Architects' CAD/BIM process gets a real-time 3D makeover with Modumate

Minimizing arduous drafting tasks 

Design and drafting are the yin and yang of the architectural designer’s process. Throughout his career, Neumann has loved designing buildings—but hated drafting their construction documents.

Design, which involves choosing and composing the parts of the building, is impactful. It’s fun. It activates an architect’s expertise in aesthetics and their problem-solving skills. It improves the built outcome. But it makes up no more than 45% of the hours spent on a project, often less.

Drafting, which involves creating drawing sheets and adding dimensions, tags, keynotes, legends, notes, and cross-references, is painful. It’s repetitive. Drafting these documents does not itself improve the built outcome—it just explains your prior design decisions to a reader, such as a permit official or a builder. Drafting feels like endlessly repeating yourself. But architects spend over 55% of their project timeline on this task.

If you enjoy designing, drafting all those dimensions and tags is a serious chore. Unfortunately for designers, no tool has been created that can capture enough information to automate this task. Until now.
 

The software is driven by three experts in their field: Neumann, with his architectural background, is CEO of the company. CTO Jason Shankel spent 15 years at Maxis/EA, 11 of which were spent working on SimCity and The Sims. And VP of Engineering Duncan Boehle, who was Neumann’s roommate at Carnegie Mellon University, worked on the Oculus Home VR title. “We only half-jokingly call Modumate ‘The Sims Pro’ around the office,” says Neumann. 

In addition to the ongoing work around automating drafting tasks, the team have also tackled a number of other problems that have plagued architectural 3D design tools for years: poor visual quality, slow modeling tools, confusing UX, and weak or non-existent collaborative workflows.

Model a complete building more efficiently

Building designers want to design spaces that feel good to live in, and it’s easier to judge (and sell) the quality of a design when the image is photorealistic. Currently, most architects are forced to create 3D models in unrealistic apps, then export to a downstream rendering tool to make beautiful images.

Powered by the photorealistic graphical capabilities of Unreal Engine, scenes designed in Modumate represent the final product much more accurately. This enables architects to design with confidence about the look and feel of their spaces.

When it comes to modeling, most mainstream CAD-based tools encourage users to sculpt shapes vertex-by-vertex. But buildings aren’t sculptures—they’re a kit of parts, made up of components like studs, blocks, boards, panels, and handles. Building designers have recipes for how to assemble these parts—we call these recipes walls, floors, roofs, and doors.

Modumate includes a set of BIM tools for modeling these parts and assemblies in one click each. By working with these BIM objects, architects get a clean, clear model of their building much more efficiently, and Modumate keeps track of all the parts with a real-time quantity estimate, takeoff, and bill of materials.

Modeling in real-time collaboration

Multiplayer collaboration is another concept from the world of video gaming that hasn’t yet arrived for building designers. Mainstream 3D design tools typically only allow one user to work on a file at a time, which means the other teammates can’t productively contribute. Or they perform version control by synchronizing each user to a central model on a push-pull cadence, which means most users are working with a model that is hours, days, or weeks behind their teammates’ latest work.
 

Customizing with source code access

Unreal Engine has been at the core of Modumate since its inception. “Unreal Engine has paid for itself many times over,” says Neumann. “It’s like having a whole team of computer scientists, gameplay and graphics programmers, and more, on your side. And most importantly, Epic Games is growing a community of avid fans faster than any other engine. We’re proud to be a part of that community.”

Duncan and Richman had been discussing Modumate’s core concepts informally since they were roommates at Carnegie Mellon University. “We knew from the start that Unreal was the engine for us,” says Neumann. “Our team loves C++ and isn’t afraid to modify the engine’s source code when needed—something that isn’t possible on some other engines. And Epic Games continues to push boundaries faster than any other engine developer.”

With free access to the source code enabling the team to make its own customizations, and the engine’s powerful native features providing the horsepower for development, the Modumate team was able to get to market much faster. “Unreal Engine probably accelerated our development by 18 months,” says Neumann. “Since they’ve solved all the general problems of making a beautiful 3D app, it allows us to focus on the specific goal that Modumate’s going after: a new BIM model that can automate drafting.”