Drastic improvements in 3D modeling technology over the past few decades have been a major boon for architects.
While rulers, pencils and paper are by no means dead, it’s hard to beat an interactive 3D model when it comes to showing how a completed building may look in a landscape, how floor layouts change the feel of a room and how different materials play together.
With BIMsmith Forge — a cloud-based tool for architects launching on May 2 —
wants to make 3D models even better by basing them on the exact building materials that will be used in the actual building.
“Basically, it’s a simple interface for the user to be able to create the layers of a wall, floor, roof or ceiling one by one, and layer them accordingly,” said CEO Benjamin Glunz.
One of the platform’s major selling points allows architects to combine hundreds of building products from different brands. In a wall system, for instance, the user can choose the specific studs, insulation, drywall and paint they want to use in the project and export the final wall into Autodesk Revit — a popular planning and modeling tool for architects. In addition to getting a more accurate depiction of what the final building will look like, this integration helps architects and engineers keep track of the materials they’ll need to complete a project.
Free to use and designed to run smoothly in the user’s browser, BIMsmith saves architects the time they would otherwise spend browsing catalogs and downloading building materials they want to use in their models. For brands that pay to have their products included in the platform, BIMsmith offers an opportunity to get discovered by new architects — and get in front of them at the very moment when important design choices are being made. (Launching partners include paint and coating manufacturer Sherwin Williams and building materials manufacturer National Gypsum, among others).
An architect by training, Glunz co-founded Anguleris with Freddy Munoz in 2010 to work with furniture, appliance and building materials manufacturers in building digital 3D models of their products and distribute them to architects, engineers and designers.
Thanks to a steadily growing portfolio of clients (Anguleris has worked with over 150 brands, including 3M and Kohler to build digital product libraries) the staff of 29 recently outgrew its old Carpentersville offices and is in the midst of a relocation to downtown Elgin.
Glunz expects the addition of a SaaS component to the business to open up new avenues for substantial growth. To that end, the company hired a new CTO in January and is on the lookout for additional developers and designers.
Images via Anguleris.
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