Procore’s not yet available Model Viewer for 3D BIM models
This week, Procore held their annual construction technology conference called Groundbreak in Austin, TX. Through a series of keynote speeches and breakout sessions, Procore announced their latest releases and plans for the future. I was in attendance this week and I’ll have a full recap of the event coming soon. One of the company’s biggest announcements at this year’s Groundbreak was the release of a new product called Design Coordination, for Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) teams.
Design Coordination
Available now, Design Coordination plans to simplify the BIM coordination process by housing all access and coordination issues within Procore. Users will be able to integrate their existing BIM products into Procore, assign ownership of items to various team members, elevate any coordination issues to RFIs, and track issue status directly in the Procore platform. Live syncing through Navisworks plugins will allow for issue coordination in real time.
Screen shot of RFI creation through Procore’s Design Coordination
“VDC teams play a critical role in the construction process. The success of a project, in terms of staying within budget and finishing on schedule, rests heavily on those teams having the ability to efficiently manage design coordination issues through improved collaboration across the entire project team,” said Dave McCool (who doesn’t love that name?), Senior Product Manager for VDC, Procore, in a press release. “Companies that leverage the collective team’s experience to solve issues in the virtual environment, achieve predictable results in the field, and ultimately provide a safer working environment for everyone on the project.”
Like all Procore products, Design Coordination is a separate from the others, like Project Management, Quality & Safety, and Construction Financials. Each product is purchased separately.
Model Viewer
In addition to Design Coordination, Procore also gave Groundbreak attendees a sneak peak at a program that will be available within Design Coordination in the future, called Model Viewer. Model Viewer aims to make navigating through 3D BIM models less daunting for those not using it every day, like foreman and superintendents. Two cool features of the viewer are: 3 joy sticks, including an “elevator” joy stick that allows you to move north and south on the model and a tap and hold function that zooms into a specific area on the model automatically by selecting the area on the corresponding 2D floor plan.
There is no release date set for model viewer, but Procore hopes to make it available some time in 2019. I was able to grab some video of how it worked and it was definitely a crowd pleaser at the event.
Acquisition of BIManywhere
Perhaps the thing that made these developments possible was Procore’s recent acquisition of BIManywhere, which was announced in September. The co-founders of BIManywhere, Peter Wu and Winson Chu, have also joined the Procore team as part of the deal. The duo started BIManywhere in 2012 and built their platform into a mobile 3D BIM model viewing engine. It was stressed to the audience several times that the announcements mentioned above were the result of only 2 months of partnership with BIManywhere, a nod that there is plenty more to come in the future.
“Procore and BIManywhere share a common goal to provide seamless access to information for everyone who needs it on the jobsite,” said Tooey Courtemanche, founder and CEO, Procore, said in a press release. “What we’re seeing with most large construction projects utilizing BIM today is that the model plays an enormous role in the construction process by providing a central location for critical project information. We’re excited for the opportunity the BIManywhere product and team brings to Procore users and the wider construction community.”
There is more coverage of Procore Groundbreak to come, so please be sure to check back next week!
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