A Smart Playbook for New AEC Software
During a long career in design and construction, I’ve experienced it all in the AEC software world—from the slow, lumbering Unix giants of yesteryear, to the market dominating CAD and BIM vendors of the last 25 years, to the current fast-twitch, high-caffeine startups promising to “revolutionize” your workflow (again). And after years of watching architects and engineers hold their software stacks together with duct tape and hope, I’ve come to a simple, unshakeable truth:
The future is not one almighty software platform.
It’s lots of excellent tools… that actually talk to each other.
Coopetition: Weird Name, Smarter Game
“Coopetition” might sound like a word you’d hear in a corporate brainstorming session that ran out of ideas, but it’s actually a real strategy. It means teaming up with your competitors to grow the whole pie, not just fight over the slices. Way smarter than building a walled garden around your platform and pretending your customers are thrilled to wait for you to build everything in your closed ecosystem.
In AEC, coopetition is still a bit of a novel concept. But now, thanks to API’s, open standards, and the cloud, it can gain serious traction in AEC.
Instead of every vendor trying to build a jack-of-all-trades monstrosity, they can focus on doing one thing really well—and make sure it plays nicely with others. They can stop pretending to be a one-man orchestra—because let’s face it, no one wants to hear a kazoo solo. Instead, they can form a real band, where everyone plays their part, and together they create something worth listening to.
The Problem with Platform Overlords (and How FASS Is Changing the Game)
Let’s talk about the old “platform” mindset. You know the one: bloated, bulky, and built to trap you like a bad cell phone contract. Their business model? Lock you in, wear you down, and make escape feel like trying to delete your Facebook account.
Remember the infamous “Open Letter to Autodesk”? Yeah, that wasn’t just some spicy industry drama. It was a full-on reckoning. And it lead to something actually productive: the Future AEC Software Specification (FASS). Basically, a wish-list for tools that don’t make you cry.
FASS says tools should be:
Interoperable
Based on open standards
Priced like you’re not buying a yacht
Modular and flexible
Not sneaky with your data
Recently they ran 20 generative design tools—including Skema, through the FASS wringer—and instead of crowning an overall winner, they highlighted what each tool is actually best at.
Imagine that.
Why AEC Needs Toolchains—Not Tool Soup
Design firms are already trying to stich together their dream team of tools. A bit of SketchUp here, a sprinkle of Rhino there, and a whole lot of praying during the handoff to Revit. In theory, it’s elegant. In practice, it’s more like digital duct tape.
And let’s be honest — Every time you pass your design from one tool to the next, a chunk of data gets sacrificed. You end up redrawing perfectly good work, wasting time that could’ve gone toward actually designing something impressive—or at least drinking your coffee before it turns into a cold, sad cup of regret.
Enter Skema: we’re not trying to be all the tools. We’re the ones making your tools work together without a breakdown. Think of us as the software matchmaker, helping your apps find their groove and make beautiful music together.
But even if your tools finally start playing nice, you’ve still got a problem: what exactly are you handing off? If your design data doesn’t come with any smarts, you’re just passing along confusion in a slightly neater package. To actually move fast, you need components that know what they are and why they matter.
How Unitized Design Helps You Build Smarter, Not Harder
Let’s talk unitized design. Smart, flexible components—rooms, room pairs, apartment clusters—tailored to your project’s vision.
Forget the prefab nightmare. These aren’t random building blocks; they’re pre-understood, which means you can stop reinventing the wheel and actually get to the fun part—designing.
Done right, this approach lets you speed up without killing creativity, all while answering big questions—like “Can we actually build this?”—before you hit a wall. It’s not just Design Deliverables for Permits—it’s “Design for Constructability.”
Bottom line? It’s about working smarter, not harder (and definitely not redoing your drawings for the fourth time).
What Firms Should Really Expect From Software
Here’s a revolutionary idea: your tools should respect you. Like, actually respect you.
That means:
Playing nice with other tools
Having a clear purpose (and not trying to be everything to everyone)
Not hoarding your data like Gollum with a USB stick
Giving you a roadmap that makes sense, not one that makes you wish you had a GPS to understand it.
Look, your job is to design buildings, not become a DevOps wizard just to keep your software stack from spontaneous combustion. That’s our job.
And the good news? A new wave of tools is here to make sure your tech works for you, not against you.
A Friendly Nudge (Okay, Maybe a Shove)
To my fellow software folks in AEC:
Build something useful. Be excellent at it. And make sure it plays well with others. You don’t need to create the One Platform to Rule Them All™. After all, the future is about enabling a connected experience, not creating isolated silos.
To architecture firms:
You’ve got options now. The future isn’t a giant, monolithic platform trying to “disrupt” your workflow—it’s a curated stack of tools that respect your process, your data, and your brain.
So let’s quit locking ourselves in tech silos like a bad reality show.
Instead, let’s create a real ecosystem where everything fits together like the pieces of a well-designed puzzle.
It’s time to design the future, not just keep up with it.