“The building must be alive,” Claudia Guenzi, head of smart infrastructure for Siemens in Italy, said at a recent press conference in Milan. “That means understanding and controlling its behaviour in real time. And we can’t just keep digging up grids. Software is the only scalable answer.”

It’s an important point, especially in areas with old infrastructure and legacy technologies to consider. Software may promise smarter, more efficient systems and buildings, but it remains a challenge to get it right. Without clear incentives, inclusive design, and a culture that understands its role and purpose, its value risks going unrealized.

As Carlo Ratti, director of the MIT Senseable City Lab and founding partner at Carlo Ratti Associati, told Engineering.com, “data is everywhere but insight is rare. Building owners collect huge volumes of information on energy use, occupancy patterns, and maintenance. Yet much of it goes unanalysed and unused. The issue isn’t a lack of data, but a lack of interpretation.”

This is where developers like Coima come in. Coima is working with Siemens at Porta Nuova, helping to deliver a building management system that integrates HVAC, fire safety, intrusion detection, and electrical systems into a unified platform. According to Siemens, energy use in Gioia 22 has since been cut by 75%, avoiding over 2,200 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.

Data is now defining infrastructure

Yet even where the technology has demonstrably improved performance, there are signs that not all tenants fully understand or use the tools at their disposal. As Stefano Corbella, Coima’s sustainability officer, told Engineering.com, “most people who own buildings don’t know the data in their buildings, and it’s a shame. Because without data, you cannot manage properly.”

Kas Mohammed, VP of digital energy at Schneider Electric UK and Ireland, sees this dynamic all the time. “Some are [using the data], but there’s still a gap between collecting data and acting on it,” he told Engineering.com. “The best results come from collaboration. Data is powerful, but it’s even more valuable when combined with real-world feedback from the people using the space.”

So is software really eating infrastructure? Or is the infrastructure simply being upgraded to speak software’s language?

Either way, digital systems are no longer just supporting the built environment, they’re starting to define how it behaves, performs, and evolves over time. According to Nemetschek Group’s Jimmy Abualdenien, who is charge of the company’s digital twins, this transformation is not just necessary, it’s overdue.

“Digital twins and smart building platforms are not just justified by their operational and environmental costs, they are essential for achieving net zero targets,” Abualdenien told Engineering.com. “By integrating real-time data from IoT sensors and leveraging AI, digital twins provide actionable insights that optimise energy use, reduce carbon emissions, and extend asset lifecycles.”

Still, even among advocates, there is caution. Abualdenien notes that the biggest challenges lie not in the tools themselves, but in the systems that surround them—data silos, fragmented standards, and a lack of interoperability.

His call for open standards and collaborative workflows echoes a broader industry concern that the rush to digitize may create new forms of lock-in or technical debt. This is particularly relevant as building technologies increasingly resemble software stacks, where decisions made at the design stage can affect flexibility and viability for decades to come.

Ratti, of the MIT Senseable City Lab, goes further. “There’s no one-size-fits-all answer,” he told Engineering.com. “It depends on how, and for what, you use [these systems]. Let me use an analogy and take generative AI, for example. It can help optimise energy production and reduce emissions, paying itself back by many orders of magnitude. But if you’re using it to generate meaningless anime videos, the environmental cost is hardly justified.”

Ratti, who says he is already exploring many of these trade-offs through experimental projects at the 2025 Biennale Architettura in Venice, believes that intelligence alone isn’t enough. Purpose matters. So does ownership. So does design.

Empower engineers rather than dictate

That message is echoed by Arup’s Lindsay English, associate principal and leader of Americas Digital Rail, and John Hagerty, an associate leading digital master planning and smart buildings. For them, software is part of a toolkit, a means to an end, not the end itself.

“The toolkit is there to enhance the work of the engineers,” English told Engineering.com. “Yes, return on investment is important. But there are other outcomes that matter too. Reducing risk, improving project quality, helping engineers visualise interdependencies earlier.”

That shift from static models to dynamic systems thinking is already underway in Arup’s rail buildings work. English points to a project where a digital twin strategy wasn’t just designed for operations and maintenance, but was used during construction to manage contractor coordination, track construction progress in real time, and evaluate the sustainability and cost impacts of design changes.

“Most of the cost savings come in operations. But instead of waiting, we used the twin to improve delivery, manage risk, and model outcomes across multiple dimensions,” said English.

Hagerty adds that one of the most pressing challenges is not the technology itself, but the organizational structures around it.

“Clients can usually find the funding,” Hagerty told Engineering.com. “But if they’re not structured to support these systems over time, with an internal champion, a plan for evolution, and alignment across teams, then they fall apart.” He cites the common scenario where a client invests in smart systems for a new flagship building but ignores the legacy estate that makes up most of its footprint.

