The Qonic Mission

BIM has been around for more than two decades. Still many AEC professionals feel it has not lived up to its promises yet. Nowadays software tools are not offering enough depth to enable a process “from cradle to grave”. Our goal is to offer a path for this by connecting mainstream BIM software with our tools for enriching and upscaling of BIM data, both in geometry and data. Let’s explain how we plan to make this happen.

From design to construction

The process for designing and constructing buildings is broadly the same everywhere. The design team are responsible for producing the design and information required to construct the building. The construction team then prepare a tender and undertake construction works.

BIM models created during early design phases contain simplified geometric representations of real-life building systems. While these design intent models are great to convey architectural, aesthetic, and engineering intentions, they do not contain the level of development needed to support full project detailing and accurate model information during later tendering and construction phases.

Missing or incomplete information, and approximated project quantities often lead to the point where the model is re-built several times, causing valuable loss of time and work. This results in a compromise between speed and quality, pushing risks all the way down to the construction phase.

Real accurate BIM

At Qonic, we have gathered a team of experienced AEC technologists sharing the ambition to apply technological innovation to drastically increase efficiency in the construction industry. The Qonic team strongly believes in the promise of BIM technology, but to really improve budget overruns, lower the risk at construction, and minimise delays, we are building tools to deliver real accurate BIM.

“At Qonic, our goal is to introduce smart 3D tools to increase the level of development of your design faster and more consistently.”

Qonic’s goal is to allow you to increase the level of development of your design faster and more consistently, smoothly going from a design intent model to construction model. Traditional modelling tools demand a lot of manual and repetitive modelling work to create a fully detailed building model.

Think about placing a lintel for a specific type of window, which must be placed manually across the entire model, adjusting each time the size and position according to the window size. Think about sweeping a connection detail (like sills, insulation stones, roof caps, ...) across the building perimeter. Think about adding interior finishes (coverings, wall treatments, ...) for all spaces in the building.

These are just a few of the tedious and error-prone tasks, which we aim to tackle and automate. We are developing a complete solid modelling toolbox for AEC professionals – along with tools to easily inspect details in the BIM model and deliver the correct view on the data for each stakeholder.

There is no need to start from a blank page ever again – instead we offer the tools to enrich and upscale your existing models. Import an existing model, detail on top of the imported model, then export your work back when ready.

Collaborative, scalable, fast, and open technology

Business software users in many industries around the world have explored ways for working in the cloud. While this shift has taken place in many places, the AEC industry is still stuck with massive, monolithic on-premises software programs, expensive to build and expensive to buy.

"Our tools are built to be collaborative, scalable, fast, and open – based on modern cloud and web technologies."

To fundamentally re-think how AEC professionals use our software, our technology is built from the ground up – keeping the following principles in mind.

Collaborative. The design and construction process are inherently collaborative with many stakeholders involved. Our technology is based on web technologies to enhance digital collaboration at scale — leading to more streamlined flows of information (sharing designs with a colleague, team, or public), higher mobility (on the field), and access on different platforms (browser, mobile, and desktop).

Scalable. Many BIM models can get big and complex, and most traditional BIM software would require conversion to viewer formats when coordinating across disciplines. We apply technology to stream only little chunks of information when needed. Regardless the size and complexity of the BIM model, the number of triangles rendered on the screen remains constant, which makes our technology perfectly scalable.

Fast. The cloud gives us collaboration and high-performance computing infrastructure for heavy calculations. Client software on the other hand gives us offline support and more instant response times as all data is available at your fingertips. Our technology combines best of both worlds. Our built-in solid modeller enables both batch solid operations – performed on high-performance cloud infrastructure – as well as real-time modifications performed on the client.

Open. Our tool is built on top of the open IFC standard to connect with BIM modelling software you already use. While we plan to provide a lot of tools and configuration options out of the box, not all customer’s needs can entirely be covered. To resolve this, we make our technology available via powerful APIs, so anyone can contribute new logic, styles, or approaches.

Built for non-technical users

In many AEC firms, there is a shortage of BIM expertise among the team, and the demand towards the few who can access the BIM information is overwhelming. In the worst-case, BIM is often too complicated for many architecture or contractor firms to have in-house.

We believe that one of the main barriers for stronger adoption is that BIM tools are too cumbersome to use and require a high level of technological expertise. Nowadays tools should be easy and intuitive enough to use to ensure that all project architects, contractors, and field engineers are able to extract maximum benefit from it.

User experience (UX) is strongly embedded in the product design cycle at Qonic. Our goal is to build software that is intuitive to use and does not require expensive training courses to learn.

Instead of applying UX design at the very end of the product design cycle where people would just make things prettier, our team at Qonic applies it through the entire process. This UX-driven mindset will allow us to create products with more meaningful and intuitive experiences.

Get in touch!

Keep following us to see more updates. As we’re building the Qonic toolset in the months to come, we would like to speak to you. Feel free to reach out to us, follow Qonic on LinkedIn or subscribe to our website www.qonic.com.