Hi everyone,
We’ve all seen the growing use of AI in Architecture. It’s something that makes sense as Architecture is a creative profession though built on top of a lot of rulesets and standard practices, that consume a lot of working time.
I’m not fond of giving up creativity in favor of generative AI workflows, but things have progressed from being almost randomly generated from a mere prompt into a huge degree of control.
We can see that Trimble has taken an interest and a good example is Sketchup Diffusion. I hope this trend grows inside Sketchup and we can automate more in the future.
However, we cannot rely on Trimble to give us every tool in the tool set and there are a lot of developers out there using AI to pursue new workflows.
I’m mostly interested in AI to help us do the repetitive work, but I’m open to anything that helps me explore more and faster and design better, while doing it in Sketchup as that’s what it allows.
After this boring intro, trying to make things conform to the scope of this forum, I’d really like to know what AI tools you see are directed at Architects using Sketchup, but also what tools could be used for any workflow even if they don’t deal directly with Sketchup.
I’ll throw in a few areas I’m interested in:
1. Urban Planning, Pre-Design, Analysis and Massing Studies
Autodesk Forma | Forma Login | Software Price & Buy
This pre design AI app is used for urban planning and massing studies as well as sustainable design analysis, that uses AI to help users generate metrics, reports and constrains to their designs. It’s in the autodesk eco system which probably isn’t popular around here, but it seems very interesting and has some relation with software like Sefaira.
TestFit Real-Time AI
This AI driven predesign tool seems to comply with very complex tasks in architecture like checking zoning, volumetric and distance constraints, while allowing for fast massing tools and uses or parking space distributions, while generating reports, cost estimations and quantity take-offs. There’s no relation with sketchup whatsoever, but this kind of work should be able to be carried on to Sketchup.
2. Floorplans
Skema for SketchUp
A floorplan generator that uses library of favourite solutions and adapts them to floorplans with the added benefit of exporting to Revit and convert them into a full BIM model. Work isn’t exclusively developed inside Sketchup, but Sketchup becomes an important part of the proposed workflow.
I haven’t tried it as it links to Revit, but the approach of having a simple model being created with the help of AI that is the basis of a auto created complex design, seems very interesting.
Finch – Optimizing Architecture
At the time limited to Rhino+Grasshoper and Revit, it seems that there will be developments in the Sketchup front, but I’m not sure. It seems to be able to generate speedy iterations on floorplans, that show some promise.
3. IFC Classification, Construction Documentation
Artificial Intelligence in BricsCAD® BIM
BricsCAD BIM claims that it can auto classify objects in a model into IFC, it can propagate details to several areas in the project and it use pointclouds to create models with the help of the AI. If anybody tried this one, I’d be really happy to know if it works as expected.
Loci AI
Analyses models to find out what they are and then attempts to organize them, by tagging, classifying, labelling and create some kind of meaning in the model. IFC classification is one such classification and there are examples that deal with it.
NOTE: I know that most of these are not ready for Sketchup, but they might be worth investigating nonetheless. If you know more info about some of these apps, if you know some more that are better integrated with Sketchup workflow, or if you know of apps in other areas that might be interesting for Architecture, please throw them in and I’ll add them to the list.
