New Platform Promises Collaboration

For the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, the ability to visualize a project is essential. To help with this, ArchVision provides architects and engineers around the world with visualization content and content management solutions for software applications.

Recently, ArchVision CEO and founder Randall Stevens announced a new business that promises to improve workflows and content management for the AEC industry drastically.

Called AVAIL, the new platform aims to streamline how the AEC market accesses and manages building information modeling (BIM)-related content, particularly with a tight integration with Autodesk Revit.

More specifically, the goal is to provide a solution for firms that have multiple offices locations and employees with content spread across multiple networks. Rather than requiring project managers to coordinate linked files manually, which can disrupt the files and existing workflows, AVAIL promises to provide a solution for easily organizing content that is already sitting on a firm’s network—regardless of the size.

Additionally, the platform will reportedly be completely customizable to a firm’s needs and will be content-agnostic for simplifying connections between designers and manufacturers.

Because AVAIL is content-agnostic, users can organize any file from an internal Revit Standards Library to inbound manufacturer content, a visualization group's materials and textures, a marketing department’s project photos, PDF cut-sheets and more. (Photo: ArchVision.)

One of the key features of the AVAIL platform is that it enables collaboration between offices without use of the cloud. It does this by structuring itself over an existing Windows file-folder system. Companies will be able to keep files on internal networks, which could be useful for those with security concerns about cloud storage.

“With AVAIL, AEC firms can now centrally manage their firm-wide content assets and provide individuals and/or their practice groups with a subset of the content that is most relevant to their workflow,” said Stevens. “We talk about it in terms of signal versus noise. Each individual is only interested in a subset of the global content offering. AVAIL lets them get to that valuable content.”

Currently, AVAIL is operating in beta for some leading architecture and engineering firms around the globe with the full version expected to be coming soon.

For more information, check out the ArchVision website.

Simon Martin is a writer and industrial designer in New York City.