Trends in AEC/BIM Software Development for 2024
By Jonathan Girroir • The breadth of industries involved in AEC/BIM, combined with rapidly evolving technology and a huge array of influences on the market require developers to stay on top of current and future trends.
Some of the most important developments in AEC/BIM applications you need to be aware of for 2024 are:
Challenges in Data Access
Visualization & Digital Twins
Analysis, Sharing, & Collaboration
Artificial Intelligence
Challenges in AEC/BIM Data Access
AEC/BIM data is increasing in amount, complexity, and organizational challenges which presents both opportunities and challenges for application developers. In this market, there continue to be a few formats that remain somewhat standard. IFC and the Autodesk formats are the clearest examples of these, and any developer needs to ensure their application can handle these data types and do so to a very high degree.
Despite these standards, perfect interoperability remains elusive. No project of any significant size in AEC or BIM is completed without digitization in the modern age. Application developers need to ensure the tools they develop can handle a wide range of data, in the ever-increasing amounts we see today.
AEC/BIM application developers need to handle more than just increasing data size and sharing – data complexity is constantly changing, as are its organizational methods.
AEC/BIM users may want to design data organized by logical space, such as individual rooms or apartments in a multiunit complex. They may need the information by domain, such as viewing the mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) data of a design. This data complexity must be accessible, transferable, and easily engaged with by application users, and developers must provide navigational tools to support these needs.
The complexity of this data leads to frequent, sometimes complex format updates of those commonly used in AEC/BIM. Keeping your application up to date on dealing with these presents another developer challenge.
Overall, developers of AEC/BIM applications need to be cognizant of the trend of increasing complexity, scale, and interoperability requirements of the data their software will handle.
Visualization – Digital Twins
As mentioned, AEC/BIM applications are required to visualize larger and more robust data sets than ever before. This information is useless if users have no viable way to interact with it, and this is where the visualization trends come into play.
Developers are asking questions about how they can take advantage of this information and how they can support viewing across multiple devices in a user-friendly fashion that can handle the complexity of modern AEC/BIM data.
Even more so than in other visualization use-cases, there is an increase in demand for realism in visualization for AEC/BIM applications. This includes realistic materials and lighting, with advanced rendering techniques such as ray tracing. In the surroundings of designs, users are expecting foliage, simulated people navigating 3D space, and purely aesthetic additions. Users want and expect appealing renders without hiring a 3D artist. Improvements to AR/VR have also created opportunities and challenges for developers in this space. These devices can create augmented visualization or virtual walkthroughs but require complex maintenance to support the rapidly evolving array of products and software.
Historically, there has always been a gulf between visualization in gaming and engineering software. The new visual demands of the AEC/BIM market are causing these lines to blur, as developers leverage the visual fidelity that has long existed in game engines for their applications. AEC/BIM developers are at the forefront of this change.
While we are continuing to build a digital world, it isn’t quite here. Digital twins offer a dynamic digital model that mirrors a real-world object, from physical characteristics to behaviors. Ideally, this model is updated with real-time data, and can be used to predict outcomes, simulate scenarios, and provide data with nearly real-world accuracy.
On the horizon, we may see the entire campuses recreated in fully digital environments – full of the relevant AEC data in real-time. The trend of increasingly realistic visualization, paired with digital twins in the AEC/BIM space will continue to push developer capabilities to new heights.
Analysis, Sharing & Collaboration
Efficiency is more important than ever for your users to remain competitive. This includes energy efficiency and carbon footprints, construction planning and optimization, extreme weather readiness, and structural analysis.
These requirements mean developers of AEC/BIM applications need to provide faster, more complete analysis tools. Simulation is becoming essential as we need to build smarter to meet the increasingly complex demands of AEC/BIM users. The added complexity, rapid digitization of the industry, and globalization of workforces and clients mean collaboration and sharing are more essential and difficult than ever.
AI (Artificial Intelligence)
No current trends list is complete without artificial intelligence. While discussing the impacts of AI is required for any industry, the technology has unique implications in the AEC/BIM space.
To start simply, AI will offer developers and end users opportunities to automate routine tasks within the software. This can and will take a variety of forms but promises to reduce the “busy work” aspect of AEC/BIM design.
Natural language processing is a subsection of AI that is likely to have huge impacts on this industry and many others. We are going to see an explosion of tools that use natural language recognition to allow users to interact with software simply using descriptive prompts. This presents opportunities by reducing the technical skill required to use AEC/BIM tools. This market is particularly well suited to this, as the ability to simply describe changes to a design could be transformative at all stages of an end user's experience.
AI will empower us to leverage vast amounts of data to make more intelligent decisions. This can include historical events, designs, or incidents along with real-time information. AI will allow us to gain insights from these to improve upon our past while accelerating the design process. Far cheaper than creating something from scratch, AI can inform smarter and more proactive maintenance. These features are not fully-fledged but are on the horizon for AEC/BIM applications, and developers should be aware of them.
AI presents the opportunity to automate a significant chunk of your support needs. By taking all your documentation for your end-user software product and putting it into a well-made natural language model, users could ask questions and receive answers without human interaction.
The Future of AEC/BIM Software
While what AEC/BIM software looks like may change in the coming years, demand is likely to remain strong. By staying up to date with important trends, developers can better position their tools to keep current and meet shifting customer demands.
One way for developers to accelerate their development process or improve the offering of their final product is through licensing SDKs. At Tech Soft 3D, we offer a wide array of toolkits that can help in the AEC/BIM market specifically. Get in touch with us to learn more.
