a mixed-use destination, combining luxury residences, creative workspaces and premium amenities.
However, reimagining a complex once celebrated as the “cathedral of entertainment and news” presented a major challenge –preserving its cultural heritage while adapting the space for modern living.
The challenge: selling the vision before construction.
The Boundary, a global creative agency specialising in the best-in-class photorealistic visuals and immersive experiences for products, architecture and the built environment, was selected to bring the redevelopment to life. The Boundary dedicated its focus on the new residential building in the complex, The Ariel - a residence yet to be built.
The team crafted photorealistic marketing visuals that honoured the site as a cultural landmark, whilst also creating a visual experience that could be imagined as a home for future residents. The Boundary’s deliverables included CGIs, animations, a marketing film, and interactive real-time tours.
The Ariel project demanded a visual narrative that would help prospective buyers and tenants imagine life within the space. Materials needed to capture atmosphere, from how light shifts throughout the day, to how textures feel, and how people move throughout the space. Bringing that level of realism to life - with both accuracy and emotion - required the right technology.
Transforming visuals with Chaos Corona.
Redefining design workflows with up to 80% time savings.
The Boundary relied on Chaos Corona, an easy to use rendering software for architectural visualisation, for all rendered content. The tool’s flexibility meant they could create photorealistic images and easily tweak them based on feedback, without having to start from scratch each time a change was requested by the developer. This made the design process faster and more collaborative, saving time and money for the wider project with fewer iterations being produced.
The interiors at The Television Centre showcased a complex ceiling design that went through numerous iterations. What would typically require skilled modellers several hours to model and implement changes at each design development stage was streamlined to a fraction of the time using Corona’s Slicer tool.
By leveraging the tool’s ability to modify geometry with remarkable precision, the team significantly decreased the time spent on remodelling while ensuring accuracy. They could swiftly implement the design changes while ensuring the ceiling’s intricate details aligned with aesthetic and functional requirements.
Used with the Slicer, the Corona Pattern tool simplified the mapping of the ceiling’s intricate details and complex panelling. When designs changed multiple times, the team could adapt without compromising quality or project timelines.
The Boundary estimates that Corona tools saved up to 80% of the usual time spent to generate a render as intricate as this one, without compromising quality. In turn, the ability to rapidly test and refine designs significantly lowered expenses related to mistakes and delays.
Making space for creativity.
At the heart of any project lies creativity. The Boundary relied on Corona Sun and Sky were used to create initial clay compositions, offering greater flexibility and the ability to test solutions using a range of tools. Sun direction and size were changed to quickly output lighting tests from morning to night, from sharp sun to overcast. With Volume Effect, the team could create depth that would otherwise require costly volumetrics. Designs, textures and materials were trialled and refined with technology that gave the team creative licence, without the risk of costly mistakes.
When vision meets technology through partnership
Today, what was once home to the BBC is now set to be home to approximately 950 residents, enjoying a reimagined creative district with a host of new amenities. The revival of an icon was never an easy project to conceptualise, but through emotive visuals, the end goal became easier to picture. The success of the redevelopment hinges not just on technology, but on the creative teams who utilised it to its full potential.
For Chaos, each of our customers are viewed as creative partners. Projects like this exemplify that collaboration, giving us the chance to see the tangible impact of our tools while building strong, lasting relationships with the people who use them. Meanwhile, our customers can rely on technology that they can trust.
“I have been using Corona since the very initial release and never looked back. It is one of the most utilised and trusted software we use in our studio.”
- Eleonora Galimberti, Senior Associate at The Boundary
This redevelopment is a testament to what happens when creative vision meets trusted technology, transforming not just spaces but the way we experience them.
Visit www.chaos.com to learn more.
The future of Revit: take 2
At our recent NXT BLD event, Carl Christensen, Autodesk VP of Product, dropped a bombshell: Forma is not the replacement for Revit, he told attendees. Martyn Day analyses his comments and Autodesk’s messaging around Revit
Each year, our NXT BLD and NXT DEV events showcase BIM authoring tools that leverage the latest advances in cloud, database, collaboration and AI technologies. This year was no exception, providing a forum for participants to familiarise themselves with the latest offerings from a wide range of vendors, including newer companies such as Arcol, Hypar, Motif, Qonic and Snaptrude. (All presentations can be viewed free at www.nxtaec.com).
None of these start-ups offer products that can currently be considered ‘featurecomparable’ with Revit – but it’s clear that their eventual goal is to offer credible alternatives to Autodesk’s flagship BIM modeller.
Right now, those ambitions may not represent an immediate threat to Revit, but we estimate that over the next 18 months to three years, Autodesk will begin to feel the squeeze, as long as these rivals remain well-funded and focused.
At the same time, the rise of AI powering features such as
tive for older, monolithic design applications that only cover the concept to documentation phases.
Against this backdrop, Autodesk VP of Product Carl Christensen was an excellent speaker to welcome to our stage last month. He is intrinsic to the development of what Autodesk sees as the next generation of AEC software, from databases to the company’s first new cloudbased AEC design tool Forma. He joined Autodesk back in 2020 when it acquired his previous company Spacemaker and now leads a development team specifically focused on next-generation, cloudbased AEC solutions.
With that in mind, we were surprised to hear what Christensen had to tell NXT BLD/NXT DEV attendees, especially given our coverage in recent years of Autodesk’s ambitions for Forma.
“Forma is not intended to replace Revit or AutoCAD, and Revit and AutoCAD will continue to exist,” he said, before adding some nuance to his statement. Autodesk, he continued, intends to provide “some of the capabilities found in
early-stage design?
To me, this seems nonsensical. All software eventually dies. Successful products are sometimes rewritten from the ground up to keep them performative and competitive, but old code simply can’t keep up with solid-state advances.
Revit was originally written at a time when CPU performance was based on the speed of a single-core processor. Now we have multi-core CPUs, advanced GPUs, and powerful APUs too.
In light of this, how are we to make sense of Christensen’s statement?
Today’s reality is that while Autodesk dominates the market with Revit, the product is around 25 years old. Customers have complained to me that they are frustrated with its failings when it comes to speed, robustness and ease of use. At firms that use Rhino at the concept stage, users see Revit mainly as a documentation tool, rather than a design tool.
autodrawings has the potential to transform key phases in current BIM design process- es. The impact of that could be nega-
Revit and AutoCAD in a new way, by moving them to the cloud, making them accessible to a wider range of people, who may not need the extensive capabilities of the full desktop solutions.”
Revit never to be redeveloped or reimagined in future? Will Forma only ever address
None of this is a secret. Customer frustration has boiled over in recent years, leading to two open letters in 2020 and 2022, in which users gave vent to their concerns regarding lack of development and increased cost of ownership. Many wanted to understand Autodesk’s plans for redeveloping and modernising Revit.
