Innovative tech solutions– from 3D printing to project management tools and drone-based monitoring systems– are revolutionizing the way architects work. These tools allow them to optimize their workflows, increase ROI and communicate better with clients. Since the advent of the smartphone, app developers have been rolling out small, nimble tools that tackle all sorts of problems professionals encounter on a daily basis, both in the studio and on the construction site.

These 10 apps for architects have proven to be extremely useful across different aspects of the profession. They are intuitive, enhance collaboration and can integrate well with the most popular design software solutions used in the AEC industry.

Best Mobile Apps for Architects List:

#1 MagicPlan

MagicPlan makes augmented reality work to an architects’ advantage by allowing them to create accurate floor plans without the use of measuring tape, pencils, or paper. The app assembles a floor plan in a matter of minutes. All that is required is that the user stand and point a device toward the space that needs measuring. Users can also export these drawings as a PDF, JPG, or DXF and share them with collaborators. The app also includes tutorials on how to use it effectively and get fully adjusted to it.

#2 Autodesk Formit

Autodesk created Formit as part of the company’s Revit software package. The app allows architects to use real-world site information during the early design stage of a project. Formit is an intuitive, easy to use mass-modeling application helping designers make informed decisions while accessing site and climate data. It allows designers to sketch proposed design options that can be compared with program requirements and then shared with the project team for continued collaboration through Autodesk® 360. The Pro version allows users to build larger models and includes built-in Solar Analysis. FormIt started life as an iPad application, but is now available on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and in the web browser.

#3 iRhino 3D

With iRhino 3D, architects can view models created in Rhino 3D on the go. It allows users to view native Rhino 3DM files on their iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch, pan, zoom, and rotate using typical commands. By using the navigator, they can scroll through thumbnails and quickly jump to different models, showcase them to clients and colleagues and save views as images for markup and emailing. You can load Rhino models from websites, Google Drive, Dropbox, email attachments, or from iTunes.

#4 BIMx

BIMx is GRAPHISOFT’s mobile BIM communication tool for viewing ARCHICAD models on smarphones and tablets. Architects can use this free app for Android and iOS to share designs, view them in 2D and 3D, or in virtual reality on the iPhone where the Google Cardboard is supported. BIMx Viewer allows users to download models from other sources or from the BIMx community site through iTunes to the iPad.

#5 Morpholio Trace

Morpholio Trace is perfect for architects who love to create quick sketches with the intelligence and accuracy of CAD. The app allows them to draw on top of imported images and templates, add comments and annotations, and quickly visualize ideas. It provides instant scaling, allows users to create custom entourage, landscapes and graphics, and send or print packages. It includes the ScalePen, a patent-pending technology that checks the drawing scale and zoom level continuously to automatically assign a calibrated set of technical pens. The result is simple but powerful – an array of perfect pen sizes that dynamically responds as you move around, through and into the drawing.

#6 IrisVR

With virtual and augmented reality tool gaining popularity, this new technology has also become a medium that is transforming the way the AEC industry communicates and creates designs. Tech startup IrisVR, which develops virtual reality software for professionals in the AEC industry, has already developed two useful pieces of software: Prospect, which instantly and automatically converts 3D models into fully navigable VR experiences for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift headsets, and Scope, an app that allows you to view rendered 360° panoramas with a Google Cardboard, GearVR, or other mobile VR headset.

#7 Storyboard VR

Storyboard VR is a free prototyping and visualization tool that allows users to pull in, arrange, scale and animate simple 2D assets. Architects can upload transparent drawings and environment maps from existing sketching tools to Storyboard VR and use the app to get feedback early in the design process. It also features a VR version of PowerPoint which creates slides for effective presentation purposes.

#8 Pair

Pair (formerly Visidraft) is a tech startup that built an app which allows architects to drag-and-drop 3D models of consumer furnishings and appliances into their designs using iPhones or iPads. The firm built Pair using their proprietary computer vision and augmented reality technology that makes the app different from its AR competitors. Architects and consumers can physically walk around a virtual 3D product like it is in their home, office space or design.

