Building Bridges: How Web-Based BIM Connects Design Teams

For many architects and engineers, Building Information Modeling (BIM) represents a necessary but often frustrating experience. We love designing innovative structures and solving complex engineering challenges, but traditional BIM software can be a bucket of cold water. It abruptly pulls us from creative design work into a world of heavyweight desktop applications, manual file exchanges, and limited collaboration.

BIM visualization is challenging, especially at scale. Each building model contains millions of vertices and complex metadata, creating significant performance demands. That's why most approaches rely on desktop applications like Navisworks, which break down models into manageable pieces so teams can navigate them without crashing their computers.

Yet even these specialized tools have significant limitations. We've all experienced that moment when a seemingly simple model takes forever to load or crashes the application entirely. This raises the question: why remain tethered to desktop applications? The emerging web-based BIM movement offers an alternative, suggesting we leverage browser technologies to make models accessible anywhere, on any device.

Given these issues with traditional BIM workflows – performance problems, resource intensity, and collaboration barriers – some might think it's time to move beyond desktop applications entirely. But what if we could reimagine BIM visualization as a web-based process that enhances rather than constrains our work?

A shift in focus

I think traditional BIM applications have gotten a bad rap. They've become synonymous with performance issues, installation requirements, and solo work environments. Too often, they're merely a thin veneer masking the imperfect, and to some degree isolating, realities of our work. But if we acknowledge that desktop tools can't eliminate collaboration barriers, we can take advantage of the web's true potential.

Web-based BIM visualization, at its best, isn't about endless loading screens and rigid file formats. It's about creating momentum. It breathes life into building models and aligns teams around a common goal. When developed with this framing in mind, it can make the distance between where we are and where we want to go feel more traversable.

Consider the sense of possibility and excitement you experience when you first conceptualize a building design. Do you get fired up about installing software updates? Does configuring export settings induce feelings of creative flow? Probably not. You'd likely find it much more enjoyable to focus on the bigger picture: how the building takes shape and how different disciplines work together. Keeping in mind that your designs might change—you can't predict whether a structural element will need reinforcement, or the client will request layout modifications—you're prepared to adapt.

Likewise, if we let go of the idea that desktop BIM has all the answers, we can acknowledge that a dramatic change in our visualization approach doesn't mean we've failed. It just means finding another path forward. To wax philosophical and paraphrase Heraclitus, change is the only constant in life.

What's more, accepting that our tools can and will evolve can lead to better outcomes. To extend our design analogy, imagine you discover a breathtaking new visualization technique you hadn't planned to use. Changing your approach might just result in the best project of your career. Now, imagine you discover through early testing that a web-based solution addresses your team's needs after just a few weeks of work instead of the months you've scoped out for desktop software implementation. Revising your plan will grant you the freedom to solve other problems for your users, rather than spending time adding extraneous features and frills to the existing solution.

Visualization to think

Web-based BIM visualization is a fantastic way to get thinking.

The kinds of buildings, structures, and spaces that we as architects and engineers produce require some serious thought—and interactive visualization is a fantastic way to get thinking.

In a 2014 talk at the University of Chicago, Larry McEnerney, the renowned former director of the university's writing program, suggested that people who work in complex domains shouldn't try to solve entire problems in their heads and then implement the solution. Instead, they should write about them first. The writing process, he said, allows us to fully express and refine our ideas and proposed solutions. We continue to reflect and iterate on them as they materialize on the page.

Visualization, like writing, produces tangible artifacts. For example, at Fabrik, we've created a platform that loads IFC models directly in the browser using IFC.js and React Three Fiber. This web-based approach allows you to plan your building in three dimensions while also providing a resource for future teams that explains why a particular part of the structure was designed a certain way. It prompts you to ask and answer critical questions up front, before construction begins. What does this beam support, and where does it sit within the system? What context does it need, and what relationship should it have with neighboring elements? What load are you designing for?

These visual artifacts—your models—can take many forms in our platform. You could create a simple volumetric study with basic building blocks, or develop a detailed structural model with every beam and connection. You could produce a full BIM model that follows industry standards. The form is less important than the function it serves: detailing your ideas, producing a record for soliciting feedback, and enabling your designs to evolve over time. And evolve they should.

Failing faster

There's no such thing as a perfect design on the first try. Your initial architecture may have unforeseen flaws, or you may encounter unexpected structural bottlenecks when analyzing load distributions. Maybe another team at your company is working on solving the same problem, and you'll be better served by joining forces and collaborating on a solution.

Sharing your model through a web-based platform allows you to tease out those unknowns and identify and solve problems more quickly. By creating an accessible 3D workspace and soliciting input from your team, project stakeholders, and key senior engineers, you're opening yourself up to new ideas and perspectives and inviting others to find the holes in your designs. That might feel uncomfortable, but in truth it's wonderful—it gives you an opportunity to patch up your plans before you've put time and effort into construction.

With each layer of feedback your design will become more airtight, and you'll increase buy-in around your approach. You can make changes before it becomes expensive to implement them, and the resulting building will be more fit for purpose. Consider the alternative: If you don't solicit feedback, you might only uncover a weakness—say, a structural vulnerability in certain edge cases—during construction, at which point you'd have to go back to the drawing board and redesign the feature. You'd have missed out on a major opportunity to fail fast and with less friction. Quite in contrast to the isolated workflows of traditional desktop software, your web-based visualization can become a tool of collaborative development instead of an impediment to it.

Visualization for propulsion

When we understand visualization as a tool for creating momentum, it can provide a sense of direction.

When we understand visualization as a tool for creating momentum rather than a set of inflexible and sometimes stifling parameters, it can provide a sense of direction and orient us around a shared objective. Agile is all about collaboration and continual iteration, and BIM visualization can be too. We don't need to pour concrete in order to start collaborating; we can share models and feedback to clarify our vision, and continue to hone it as we build.

At Fabrik, we've built a solution that loads large IFC models directly in the browser using IFC.js. We attach BIM metadata to elements for better information access, provide a real-time 3D dashboard for monitoring building progress, enable video calls and avatar-based collaboration inside the 3D model, and allow users to place hotspots and assign tasks to construction teams.

The next time you begin planning a new building, structure, or renovation, consider using a web-based platform like ours to see how it helps sharpen your ideas. Share it with your colleagues for their feedback. Patch up the holes your collaborators have generously pointed out, and keep moving toward the crispest version of your vision. Let it fuel an ever-evolving design that propels your teams forward.

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