About Leyard & Planar
Leyard and Planar are global leaders in the design, production, distribution and service of LED and LCD digital displays, video walls and visualization products worldwide. Used in applications such as broadcast, sports arenas, advertisement networks, retail digital signage, control rooms, exhibitions, large-scale events and digital cultural experiences, Leyard and Planar enjoy marquee installations globally and have over 300 patents in display technology.
Leyard and Planar have achieved the #1 market share position in the global LED video display market and continuously strives to be the world’s premier provider of video walls and electronic displays for those who demand the best image experience.
Building Information Modeling (BIM) with Leyard & Planar
As with many companies, BIM has been difficult for Leyard and Planar to predict and calculate a return on investment (ROI), however the steady trend in the adoption of BIM has led Leyard and Planar to continue to develop and share BIM objects with their customers. Leyard and Planar discovered that by sharing high quality BIM content with design teams, they not only gained exposure to be included in Revit models for rendering and documentation, but also opened up the opportunity for their products to be specified as part of an audio/visual design during earlier phases of a project lifecycle.
Who Uses Leyard & Planar’s BIM Objects?
While Leyard and Planar’s customers are typically authorized resellers who sell their products to end-users (i.e., building owners and occupants), the BIM objects themselves are mostly leveraged by architects, interior designers, and audio/visual consultants. These designers are contracted to design the spaces within a building and often specify (or at least have an influence on selecting) which products will be installed in the real world for the end-users. For this reason, Leyard and Planar have made an effort to make it easier for designers to find and use their BIM objects therefore increasing their opportunity of being specified.
Distributing BIM Content
Leyard and Planar began distributing their CAD/BIM content on their website because designers who were seeking Revit families for commercial displays were not familiar with the Leyard & Planar products. They began testing several web-based solutions to increase their BIM content visibility throughout the industry, however their experience on several other platforms proved to be anticlimactic, as they had very little insight into who was using their BIM content.
After multiple discussions with several large design firms, Leyard and Planar found that many of these firms were already using Unifi Core to subscribe to manufacturer “channels”. With that realization, Leyard and Planar committed to hosting their Revit families on Unifi Connect in addition to their website.
This gave designers access to vetted BIM content for video walls and other large commercial displays directly within their content management system, Unifi Core, meaning search results would display Leyard and Planar content in line with their firm’s standard library content.
Visibility of the Revit families themselves is only scratching the surface of the benefits of finding content in Unifi Core. Drilling down into each family uncovers the product information (or parameters in Revit terms) and gives the designer the opportunity to review the family before loading it into their project.
In addition to increasing the visibility of their products to designers, Leyard and Planar are able to leverage the metrics that are gathered by Unifi and discover who is using their BIM objects, where these users are located geographically, and how many projects their products have been loaded into.
Case Study: Amazon Understory at The Spheres
“The Spheres is the latest addition to Amazon’s downtown Seattle headquarters and includes three giant intersecting domes housing more than 40,000 plants from the cloud forest regions of over 30 countries—creating a lush workplace with a direct link to nature. The innovative building offers employees a work environment that is more like a rainforest than an office.”
“To properly explain this groundbreaking new building, Amazon set out to establish a free, public visitor center at The Spheres, called Understory—the name of which refers to the lush habitat between the rainforest floor and canopy. Amazon assembled an accomplished team of local Seattle companies to design the exhibit space. Understory provides a fully immersive, 360-degree experience where visitors can get up close and personal with the science, engineering, and plants behind The Spheres. At a central media installation, visitors can take in sweeping interior views of The Spheres above, as well as stunning macro footage of its world-class plant collection on LED video wall displays from Leyard and Planar, A Leyard Company.”
Leyard & Planar BIM Content Helps Designers
Due to the rising popularity of video walls, designers are increasingly being challenged to design spaces and incorporate these complex A/V systems. In most cases, designers don’t have experience with this particular type of technical solution and they struggle to find the information they need. Typically, a designer will lay out spaces with placeholder BIM objects for things like large displays, but when a real-world product is not selected until late in the project lifecycle, this results in last-minute decisions, change orders, budget overages, delays, and inappropriate product selection, which ultimately can result in an installation that looks like an afterthought rather than a solution that was really designed into the space. Leyard seeks to mitigate these issues by offering their BIM content to designers on Unifi Connect during the earliest phases of design.
If you’re a designer who has recently been challenged with designing a space which includes LED or LCD video walls or large commercial displays, have a look at the Leyard & Planar Channel in Unifi Core. Not only will it save you time from modeling a placeholder from scratch, but perhaps it can help guide you into selecting a final product earlier in the project lifecycle and prevent issues that can have an impact on budget and scheduling.