#9 Drone Deploy

Drone Deploy is an app that allows architects to collect aerial construction site data and images using drones, upload imagery to create accurate, high-resolution maps and 3D models for detailed analysis, manage hundreds of users and connect teams with one-click collaboration and admin tools. Project monitoring thus becomes easy and consistent, with the app helping to improve site planning and quality control, managing assets, and reducing risk on the job site.

#10 ArchiSnapper

Archisnapper is an app for iOS and Android devices which allows users to create and access field reports and punch lists on the construction site, as well as to photograph, draw, sketch, annotate and add comments. It streamlines the creation and organization of construction site data that typically requires the use of several devices and cumbersome processes. With ArchiSnapper, architects can automatically generate and edit field reports and share them with their collaborators and clients.

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Let us know which of these apps for architects do you find most useful, or if you think we’ve missed other important ones you can’t do without.

The post 10 Best Apps for Architects That Make Life Easier appeared first on Archipreneur.

This week’s interview is with Tian Deng and Qi Su, co-founders of the startup Modelo based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Tian and Qi developed a browser-based 3D design collaboration tool, which makes it easy to share and comment on digital 3D models. From his work in various architectural offices, Qi’s experience was that sharing a 3D model with a client for giving feedback could be difficult. The process was hardly optimized, involving converting the 3D model into a flat image, printing it out for the client, marking on the print, and then scanning it and updating the 3D model.

That pain point is what eventually led to Modelo, which Qi founded together with industrial designer Tian Deng in 2014. Their product is now in its beta development stage and the full commercial release is coming soon. The startup has raised more than $1 million in funding and has 12 employees. Way to go!

Keep reading to learn how the two founders managed to finance their startup, about their Software as a Service (SaaS) business model, and about the similarities of being an architect or software entrepreneur.

I hope you enjoy the interview!

What are your respective backgrounds and when did you partner up?

Qi Su: I was an architectural designer and had worked for several firms before I went to The Harvard Graduate School of Design. While there my major focus was on technology, so it’s fair to say that at that point I became half architect, half programmer.

Tian and I met through a mutual friend. At the time, I was mainly doing everything by myself, showing my prototype to friends. I still remember the first time Tian and I talked about potential collaboration; we actually did it on a model page of Modelo where we could both chat and rotate the 3D model together.

I think we shared the same vision for and interests regarding the solution we are offering to the industry, and so that’s why we decided to partner up.

Tian: I had worked as an industrial designer before, so the design disciplines were different for both of us. But our experiences gave us a great combination of perspectives to build our product.

What made you decide to found Modelo? Was there a particular moment that sealed the decision for you?

Qi Su: The first moment must have been when I first saw a 3D model get rendered in the browser using WegGL; that was back in 2012. My director at Harvard, Panagiotis Michalatos, showed it to me. I was so excited because finally our major digital production outcome, CAD models, could reside in a web browser and be shown to the others interactively, in 3D. As a result, I decided to do something with it.

How do you finance your startup? Any tips for our community on how you managed it?

Qi Su: We were supported by our friends (mainly architects) at the beginning and also got some funding from an accelerator program called BetaSpring. After that, we went on the same track like every other technology startup in the world: getting money from institutional VCs.

Regarding tips, I think you really have to think your business through, keep your mind open and learn as much and as fast as you can.

You developed a browser-based 3D design collaboration tool. Could you give us some examples of how the tool is used and how it helps architectural practices?

Tian: Modelo provides web-based communication and presentation tools for architects and people who use CAD as their production tool. The goal of Modelo is to help our users get things done faster: making presentations, rendering, giving design feedback, sharing files, getting clients’ approval or validating building issues with engineers and consultants. We’ve seen our customers extensively using Modelo for internal design feedback, file transfer and client-facing presentations.

We’ve heard from one of our customers that their design partner wouldn’t allow anyone to show him models that are NOT on Modelo; besides that, they use Modelo for most of their client presentations and the clients love it.