The response from Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost was pretty clear. The development work that Autodesk planned to perform on Revit, based on the current roadmap, he said, “does not involve a bottom-up rewrite. There is no next-generation rewrite of Revit coming.”
Recommended viewing
Autodesk VP of Product Carl Christensen, speaking
While he acknowledged that customers might want “a faster horse”, new technologies including the cloud, AI and modern database architectures meant that a straight rewrite of a desktop tool was a low bar for which to aim. “There is no Revit 2.0,” he reiterated.
This was a dose of tough love for Revit fans – and it raised more questions than it answered. If there was to be no Revit 2.0, what was coming next?
The answer seemed to be Forma, a concept unveiled at Autodesk University in 2022 and officially launched as a platform product the following year. Autodesk Forma was described as “an industry cloud that will unify workflows across teams that design, build and operate the built environment.”
the right format, to be worked on using tools tailored for each discipline. The clear message was that this future would include the replacement of traditional desktop apps with ondemand design systems.
A significant shift
In light of all this, Christensen’s remarks at NXT BLD would seem to signify a significant shift in approach at Autodesk –but caveats are important. He didn’t provide any timeline, but indicated that over
‘‘
Autodesk can rely on Revit’s ‘sticky-ness’, meaning customers have invested time and money in ensuring they have the internal skills to use Revit and get the most from it. It’s not going to be chucked out overnight
Customers were told that initial capabilities would target earlystage planning and design processes with automation and AI. According to Autodesk executives, by moving data to the core of the process, within the cloud, all sorts of benefits would be unlocked, such as seamless collaboration on projects, more granular models, easier data management, and smoother application of AI.
In short, a future was painted in conversations with Autodesk software architects and database magicians in which the right data went to the right designer, in
the next few years, the company will focus on integrating existing capabilities from across its product portfolio into Forma, with the aim of combining the deep technical capabilities of tools such as Revit with the agile, intuitive approach taken with Forma. As a result, Forma will get some special sauce from Revit and AutoCAD as its development progresses, indicating some degree of overlap between the products in future.
It also seems likely that, in the long term, Revit will become a ‘thinner client’
application that relies on a robust cloud back-end – a similar trajectory to mechanical CAD/CAM software Autodesk Fusion and a definite shift away from the monolithic desktop application. Anagnost has already suggested as much, telling analysts back in 2021: “We believe that relatively modestly sized thick clients with a really robust cloud back-end are the future. Fusion has a thick client, but it has a very, very, very fine-grained, multi-tenant cloud data infrastructure hidden behind it. Fusion’s client will get thinner over time. You could also see an evolution with Revit that’s similar to that. That’s going to take a little longer.”
So what’s changed at Autodesk? Executives at the company have always been up for talking about possible next-generation platforms. Its leadership pays close attention to analysing competitive threats, the current state of technology, customer demand, costs and market opportunities. Prior to the publication of the open letters from customers, cloud and the construction market were seen as the investment targets with the most potential. Amy Bunszel, at that time senior VP of design and creation products and subsequently VP of AEC, apologised for the company’s
The Accelerated Graphics Tech Preview in Revit 2026 helps give Autodesk’s aging BIM authoring tool a new lease of life
under-investment in architectural modelling. She used the phrase ‘outcome-based design’ to describe Autodesk’s strategic aim and envisioned a future “powered by the cloud, with experiences spanning desktop, mobile and extended reality”, which would look “quite different from a desktop application with hundreds of buttons in the ribbon.”
Of course, today’s AEC software world is very different from how it was in 2020 and 2021. For the first time in Revit’s 25 years, there are now many new BIM competitors vying for the attention of users on a mission to achieve BIM 2.0. The Covid pandemic supercharged previously sluggish cloud adoption. Documentation output volume for projects is widely seen as burdensome and real productivity benefits remain elusive. Many firms in the AEC market are actively looking to diversify their software estates and rethink their 3D and 2D workflows.
appearance in new releases of Forma.
However, Autodesk can at least rely on Revit’s ‘sticky-ness’, meaning customers have invested time and money in ensuring they have the internal skills to use Revit and get the most from it. It’s not going to be chucked out overnight. For many BIM managers, their job security and professional reputation derives directly from their Revit skills and their ability to introduce Revit-based BIM practices to workplaces.
We also know that the Spacemaker team has been on-board at Autodesk for more than three years now, focusing on
‘‘
Revit. In addition to the single-threaded nature of the programme, Revit has barely made any use at all of modern-day GPU acceleration. Yet in the past 15 years, huge steps forward have been made in 3D frame rate, rendering quality and interaction speeds.
For almost five years, we’ve known that Autodesk has been redeveloping the One Graphics Subsystem (OGS) used by many of its core modelling products. Inventor, AutoCAD and 3ds Max have all been updated. Now it’s the turn of Revit. We saw the first signs of this in the 2026 release of with the Accelerated Graphics Tech Preview, with full implementation expected next year.
At firms that use Rhino at the concept stage, users see Revit mainly as a documentation tool, rather than a design tool ’’
cloud strategy and building the backbone to a next-generation suite of tools.
At Autodesk, executives can clearly see who the company’s key competitors are in BIM 2.0, how well they are funded, their particular approach to the market, their product development velocity and their current technology stacks. I’m sure Autodesk has plenty of personnel focusing on competitive threat analysis, because the company understands who its challengers are and the threats they pose. And it’s interesting to see capabilities from challenger products start to make their
In summary, it’s hardly surprising that Autodesk’s vision for the next generation of BIM — and how it’s reflected in its product portfolio — has evolved since 2021. Four years is a very long time in the tech industry.
All change
When it comes to older software, one of the key drawbacks is that it cannot make use of modern hardware – and this is particularly significant in the case of
Autodesk AEC software: a step back in time
As far back as 2008, executives at Autodesk had already decided that the future of software was in the cloud, not tied to the desktop. While Revit could be rewritten, there seemed little point in doing this for the desktop, if the browser was to become the next operating system. Porting to the browser created constraints, of course, but the software could then be run on many machines – and a lot of architects were already asking for Revit to run on Apple Macs. Back then, however, the web platform was far from mature and in no way ready to host applications that simply ran better as desktop clients.
In fact, from my discussions with Autodesk execs about
Fusion, the cloud-based mechanical CAD/CAM tool that Autodesk launched in 2012, it seems that they were already thinking about how lessons from that exercise could be applied to the next generation of Revit.
The company was way ahead of almost every other supplier in browser-based application technology, but due to a lack of web 3D acceleration standards and cloud platform tools, Autodesk’s MCAD team had to do a lot of experimentation and engineering work to bring Fusion to market.
