Did you know that UNIFI Core users can find high quality BIM objects from leading manufacturers such as Knoll directly in the UNIFI Core app?
Benefits for Designers
Typically, when a designer is looking for manufacturer content, they turn to a search engine. This can either lead them to the manufacturer’s website or an online BIM object library. However within the UNIFI Core application design firms have the option to subscribe to manufacturer “channels” which returns search results from not only said firm’s internal standard library, but manufacturer BIM objects as well.
With CORE and CONNECT, searching for something as complex as the perfect chair has suddenly gotten a little easier when users subscribe to the Knoll Channel.
In the screenshot above, a user is searching for a chair and is not only seeing results from their organization’s internal BIM object library, but from the Knoll manufacturer as well.
According to our statistics, the most downloaded piece of content from the Knoll channel is “Knoll_Studio_Platner_Tables_Side.rfa” which is the Revit family for Knoll’s product, the Platner Side Table. We can see why designers have opted to not attempt to model this family themselves. There look to be several hundred sweeps in the base of that table!
The Knoll Platner Side Table in Unifi Core
UNIFI Connect for Manufacturers
It goes without saying that visibility of products is key when striving to be specified in projects. However, one added benefit for our manufacturers who are leveraging UNIFI Core to host their BIM content is the ability to track data. We offer PowerBI reports so that our manufacturers can see statistics on not only the number of times their content has been searched and downloaded, but who is downloading it, the number of times it has been loaded into projects, and how many projects their BIM objects have been inserted into.
Today, I’d like to focus on one of our most successful Connect customers to date, Knoll, and share some of their impressive statistics.
Knoll, Inc is a design firm that produces office systems, seating, files and storage, tables and desks, textiles (KnollTextiles), and accessories for the office, home, and higher education settings.[1] The company manufactures furniture for the home by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Harry Bertoia, Florence Knoll (Florence Schust), Frank Gehry, Maya Lin and Eero Saarinen under the company’s KnollStudio division. Over 40 Knoll designs can be found in the permanent design collection of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. – Source: Wikipedia
Knoll joined the UNIFI Connect platform a little over one year ago and has seen steady traction with the usage of their BIM objects. Our data shows that their products have been returned in over 430,000 search results to date. Those searches yielded over 2,300 insertions of Knoll products into over 650 projects across the globe.
The designers who have been using the Knoll content have predominantly hailed from all across the US, but also include users from The UK and Australia.
Since inception, Knoll has seen steady growth in Channel subscriptions. Today, nearly 200 AECO organizations have elected to see Knoll BIM objects included in search results within UNIFI Core by subscribing to the Knoll Channel.
UNIFI Connect is typically seen as a solution for manufacturers, but it also can offer efficiency gains for designers. While we offer several key pieces of analytics to help manufacturers track how their content is being used, designers also reap the benefits of access to high quality manufacturer products directly in their BIM content management system.