In what stage of development is your tool?

Tian: We are still in beta, but the product has been pretty stable and we already have many paying customers using it in their work. We will probably launch our full commercial release in the next couple of months; by that time, we will have released several very exciting functions.

What is your business model for your startup?

Tian: It is Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscription based. Users go to www.modelo.io, sign up, choose a plan, try it out, and then they get to decide whether they want to pay after a 14 day trial. We also have a free plan where people can sign up and try Modelo out by uploading models that are under a certain file size.

Qi Su, first you worked in an architectural office, now you are an entrepreneur. What do you find the most fulfilling about it?

Qi Su: I found both very interesting, and in some ways similar to each other. They are both about creating things for people to use and getting big projects done – but the pace is very different. As an entrepreneur you can probably (and have to) learn new things faster than as an architect.

Do you miss working as an architect?

Qi Su: Sometimes. I still love architecture very much. My family’s background is in architecture and civil engineering. So becoming an architect was my childhood dream – except during my teenage years when I tried to become a professional soccer player!

The building industry is known for being slow to adapt to new technologies. What is your experience with this?

Qi Su: We are dealing with buildings, not toothpaste. I think it is reasonable for the industry to be slow. It’s such a complex industry, and it involves many stakeholders.

The bigger problem I see is in architectural design education. I think it’s very broken; it’s rare that people coming out of it will know anything about how to run an architectural practice. I think we need to change that.

Do you have any advice for archipreneurs who want to start and build their own business?

Qi Su: Follow your heart and do what you love to do. However, if it’s business you want then you need to learn to take care not only of yourself but also your customers.

In which areas (outside of traditional practice) can you see major business opportunities for up and coming architects?

Qi Su: Wherever our skills can be sold and the Internet can help us in selling.

About Qi Su and Tian Deng

Qi Su is an architect who has worked for the architectural offices amphibianArc, MADAs.p.a.m. and Michael Sorkin Studio. He graduated from Harvard Graduate School of Design and is the only master’s student in school history who has won both the Peter Rice Prize for structural design invention and the Digital Design Prize for the innovative creation of digital tools.

Tian Deng worked as an industrial designer after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. He worked on several hardware design and interactive design projects before he joined Qi Su and start working on Modelo in 2014.

The post How Modelo Started a SaaS Business appeared first on Archipreneur.

Discourse concerning automation and artificial intelligence has really come into the limelight in the last few decades, and we have seen both optimistic predictions and dystopian visions of the future. Are machines taking our jobs away, or are they helping us move away from menial tasks and pursue more creative endeavors? Do architects have any reason to panic?

Technology-driven development is undeniably changing job markets across the world. Taxi drivers, clerks and bookkeepers, among other professions, are likely to completely disappear in a matter of decades. Apps and robots are replacing repetitive activities: drones can survey crops and deliver packages, and self-driving cars are expected to dominate city streets within our lifetime.

Computers are reaching a level of sophistication that allows them not only to perform mechanical, repetitive tasks but also operate on a higher cognitive level. While optimists see this change as an opportunity for economic growth and innovation, others are voicing their concerns over its social implications, such as economic inequality and unemployment.

According to a research conducted by the World Economic Forum, over 5 million jobs will be lost to automation by 2020, affecting mostly white-collar workers in administrative and office jobs.

Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne from Oxford University, authors of The future of Employment, have created a table that ranks professions by probability of computerization, according to which people working in administrative support, factories, retail and service industries are most likely to be replaced by computers.

In the AEC industry, model makers, technicians, drafters and urban planners are at a much greater risk of disappearing compared to architects, interior designers and civil engineers. Frey and Osborne give architects a 1.8% chance of being automated, compared to a 93.5% chance for accountants, a 96.3% chance for restaurant cooks, and 86.4% for real estate agents.

A new McKinsey report suggests a somewhat different impact of automation on job prospects. Instead of thinking of automation in terms of it eliminating entire occupations, the report suggests that many jobs will be redefined rather than eliminated—at least in the short term.

