For those who couldn’t make it, we had a fantastic event at the iconic Brewery in London. It was wonderful to see many passionate individuals come together to discuss the future of the AEC industry, exchange ideas, and build new connections.
We started with the product launch and in-depth demonstration of Qonic, our innovative new software platform designed for the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry.
Erik’s introduction explained our vision for a model-based BIM approach, in which solid modelling and a high degree of detailing places a central role.
The Qonic team then presented the platform’s capabilities and features. The demo showcased Qonic’s core foundations: performance, the platform’s user-friendly interface, and cloud-based collaboration. We demonstrated five different use cases and workflows for which Qonic can be used today:
- Enrich and upscale design intent models
- Create 3D models with a higher level of development
- Obtain accurate model quantities
- Collaborate with multiple people on BIM models
- Make BIM accessible across all stakeholders
Following the product demo, Mark took the stage to discuss the future roadmap of Qonic:
- A unified, full-fledged AEC modelling environment
- An open, accessible geometry and data platform
- Our vision on automated generation of construction drawings
- Using Artificial Intelligence to automate repetitive tasks
- Our business model to advocate collaboration with unlimited users
Martyn Day from AEC magazine provided a compelling analysis of industry trends, emphasizing the growing importance of digital transformation and data integration in AEC.
The floor was then opened for a Q&A session, where attendees had the opportunity to engage directly with the Qonic team. Questions ranged from technical specifics, such as handling coordinate systems and offline work capabilities, to broader strategic queries about the platform’s pricing models and security features. We address some of these questions below this post.
The event concluded with a networking session accompanied by food and drinks. This provided an excellent opportunity for attendees to discuss the day’s presentations, exchange ideas, and forge new professional connections.
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Below are some of the questions that were asked during the Q&A.
- Q: How does object ownership work when multiple users interact with the same geometry?
A: When multiple editors interact with the same geometry or data at the same time, they will not be in each other’s way. Both users will be working on their own ‘personal’ version of the model until they choose to publish their changes. When both users have published their work, the two versions of the model will be merged automatically where possible. If there are conflicting changes, i.e. both users have made different changes to the same geometry or data, a manual conflict resolution needs to happen. The user is notified by this in the Model Version History panel. You can find a more in depth explanation of this concept in the Qonic knowledge base article on version management.
- Q: Is there a way to save project properties and share them across multiple projects? Similar to how Revit models have Shared Parameters?
A: Properties are managed per project using the concept of project libraries. Once a project library is defined it can be used across different models within this project. Learn more about libraries here.
- Q: Can you explain how separation works between discipline models when collaborating? E.g. Structural engineer can’t edit architects model.
A: Individual access rights can be defined per model. This way you can ensure that every stakeholder only has viewing or editing rights to those models relevant to them. Click here for more information.
- Q: How does one work offline, and how to address poor internet connections?
A: The first release of Qonic does not support offline work yet, however the framework is in place to allow this in future releases. Thanks to our asynchronous collaboration setup it will be possible to download a model, do your work while offline, and when you are ready, push the changes back to the cloud so it syncs back up with the public version.
- Q: What’s the speed difference between browser and desktop Qonic?
A: This is of course very difficult to quantify exactly, but we have found that performance in the browser is typically good enough to navigate even in very large models. When doing actual modelling operations, we do recommend switching to the desktop application as it can make full use of the available memory of your desktop, whereas the memory capacity of a browser window is limited.
- Q: Do the UniClass 2015 tables embedded into Qonic automatically update whenever NBS releases updates?
A: The libraries are brought into Qonic from the buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bsDD) via an API. Whenever the version of UniClass hosted by bsDD is updated, it is possible to pull this updated version into Qonic. A library that is already in use in a project however will not be automatically updated; this to safeguard data consistency in ongoing projects.
- Q: Have you thought about other models of usage based pricing? Different from sqm on the platform.
A: We have considered multiple different metrics to define the pricing model. One key principle however that we do not want to compromise on, is that we want to encourage collaboration. Therefore we will not charge licenses per user. Other metrics that we may include in future pricing plan updates are things like number of models in a project and number of projects in your portfolio. We are however still very much open to suggestions; if you think this pricing model does not work for you, please reach out to us and we will take your concerns into consideration.
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