Around the same time, the company made another commitment to the cloud as the future of software, with the creation of Forge, since renamed Autodesk APS. This breaks
The latest incarnation of OGS fully utilises modern graphics APIs, including DirectX 12 and Vulkan. This means that Autodesk applications will be able to ‘talk’ directly to GPU hardware, rather than having to route everything through a graphics driver. It also means they can take better advantage of multi-core CPUs. It will incorporate hardware-based ray tracing, allow switching between simple shaded views and photorealistic representations, and should be able to run at a fluid 60 frames per second. Autodesk executives are claiming a performance lift in Revit of around three to four times, along with better quality graphics.
In recent years, Autodesk has become somewhat enamoured with the Pixar
down common features within the company’s software estate and rewrites them as cloud services, so that new applications can be assembled in the cloud and delivered to users over the internet. This was no small undertaking and perhaps came a little too early for the market, but it did provide some excellent crystal ball gazing for the software world.
Then in 2016, Amar Hanspal, Autodesk VP of product at that time, introduced the concept of a next-generation, data-centric, cloud-based collaborative environment for AEC called Project Quantum. But it wasn’t until 2018 that design apps on the browser began to gain acceptance with Figma, and new generations of browser
technology began to be leveraged for heftier professional applications.
While in retrospect Quantum was described as “little more than a PowerPoint”, I did see some proof-of-concept demonstrations in 2019, rebadged as Project Plasma (www.tinyurl.com/AEC-plasma)
Subsequently, Autodesk acquired Spacemaker, charging its development team with fleshing out this long-held, nextgeneration vision, reworking the Spacemaker application as Forma, while also delivering Forma as an ‘industry cloud’ for realising the future of AEC cloud data backbone. At the time it seemed that Forma, Autodesk’s new light, was both a wave and a particle.
open source Universal Scene Description (USD) format (www.tinyurl.com/USD-AEC) and has started a working group called The Alliance for OpenUSD to beef up USD for AEC use, alongside Nvidia and others.
USD is not only seen as a way to share model data but also offers technologies that Autodesk is putting to use in the new OGS in Revit, which leverages MaterialX and Pixar’s Hydra renderer (part of USD).
For now OGS in Revit is delivered through the Accelerated Graphics Tech Preview, and is not yet fully wired into the product. Shadows, sketchy lines and depth queuing, transparency, point clouds, line patterns and thickness are not currently supported, but these will come in time.
Acceleration is mainly aimed at improving 3D interaction. In our early tests using Revit’s Snowdon Towers Sample project, enabling the Accelerated Graphics Tech Preview more than tripled 3D frame rates — delivering exceptionally smooth viewport performance. Autodesk recommends users have in place at least 8 GB of GPU memory.
In layman’s terms, Revit users will be mainly interacting and navigating their way around lightweight USD representations of their AEC geometries, relieving Revit from the processor-heavy display technology on which it used to rely. This means it could load larger models, and with caching, loading times could benefit too.
It’s been a long time coming. To replace the graphics subsystem in Revit appears to have taken many years and required technology that had not yet been conceived around the time of the original Forma announcement.
This new technology, now near production, is perhaps giving Autodesk executives the confidence that, once delivered, there’ll be plenty of life left in extending Revit, to the satisfaction of existing customers. Despite its underlying database
and systems architecture, OGS could provide a performance uplift that will enable Revit to fight off some of the cloud startups which might use more modern graphics APIs but offer less like-for-like capabilities, for at least the next few years.
This is speculation, of course – but Revit is a meaningful brand and it would be foolish to throw that away. If its existing code can be made more performant at the graphics front end, and if the historic RVT database can be unhooked at the back end and replaced with a connection to a more streamed, granular, next-generation cloud database (which allegedly is a Forma technology), Revit could exist as ‘a thick Windows client’ for a long time yet.
The next act might be to port Revit’s capabilities to work in a browser, removing the Windows lock in, or to slowly develop web-delivered replacement apps, grouping toolsets for individual discipline needs – which was the original Forma idea.
Replacing graphics with OGS on its own would really only serve as a temporary Band-Aid, and we have yet to see what Autodesk will do when it comes to Revit’s back end and its future cloud integration.
Conclusion
Christensen’s statements might be seen as simply a marketing decision, with the aim of restating the company’s commitment to Revit at a time when the market is becoming increasingly overheated and noisy, thanks to the buzz generated by next-generation rivals.
In fact, I’m sure that is the intent, at least in part. However, things are changing in the Revit world, not least with the new ‘Accelerated Graphics’. Next year’s Revit looks set to be a massive crowdpleaser, offering what could be the single biggest performance increase in the product’s history.
It’s entirely possible that the Autodesk AEC team is viewing that uplift as a reprieve for Revit, or at least a useful shield to ward off the BIM 2.0 wannabes while they still have bags of VC funding. Autodesk’s OGS will certainly buy desktop Revit a little extra time and please the fans. It could be a rethinking of what Forma and its future should look like. However, with Christensen promising early access to some of the modelling tools that will shortly be added to Forma, there’s a risk of the company muddying the waters as Revit and Forma’s individual toolsets start to overlap. Positioning is everything.
For me, the acid test will be how Autodesk responds to the autodrawings threat and how well it delivers the automation technologies on which it’s currently working. Will these capabilities be developed with Revit in mind, to safeguard the product’s position within customers as a documentation tool, or will they appear as a capability or service within the Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) or Forma cloud? And beyond OGS, what significant developments are left on the Revit roadmap?
While we have concentrated in this article on technology, the part that is missing from the equation is customer sentiment towards Autodesk and its business practices. Non-compliance is deeply unpopular and IT directors we speak to view Autodesk with some trepidation, fearing escalating costs, the end of the ‘2 for 1’ perpetual-to-subscription deal slated for 2028 and what all this might mean for their own practice’s budgets, not to mention how they’re going to support new and redesigned workflows using automation, AI, open source tools and data lakes.
Whichever way you look at it, the next three years promise to be very interesting indeed.
■ www.autodesk.com/revit
Autodesk Forma is being developed at pace, but is not a replacement for Revit
NavLive.ai
With all the progress being made to convert point clouds to 3D models,
‘scan to BIM’ is fast becoming a reality. One step before that would be ‘scan to drawings’ — and an Oxford-based startup sparked plenty of buzz around this at our recent NXT BLD event, writes Martyn Day
True industry disruption rarely comes from a single new technology. More often, it’s the convergence of multiple innovations that reshapes workflows and drives meaningful change. Ai is clearly one of the most influential technologies in this mix — and it’s now being woven into nearly every aspect of software and hardware development.