The tendency to focus on new builds risks missing the bigger opportunity—retrofitting the systems we already have. Here too, interoperability becomes a sticking point.

“Always avoid vendor lock-in,” said English. “We don’t know what the future will hold, but we do know that assets can last 100 years. You want a foundation that’s flexible enough to adapt.”

Expectations are changing

Mohammed, the VP at Schneider Electric, agrees. “In older buildings, facility managers often have to deal with separate, unconnected systems. This makes it hard to see what’s working well and what isn’t. But with modern BMS [battery management systems] and sensors, managers can quickly respond to how the building is being used and to changes in the environment,” he says.

Siemens takes a similar long-term view. “We do not consider the journey finished,” says Guenzi. “The technology is scalable and ready for future development.”

That foundation, increasingly, is data. But the value of data depends on its usability.

“I can’t tell you how many portfolio owners still rely on phone calls and clipboards to get the answers they need,” says Arup’s Hagerty.

The goal is not just a single source of truth, but a shared one, where engineers, operators, and tenants can all access and act on the same information. But even access isn’t enough. As Ratti puts it, data is everywhere, but insight is rare. The risk is that we end up designing for complexity rather than clarity. That risk only grows as AI becomes more embedded in design and operations. While tools like generative AI can dramatically accelerate information retrieval and automate workflows, they also raise questions about privacy, governance, and control.

Hagerty suggests the industry is just beginning to reckon with these implications.

“Clients are already asking what all this tech means for privacy. That’s going to become mainstream much faster than people think,” he said.

Where does this leave the engineer? According to Hagerty, the role is evolving fast. “It used to be that a building engineer focused on mechanical systems. Now they’re fielding calls about IT infrastructure, cyber risk, and AI-driven control systems. The skillset is changing.”

So too are the expectations. As infrastructure becomes more software-defined, the traditional boundaries between architecture, engineering, and operations start to blur. For Arup, the answer lies in flexibility, in building foundations that support change rather than resist it. That may require new procurement models, new forms of governance, and a rethinking of value that goes beyond cost per square metre.

“Smart infrastructure shouldn’t be an optional extra,” said Hagerty. “It’s already part of most modern systems, whether people realise it or not. The question is whether we make those decisions thoughtfully and build systems we can live with in the long term.”

The future of infrastructure, then, may not be one where software simply eats the physical. It may be one where the physical and digital co-evolve, sometimes uneasily, often messily, but with an eye on what matters most. As Ratti reminds us, quoting Cedric Price, “technology is the answer. But what was the question?”

The post How software is redefining sustainable building engineering appeared first on Engineering.com.

Infrastructure teams today face a difficult balancing act. Urban populations are growing, climate targets are tightening, and there is rising pressure to deliver projects faster—often with constrained budgets and leaner workforces.

To meet these demands, organizations are turning to digital tools and collaborative workflows to help make better decisions earlier in the project lifecycle. From residential developments to transport hubs, recent projects offer a closer look at how this approach is working in practice.

Coordinating complex projects with limited time

One of the more challenging aspects of infrastructure delivery is coordinating multiple disciplines under tight schedules. With overlapping scopes, even small misalignments can lead to costly delays or rework. Under these pressures, many teams are using federated modeling and 4D planning tools to visualize logistics, flag conflicts early, and keep project delivery on track from the start.

Take John Sisk & Son, who used Bentley’s digital tools to manage construction of a two-tower, 463-unit residential project in Leeds. The team created a federated model early in the bid phase, then layered in construction sequencing to develop a living 4D plan. The model helped teams visualize temporary works, delivery flows, hoarding access and more. In one case, they identified a conflict between pod delivery paths and mast climber locations, and resolved it digitally before it created problems onsite. Across the project, the team tracked nearly 800 risks and opportunities, estimating £4.6 million in cost avoidance as a result of the modeling effort.

Designing for real-world behavior

Urban spaces are shaped by more than just building codes; factors around how people move through a city must be integrated into design. For example, consideration should be given to whether people are alone or in a group, in a rush or carrying luggage. Traditional design approaches often miss these nuances. To better account for real-world behavior, planners are turning to performance-based design and simulation.

In Madrid, Buchanan Consultores used Bentley’s LEGION software to model pedestrian and traffic flows at a stadium, a multimodal transport hub, and one of Europe’s largest redevelopment initiatives. The agent-based software allowed teams to simulate crowd flows using behavioral algorithms that account for speed, comfort, personal space, and direction of travel. The models also considered elements like stairs, signage, and narrow corridors.

