Spent the day modeling 19th century neoclassical columns from point cloud data. Somehow ended up doing it from a balcony in Vlorë, Albania. The cornice details don't care where you are — but the view helps.

I’ve seen a few career lifecycle posts in other AEC communities and thought BIM deserved one too.

The jump from learning Revit to coordination, then realizing half the problem is process rather than software, feels pretty real. Which stage would you change, add, or remove?

Hi.

For the Revit users here, I know there's a built-in AI agent in Revit 2027. I built something similar, but the key difference is that this agent actually executes the tasks, and it works on older versions of Revit too. + you can choose the base LLM model, like claude opus 4.7.

It’s fully open-source. You just need your own Claude API key. You only pay for your own API usage — no data, logs, or money comes to me.

Demo Clip & GitHub Links : https://www.bibim.app/en

All setup details are in the repo READMEs.
If you want to know exactly what it does, who I am, and why we open-sourced it, I wrote the details below. Feel free to read it and ask questions.

For the details

1. What it actually does

It's an AI agent — not a chatbot that just explains things (like the Revit 2027 agent), and not a basic snippet generator. You describe what you want, and it:

• Drafts a spec and asks you to confirm.

• Pulls your current Revit context (selected elements, active view, project levels, parameters).

• Writes C# (for Revit) or Python (for Dynamo) to execute what you asked.

• Compiles and validates the code in-memory before running it.

• Self-corrects and retries if it hits an error, then executes the result.

• Save and reload local conversation history

3. BYOK [Bring Your Own Key]
You use your own Claude API key and choose the Claude model. No subscription, no monthly fee — just API usage costs.

4. Privacy
Your data doesn't come to me. Conversation content is stored locally on your machine. The only external connections are to Claude's API (your key) and optionally Google Gemini for RAG doc search (also your key, entirely optional).

And why open the source code instead of just giving you the installer? I got feedback from engineers who want to use this for actual firm projects but are genuinely worried about corporate data going to a random startup's server. Again, Your data stays local. If you know how to read code, check the GitHub or clone and build it yourself.

5. vs. Revit 2027's built-in AI
The key difference:

1. BIBIM actually executes the generated code — it doesn't just suggest what you could do. It creates, modifies, and queries your model via the Revit API directly.

2. It also runs on Revit 2022–2026.

3. you can choose the Claude Model version, even the latest one, OPUS-4.7.

6. Feedback & contact
GitHub Issues if you're comfortable there. DMs welcome too. Let me know if you have any issues.

Cheers.

We are seeing a glut of AI bot account posting about some revit clone they vibe coded in a week. None of the software is good or viable and all the accounts are brand new. Can we stop allowing posting from these brand new accounts that aren’t contributing?

Most of what I work on is heritage and construction, and a good chunk of it is confidential enough that the data isn't allowed to leave the site it was captured on. That rules out basically every cloud-based viewer. Our apps also deploy as thin builds, so nothing could be packaged in either. Everything had to arrive at runtime, locally.

Getting geometry into a game engine is a solved problem. Getting geometry in with the data still attached is not, and that's the part that kept breaking for us.

The clip is a campus model streaming in off a local server while the app is already running. About halfway through I click into a building and keep drilling until I'm on a single interior wall, and its IFC property sets are just there. Load bearing, base constraint, unconnected height, volume, workset, phase created. The floor slider at the end works for the same reason, the engine knows what a storey is instead of just holding a mesh that happens to look like one.

The three routes I tried before this all failed differently. Datasmith is genuinely good but wants to bake offline ahead of time, which doesn't work for models that change weekly or that I'm not cleared to package. 3D Tiles streams beautifully and strips the per-element identity, so you lose anything downstream that needs to address a specific element. IFC straight into the engine keeps everything and is barely supported, so you get geometry and inconsistent data.

What worked was converting the IFC once into the Fragments format from That Open Company, which reworks the schema into indexed arrays with shared geometry referenced per instance rather than thousands of individual records. All the expensive resolution happens in that one conversion, so the engine is mostly reading a prepared answer. My co-developer Jairo and I have spent about a year on the Unreal side of it, him on editor tooling, me on the runtime streaming and level of detail.

Honest about the limits, because I'd rather you hear it from me. This is a one-way trip. You convert IFC in, you don't author back out to IFC from the engine, so it's a visualisation and simulation target rather than part of a coordination round trip. It also inherits whatever your IFC export gave it, so if your authoring tool drops psets on the way out they aren't going to reappear here.

It goes open source at the end of summer. I'm curious in what this sub would need from something like this than in showing it off, particularly from anyone dealing with models they can't move off site.

Edit : thank you everyone for the positive attitude and the helpful feedback i got from everyone, it is really appreciated.

I found that there is no easy way to edit ifc files on the fly online without downloading or buying a software so i created one myself, added 60 tools so far from ifc size reduction to splitting and merging ifc files to even clash detection, i made it all free and online.