A great example of this convergence is NavLive, which combines LiDAR technology with advanced Ai processing to scan buildings and generate precise site drawings in minutes.
The company was formed in 2022 as an Oxford University spin out from the PhD research on SLAM, 3D mapping and autonomous robots, carried out by
co-founder David Wisth, who is the company CTO.
The CEO and other co-founder, Chris Davison, comes from an investment background and was one of the co-founders and CEO of BigPay, a Singapore challenger bank.
The company has raised £4 million from investment and grants, to develop a unique SLAM scanner, which captures and processes point clouds, digital images using Ai powered by Nvidia GPUs on the device. Data is then shared, via cloud, to deliver a rapid scanning solution that automatically generates 2D floor plans, 3D models, sections and elevations with a claimed accuracy of about 1cm for 1:100 RICS-grade surveys.
NavLive has a team of around 15 peo -
ple and, at the moment, the handheld scanners are hand-made in the UK.
Currently, in this space you have Matterport which has a tripod-based solution at around £6k and products like Leica BLK2GO at £40,000, the Faro Orbis at £45,000 and the NavVis VLX 2 or 3 at about $30k - $60K.
At just £25,000, NavLive hits a sweet spot for rapid SLAM-style scanning, with the added benefit of delivering 2D drawings and 3D models. It comes with all the necessary software and on-board processing and the company is also working on how it could convert these models from 3D to intelligent BIM.
While at NXT BLD, NavLive scanned the Queen Elizabeth II building as a data set (see Figure 1) and gave demos showing
Raw scan from NXT BLD: floorplan of the QEII Centre 1
how quickly it scanned spaces, simply by walking around. These were instantly turned into 2D drawings on the Samsung device built into the scanner. It was also possible to see the model and interactively create sections and elevations.
Key features
NavLive is a real time system. The input is the point cloud (SLAM is typically ‘noisy’) and the output are the 2D plans, sections and elevations. While it will capture people and other items within the scan, these can be cleaned up.
The device contains three HD image capture cameras for visual reference and documentation. NavLive will automatically work out and plot the path the user has walked, and photos can be looked at, at any point, to identify features that might not be obvious from the scan drawing.
The team claims that the NavLive device is the quickest AI-powered scan-to-BIM tool on the market, delivering ‘instant site surveys’ in one self-contained unit. The scanner is light and requires very little training to operate. It is capable of being used in multiple environments and has already been trialled in nuclear facilities.
The software is mobile and desktop enabled. It automatically syncs to cloudpoint clouds, drawings and models - and the results can be seen live by any other team member irrespective of geography to the actual scanning. Users can easily download files in all standard formats, including DWG, DXF, PDF for drawings, E57 or LAS for point clouds, and JPG for images. It integrates with CAD/BIM software, such as Revit, AutoCAD, and Archicad, speeding up scan-to-BIM workflows.
device coming out of the UK; even more impressive to assemble the scanner here too. While SLAM techniques are well understood, the big benefit here is having the necessary ‘oomph’ on-board to do the processing and not just in cleaning up the point cloud but actually delivering something immediately useful - 2D drawings, plans and sections and (hopefully) ultimately BIM models.
This is an Oxford University spin out
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said, BIMify also tells us they support direct 3D point cloud to BIM conversion.
At NXT BLD NavLive certainly created a buzz. Unfortunately, BIMify’s CEO was unable to make the event, but that would have been a good introduction!
Rapid reality modelling is evolving fast — Robert Klashka hosted an excellent panel at NXT DEV that explored some of the latest developments - www.tinyurl.com/reality-dev.
At just £25,000, NavLive hits a sweet spot for rapid SLAM-style scanning, with the added benefit of delivering 2D drawings and 3D models
and start-up that certainly has legs.
It raises the question: could NavLive’s automatic 2D floorplan algorithms work with point clouds from any scanner?
Automation is certainly coming to nearly every granular process within traditional BIM workflows. Tasks that once took days or even weeks are being dramatically compressed by emerging technologies. The tedious, time-consuming “grunt work” is being minimised — freeing up teams to focus more on design and decision-making.
Conclusion
It’s highly unusual to find such an initially well-funded and interesting scanning
Having covered BIMify (www.bimify. com) in the May/June edition, one wonders whether you could scan a building using NavLive and then send the generated drawings to BIMify — enabling the creation of Revit BIM models using a customer’s own component libraries. That
Solutions like NavLive are helping drive this shift, lowering the cost of capture while significantly reducing the time it takes to go from survey to as-built drawings — and even to as-built BIM. It’s no exaggeration to say this is the most exciting era for AEC technology innovation in the past 30 years.
■ www.navlive.ai
Ai & design culture (part 2)
In the second of a two part article on Ai image generation and the culture behind its use, Keir Regan-Alexander, director of Arka.Works, gives a sense of how architects are using Ai models and takes a deeper dive into Midjourney V7 and how it compares to Stable Diffusion and Flux
In the first part of this article (AEC May/June 2025 — www.tinyurl. com/AI-AEC-pt1) I described the impact of new LLM-based image tools like GPT-Image-1 and Gemini 2.0.Flash (Experimental Image Mode).
Now, in this second part I turn my focus to Midjourney, a tool that has recently undergone a few pivotal changes that I think are going to have a big impact on the fundamental design culture of practices. That means that they are worthy of critical reflection as practices begin testing and adopting:
1) Retexture - Reduces randomness and brings “control net” functionality to Midjourney (MJ). This means rather than starting with random form and composition, we give the model linework or 3D views to work from. Previously,
despite the remarkable quality of image outputs, this was not possible in MJ.
2) Moodboards - Make it easy to very quickly “train your own style” with a small collection of image references. Previously we have had to train “LoRAs” in Stable Diffusion (SD) or Flux, taking many hours of preparation and testing. Moodboards provide a lower fidelity but much more convenient alternative.
3) Personal codes - Tailors your outputs to your taste profile using ‘Personalize’ (US spelling). You can train your own “--p” code by offering up hundreds of your own A/B test preferences within your account – you can then switch to your ‘taste’ profile extremely easily. In short, once you’ve told MJ what you like, it gets a whole lot better at giving it back to you each time.
A model that instantly knows your aesthetic preferences
Personal codes (or “Personalization” codes to be more precise) allow us to train MJ on our style preferences for different kinds of image material. To better understand the idea, in Figure 1 below you’ll see a clear example of running the same text prompt both with and without my “--p” code. For me there is no contest, I consistently massively prefer the images that have applied my --p code as compared to those that have not. When enabled, Personalization substantially improves the average quality of your output, everything goes quickly from fairly generic ‘meh’ to ‘hey!’. It’s also now possible to develop a number of different personal preference codes for use in different settings. For example, one studio group or team may have
(Left) an example of a generic MJ output, from a text prompt. The subject is a private house design in Irish landscape.