For example, at the stadium, Buchanan validated that ongoing renovations wouldn’t compromise crowd movement on match days. Elsewhere, they evaluated how new transit connections would affect pedestrian and cycling flows, and proposed design changes to improve walkability. In one case, Buchanan’s team even created a digital twin of a metro station to assess how a larger station would accommodate more people and how far they would need to walk. By grounding their work in behavior-based simulation, the team helped ensure that the public spaces would function well once built.

Building flexibility and sustainability into design

Perhaps no expectation has grown more rapidly than the demand for sustainable infrastructure. Project teams face mounting pressure to incorporate smarter and greener designs, while keeping buildability and long-term flexibility in mind.

That balance was a key focus for the Arcadis team working on the new Cambridge South rail station in the UK, designed to support Cambridge’s growing biomedical campus and serve over two million passengers per year. The station is part of a broader three-mile infrastructure enhancement project, which also includes track, signaling, drainage, and overhead line work. The project is aiming for BREEAM Excellent certification and includes measures to achieve carbon net zero within three years and contribute to 10% biodiversity gain.

To deliver these goals efficiently, Arcadis used an array of Bentley tools including MicroStation, OpenRoads, SYNCHRO, and ProjectWise. Clash detection, performed monthly using federated models, identified and resolved over 26,000 issues before they reached the construction site. Tools like iTwin made it easier for those without technical knowledge—or even installed software—to interact with the federated model. Parametric modeling allowed for rapid iteration of earthworks and walkways. The team also used construction sequencing tools to plan complex activities—such as culvert replacement under live rail lines—in a way that minimized disruption. Arcadis’ design extended to include EV charging infrastructure and a scalable layout that would accommodate future expansion.

Conclusion

From residential towers to stadiums and rail stations, digital workflows are enabling infrastructure teams to work smarter under tighter constraints. Across the industry, organizations are rethinking their processes to integrate data and simulation so that teams can better understand their projects earlier, coordinate more consistently, and reduce avoidable mistakes.

To learn more, watch Bentley’s Going Digital webinar series.

The post How infrastructure teams are managing higher expectations on tighter budgets appeared first on Engineering.com.

This week I’m in Detroit for Realize Live Americas 2025, Siemens’ annual user conference. Siemens Digital Industries Software CEO Tony Hemmelgarn gave the opening keynote yesterday to more than 2,500 attendees at the Huntington Place Convention Center. He kicked off the conference with that famous Heraclitus quote—“No man steps in the same river twice”—before expounding on the Greek philosopher’s lesser known views on digital transformation and the Xcelerator portfolio.

Hemmelgarn’s keynote gave a high level tour of Siemens’ products and plans. He pointed out AI copilots in Teamcenter and NX CAM, discussed immersive engineering with Teamcenter Digital Reality Viewer, gave some love to recent acquisition Altair and acquisition-in-progress Dotmatics, and showed off deluxe customers including Rolls Royce.

Today’s keynote, headlined by Siemens executive vice president of PLM products Joe Bohman, continued that tour. Bohman talked about BOMs (a favorite subject of his), design space exploration with Simcenter HEEDS, electrical design with Siemens Capital, requirements management with Polarion and more. He also announced that Siemens is developing an “industrial foundation model” to train AI in the language of engineering and manufacturing, but we didn’t get many details on that.

Bohman previewed a couple interesting upcoming features for Xcelerator: one, a new personalized home screen for all users to simplify onboarding, and two, embedded AI agents to which users can assign a task at the click of a button. Oh, and he introduced something called Siemens Designcenter, which as far as I can tell is just a new way of referring to Solid Edge and NX.

One more NX goodie: in the NX CAD keynote by Bob Haubrock, senior vice president of product engineering software, we learned that the upcoming 2506 release will allow multiple NX users to work on the same part or assembly at the same time, with live updates between them à la Google Docs.

More to come as I hunt down details in Detroit. If you’re at the show and want to say hi, you can find me by the coffee (or send me an email at malba@wtwhmedia.com).

Arcol launches “Figma for BIM”

Another cloud competitor has entered the building information modeling (BIM) arena. Arcol, a New York-based startup founded in 2021, has launched its web-based platform for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC).

Arcol wants to “bring the magic back to building design,” according to Paul O’Carroll, founder and CEO, in the company’s announcement.

By magic, O’Carroll means an intuitive, playful interface and a web-first workflow that averts versions, foregoes files, and eliminates emails and exports. O’Carroll wants Arcol to be the Figma for BIM (and Figma CEO Dylan Field happens to be an Arcol investor, so the inspiration runs both ways).

