I always wonder one day there would be an easy and practical way to unify design data, log of discussions, decisions, instruction, editing activities for all members of architectural projects. People can contribute to the development, review and update of the building blocks with the best accuracy and timeliness to control the UNIFIED virtual project on the virtual site. In such platform, unification is the critical factor for all members to use and enjoy the ease of collaboration and communication fostered by the spatial idea structured, represented and stored in the accurate virtual (yet to be physical) space. Client as the administrator grants the right of viewing and editing within the specific certain space matrix. For instance, Lead architect will be given the access to all part of model for constant viewing and updating the overall project. Interior designer for the office typical floor can easily get into the limited view of the office tower for the most updated/on-going tower floor to develop their idea without asking/waiting for the latest version from the respective architect. Client can always go to the virtual unified site/building having all consultants submitting their models (built in various platform such as sketchup, rhino or Revit), 2D drawing/sketches/markups, etc. Features like time capsule can enable the retrieval of previous model for comparison organized with respect to the spatial matrix. Besides individual parties (client or designers/engineers) access the model for their design tasks, what’s more important is the project site acting as professional meeting places. Design and coordination meeting can take place as “site walk” with more objective view and orchestration of live design data and project records.
This may sound too grand, but I just find the current project practice world-wide is hindered by unnecessary obstacles due to unsynchronized model/data, inaccurate alignment of model to the site and other model parts, differentials between different design softwares between parties, limitation of current video conference platform for discussion and joint collaboration of highly sophisticated project in 3D or 4D. I post this thread because I see the potential of Enscape and its popularity among the professionals worldwide and its compatibility with most of the popular design software.