(Right) an output running the exact same prompt, but applying my personal “--p” code, which is trained on my preferences of more than 450 individual A/B style image rankings
a desire to develop a slightly different style code of preferences to another part of the studio, because they work in a different sector with different methods of communication.
Midjourney vs Stable Diffusion / Flux
In the last 18 months, many heads have been turned by the potential of new tools like Stable Diffusion in architecture, because they have allowed us to train our own image styles, render sketches and gain increasingly configurable controls over image generation using Ai - and often without even making a 3D model. Flux, a new parallel opensource model ecosystem has taken the same methods and techniques from SD and added greater levels of quality.
But for ease of use, broad accessibility and consistency of output, the closed-source (and paid product) Midjourney is now firmly winning for most practices I speak to that are not strongly technologically minded.
ended method of exploration.
While SD & Flux are potentially very low cost to use (if you run them locally and have the prerequisite GPUs) and offer massive flexibility of control, they are also much much harder to use effectively than MJ and more recently GPT-4o.
For a few months now Midjourney now sits within a slick web interface that is very intuitive to use and will produce top quality output with minimal stress and technical research.
Before we reflect on what this means for the overall culture of design in architec-
2) I now see a growing interest from my developer client base, who want to go ahead and see vivid imagery even before they’ve engaged an architect or design team - they simply have an idea and want to go directly to seeing it visualised. In some cases, developers are looking to use Ai imagery to help dispose of sites, to quickly test alternative (visual) options to understand potential, or to secure new development contracts or funding.
‘‘ We may marvel at what Ai makes possible in shorter time frames, but we should all be thinking“great, let’s try to make a bit more profit this year” not “great let’s use this to undercut my competitor ’’
tural practice going forwards, here are two notable observations to start with:
Anecdotally, when I do Ai workshops, perhaps 10% of attendees really ‘get’ SD, whereas more like 75% immediately tend to click with Midjourney and I find that it appeals to the intuitive and more nuanced instincts of designers who like to discover design through an iterative and open-
1) Practices who are willing to try their hand with diffusion models during feasibility or competition stage are beginning to find an edge . More than one recent conversation is suggesting that the use of diffusion models during competition stages has made a pivotal difference to recent bid processes and partially contributed to winning proposals.
Make of that what you will. I’m sure many architects will be cringing as they read that, but I think both observations are key signals of things to come for the industry whether it’s a shift you support or not. At the same time, I would say there is certainly a commercial opportunity there for architects if they’re willing to meet their clients on this level, adjust their standard methods of engagement and begin to think about exactly what value they bring in curating initial design concepts in an overtly transparent way at the inception stage of a project.
Text vs Imagewhere are people focused?
While I believe focusing on LLM adoption currently offers the most immediate and broadest benefits across practice and
Latest updates from Midjourney now allow control net drawing inputs (left), meaning for certain types of view we can go from hidden line design frameworks to rendered concept imagery, or with a further step of complexity, training our own ‘moodboard’ to apply consistent styling (right). Note, this technique works best for ‘close-up’ subjects
projects - the image realm is where most architects are spending their time when they jump into Generative Ai.
Architects are fundamentally aesthetic creatures and so perhaps unsurprisingly they assume the image and modelling side of our work will be the most transformed over time. Therefore, I tend to find that architects often really want to lean into image model techniques above alternative Ai methods or Generative Design methods that may be available.
In the short term, image models are likely to be the most impactful for “storytelling” and in the initial briefing stages of projects where you’re not really sure what you think about a distinctive design approach, but you have a framework of visual and 3D ideas you want to play with.
Mapping diffusion techniques to problems
If you’re not sure what all of this means, see table right for a simple explanation of these techniques mapped to typical problems faced by designers looking to use Ai image models.
Changes with Midjourney v7 Midjourney recently launched its v7 model and it was met with relatively muted praise, probably because people were so blown away by the ground breaking potential of GPT-image-1 (an auto-regression model) that arrived just a month before.
This latest version of the MJ model was
transfer. In this case a “synthetic precedent” is used to seed the colour and material styles to the final render using --sref tool. Challenge
“Image models produce images I like, but I can’t control the composition or precise design”
Current Solution
When using Stable Diffusion and Flux, Control nets allow the model to work within specific constraints. Inputs can include photos, existing renders, sketches or linework.
When using Midjourney, Retexturing does a similar thing, although it’s less precisely configurable. Retexture is accessed via the Edit tool and requires an annual subscription. Most businesses will need ‘Pro’ level sub for commercial use, which can be a lot more costly than open-source alternatives.
“I can create one good image, but I can’t create a collection of images that have the exact same style”
“I have a material reference image that I want to use to give the model reference imagery for guidance on architecture and facade style”
In SD / Flux, Customised style “LoRAs” do a really good job of applying consistent styling and these can be created with as few as 20 images. They take about 3 hours to train, but the curation of the image collection and captions needed, as well as the testing after training can take many more hours.
MJ: “Moodboards” allow us to create a style code from a collection of images that we can then apply to future images.
In SD / Flux world, the technique is called IP Adapter (which stands for Image Prompt), however for most users, it is fairly tricky to get consistent style transfer.
In Midjourney, you can prompt easily with images along your words. You can use straight image prompting, which is very compositional transfer or use “Style Referencing”, which I find is a smarter method of style transfer.
Example of sketch-to-render using Midjourney, but including style
trained entirely from scratch so as a result it behaves differently to the familiar v6.1 model. I’m finding myself switching between v7 and 6.1 more regularly than with any previous model release.
One of the striking things about v7 is that you can only access the model when you have provided at least 200+ “image rating” preferences which points to an interesting new direction for more customised Ai experiences. Perhaps Midjourney has realised that the personalisation that is now possible in the platform is exactly what people want in an age of abundant imagery (increasingly created with Ai).
I for one, much prefer using a model that feels like it’s tuned just for me – more broadly, I suspect users want to feel like only they can produce the images they create and that they have a more distinctive style as a result. Leaning more into “Personalize” mode is helping with that and I like that MJ gating access to v7 behind the image ranking process. I have achieved great results with the new model, but I find it harder to use and you do need to work differently with it. Here is some initial guidance on best use:
this version you have to work in this manner, first starting with draft mode enabled and then enhancing to larger resolution versions directly from there. It’s almost like draft mode helps v7 work out the right composition from the prompt and then enhance mode helps to refine the resolution from there. If you try to go for full res v7 in one rendering step, you’ll probably be confused by the lower-par output.