So what can it do? Arcol offers real-time collaboration (supporting multiple users and commenting), geometric modeling tools (with familiar sketch and extrude operations), automatic data calculations (live updates of square footage, unit counts, parking, costs, etc.), and a presentation workspace called Boards that synchs with everything else.

Arcol’s data can be exported in the expected ways—STL, CSV, JPG—but there’s also a beta to export models to Autodesk Revit through an add-in. A company spokesperson told me that Arcol will soon support additional BIM platforms as well.

At the moment, Arcol is a conceptual design platform. But the startup plans to go much further in the AEC workflow. Its roadmap includes schematic design, design development and eventually construction documentation.

Arcol is now generally available following a preview release for select firms. The platform starts at $100 per user per month, though enterprise pricing is also available.

So… anyone else feeling déjà vu?

Everything about Arcol reminds me of Motif, another web-based BIM platform that launched in March. Both platforms are taking aim at what they see as the outdated BIM goliath (cough, Revit). Both are explicitly taking cues from Figma and similar web-based tools. Both are coming out of the gate with a focus on conceptual design and real-time collaboration. Both have a synchronized presentation workspace (Motif’s is called Frames). Both have an add-on to send data directly to Revit (though Motif’s is bidirectional, while Arcol’s appears to be one-way). Both are planning more BIM add-ons soon (Motif currently supports Rhino as well as Revit).

And, most interestingly, both have Amar Hanspal, former co-CEO of Autodesk. He was an early investor in Arcol and is now the CEO of Motif. What’s that story, I wonder?

I asked O’Carroll about Hanspal over email, and I’ll quote his deft reply in full:

“Amar was an early angel investor in Arcol and later started Motif, which was unexpected. He is no longer involved in Arcol. But Motif’s entry into the space is just further proof that the industry is really hungry for innovation — it validates our market opportunity. We are confident we are delivering the best experience for today’s designers, and we’ll keep raising the bar for building design. Others will have to answer for themselves.”

Quick hits

• IMSI Design has released TurboCAD 2025, claiming more than 70 updates to the latest version of the CAD software. Those updates include performance boosts, interface improvements, and “AI-driven tools to enhance rendering workflows, provide design insights, and facilitate part creation” in the form of the optional TurboCAD Copilot Professional plug-in.
• 3D software developer CoreTechnologie has updated its 3D_Kernel_IO SDK for CAD conversion. The SDK now supports the latest formats for Catia V5, Solidworks, NX, Creo and more.
• Siemens Digital Industries Software announced two new offerings of its PCB design software, Xpedition, to cater to small and medium businesses. PADS Pro Essentials is a basic version of the software for $999/year and Xpedition Standard is for intermediate users at $2,999/year. Based on the clashing names, it seems Siemens is doing a bit of portfolio spring cleaning. Siemens notes on the Xpedition landing page that “PADS Standard, PADS Standard Plus, PADS Professional and PADS Professional Premium are still current products in our portfolio,” and that users can contact the company for additional seats.

One last link

CIMdata’s Peter Bilello, an Engineering.com contributor and fellow Realize Live attendee (hi Peter!), with In the rush to digital transformation, it might be time for a rethink.

Got news, tips, comments, or complaints? Send them my way: malba@wtwhmedia.com.

The post Realizations in Detroit and the “Figma for BIM” appeared first on Engineering.com.

Today’s top story comes from Maxon, developer of the rendering app Redshift and 3D modeling and animation software Cinema 4D, among others.

Maxon announced last week that it’s on a mission to improve architectural visualization. How? With a series of new plugins for real-time rendering in popular BIM platforms, starting with Vectorworks.

“Maxon is obviously a leading 3D software provider, mostly in broadcast, motion graphics, game and visual effects,” Maxon CEO David McGavran told me. “We also have quite a large amount of high-end architectural visualization artists as customers. And so with that, we’ll be expanding our solutions that we bring to market, and we’ll be talking about it for the first time in June with one of our sister companies, Vectorworks, at AIA.”

That’s the AIA Conference on Architecture & Design 2025, which will take place in Boston from June 5 – 6. Maxon and Vectorworks, both subsidiaries of the Nemetschek Group, will be showing a demo of the new plugin at booth 563.

There’s more to come. McGavran said Maxon is planning to develop plugins for other popular BIM platforms after Vectorworks.

For more details from my interview with McGavran, read Maxon to release Vectorworks plugin for real-time BIM rendering.

The Engineering $alary $urvey

Engineering.com has released the results of its 2025 Engineering Salary Survey, conducted in partnership with our sister publications Design World, EE World, Fluid Power World, The Robot Report, Medical Design & Outsourcing, and R&D World.

