Rendering: What You See Is What You Get

Render Image by Eduard Lefler

In the old days (less than 20 years ago!) designers, architects, and manufacturers used to rely on design sketches and pictures to help their clients understand their vision.  How did we survive before rendering?

For manufacturers, taking high quality images of their products in showrooms with set dressings was the only way to show new products in their true environment.

The cost was high to assemble furniture, find a suitable space, and hire a photographer for the shoot.  The furniture used often had to be sold at a discount as a "display" model.

Now, manufacturers create photo-realistic renders of their products in synthetic settings.  Their customers are also designing spaces with similar virtual products on their own platforms.

This is all great, and everyone is doing it, but what are the real benefits that renders offer?  How can dealers and manufacturers sell even more with render technology?

Dream faster in the cloud

Everything is moving faster and so are your customers.  Render technology is keeping up with business, but not everyone in business is moving faster.

Are you going overseas to create renders?  Many manufacturers go abroad and there are plenty of companies who create realistic renders in India and China, but that turnaround time is still not fast enough for time-crunched customers.

With new render cloud technology, you can render your designs in the web and not halfway around the world.  Make sure your design tool uses cloud render technology, so you can keep your sales momentum.

Speed is one of the most important elements that renders offer.  No physical products--everything is digital and your design teams across the country are creating professional photographic work on their own at a fraction of the cost.

Image by Fdecomite

Swap it out: quick

Think about how complex your products are.  Imagine showing your customer a finish library that has hundreds of options.

There was a time (and still today) where books filled with all of the variations of your products was the most efficient way to help your customer envision your product in a space.

The problem was, after the sixth book, your products turn into a heavy stack of cloth pasted in a binder.

Options, options, options.  Offer them quickly and at the touch of button in render software. Hundreds, and in many cases, thousands of options are digitized and ready to be applied to your render.

The faster the better.  You can send high quality render-able images off to your client before they decide to spend their money elsewhere.

Condensing your product offerings into a digitized state where the options you want to show are at your fingertips is the second most important way to increase sales with renders.

If the customer doesn't like something--change it, and know that you have thousands of options you can insert immediately.  This is the power of rendering to sell more.

Join us as we explore the world of rendering more in future posts, as ofcdesk adds this technology to their Connect tool.

5 Reasons Interior Designers Use Revit/BIM Software

Photo by Jakob Salovsky

For contract furniture manufacturers and dealers, understanding how their customers are using their products in a virtual space is becoming more and more important.

This post is a primer for members of the contract furniture industry to understand how their customers are interacting with their products in a BIM environment.

For those of you new to BIM, the acronym stands for Building Information Modeling. BIM is a streamlined, collaborative process used by architects, engineers, construction companies, and interior designers to efficiently plan and visualize buildings.  

Revit is a BIM software that works in this process.  In comparison, AutoCAD is not a BIM software.

In many cases interior designers may work with a manufacturer's products in a virtual space before even seeing the physical product.  

Designers may design a space using your task chair (provided you have Revit models available for them) before they've had the opportunity to sit in it.

This is the new reality for interior designers who collaborate simultaneously with other disciplines on BIM projects, the most popular BIM software being Autodesk Revit.

BIM has become an integral part of most large scale building projects and those who work with interiors have been in the process of making the switch for the past five years.

Here are 5 reasons that interior designers are making the transition to the BIM process using Revit:

1. Revit helps them visualize in 3D

BIM software, like Revit, helps designers create their space in 3D and then view that space. The ability to switch between 2D and 3D views helps the designers on both practical and creative levels.

In our interview with Linette Kilbourn, an interior designer working at Interior Architects, we learned the importance of BIM in the interiors space.  Linette told us:

"Personally, I feel that the (BIM) benefit for interior designers is even more than for architects.  First, we can immediately see the space in 3D, even right after the plan is drawn." 

For example, the concept of "clash detection," the ability to avoid errors when two objects are laid out in the same space, become more important. Designing in 3D makes inserting objects into a space as intuitive as placing a physical object in a room.

Revit designers use 3D Revit views to generate basic renders for their clients.  This is an opportunity for designers to impress and discuss their ideas for the layout for a given space within the building. 

It's in this phase that the designer showcases the furniture in the space, making it even more important for manufacturers to offer accurate Revit representations of their products.

Photo by stuart.childs

2. Data is easier to manage

There are a lot of 3D design tools on the market that the interiors community can use for free.  But the real power of BIM comes, not only in the ability to design in 3D, but in the easier management of all the data that can be used to plan the space.

Think of well made Revit/BIM models as little computer programs that hold data and options for manufacturers' products.  The bulk of the work that uses BIM models relies on product data and is not concerned with graphics.

Revit/BIM models often contain valuable data that assists with GSA and LEED requirements to be calculated for the space.

3. The Revit schedule helps them slice and dice data

Schedules provide an organized foundation for extracting and using BIM data as designers work through their projects.  If you're familiar with a Bill Of Material, schedules are a similar concept. Revit schedules provide an interface that could be compared to Microsoft Excel.

Revit designers use schedules to edit and view data in different ways.  For example, Room Data sheets are commonly created from schedules for an inventory of products which are added to the design.

Adding non-graphic data within the individual Revit symbols, enables interior designers to perform accurate quantity calculations in relation to surface areas and material amounts with ease.

Picture by GotCredit

4. BIM promotes collaboration

Furniture is just one aspect of a building project.  Interior designers involved with building projects are not only looking at their piece, they're collaborating in a virtual model that is simultaneously being worked on by other disciplines.

The days of passing architectural data from architect to engineer to construction and finally ending in the designers lap are fading fast.

BIM helps multiple disciplines work data for a building simultaneously.  That means engineers, MEP, electricians, and designers could theoretically still have their hands in a BIM model at the same time.

Creating in Revit helps designers capture and manage the design with multiple options such as space layout and material selection, within a single model, while communicating with their colleagues in other disciplines.

5. No fudging, accuracy is improved

With BIM/Revit there are fewer change orders as well as requests for information from the contractor and their subcontractors.

Revit doesn't let you fudge the numbers because its a 3D software.  In the old 2D software, dimensions can be overwritten, making the finished documents incorrect.

Revit doesn't let designers make up the numbers, and they appreciate the software for its accuracy and honesty.  In a BIM environment everything is as it appears, and if it is modeled incorrectly it will be caught in advance and fixed as soon as possible.


What have you heard about BIM technology for interior design?  Leave us comments below.