• Getting your “personalize” code is essential for accessing v7 and I’m finding my --p code only begins to work rel-
‘‘
The biggest psychological hurdle that teams have to cross in the image realm is to understand that using Ai diffusion models is not like rendering in the way we’ve become accustomed to - it’s a different value proposition. If you’re already modelling every detail and texture of your design and you want finite control, then you don’t use an Ai for visualisation, just continue to use CGI.
However, if you can provide looser guidance with your own design linework before you’ve actually designed the fine detail, feeding inputs for the overall 3D form and imagery for textures and materials, then you are essentially allowing the model to play within those boundaries.
If you’re already modelling every detail and texture of your design and you want finite control, then you don’t use an Ai for visualisation, just continue to use CGI ’’
atively effectively from about 1,000+ rankings, so set aside a couple of hours to train your preferences in.
• You can now prompt with voice activation mode, which means having a conversation about the composition and image type you are looking for. As you speak v7 will start producing ideas in front of you.
This means letting go of some control and seeing what the model comes back with - a step that can feel uncomfortable for many designers.
• v7 has a new function called ‘draft’ mode which produces low-res options very fast. I’m finding that to get the best results in
Letting the model play
Image models improvise and this is their great benefit. They aren’t the same as CGI.
When you let the model play within boundaries you set, you likely find striking results that change the way you’re thinking about the design that you’re working on. You may at times find yourself both repulsed and seduced in short order as you search around through one image to the next, searching for a response that lands in the way you had hoped.
A big shift that I’m seeing is that Midjourney is making “control net” type
Example of what the new MJ v7 model can do. (Left) an image set in Hamburg, created with a simple text to image prompt. (Right) a nighttime view of the same scene, created by ‘retexturing’ the left hand image within v7 and with ‘personalize’ enabled. The output is impressive because it’s very consistent with the input image and the transformation (in the fore and mid-ground parts of the image are very well executed).
work and “style transfer” with images accessible to a much wider audience than would naturally be inclined to try out a very technical tool like SD.
I think that Midjourney’s decision to finally take the tool out of the very dodgy feeling Discord and launching a proper new and easy to use UI has really made the difference to practices. I still love to work with SD most of all, but I really see these ideas are beginning to land in MJ because it’s just so much easier to get a good result first time and it’s become really delightful to use.
Midjourney has a bit more work to do on its licence agreements (it is currently setup for single prosumers rather than enterprise) and privacy (they are training on your inputs). While you may immediately rule the tool out on this basis, consider – in most cases your inputs are primitive sketches or Enscape white card views, do you really mind if they are used for training and do they give away anything that would be considered privileged? With Stealth mode enabled (which you have to be on pro level for), your work can’t be viewed in public galleries. In order to get going with Midjourney in practice, you will need to allay all current business concerns, but with some basic guardrails in place for responsible use I am now seeing traction in practice.
Looking afresh at design culture
We are now starting to see Ai imagery be pinned up on the wall for studio crits and therefore I think we need to consider the impact of Ai on the overall design culture of the profession.
The use of “synthetic precedents” (i.e. images made purely with Ai already) is also now beginning to shape our critical thinking about design in early stages. Midjourney which has an exceptional ability to tell vivid first-person stories around projects, design themes and briefs, with seductive landscapes, materials and atmosphere. From the evidence I’ve seen so far, the images very much appeal to clients.
If we put Ai aside for a moment - in architectural practice, I think it’s a good idea to regularly reflect on your current studio design culture by considering first;
• Are we actually setting enough time aside to talk about design or is it all happening ad-hoc at peoples’ desks or online?
• Do we share a common design method and language that we all understand implicitly?
• Are we progressing and getting better with each project?
• Are all team members contributing to the dialogue or waiting passively to be told what to do by a director with a napkin sketch?
• Are we reverting to our comfort zone and just repeating tired ideas?
• Are we using the right tools and mediums to explore each concept?
When people express frustration with design culture, they often refer specifically to some aspect of technological “misuse”, for example;
1. “People are using SketchUp too much. They’re not drawing plans anymore”
2. “We are modelling everything in Revit at Stage 3, and no one is thinking about interface detailing”
3. “All I’m seeing is Enscape design options wall to wall. I’m struggling to engage”
4. “I think we might be relying too heavily on Pinterest boards to think about materials”, or maybe;
5. “I can’t read these computer images. I need a model to make a decision”.
… all things I’ve heard said in practice.
Design culture has changed a lot since I entered the profession, and I have found that our relationship with the broad category of “images” in general has changed dramatically over time. Perhaps this is because we used to have to do all our design research collecting monograph books and by visiting actual buildings to see them, whereas now I probably keep up to date on design in places like Dezeen or Arch Daily - platforms that specifically glorify the single image icon and that jump frenetically across scale, style and geography.
One of the great benefits of my role with Arka Works is that I get to visit so many design studios (more than 70 since I began) and I’m seeing so many different ways of working and a full range of opinions about Ai.
I recently heard from a practice leader who said that in their practice, pinning up the work of a deceased (and great) architect was okay, because if it’s still around it must have stood the test of time and also presumably it’s beyond the “life plus 70 year Intellectual Property rule”but in this practice the random pinning
up of images was not endorsed.
Other practice leads have expressed to me that they consider all design work to be somehow derivative and inspired by things we observe - in other words - it couldn’t exist without designers ruminating on shared ideas, being enamoured of another architects’ work, or just plain using peoples’ design material as a crib sheet. In these practices, you can pin up whatever you like - if it helps to move the conversation forward.
Some practices have specific rules about design culture - they may require a pin up on a schedule with a specific scope of materials - you might not be allowed to show certain kinds of project imagery, without a corresponding plan, for example (and therefore holistic understanding of the design concepts). Maybe you insist on models or prefer no renders.
I think those are very niche cases. More often I see images and references simply being used as a shortcut for words and I also think we are a more image-obsessed profession than ever. In my own experience so far, I think these new Ai image tools are extremely powerful and need to be wielded with care, but they absolutely can be part of the design culture and have a place in the design review, if adopted with good judgement.
This is an important caveat. The need for critical judgment at every step is absolutely essential and made all the more challenging by how extraordinary the outputs can be - we will be easily seduced into thinking “yes that’s what I meant”, or “that’s not exactly what I meant, but it’ll do”, or worse “that’s not at all what I meant, but the Ai has probably done a better job anyway - may as well just use Ai every time from now on.”
Pinterestification
This shortening of attention spans is a problem we face in all realms of popular culture, as we become more digital every day. We worry that quality will suffer as people’s attention spans cause more laziness around design idea creation and testing - which would cause a broad dumbing down effect. This has been referred to as the ‘idiot trap’, where we rely so heavily on subcontracting thinking to various Ais, that we forget how to think from first principles.
