Today we’re announcing what many of you have been asking for: we’re opening up Arcol to everyone… but, just for one week! At the end of that week we’ll be closing off access and focusing on working with our pilot firms — if you’d like to maintain access after August 23rd, you can apply for closed beta access here.
You can get started with Arcol by heading to app.arcol.io and signing in. You’re welcome to jump right in and poke around, but you can also use our support documentation to dive deeper. Here is Paul’s tutorial video.
We’ve been hard at work building Arcol over the last 20 months. Arcol’s mission is to e̶̶̶̶l̶̶̶̶e̶̶̶̶v̶̶̶̶a̶̶̶̶t̶̶̶̶e̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶t̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶h̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶e̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶w̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶o̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶r̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶l̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶d̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶’̶̶̶̶̶̶̶s̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ ̶̶̶̶̶̶̶c̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶o̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶n̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶s̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶c̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶i̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶o̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶u̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶s̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶n̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶e̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶s̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶s̶̶̶̶̶̶̶̶ bring the magic back to building design. We have talked a lot about that in posts here and here so I won’t blather on about that now — instead, I want to talk about how what we’re showing off this week embodies our mission and outlay the journey that we’re going to be on for the next few years.
The Arcol of Today
Just under a year ago we released this post. In it we outlined what would be included in the “open beta release of Arcol”:
“Based on the feedback above we’ll be shifting our focus next to complex modeling and allowing you to sweep, loft, push/pull, and perform boolean operations on your model.”
“combining the power of complex modeling with creative collaboration in Boards will make a very compelling conceptual tool in the short term”
“Let me be clear: our long term goal is NOT to just be a conceptual tool, but to take a big bite out of the documentation space as well. However, this seems to be the most logical step towards providing our users value as early as possible.”
All of these statements ring true today:
- Today you can non-destructively loft, sweep, push/pull and perform boolean operations in Arcol.
- Boards is a very functional early stage ideation and moodboarding tool (a la Miro/Mural).
- We’ve also built more around the idea of the perfect conceptual tool by making additional workflows like markups possible directly in Arcol.
The purpose of writing the post a year ago was to put our money where our mouth was. We wanted to be transparent about what we were planning to build, knowing full well that if we missed the mark on features we’d have to own up to it and explain why.
For example, in this post we talked about supporting “roofs, stairs, and other stuff”. This didn’t make it into open beta (although we do have walls, windows, and doors), and we have some good reasons for that, but it’s still something that we missed. On that note, if this is something you’d like to see please let us know! The other obvious thing is that we’re not going into “open beta”, but instead a “preview release”. Let’s talk about why.
Preview release
Typical desktop software uses terms like alpha, beta or version 1 to describe different milestones in the product and to allow users to differentiate between old/new builds of the application, however since Arcol is a browser based tool users are always on the latest version.
For this reason we’re taking a different approach. The thinking behind the preview release is simple: we appreciate everyone that has been following along and we want people to be able to experience Arcol to give us feedback on what we’ve currently built, but we also want to be focused on making our early pilot firms successful. We don’t feel that we can give the combination of these groups the experience they deserve, both in the product and in the support we offer, hence the limited availability to the public.
Although we’ve spent a long time building Arcol to be performant (you can see more about that here) and stable, the majority of our focus has been on blocking out large feature sets and building our geometry kernel. We’ve built what we would describe as a “cool product”. It’s our job to turn that “cool product” into a “very valuable early stage design tool that your firm relies on” before we open up Arcol to everyone. This is what we will continue to do over the coming weeks and months with our pilot firms.
How Can You Use Arcol Today
This is a fair question to ask. Since the beginning we’ve described Arcol as “Figma for BIM” and we talked about how we want to replace and re-think the incumbent tools. The Arcol of today isn’t that…yet. At the moment we’re hyper focused on creating the perfect early stage design tool.
Your workflow probably looks something like this:
- Moodboarding/ideating in Miro or Mural
- Sketchup for massing
- InDesign to create presentations
You can do all of the above workflow directly in Arcol, maintaining a single source of truth, simplifying the process, giving you more time to design and allowing you to get your model into Revit as native Revit families.
Try out our example projects to see the scale of what can be created in Arcol and then go have fun making something. Don’t forget to invite your friends, real time collaboration is one of the coolest things about Arcol! After you’ve given it a go please do give us your feedback so we can build a tool you’ll love — the good, the bad, the ugly…we want it all.
If you’re interested in maintaining Arcol access after August 23rd, please reach out to beta@arcol.io if you meet the following requirements:
- Are currently working at a firm that would want to pilot Arcol
- The workflow at your firm sounds similar to what we outlayed above (Miro, Sketchup, Excel, InDesign etc)
We are excited to show off Arcol to those that have been waiting (our waitlist recently passed 17,000 people) and look forward to hearing all the things you like and (even more excited) to hear the things you didn’t like. Arcol will be closed at 12pm EST on 23rd of August.