Motif, Inc., a startup of the former executives of Autodesk Amar Hanspal and Brian Mathews, launched its first product on March 26, a platform based on cloud design for real -time design and construction collaboration. The Cloud platform integrates 2D and 3D work flows and addresses what Mathews calls inefficiencies of design review in collaboration tools available in the current market. Using their APIs to transfer the previously separated tool and process data, Motif aims to improve the flow of architecture, engineering and construction work.
Motif won $ 46 million in Seet funding and Capitig’s A series A, Alphabet’s independent growth and series A was led by Redpoint Ventures.
The company has called the launch the first step towards the reality of the true vision of information modeling (BIM) in a statement. While this implies that a design authorization tool will be created by Motif, the collaboration platform was what Mathews said it was a more immediate need.
Motif allows users to sketch and set details, such as steel connections for an artwork made of roof.
Screen Capture Motif courtesy
“Many of the main applications on one nucleus machines,” said Mathews, who is Motif’s head of technology. “This was before the modern website and was based on files. You did not have the centralized ways to coordinate the data. You did not have ways to collaborate with a team you do now. You did not have mobile devices, you did not have touch screens, you did not have a smart cellphone, if you returned to these applications, so there are many opportunities.”
Mathews said it will take many years to build a totally functional design tool from the base, which is made for the modern world and that collaboration would be a focus even when engineering work is being done.
A new work space
The March -launched Platform in March has a unified collaboration space in which architects, engineers and other project stakeholders, including owners and even subcontractors, can work together in a workspace that integrates 2D drawings, 3D models, sketches, shops and specifications. The data was shown from file formats known as PDFS, CSV Excel files, Revit or Rhino 3D in the canvas space of the demonstration that is shown in the ENR. The concept of live models streaming and direct connections to Revit and Rhino allows real -time updates of projects without manual recharging, giving teams the last designs. Users can also deactivate changes in the live transmission project if they want to work on an idea that is not yet ready to update in the global project.
The platform is capable of allowing a 2D and 3D sketch as popular in the design tool and conceptual trademarks of Trimble Sketchup popularized by the Nemetschek Bluebeam Revu. Both capabilities collect comments directly on models and drawings with comment tools and sketch in real time. Comments made at Motif appear in Revit, RHINO or other authorization tools used and are in the other way, thanks to the powerful interfaces of the application program, which could provide quick feedback cycles for project teams.
“During Covid, you had this explosion of use of these infinite canvas applications such as Miro and became very popular in architectural offices, although these tools are white tables, they were not intended for architecture,” Mathews said about the work space of the infinite fabric of the motif. “They could not handle 3D. They do not understand design concepts. They cannot be measured, but they became very popular because the need for collaboration was enormous. So people use a kind of wrong tool for the correct reason. And now that you know, we are in a postcovated age. Working with.”
Mathews said that Motif can take architectural designs, add them from various tools, take revit or rhino data, and not simply publish them on another platform to publish and see, but are transmitted with brands and outlined in the collaborative way that initially made Sketchup so popular when it was owned by Google in the mid-2000s. Motif contributes a 2D and 3D geometry of self -tools and streaming connection to those authorization tools is two ways when the user is not providing complete parametric information on a platform like Revit, so his cloud collaboration is not sent into large data sets.
“These are scoring objects. These are not CAD objects,” he says. “We are not doing a parametric design. We are making a marking, there is a difference. We want to group these things together.”
Although Motif brands and Slack -like text conversations can be connected to objects taken from the CAD and BIM platforms on their platform, they can also exist as free flotation talks or sketches on their canvas without streaming connection to a design tool. They can also share files such as PDF and Excel files within conversations. In the ENR Demonstration Sierra, a theoretical engineer and a theoretical manufacturer discussed a roof work. The information on the brands was passed on to Rhino, the design tool used by the manufacturer.
“So two comments were made for reason and they are shown in the appropriate application,” said Mathews. “He is associated with the object and knows which object comes from what application. Motif can, due to the plugins, to return this comment with this manufacturer. This flow comes from rhino. [in Motif] So, yes, they are associative. ”
Some of the companies that have participated in the test and conformation of the Motif platform for the last two years are Perkins & Will, DLR Group and KPF Associates.
“Motif is focused exclusively on designers, building a tool that is closely configured by the design process, in itself,” said Perkins & Will’s, Nick Cameron, the director of the digital practice of the firm, in a statement. “Its innovative platform makes our work more accessible and collaborative, opening design to more team members and customers than I have experienced with any other solution.”
Using plugins and APIs to add different data from users such as manufacturers, architects, engineers, construction professionals and even owners, they join the long -term motif strategy, said Mathews and even when the company creates a design tool, which will continue to be its value proposition.
“We are trying to create a design tool in the future that really is a much more open design platform, much more distributed and not only a centralized fixed scheme,” he said.