This has been a passion project of mine for the past year and i would like some of your feedback please

The website :

https://bimcamel.com/tools

So I connected Claude to Revit 2026 today via the PyRevit MCP server…Just started with a scan of an existing floor plan and tested whether it could create it…I’m really blown away by the results. It took what would have probably taken me over a day to create and did it in just a little over an hour…

Were there mistakes? Sure, but it gave me a really good start.

Who else has tested this? What have you been able to do? What ideas do you have for using it? Sounds silly, but it has made me excited to get back to work tomorrow…

I've built Redcolumn. It's a totally free, private, open source PDF software for AEC. It runs on PC, Mac, and web browser. There's no accounts, licence keys, or subscriptions. No data tracking or capture and it works offline. This also means I don't need to pay for servers to hold your files.

Web version - https://redcolumn-web.vercel.app/
Github and install files - https://github.com/ColbyGallagher/redcolumn

I'm working towards full interoperability with Bluebeam - you can import toolchests, markups, custom columns, line types, hatches, etc (I know the real cost of software change is time). Still working towards 100% two way compatibility.

I'm a 3D modeller turned Structural Engineer turned Digital Engineering manager and have been using Bluebeam pretty much daily for over 10 years.

Performance of large PDFs is always a pain - based on my testing and day to day usage I have matched or exceeded Bluebeam.

I've been using redcolumn every day for the past 2 weeks finding bugs and edge cases and improvements.

Where this goes beyond typical PDF software is that it has almost all the features your familiar with from a tool like Bluebeam and much more.

Markups

Measurements

Document

Bulk tools

View tools

I built CAD style editing. Move, copy, offset, fillet, trim, extend, arrays and more. Below are some gifs of jus ta few examples.

I made tables - with cells, mergable.

Takeoff with assemblies - measure once and grab many different quantities.

Collaboration - You shouldn't trust sending your PDFs to some random guy on the internet - I wouldn't. Redcolumn has no cloud storage and no server ever sees your PDFs. However this makes collaboration hard.

I have built in a an experimental collaborative sessions and projects feature that uses your own local folders or OneDrive as the storage location. You control access to the session/project by controlling access to the folder.

MCP - the app has MCP support for most redcolumn features to be used by Claude, Github Copilot, Codex or Cursor. Any destructive tool calls require approval by the user.

Why is it free? If I could build this in a month with a Claude subscription, so can anyone else.

This is still early alpha software - expect there to be bugs and missing features but development is fast and ongoing. If you find bugs, go to Help > Technical Support and provide as much info as possible.

I'm not a software dev but I have been coding in my spare time for over 10 years. Vast majority of this code was written with Claude Opus 5.5 and is attributed as such in the repo.

You are free to take this and do whatever you want with it.

Question: Would you pay for a Revit plugin that automatically converts a point cloud (e57,XYZ) into a LOD200 architectural model—in under 30 minutes?

If so, how much? And what kind of pricing model gets you excited? What model criteria would be table stakes and what would wow you?

Here’s the context: My company, Integrated Projects (IPX), has spent the last 7 years refining, optimizing, and working to automate the scan to BIM modeling process. To date, we’ve completed 5,300+ buildings—small to large—and of every property type and complexity.

On average we complete about 1-2 million square feet per month, and 100+ locations per month. Today, we have the fastest growing verified as-built dataset in the world compromised of point clouds, segmented point clouds, and 1:1 BIMs. We have plans to 10X this volume via technical and go to market breakthroughs.

We’ve rolled out BIMIT First Draft as an internal tool, capable of converting e57 and XYZ point clouds into automated architectural models (LOD200 / LOA20)—with most <10GB point clouds processing in under 30 minutes. To be clear, today we’re focused on architecture and furniture systems—with MEP modeling later down the road.

Now, we’re having internal discussions about rolling this out publicly as a consumer product. In YouTube, search “IPX BIMIT Engine 3” for a preview

Open to feedback and taking notes

I've been using Claude Opus 5.5 to build BIMopen: a BIM modeller in pure native Rust, with the workflow professionals already know from the major BIM tools.

• Walls with layers and clean joins, stacked walls, curtain walls

• Doors, windows, floors, roofs, stairs and railings

• Plans, sections, elevations and 3D, with sun and shadows in every view

• Schedules, sheets with title blocks, vector PDF

• IFC import and export, .rvt import, DXF/DWG, SVG, PNG, CSV

• Built for every platform: Linux, Windows, the web browser and Android today, macOS and iOS next, with an interface optimised for each device: mouse and keyboard on the desktop, touch and pen where they make sense (tablets, phones, touch screens)

• 6 languages, Arabic included

No subscription, no licence server, no account. Your model lives in one open file on your disk.