“With data gathered from nearly 600 full-time engineers, this survey reveals more than just salary figures. It explores benefits preferences, vacation norms, job roles, and career trajectories, offering a detailed snapshot of the professional engineering landscape,” wrote editorial director Paul J. Heney in his announcement of the report on Engineering.com.

You can download the full report here.

The nTop Computational Design Summit

Software developer nTop has announced its 2025 Computational Design Summit (nCDS), set for June 24, 2025 in Los Angeles. It’s a one-day event featuring speakers from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Siemens and more.

“nCDS is an opportunity to showcase how computational design and AI are changing the way products are developed and brought to market—helping engineers shorten design cycles, improve performance, and meet increasingly complex requirements,” Bradley Rothenberg, nTop founder and CEO, said in the company’s announcement.

If you’re nTerested in nCDS, you can register here.

A P-1 AI update

A few weeks back I covered P-1 AI, a startup working on engineering artificial general intelligence (AGI). I still can’t tell if the whole thing is a joke or not.

There’s some more evidence for not with a new demo video from cofounder Aleksa Gordić, in which he shows Archie (the name of P-1 AI’s agent) helping design a residential cooling system. It’s not a particularly convincing demo, but at least it’s more than we got with the Archie demo hype reel from the company’s launch.

On the other hand, there’s also more evidence that P-1 is just putting one on. Not only does the new demo continue to propagate the preposterous claim that P-1 AI is working to build Dyson spheres (in addition to more boring things, like HVAC prisms), but the startup has released a new, even more terrible promo video called Archie biopic, in which “Archie” “narrates” “his” “life” over AI generated images culminating in, you guessed it, a Dyson sphere.

If P-1 AI is genuine, the irony is rich. Even as the startup ostensibly works to replace human engineers, it’s in full recruitment mode, putting out calls for “cracked engineers” to join the team (and crack themselves right out of a job).

One last link

Here’s a revealing look at the state of generative AI from R&D World editor-in-chief Brian Buntz: 8 reasons all is not well in GenAI land.

Got news, tips, comments, or complaints? Send them my way: malba@wtwhmedia.com.

The post Maxon’s archviz mission, and engineering salaries revealed appeared first on Engineering.com.

The developer of 3D modeling, animation, and rendering software, including Cinema 4D and Redshift, announced today that it will release dedicated plugins for several BIM platforms, starting with Vectorworks.

“The key feature that we’re bringing to this product is real-time visualization,” David McGavran, CEO of Maxon, told Engineering.com. “It’s going to be faster than anything you’ve ever seen before from Redshift.”

Redshift, but real-time

Redshift is Maxon’s GPU-based rendering software, used in several industries for production-quality renders. The new plugin is based on Redshift, but it’s adapted for real-time rendering in the Vectorworks environment. Architects will be able to fly through their scenes with Redshift-quality rendering occurring in real-time, according to McGavran.

The actual rendering quality will depend on users’ hardware. Like Vectorworks, the plugin will work on both Windows and Mac. The more powerful the computer, the higher the real-time rendering quality. McGavran says he’s been demonstrating the plugin on two laptops, an M4-equipped MacBook and a Windows PC with a high-end Nvidia GPU, and both provide full rendering quality.

Integration with Redshift and Cinema 4D

Users of the plugin will be able to move directly between Vectorworks and Maxon’s 3D software: Redshift for final production rendering and Cinema 4D for scene modeling and animation. The scene will sync back and forth with the host application, according to McGavran, who says the plugin will help expose architects to Maxon’s robust 3D design tools.

“You’ll just be able to press a button and it’ll just open up your scene directly into Cinema 4D,” McGavran said. “You’ll be able to do your walkthroughs, all of your visualization, your movie exports, your still exports, using these tools that we’ve built for years and years inside of Cinema 4D.”

Architects may be particularly interested in Maxon’s 3D asset library, which McGavran says includes thousands of high-quality 3D assets that will “empower those architects to quickly decorate and make their scene beautiful at the highest quality inside of their tool of choice.”

For example, architects could decorate their scene with photorealistic flora. In January, Maxon acquired Laubwerk, a developer of 3D tree and plant models that will be available through the plugin.

What’s next after Vectorworks?

Maxon will show a preview of the Vectorworks plugin at the AIA Conference on Architecture & Design 2025, taking place in Boston, MA from June 5 – 6, at booth 563.

The plugin will go into beta for select Vectorworks customers this summer, but Maxon has not announced an official launch date. The company also hasn’t announced how the plugin will be priced or licensed, but McGavran asserted that it “will be a very, very price-competitive product.”