You might think as a reaction - “well let’s just not bother using Ai altogether” and I think that’s a valid critique if you believe that architectural creativity is a wholly artisanal and necessarily human crafted process.
Probably the practices that feel that way just aren’t calling me to talk about
(Left) a
from the
Ai, but you would be surprised by the kind of ‘artisanal’ practices who are extremely interested in adopting Ai image techniques because rather than seeing them as a threat, they just see it as another way of exercising and exploring their vision with creativity.
Perhaps you have observed something I call “Pinterestification” happening in your studio?
I describe this as the algorithmic convergence of taste around common tropes and norms. If you pick a chair you like in Pinterest, it will immediately start nudging you in the direction of living room furniture, kitchen cabinets and bathroom tiles that you also just happen to love.
They all go so well on the mood board…
It’s almost like the algorithm has aggregated the collective design preferences of millions of tastemakers and packaged it up onto a website with convenient links to buy all the products we hanker after and that’s because it has.
Pinterest is widely used by designers and now heavily relied upon. The company has mapped our clicks; they know what goes together, what we like, what other people with similar taste like - and the incentives of ever greater attention mean that it’s never in Pinterest’s best interest to challenge you. Instead, Pinterest is the infinite design ice cream parlour that always serves your favourite flavour; it’s hard to stop yourself going back every time.
Learning about design
I’ve recently heard that some universities require full disclosure of any Ai use and that in other cases it can actually lead to disciplinary action against the student. The academic world is grappling with these new tools just as practice is, but with additional concerns about how students develop fundamental design thinking skills - so what is their worry?
The tech writer Paul Graham once said “writing IS thinking” and I tend to agree.
Sure, you could have an LLM come up with a stock essay response - but the act of actually thinking by writing down your words and editing yourself to find out where you land IS the whole point of it. Writing is needed to create new ideas in the world and to solve difficult problems. The concern from universities therefore is that if we stop writing, we will stop thinking.
For architects, sketching IS our means of design thinking - it’s consistently the most effective method of ‘problem abstraction’ that we have. If I think back to most skilful design mentors I had in my early career, they were ALL expert draftspeople.
That’s because they came up with the drawing board and what that meant was they could distil many problems quickly and draw a single thread through things to find a solution, in the form of an erudite sketch. They drew sparingly, putting just the right amount of information in all the right places and knowing when to explore different levels of detail - because when you’re drawing by hand, you have to be effi-
cient - you have to solve problems as you go.
Someone recently said to me that the less time the profession has spent drawing by hand (by using CAD, Revit, or Ai), the less that architects have earned overall. This is indeed a bit of a mind puzzle, and the crude problem is that when a more efficient technology exists, we are forced into adoption because we have to compete for work, whether it’s in our long term interests or not - it’s a Catch 22.
But this observation contains a signal too; that immaculate CAD lines do a different job from a sketching or hand drawing. The sketch is the truly high-value solution, the CAD drawing is the prosaic instructions for how to realise it.
I worry that “the idiot trap” for architects would be losing the fundamental skills of abstract reasoning that combines spatial, material, engineering and cultural realms and in doing so failing to recognise this core value as being the thing that the client is actually paying for (i.e. they are paying for the solution, not the instructions).
Clients hire us because we can see complete design solutions and find value where others can’t and because we can navigate the socio-political realm of planning and construction in real life - places where human diplomacy and empathy are paramount.
They don’t hire us to simply ‘spend our time producing package information’ - that is a by-product and in recent years we’ve failed to make this argument effectively. We shouldn’t be charging “by the time needed to do the drawing”, we should be
screenshot
“ArkaPainter_MJ” moodboard, which is a selection of 23 synthetic training images, the exact same selection that were recently used to train an SD LoRA with similar style. (Right) the output from MJ applies the paint and colour styles of the moodboard images into a new setting - in this case the same kitchen drawing as presented previously
charging “by the value” of the building.
So as we consider things being done more quickly with Ai image models, we need to build consensus that we won’t dispense with the sketching and craft of our work. We have to avoid the risk of simply doing something faster and giving the saving straight back to the market in the form of reduced prices and undercutting.
We may marvel at what Ai makes possible in shorter time frames, but we should all be thinking - “great, let’s try to make a bit more profit this year” not “great let’s use this to undercut my competitor”.
Conclusion: judicious use
There is a popular quote (by Joanna Maciejewska) that has become a meme online:
“I want Ai to do my laundry and dishes, so that I can do art and writing, not for Ai to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes”
If we translate that into our professional lives, for architects that would probably mean having Ai assisting us with things like regulatory compliance and auditing, not making design images for us.
Counter-intuitively Ai is realising value for practices in the very areas we would previously have considered the most difficult to automate: design optioneering, testing and conceptual image generation.
When architects reach for a tool like Midjourney, we need to be aware that these methods go right to the core of our value and purpose as designers. More so, that Ai imagery forces us to question our existing culture of design and methods of critique.
Unless we expressly dissuade our teams from using tools like Midjourney (which would be a valid position), anyone experimenting with it will now find it to be so effective that it will inevitably percolate into our design processes in ways that we don’t control, or enjoy.
Rather than allow these ad-hoc methods to creep up on us in design reviews unannounced and uncontrolled, a better approach is to consider first what would be an ‘aligned’ mode of adoption within our design processes - one that fits with the core culture and mission of the practice and then to make more deliberate use of it with endorsed design processes that create repeatable outputs that we really appreciate.
If you have a particularly craft-based design method, you could consider how that mode of thinking would be applied that to your use of Ai? Can you take a particularly experimental view of adoption that aligns with your specific priori-
ties? Think Archigram with the photocopier.
We also need to question when something is pinned up on a wall alongside other material, if it can be judged objectively on its merits and relevance to the project, and if it stands up to this test - does it really matter to us how it was made? If I tell you it’s “Ai generated” does it reduce its perceived value?
I find that experimentation with image models is best led by the design leaders in practice because they are the “tastemakers” of practice and usually create the permission structures around design. Image models are often mistakenly categorised as technical phenomena and while they require some knowledge and skill, they are actually far more integral to the aesthetic, conceptual and creative aspects of our work.
To get a picture of what “aligned adoption of Ai” would mean for your practice, it should feel like you’re turning up the volume on the particular areas of practice that you already excel at, or conversely to mitigate aspects of practice that you feel acutely weaker in.
Put another way - Ai should be used to either reinforce whatever your specialist niche is or to help you remedy your perceived vulnerabilities. I particularly like the idea of leaning into our specialisms because it will make our deployment of Ai much more experimental, more bespoke and more differentiated in practice.