During the 1950s, before architecture and engineering firms shifted from having shared computers to individual machines, companies transitioned from mainframes to ‘minicomputers’. Due to steep prices, these machines had to be operated by specially trained workers. Designers would bring their work to the CAD Department and wait for hours to receive plotted outputs, which would then be turned in for revision before being returned to the designers.

This back-and-forth seems cumbersome by today’s standards but back in the day this new system produced work that had previously taken 10 or 12 people to complete. It also eliminated and introduced job profiles through a process that still continues to evolve.

In the last 15 years, employment for architects has increased by 25%, with significant differences between specific job profiles. Computerization has generated some new occupations within the field of architecture, in particular the mainstream profession.

While employment opportunities have diminished for architectural drafters, other profiles such as BIM specialists, digital making technologists and communication managers are experiencing growth. The chances of the architectural profession disappearing any time soon are slim, but long-term predictions imply that the role will most likely be redefined.

Another important question is: to what extent can machines substitute higher cognitive processes required in designing a building?

California-based company Aditazz uses methods derived from the semiconductor industry to create algorithms that simulate hundreds of viable design options for state-of-the-art healthcare facilities, completely eliminating the need for countless drafts and revisions. They developed an automated tool that offers the possibility of exploring a number of designs and operating options in a fraction of the time it takes traditional methods, allowing for intelligent trade-offs based on real data.

Furthermore, these can be translated into instructions for a robotic system that casts construction components. Aditazz conducts operational simulations that show performance metrics, bottlenecks of efficiency, utilization of key resources, patient wait time, etc.

Amazon and Google are also working on creating automated design solutions. Engineers at Google developed a platform with online planning applications that standardize and automate design and construction processes, promising to save up to 50% in construction costs, and cut project development time by up to 60%. The project, initiated in the Google X laboratories, was later rebranded as Flux.

Are these developments a threat to architects? Not likely. Both Aditazz’s and Flux’s automation tools are solutions based on machine-man combinations. Technology is nowhere near supplanting architects. It can address most of the quantitative aspects of architecture, even some of its qualitative characteristics, but when it comes to dealing with context, taste, aesthetics and negotiation, computers lack the higher levels of adaptability and superior cognitive skills needed.

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Architects don’t need to worry about losing their jobs or becoming obsolete, at least not in the short term. Even in the long term, it seems that technology actually redistributes labor from areas susceptible to automation into other sectors, eliminating certain types of jobs and boosting others.

Economists at the consultancy Deloitte released a study showing that, in the last 140 years, technology has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed in England and Wales. This cycle of eliminating and creating jobs can be painful, but it will hopefully occur at a slow enough pace that will allow workers to adapt and grow.

The post Algorithm vs. Architect: Will Machines Design the Cities of the Future? appeared first on Archipreneur.

Why Every Project Should Tell a Story

Every story or narrative is a series of events tied together into a plot. In architectural terms, it could be the concept, shape or intended usage of a building. The audience wants to be guided through the plot within your story. In today’s world, you have a lot of tools to carry your ideas and visualize your project’s story. Architects use sketches and diagrams, even videos, to explain and transmit their ideas to the end user.

Telling a story by visualizing it can be can be a very different and innovative way to put forward your concept. Some architects sketch, some collect data and show diagrams, some build scale models and some render their designs. The key is to display your concept in the most appropriate visual form for the project in question.

There are many tools to visualize your architectural story. The art is in first hooking your audience with your story and then “selling” your design concepts to them through the narrative. But you don’t have to start plotting your story entirely from scratch; every urban task has a framework that can be exploited. This could be building law regulations, the spatial program you get from your client or the budget you have for the task.

Here are five popular methods, examples and tools that show the process of visual storytelling in architecture. You could easily make use of them to present your ideas and work to your clients, so giving them simple, visual cues that will raise their understanding of how the project will look. A good architectural design should tell a story that will stick in the client’s mind.