Both Maxon and Vectorworks are owned by the Nemetschek Group. So are Graphisoft and Allplan, other BIM developers for which Maxon may eventually develop a plugin. McGavran wouldn’t commit to any specific plugins beyond Vectorworks, but said “we want this to be available to all architects” and mentioned other popular BIM tools including Autodesk Revit, SketchUp, and Rhino as possible integrations.

“We’re very excited to expand our base of artists closer to the architect side of the world,” McGavran said.

The post Maxon to release Vectorworks plugin for real-time BIM rendering appeared first on Engineering.com.

Infrastructure engineering software company Bentley Systems, Inc., based in Exton, Pa., has developed new asset analytics capabilities that apply AI to crowdsourced imagery for automated roadway asset detection and inspection.

“The collaboration between Bentley’s Blyncsy offering and Google’s expansive mapping and imagery databases has the ability to disrupt the tedious process of monitoring infrastructure conditions and damage assessments [after] a natural disaster,” says James Lee, chief operating officer for Bentley Systems. “Together, we can help infrastructure professionals better forecast maintenance needs long before they escalate into costly or hazardous safety problems, and respond intelligently and instantly to crises—all through the use of AI-generated insights pulled from constantly updated datasets and historical records of infrastructure.”

Unveiled at Google Cloud Next 2025, the new capabilities in Bentley’s Blyncsy software leverages Imagery Insights from the Google Maps Platform to rapidly detect and analyze roadway conditions.

Acquired by Bentley in August 2023, Blyncsy applies computer vision and artificial intelligence to analyze commonly available imagery to identify maintenance issues on roadway networks.

Bentley and Google partnered up in October 2024 to integrate Google’s high-quality geospatial content with Bentley’s infrastructure engineering software to improve the way infrastructure is designed, built, and operated.

“We have a history of leadership in applying repurposed imagery for roadway maintenance, and the addition of Google’s 360-degree imagery and AI will further enhance the value Bentley provides to transportation departments and engineering firms globally,” said Mark Pittman, director of transportation AI at Bentley. “The expansion of our relationship with Google will enable us to further develop our growing infrastructure asset analytics capabilities—initially in the transportation sector with other industries to follow.”

The combination of Imagery Insights from Google Street View, Vertex AI, and Blyncsy will make it easier for departments of transportation—and the engineering firms and consultants supporting them—to identify areas of concern and analyze changes in the condition of roadway and transportation assets over time.

“As our strategic partner, Bentley combines industry-leading infrastructure solutions with Google’s leading AI and mapping technologies, like Vertex AI and Street View, to bring powerful analytics to public and private sector leaders who need mobility insights for making more informed decisions,” said Yael Maguire, Google’s vice president and general manager for Google Maps Platform and Google Earth.

Google Street View’s global panoramic imagery gives Bentley highly detailed analysis of assets, along with visual references. Google’s Vertex AI builds and maintains models to alert transportation agencies of changes to infrastructure assets before they become safety hazards. In addition to supporting roadway maintenance activities, these capabilities can also aid in disaster recovery efforts, providing a cost-effective solution for conducting rapid damage assessments, which can help rebuild faster.

Bentley says Google’s Imagery Insights “will be generally available in Blyncsy in 2025.”

The post Disaster recovery is just the start for this Bentley-Google collab appeared first on Engineering.com.

Let’s start with the $10 billion elephant in the room. Siemens announced that it has completed its acquisition of simulation developer Altair, a deal which has been brewing since last October. In fact, the deal closed ahead of schedule—Siemens initially projected it for the second half of 2025.

A Siemens representative told me that “there should be zero immediate impact to Altair customers.”

I’m sure it won’t be long before something comes from this consummation, but we’ll have to wait and see what the software stork brings.

Meanwhile, it’s interesting that Siemens is now framing this acquisition as part of—nay, a cornerstone of—something called the Siemens ONE Tech Company program.

The program wasn’t mentioned in the original acquisition announcement (dated October 31, 2024), but some intrepid googling leads to a Siemens press release from two weeks later (November 14, 2024) that, amidst a report of the company’s fiscal 2024 performance, nonchalantly announces the initiative.

Here’s the gist: Siemens is pumping more money into acquisitions and R&D. The goal? Take your pick:

• “to achieve the next level of performance and value creation”
• “to ensure that the company leverages the opportunities arising from the historic market shifts that mark a turning point and from [sic] technological disruptions”
• “to achieve stronger customer focus, faster innovation and higher profitable growth”
• “to accelerate the execution of the existing strategy, which is summarized as ‘to combine the real and digital worlds’”

Besides the US$10 billion Altair acquisition, Siemens spent €6.3 billion ($6.81 billion) on R&D in 2024, up from €6.1 billion ($6.59 billion) in 2023.