When I am applying Ai in practice, I don’t see depressed and disempowered architects - I am reassured to find that the most effective people at writing bids with
Ai, also tend to be some of the best bid writers. The people who end up becoming the most experimental and effective at producing good design images with Ai image models, also tend to be great designers too and this trend goes on in all areas where I see Ai being used judiciously, so far - without exception.
The “judicious use” part is most important because only a practitioner who really knows their craft can apply these ideas in ways that actually explore new avenues for design and realise true value in project settings. If you feel that description matches you – then you should be getting involved and having an opinion about it. In the Ai world this is referred to as keeping the “human-in-the-loop” but we could think of it as the “architect-inthe-loop” continuing to curate decisions, steer things away from creative cul de sacs and to more effectively drive design.
Recommended viewing
Keir Regan-Alexander is director at Arka Works, a creative consultancy specialising in the Built Environment and the application of AI in architecture. Watch his NXT BLD 2025 presentation free on-demand where he explores how to deploy Ai in practice www.nxtaec.com
Photo taken during a design review at Morris+Company in 2022 - everyone standing up, drawings pinned up, table of material samples, working models, coffee cups. How will Ai imagery fit into this kind of crit setting? Should it be there at all?
(photo: Architects from left to right: Kehinde, Funmbi, Ben, Miranda & David)
BIMnesia: what your models forgot and why it matters
Rethinking the system of record in AEC
by Marty Rozmanith, Skema
True industry disruption rarely comes from a single new technology. More often, it’s the convergence of multiple innovations that reshapes workflows and drives meaningful change. Ai is clearly one of the most influential technologies in this mix — and it’s now being woven into nearly every aspect of software and hardware development.
For decades, AEC firms have relied on BIM tools like Revit to serve as their system of record —the authoritative home for the design data that produces the record drawings in the permit set. But anyone who has tried to open a ten-yearold Revit file knows the well-worn hassles and limitations of that process. At Skema, we believe it’s time to shift to something more robust for leveraging your previous work.
We’ve been quietly working on something different: a new system of record
based not on documents or exports, but on design knowledge — curated, reusable, and deeply integrated with your firm’s existing BIM practices. This system lives in what we call the Skema Design Catalog. It turns your prior projects into building blocks — semantically rich assemblies that can be reused, adapted, and reassembled with modern computational tools. It’s a fundamentally different approach than simply storing BIM data. It’s about curating design intelligence.
Why design catalogs matter
We’ve all heard the complaints: “Our Revit files are a mess.” It’s true — BIM data often resembles a cluttered garage, where even valuable assets are buried in inaccessible forms. But that doesn’t mean this data is useless. At Skema, we’re developing targeted machine learning techniques to help firms extract value from their design history. Our tools iden-
tify whole reusable layouts and assemblies from your past work, forming a searchable, reusable library of designs ready to deploy.
What’s crucial here is that this isn’t generative AI hallucinating pictures based on internet training. The Skema Design Catalog uses your own project data — authored by your team, proven in practice — and applies AI only as an assistant to help structure and curate that knowledge.
Your IP stays your IP.
We’ve been vocal about this distinction because, unlike many software vendors racing to scrape and remix user-generated content to train opaque models, Skema is designed to protect your intellectual property. We don’t ingest your models into some centralised AI hive mind. We help you build a trusted, firmspecific knowledge asset.
Opinion
From conceptual design to production-grade BIM
The idea of toolchains is central to our philosophy. We’ve moved away from the idea of Skema as a standalone conceptual tool. Today, it’s more like a Swiss Army knife — a focused, interoperable set of capabilities that work with tools you already use. Our integrations with SketchUp and now Rhino let you stay in familiar environments while accessing the power of curated BIM data. And there is no need for a team of BIM-jockeys to then re-enter the data in Revit all along the way, since we have integrated the approach.
This integration-first approach means you don’t have to relearn your entire workflow. Skema sits in the middle of the pipeline, enabling higher-quality design outputs without forcing you to abandon the tools that work for you. The result is a toolchain that’s greater than the sum of its parts. Think Rhino for expressive geometry, Skema for data-aware layout and BIM curation, and Revit for final design, documentation and drawing sets. Each tool does what it does best, and Skema links them together
Advanced workflows and solvers
Behind the scenes, we’ve been building an advanced ‘solver architecture’ where you can inject your own logic into our layout engines. These graph-based engines can automate layout and morph spaces based on real architectural design data—not just simplified shapes or boxes. And we have been working with leading AEC firms that are pushing the envelope in modular design and design for manufacturing.
Together these three legs of the stool — design catalogs, toolchains, and solvers — unlock a new design workflow—fast, flexible, and grounded in practice.
Not a platform
We deliberately avoid calling Skema a platform. Why? Because it is not our goal to charge firms for access to their own data or impose a new model standard. Skema isn’t trying to replace BIM tools — it’s connecting them with purpose. Skema’s role is not to become the next Revit or Rhino — but to make those tools work better together, to make your data more usable, and to do it in a way that’s fast to learn and simple to apply.
Skema is a ‘fast-forward’ button for your project team. Skema is not a collaboration platform even though we are used for collaboration all the time. Rather, Skema is designed to work with whatever collaboration environment you use today (or tomorrow).
This approach is shaped by feedback from real users. As one customer put it: “You’re letting me reuse what I already know and already trust.” That’s the point. We’re not trying to replace human expertise. We’re helping you operationalise it. Your data. Your terms.
There’s a growing concern in the industry about how software vendors are using customer data to train AI systems. At Skema, we’ve taken a hard stance: your models remain private. Our machine learning features operate within your own environment, curating — not consuming —your design history.
This matters. Your design work isn’t
1 With design logic you control Skema’s graphbased solvers with a view to automating layout with ‘real architectural intelligence’ 2 Skema’s Design Catalogs are designed to transform your firm’s trusted assemblies into curated, searchable building blocks—ready to adapt, remix, and deploy across new projects
3 According to Skema, thanks to its integration with Rhino, architects and designers can evolve Rhino designs into highly-constructable and trusted BIM models — without scripting, manual remodeling, or any loss of design intent
just geometry. It’s judgment, collaboration, negotiation. It’s intellectual property. And increasingly, it’s your competitive edge. Skema is here to help you protect it—and put it to work.
■ www.skema.ai
About the author
Marty Rozmanith is a co-founder of Skema and a long-time innovator in BIM and AEC software. Before starting Skema, he helped lead the development of Revit and has spent his career at the intersection of architecture, computation, and construction.
Learn more about Skema 2025. Watch on-demand Marty Rozmanith’s NXT BLD 2025 presentation where he explores smart toolchain integration, reusable design intelligence, and zero-code generative design www.nxtaec.com
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