#1 Sketches – The Foundation of Architectural Storytelling

A sketch is a classic tool for an architect and one of the most powerful in helping to display a project narrative. Sketching is always the ‘go-to’ tool when you develop an idea for a building or a site. It is the foundation for all other tools. You could, of course, sketch a diagram as well as a storyboard for your design concept.

The way you draw a sketch should be understandable for the audience and transmit your idea in a clear and straightforward way. The following sketches are examples that easily explain design aspects to the audience.

#2 Conceptual Diagrams – The Storyboards of Architectural Design

Sometimes, you have a lot of ideas to put into one building design. It begins with the urban location and shape you are creating within the wider context of the city. It continues with how you would place the main entrance and organize the floor plans. After that, you might ask why there has to be, say, a public area in the third floor, or a courtyard in the middle. You might want to ensure that the façade has an opening in a certain position. There are many possibilities and questions you have to consider before you end up with your final design.

Naturally, you want to communicate all of these great ideas and the creative potential of your design to your audience. A series of conceptual diagrams make this possible.

Diagrams can tell a story to your client and make people better understand the overall concept of a building before the physical foundations are laid. The Danish company BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) has mastered that approach. They come up with unconventional design ideas and often explain them through a series of well put-together design images.

On first impression, some of their building designs may not seem logical, even out of sync with the context. But if you connect their storyboard to the image, it will all become crystal clear and the shapes you see will be readily connectable to the narrative of their story.

It is fascinating to see how BIG tells these architectural stories, cementing the design in the audience’s mind, enabling them to connect and identify with it and even spread the word – it’s always fun to re-tell a good story!

#3 Models – Prototyping Architecture

The creative world is greatly concerned with design thinking and prototyping before the product is made. Architects have prototyped their plans for years by building models to test their designs on a smaller scale.

Models are a great way to visualize your design in 3D and to test a variety of different shapes in a way that is both time and cost effective. Not to mention, prototypes are a huge help in explaining your designs to your audience.

People who do not have an architectural background often find it difficult to visualize what you mean if you are simply telling them about new floor plans or renderings. Models will solve that problem and help you to tell your project’s story in a much more tangible way. So build models to visualize your design story!

#4 Renderings – Creating Virtual Reality

Architectural renderings illustrate your design project on a virtual platform. They are especially useful tools in winning people over to your ideas. You can introduce atmosphere, materials and even human interaction by way of the virtual platform.

Let’s say you want to sell the plans for a new apartment block. It will be much more likely to sell if your rendering shows beautiful green rooftops and balconies thronging with happy people watering their plants, than if you’d given them a simple mock-up on paper.

Imagine this: one of the apartment’s interiors is furnished with designer furniture and an open wine bottle stands temptingly on the kitchen counter. I know; architects have come to hate those cheesy moments that are often a part of renderings! But these moments are nevertheless important – you aren’t just creating a design plan for your audience; you are creating a vision of their ideal lifestyle.

Good images will burn into the mind of your audience and leave a lasting impression. It is a promising taste of something yet to come. Below are a few great examples of virtual rendering; with some of them it’s difficult to tell that they’re not real.

#5 Video – Let your Audience Fly with You

Making a movie about your project is probably the latest architectural storytelling tool out there. In some countries, it is already standard practice to present your project in this way to your client. In China, for example. Just as with renderings, films of your project can show your audience a virtual taste of their future, with moving images to boot.

Sound and music, virtual mock-ups of building materials and camera ‘flights’ inside and around the building all give you the opportunity to create a long lasting impression for your audience. I am very curious to see how this tool will develop in the future. See an architectural video of the West 57th Street Pyramid Tower from Durst Fetner Residential below.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and can implement some of the suggested tools into your work. I am now very curious to hear about the kind of tools you use to tell your project story.

Please feel free to add links to your architectural projects and stories in the comment section. And please do SHARE this article with your friends and colleagues!

The post Top 5 Architectural Storytelling Tools to Market your Project appeared first on Archipreneur.