Matterport and Autodesk Announce Integration for BIM 360 Virtual Collaboration

James Cook, head of integrations, Autodesk Construction Solutions and Tomer Poran, Director of Business Development at Matterport spoke to AECCafe Voice about the new collaboration offering from both those companies in a recent interview.

Matterport, a leader in 3D capture technology and spatial data, recently announced its integration with Autodesk BIM 360® to enable construction customers to collaborate virtually.  Project teams using BIM 360 can now access and walk through Matterport digital twins of their job sites while accessing the full scope of project information in their BIM 360 Project Home dashboard.

How big a part of the new Autodesk Construction Cloud collaboration offering is Matterport?

Cook: Matterport is integrated with Autodesk Construction Cloud’s BIM 360, so customers using both solutions can now access a Matterport Partner Card – essentially, an embedded view – on their BIM 360 Project Home dashboards. We’re excited they’ve joined our ecosystem, which now includes over 140 direct integrations to our applications.

Poran: Big! While Matterport has been operating in the Design and Construction market for over four years, we’ve only now been able to bring our models into the BIM360 view. Matterport customers around the world capture over 10,000 construction sites in a given month. I recently read that there are over 80,000 active commercial construction sites in the U.S. alone at any given time. Now, Autodesk BIM360 customers can easily share Matterport’s 3D as-built documentation across project teams.

What did Autodesk do about collaboration between these disparate companies and their products before the new integrations?

Cook: Before we had an integration that would allow easy visibility into Matterport, customers relied on switching between tabs or windows so we aimed to make that transition as clear and simple as possible.

Poran: Photos were always a part of the BIM360 offering, but we all know 2D still photos don’t do a good job accurately communicating conditions of a space – which is why Matterport was created. We enable remote stakeholders a 3D immersive experience of a job site so that they can truly evaluate progress or issues, which leads to better understanding and better decision making. Our dimensionally accurate digital twins of job sites allow those off-site to view, walk-through and even digitally measure walls, ceiling heights, doorways, windows and more – all from an embedded Matterport digital twin in the BIM 360 dashboard.

The construction industry has always needed this type of integration. Why  now? And why these companies? 

Cook: The adoption of construction technology has grown such that many projects now require remote walkthroughs and virtual experiences for remote stakeholders’ reviews, in order to keep projects on track. Additionally, the technology itself (à la mobile applications, embedded views and APIs, for example) has matured to a point that we can provide deeper, customized integrations for customers.

Poran: BIM360 has changed a lot over the past several years. With the creation of the Autodesk Construction Cloud and the new ACC Connect platform, it was clear the timing was right for us to begin the integration journey with Autodesk’s suite of products.

What does Matterport bring to the table? 

Cook: We anticipate increased need for remote project management and collaboration, which Matterport supports. Unlike many applications in the market that require specialized cameras and equipment, Matterport can capture a 3D experience from an iPhone, helping democratize virtual and remote collaboration. Embedding Matterport’s 3D walk-throughs into the BIM 360 Project Home dashboard provides construction team members spatial context alongside essential project data so they can seamlessly collaborate and make decisions from any location, saving time and money to keep projects on track.

Poran: While 3D scanning has been around the AEC space for almost 20 years, the price, speed, difficulty of use, heavy file sizes, complexity of working with the data, and low visual quality – have made its adoption minimal. 360 cameras have grown to be more prevalent in the construction world in the past few years as they bring speed and low cost documentation with existing personnel who can handle the capture. Matterport brings the best of both worlds – fast, easy and low-cost capture while maintaining a high level of dimensional accuracy. Our customers have found that for pre-construction, key milestone documentation and Facility Management Handover (Project Turnover) – there is no better solution.

How does Matterport fit into the integration with PlanGrid and the other cost management solutions? 

Cook: Matterport does not currently integrate with PlanGrid.

Poran: We’ve only just begun our integration efforts with the Autodesk Construction Cloud. Today, customers can bring Matterport 3D models into the BIM360 view and tie RFIs to specific locations in the model for easy contextual understanding of project issues.

Will the newly integrated products be part of Autodesk’s subscription program or will customers pay extra for them?

Cook: BIM 360 and Matterport customers are able to access the integration without additional payment.

Poran: This integration is free to use! While in the future, we may create additional features for the integration that may be priced, we want all our customers to be able to enjoy having their models show up in the project management tool without additional cost.

Tags: 3D, AEC, architects, architecture, Autodesk, BIM, building, building design, building information modeling, design, engineering, engineers, infrastructure, laser scanning, point clouds, reality capture, visualization

Categories: 3D, AEC, AECCafe, architecture, Autodesk, BIM, building information modeling, collaboration, construction, engineering, infrastructure, lidar, point clouds, reality capture, sustainable design, virtual reality, visualization

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