Seems like Siemens’ ONE Tech Company program is off to a good start. Altair down, a few hundred thousand tech companies left to go.

Motif launches BIM collaboration platform

Motif has officially launched its web-based BIM platform.

The software startup, founded by Autodesk veterans Amar Hanspal and Brian Mathews, emerged from stealth earlier this year with $46 million in funding and a dream: to revolutionize building design.

This debut is just one of many steps towards that dream, Matt Jezyk, VP of product at Motif, told me after the launch. Today Motif’s platform is laser focused on BIM collaboration. It provides a whiteboard-like interface for engineers and architects to brainstorm ideas, review documents and create presentations.

It’s inspired by modern web collaboration tools like Miro, Mural, and Figma, but Motif sets itself apart with support for 3D data—including live, bidirectional plugins for Revit and Rhino. More plugins are in the works, according to Jezyk.

“The first thing that we’re coming to market with is focused on collaborating and reviewing and collecting information from the sources where people are working today,” Jezyk told me.

Lots more details on Motif’s platform and the startup’s vision in Motif launches BIM collaboration app with plugins for Revit and Rhino—check it out, bookmark it, and read it first thing every morning for maximum effect.

Where engineers want to work

Are you an engineer who loves to work—particularly at places? If so, I’ve got just the list for you: the Top Workplaces for Engineers in 2025.

Engineering.com partnered with Energage to compile this list of the best U.S.-based companies to be an engineer, according to employee engagement surveys. The list includes 35 winners in three categories of small, medium and large companies.

Congratulations to the winners. This is an annual program, so if you know of a deserving engineering workplace, why not nominate it for next year’s list.

Quick hits: Update, beta, preview

• IronCAD released the 2025 version of Multiphysics for IronCAD, a simulation extension for the 3D modeling software. Multiphysics for IronCAD 2025 (known to its friends as MPIC 2025) includes new features for design optimization, mesh preparation, visualization and more, according to IronCAD, plus routine updates and bug fixes.
• China-based ZWSOFT released the latest beta of its 2D CAD program, ZWCAD. The developer says that ZWCAD 2026 has new and enhanced features for parametric design, batch editing, dimensioning, plotting and more.
• PTC announced that it will preview its Windchill AI PLM assistant at Hannover Messe 2025, the industrial trade fair taking place this week. The company says the AI assistant will “enable engineers to access information, make decisions, and develop their products more efficiently.” Cool, but I’m still waiting for a preview of Onshape AI Advisor.

One last link

My colleague Ian Wright is in Chicago this week for AMUG, the Additive Manufacturing Users Group, and he shared his first-timer impressions of the unique conference.

(Ian, if you’re reading this, grab some deep dish pizza from Giordano’s and please bring me back a large pie with anchovies and black olives.)

Got news, tips, comments, or complaints? Send them my way: malba@wtwhmedia.com.

The post ONE Tech Company to rule them all appeared first on Engineering.com.

The platform, which is accessed through a web browser, provides a whiteboard-like workspace for those in the AEC industry. Users can bring in text and images, write and sketch, add comments, and collaborate in real time on an infinite canvas.

The twist is that Motif goes beyond 2D whiteboarding. Users can also bring in 3D BIM models, annotating them in all dimensions. With bidirectional plugins for Revit and Rhino, the models stay up to date, and comments made in Motif go back to the source.

Here’s a look at how Motif’s new platform works, why it’s far from finished and how the startup is attempting to modernize BIM software.

Motif’s first step of many

When Motif announced itself to the world earlier this year, it came out swinging.

“[T]he AEC industry is using 20th century tools to design 21st century buildings,” wrote Motif CEO Amar Hanspal, formerly co-CEO and chief product officer at Autodesk, in a blog post titled The Motif Vision.

“Our mission is to revolutionize building design by merging geometry, cloud services, and machine learning to enable a dynamic, collaborative, and intelligent process,” Hanspal added.

That mission, combined with the fact that Motif’s leadership team consists entirely of Autodesk veterans, suggested that the company was gunning for the BIM heavyweight, Autodesk Revit. Now that Motif has officially launched its platform, it’s clear that a full-featured Revit alternative is still a ways away.

“This is the first step out of many,” Matt Jezyk, vice president of product at Motif, told Engineering.com.

Motif remains focused on Hanspal’s vision, but there are two reasons to take it slow, according to Jezyk. One, it’s not easy to spin up a full-featured BIM platform (who knew?). Two, even if Motif could pull a Revit out of its hat, it would take time for users to switch over.

“We wanted to come at this problem a little bit differently and solve for the collaboration part first, and then add in more and more of the modeling capabilities,” Jezyk said.

