There's a Faster Way to Discover and Select Building Materials.
As a building product manufacturer, getting your products in front of architects and specifiers at the right time is an ever-evolving challange.
There are several avenues that you can choose to promote your products and tell your story to the A&D community. Some of the most common ways are presenting at trade shows, appearing within Google searches, listing your products on directories, and actively engaging on social media.
But what if, as a manufacturer, you could reach them directly through the software that they are using to design buildings?
What if you could reach them before they even opened Google?
Well, with BIMsmith Forge, you can.
What is BIMsmith Forge?
BIMsmith Forge is a free to use building product selection platform that can be accessed online or directly through the world’s leading building design software Autodesk Revit (estimated 1.2 million users worldwide).
BIMsmith Forge puts over 110,000 materials at the fingertips of architects and allows them to configure wall, floor, ceiling and roofing systems with simple one-click, on-the-fly ease.
How is This Different From Google?
Searching around the internet, visiting multiple manufacturer websites and product directories trying to search for appropriate products isn’t ideal for architects. It’s for this reason that they will typically begin their search within their internal databases.
Make sense, right? Why waste time searching the internet when you probably have something already at hand?
Let’s look at some examples:
Example 1: An Architect Searching for some Paint Finishes to Apply to an Internal Wall
In the below screenshot you can see that the architect is designing a room and has now opened the Material Browser within Autodesk Revit. Here they can search the standard material library shipped with Autodesk Revit and/or materials that they have previously found and downloaded.
However, what if they cannot find the correct colour for the room? What if they know that the paint must meet a Certification? Or specific performance rating? Now they have options:
1. Google search and sifit through manufacturer websites
2. Product Directory / BIM Library search and browse pictures of tin cans
3. Use BIMsmith Forge – A live database containing tens of thousands of different paints and finishes, including the world’s 3 largest paint manufacturers – PPG, AkzoNobel and Sherwin Williams
BIMsmith Forge allows architects to visualise the paint colours and gain more information directly from the manufacturers' websites.
Example 2 – An Architect Searching for a 2-Hour Fire Rated Wall System
But let’s say the architect is looking for a solution and not a product. In this example, the architect is looking for a 2-hour fire rated wall system. Using the BIMsmith Forge system starters, which have been submitted by manufacturers, architects can find and load pre-build wall systems in literally seconds.
This is a great example of collaboration and how manufacturers can get specified by helping architects find solutions to their problems.
Search and Discover Products for Walls, Floors, Ceilings and Roofs
BIMsmith Forge contains hundreds of thousands of materials for walls, floors, ceilings, and roofs from some of the world’s leading building material manufacturers such as Armstrong Flooring, Trex, Alucobond, and Corian. Here are some of the most popular systems being built on BIMsmith Forge:
Conclusion
When considering your digital marketing strategy and how you can increase the chances of your building products being specified, it's important not to overlook the fact that architects are spending hours every day sitting in front of software doing what they do best – designing great buildings! If you can put your products directly in front of them at the point of design and make it easier and faster to specify your products over those of your competition, they're bound to choose the easier option.
So give them the easier option.
Recommending systems and providing solutions is a win-win for all.
Want to Learn More?
Reach out to us today for a demonstration or read this case study.
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Antony Fuller
Founded in 2010 by two architects who saw a lack of effective tools for architects to engage with the leaders in building products, Anguleris Technologies develops proprietary and custom technologies that bridge the gap between manufacturers and specifiers. The creators of BIMsmith (including BIMsmith Market and BIMsmith Forge), Anguleris has unique industry insight into leveraging building product data for maximum return on your investment. Learn more at www.anguleris.com.