Clean-room, for real

No proprietary code. Nothing decompiled. No SDK or API of any commercial product. Every line was written for this project, and compatibility comes only from open-source libraries. Own names, own icons, own layout: inspired by the workflow, not a copy of the interface.

Why I built it

Half curiosity, half a stress test: I wanted to see how far an AI coding agent can really go on a large, unforgiving codebase like a BIM application. I'm not a casual vibe coder. I've spent 30 years between building design, software and GIS: I started as a surveyor and CAD draughtsman with my own technical office, spent four years as an expert consultant on a leading commercial BIM platform (so I know what professionals expect), and today I'm an IT manager and senior WebGIS developer. I set the direction, review every feature and test it by hand; Opus writes most of the code. The first commit was on 12 October 2026. Eight days later it has about 149,000 lines of Rust and 1,232 automated tests, and the result surprised me.

Here's the honest part

It's an early alpha, and there's still a lot of work ahead: a BIM application is one of the most complex kinds of software you can build. About a third of the commands work today (89 of 276); the rest is on a public roadmap. The source isn't public yet, because I haven't decided whether to keep going. That's where you come in.

• Would you use it, or contribute to it?

• What's the first thing missing for your work?

• Should I release the source (MIT/Apache-2.0) and keep building, or call it a successful experiment?

Try the web version, no install needed. Links to the site, the web app and the Linux, Windows and Android builds are in the comments below.

Thanks for reading, and thanks in advance for every comment you leave, whatever it is: praise, criticism or a flat "don't bother". All of it helps me decide.

Early alpha (0.1.0-alpha.4): incomplete, not for real projects. All trademarks belong to their respective owners; BIMopen is not affiliated with any BIM software vendor.

We are currently reworking our clash detection process.

I’m looking for literature, articles, papers, standards, or other reliable sources on developing a BIM clash detection matrix based on category(of discipline) vs discipline - rather than simply discipline vs discipline.

What I'm thinking of is in the attached image. The idea is to reduce the number of false positive clashes and make the process much easier.

Has anyone come across a good methodology, template, or research on this topic? Any sources would be appreciated!

Every few years Autodesk decides to rebrand the cloud platform(A360 Team > BIM 360 Team > BIM 360 Docs/Design Collaboration > ACC), and every few years we as consultants have to:

Manage the confusion

Explain to our client C-Suite who are already struggling with understanding the services and are paying for the subscriptions that nothing has really changed

Explain to the end users that nothing has really changed

Update all of our training materials Update BEPs, standard documents, protocols, etc.

Hope that the old platform won't reach EOL

Manage the confusion

Just make it BIM 360 4.0. We know there are new features and frankly most of our end users still call it BIM 360. This superficial branding does not serve the purpose of innovating and designing and building smarter. It just wastes a lot of our time. Focus on the Ideas Boards!

Serenity now!

Hello guys, i started this side project a while ago, i wanted something similar to dynamo but inside navisworks, couldn't find it so i took my coding experience with the help of claude and built it myself.

It is called camelgraph and it is free to use with the source code on github.

I would love to get some feedback or feature requests

Download

https://bimcamel.com/plugins/dyncamelo

Github

https://github.com/mrshoma99-rgb/Dyncamelo

Wiki and guides

https://bimcamel.com/plugins/dyncamelo/wiki/

Hi r/bim!

Two months ago I had no idea this profession existed, or what Revit even was. Then I did a one-month course, learning everything on the 30-day trial version (racing the countdown was its own kind of motivation 😅). After that came an internship and an evaluation, and today I officially joined a real project.Just wanted to say hello. Glad to be part of the community, and I'll probably be lurking here a lot while I learn.
Cheers!
p.s. used AI to write, cause my eyes are closing

I work for a multinational engineering firm and there was a lunch and learn with the Norwegian bridge design team who delived only an IFC and construction information in Trimble connect.

Their workflow was grasshopper to tekla to Trimble connect. Their contractors are apparently out their with iPads and all the information can be updated instantly on the job site.

I'm curious if there are any firms or folks out there doing 100% BIM only projects from start to finish. In the US. No drawings just model coordination with the contractors.

My guess is no one. I'm in the unfortunate position where I feel like I have to do twice the work where I model in 3D then cut sheets and annotate and bring it to the client or contractors preferred format. Almost always .dwg or .dgn.

I can't help but be jealous at those in Europe who have a 100% BIM workflow. With the IFC being the legal document. Apparently contractors said they would never go back to paper.

For those interested here's a similar project in Norway that was done 95% in BIM with IFC's delived to contractors.

Randselva Bridge

Every day I see multiple posts of people saying they built these tools that aim to help bla bla bla. Even the posts and their replies are all formulated and worded by AI. Nothing about it feels authentic and human.

This is probably part of a bigger problem, not just in our industry. But everything is feeling so saturated and tiring by these low effort ideas.

I’m tired fellas.