Motif sees collaboration as an underserved part of the BIM market. Jezyk, a trained architect, has seen firsthand the hoops his peers jump through to communicate their ideas. “It’s interesting and somewhat confounding to me,” he said, “the number of times that I see people working on basically graphic design problems.” Why should an engineer with a master’s degree waste time messing around in Adobe InDesign?

Jezyk pointed out that modern collaboration tools like Miro, Mural and Figma are changing how people work together and what they expect from their software. Motif wants to meet those expectations for the AEC industry.

“The first thing that we’re coming to market with is focused on collaborating and reviewing and collecting information from the sources where people are working today,” Jezyk said.

A collaboration platform for BIM users

Motif’s real differentiator for engineers and architects is its compatibility with 3D data. The platform supports common 3D file formats including OBJ and glTF, so users can drag and drop 3D models as easily as they can a PDF or picture.

And if those 3D models come from Revit or Rhino, even better. Motif has developed plugins for those programs to create a real time link with Motif. A model created in Revit, for example, will retain all of its properties in Motif and stay up-to-date as changes are made in Revit. The link goes both ways: Comments added in Motif will propagate back to Revit.

Right now, Motif users can only view and mark up the data from Revit or Rhino. They can’t modify the geometry or otherwise change the data. Their comments are sent back to Rhino or Revit, but no other annotations make the journey. Jezyk says these limitations are deliberate.

“We can technically push information back into Revit and change things too,” Jezyk said. “But we’re trying to be very intentional on that to support user workflows… right now, the workflow that people seem to expect is sort of a one-way stream.”

In addition to Revit and Rhino, Jezyk said Motif plans to develop plugins for AutoCAD, SketchUp, Grasshopper and Dynamo.

Motif also has a feature called Frames, which allows users to create presentations directly on the web platform. Jezyk compares it to PowerPoint slides, though he emphasized that the info in Frames stays up to date as models, renders or other data changes.

Motif particularly focused on its user interface, aiming for a modern UI that looks simple but doesn’t sacrifice sophistication.

“You don’t have to be an advanced parametric design person or a coder to figure this stuff out,” Jezyk said. “You can hand this to a high level executive and they could still use these tools, but it’s sufficiently powerful enough to work for the technical staff as well.”

How to access the Motif platform

Motif’s BIM collaboration platform is now available, and Jezyk says it already has paying customers among a stable of early adopters that helped guide the platform’s development. Some of those early adopters are DLR Group, Perkins&Will, Heatherwick Studio and the Nordic Office of Architecture.

If you’re interested in trying it out, for now you’ll have to contact Motif. Later this year you’ll be able to subscribe directly through the company’s website, though Motif is still determining plan and pricing details.

Jezyk suggested that Motif will embrace a freemium model, in which a limited version of the software will be free and additional functionality will be doled out in various subscription tiers. “It’ll be comparable to some of the other online tools that are out there today,” Jezyk said.

Motif, as its CEO proclaimed, wants to revolutionize building design. This new platform may be the first step of many, but if it makes it easier for building designers to work together, then it’s a step in the right direction.

The post Motif launches BIM collaboration app with plugins for Revit and Rhino appeared first on Engineering.com.

The process of digitizing physical environments is called reality capture, and it comes with some challenges that every AEC professional should understand. This toolbox outlines common reality capture technologies, how to select the right method, and basics concepts of 3D modeling and documentation.

Your download is sponsored by Hawk Ridge Systems.

The post Engineer’s Toolbox: Capturing Reality for AEC appeared first on Engineering.com.

This episode of Designing the Future is brought to you by Bentley Systems.

Engineering is applied science. It’s also an art, the confluence of creativity and blue sky thinking, constrained by physics. For large engineering projects, particularly in the civil engineering space, it’s also about project management. The marriage of great designs, with great planning and high-performance execution delivers projects that arrive on time, on budget and to specification. The bigger the project, the greater the complexity, and problems can scale exponentially with that complexity.

Today, there are new factors. Mass collaboration across a city, a nation or around the world is common for large engineering projects, and it’s a given that very large projects involve more than one software platform. Factors such as regulatory compliance, and data security are also in play, as well as real questions about the emergence of new technology. It’s a big subject, and it’s important.

engineering.com’s Jim Anderton spoke with Julien Moutte, chief technology officer for Bentley Systems, about the current state-of-the-art in big project engineering technology.

* * * 

Learn more about Bentley’s engineering software and digital-twin-powered, AI-driven capabilities for complex and dynamic infrastructure lifecycle.

The post Advanced technology delivers big engineering projects on time and on budget appeared first on Engineering.com.