The free BIM viewer offered by Danish SaaS construction technology developer Dalux has been upgraded to allow commenting to support collaboration.
Dalux, the Copenhagen, Denmark-based mobile and Software-as-a-Service construction technology provider, has upgraded the free desktop building information model (BIM) viewer tool that it first launched in 2016.
Dalux CEO Torben Dalgaard (right, who co-founded the business with his brother Bent Dalgaard, Dalux’s CTO) says that use of the original Windows-based BIM viewer has extended to over 100,000 projects globally, with users in 147 countries. The product has remained free (allowing use on up to three concurrent projects per company) since 2016, and has been gradually improved. It has also stimulated many users to explore and adopt other Dalux tools: the document management solution Dalux Box, mobile application Dalux Field, and the facilities management solution Dalux FM.
The strategy appears to be successful. When Extranet Evolution first met Dalux in late 2017 (read: Dalux targets BIM collaboration), the business was 40-strong and had just made its first UK-based appointments. At an online launch on 24 February 2021, Torben Dalgaard said the business now has 165 employees, 18 offices and is growing at 60% per annum.
Dalux BIM Viewer+ now enables commenting
The upgraded Dalux BIM viewer is now more than just a viewer. It now enables users to make comments upon model views, capturing them using the BIM Collaboration Format, BCF. Once downloaded, the new desktop application is faster, and has a simple, intuitive interface. This makes it easy to navigate for, say, non-users of BIM authoring tools such as Autodesk’s Revit. When an issue or query is identified, the user simply presses a button to capture the model view and then adds details: the name of the recipient of the notification, a title for the notification, and a response deadline.
As notifications are created, recipients will be notified by email. The application allows them to specify whether they want notifications sent within 15 minutes of their creation, or if they should be bundled up so that the recipient gets just one notification per day. There is also the option to turn off email notifications altogether. Dalux BIM Viewer+ allows users to see all the BCFs they have created, and, if they wish, they can be sorted and grouped by project or named users.
Product roadmap
Dalux also offers a Revit plug-in that enables viewing of comments within the relevant Revit models. Plug-ins for ArchiCAD and for NavisWorks are in production, and will be followed by a BCF Live Connector for Solibri and a Tekla plug-in.
The desktop BIM viewer allows users to see all the BCFs created, and, if they wish, they can be sorted and grouped by project or named users. As well as markups to 3D BIM models, users can also add markups or comments to 2D drawings or documents. However, the new commenting feature won’t be added to the Dalux Field mobile application – at least, not yet. The Dalux team said the current product roadmap is mainly focused on extending BIM Viewer+.
