171: ‘From Model to Machine’, with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles

171 - ‘From Model to Machine’, with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles

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Evan Troxel: Welcome to the TRXL podcast. I'm Evan Troxel, a little bit of housekeeping upfront here before I introduce today's guests. I would very much appreciate your support of this podcast by subscribing, wherever you watch or listen. So YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Wherever that is. And please leave a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

You can also support my mission by becoming a paid member at trxl.co, which is my website.

Just click on the join button in the lower right-hand corner.

And if you'd like to receive an email when these episodes are published with all of the show notes, which includes links and all of the other information, whenever they come out, you can sign up for that by becoming a free or paid member at trxl.co. And clicking that join button. Okay. In this episode, I welcome Brian Nickel and Brett [00:01:00] Settles of Allied BIM.

Brian is the CEO and founder of Allied BIM which is a pioneering firm that develops and delivers cutting edge fabrication tools and solutions for Autodesk Revit and BIM 360 platforms. And he is an adjunct professor at Montana State University's College of Engineering, and Gallatin College. Brett Settles is the product owner at Allied BIM and he brings 20 years of experience implementing, managing, teaching, and using new technology in geospatial, mining and AEC.

In this episode, we discuss their latest work at the intersection of BIM and fabrication. We talk about the innovations the Allied BIM team has created that link design intent directly to the machines on the floor in the shop. Brian and Brett share their insights on the evolution of BIM technology, the importance of user-friendly web based platforms and the role of training and VR in remote management.

Today we [00:02:00] discuss real-world applications and the future of construction automation, making a compelling case for the transformative potential of their work.

You'll hear about how Allied BIM is bridging the gap between design intent and onsite execution, and you'll learn about their vision for the future of the critical link between design and the trades.

This was a fantastic conversation with Brian and Brett. And I hope you'll not only find value in it for yourself, but that you'll help add value to our industry by sharing it with your network. So now without further ado, I bring you my conversation with Brian Nickel and Brett Settles.

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Evan Troxel: Today I'm joined by Brian and Brett from Allied BIM. And I want you guys to actually give an intro to what you've been up to. We had the chance to connect at Autodesk University. it was a jam packed schedule. We squeezed it in [00:03:00] just in time to, but it's incredible what you guys are working on at Allied BIM. And I thought it would be a cool story to tell because I know you've been working really hard on this direct to

fabrication stuff. Everything that you've built is absolutely incredible. And there's so

much information there. I don't know how deep we'll end up going today, but, first welcome to the show, both of you. It's great to have you here.

Brian Nickel: Thank you for having us, Evan.

Evan Troxel: Well, Brian, maybe you kick us off because we've known each other the longest and have been aware of kind of what's going on on both sides of our worlds. And we're not actually that far apart anymore.

I moved to Oregon, you're out of Boise and Montana. You're kind of splitting time, right? But maybe you can get a little bit into that and tell people what you've been up to for the past few years.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, um, no, thanks, Evan, for bringing us onto the show and, uh, definitely known each other for quite some time. Um, my name's Brian Nichol. I'm the CEO of Allied BIM.

Uh, we started Allied BIM actually based out of a prefab shop in Bozeman, Montana. Um, I was a second year architecture student [00:04:00] studying architecture.

That's kind of where we have some commonalities is our architecture backgrounds. Uh, but what was interesting is just learning the process and sort of the pain points in an actual fabrication shop of, you know, what the disconnect was from model to machine software. Uh, at the time in 2014, uh, there was not a lot of applications that allowed us to easily transmit data, uh, to those machines. And so long story short, we developed Allied BIM. We raised a substantial amount of capital from Arco Murray Ventures, along with some other private ventures as well. And what's really exciting about it is we brought Brett Settles on board, who's our product owner. And I'll let Brett introduce himself here in a minute as well.

Uh, but we've come together in, just in this last year and we've really started to drive the industry on the electrical side. And [00:05:00] we're looking forward to doing that on mechanical and plumbing as well. So, uh, really brief background there. I'll go ahead and let Brett introduce himself. Yeah.

Brett Settles: here at Allied BIM for closing in on a year now. So started at the very beginning of the year. Uh, my background is really kind of dipping in and out of industry. Uh, when I'm in industry, my history really revolves around industrial engineering and construction management. So the shop hasn't always been my forte. It's more about workflows, software, user experiences. So for me

This whole journey into Allied Vim has not only been something I feel like I've been able to help with, but also something that's been an extremely valuable learning process for me, not only for what we're doing, but also for essentially, um, the way I understand it if I ever end up anywhere else in the industry.

Evan Troxel: I just want to jump in here real quick, Brett, because what you just said [00:06:00] is super intriguing to me. And I think a lot of times, uh, firms, uh, you know, I'll, I'll come at this from a kind of an architectural firm perspective. You're looking to fill a role with somebody who has all the knowledge already, right?

And they're going to be able to bring that knowledge to the firm and disperse it amongst the staff of the firm to win

projects, to deliver projects, whatever the role may entail, right? But what you just said was. Like, this was not your forte, right, to come in and, and, and, like, bridge the gap to the shop, right, from software to the shop. And I find it super interesting, like, number one, like, you saw this as a really interesting challenge for your own professional development, and that Brian, you saw that he could, Do it and that at the same time. He didn't come with all of that at the get go. And so a little bit of a detour here. I, I would love to hear from both of you because I, I don't think that that's very common, like what you [00:07:00] just described.

Like a lot of times we're looking for some, they don't, the resume, or you know, the job posting always says 10 years, 5 years, 7 years of experience, like doing all of these things. And what you're saying is like, You were going to figure it out here and you were the right guy to do it, obviously, because Brian said you're the right guy to do it,

So talk, talk us through kind of how that little piece happened. And then we'll get back to your,

Brian Nickel: Uh, I'm actually gonna hit on that 'cause uh, so Brett, I was actually Brett's third customer at a company called Visto. So I, uh, back in 2015, I believe is when I met Brett for the first time, pro, possibly even 2014. And we were just a small company and I said, Brett, you know, I'd love to use your software, but it's too expensive.

Right? And Brett's like, I'm going to come in and we're going to figure this out. And we figured it out. And what happened through that experience was I actually got to see Brett's customer service and customer care, um, on a [00:08:00] product owner standpoint. And I got to see what he was doing with that product.

And I got to see how he was evolving that product. and really how he grew Revisto, uh, in, in, from my perspective, just sitting, non software guy at the time, like, just using software to build buildings, right? And that really got my hopes up for the industry, because I knew that he was putting that extra level of care in it.

So, he ended up, uh, coming to Reality Capture Network conference about a year ago, uh, it was not this current one, it was the one last, uh, last year. And it was in November. And it was Reality Capture Networks done by Matt Bird. He's a really good friend of mine, really good advocate in the industry. And Brett came by our booth.

We actually were boothing an allied product at the time. And I saw him, and uh, and Brett had switched over to a company called Penta Engineers. And seeing Brett go from the software industry back to the traditional role of engineering as CTO, I'm like, why did you do that, Brett? [00:09:00] Like You're so valuable for the software side.

Like, have, have you ever considered like coming and working for a software company like Allied? And he's like, Hmm, I might be interested. Let's have a conversation. And Brett, I think that's pretty much how the conversation went. And then within 30 days or, or 45 days, we had Brett Settles on board and it, he's done tremendous things just in the last 11 months this year, uh,

Brett Settles: well, I'm flattered, of course, and yeah, I mean, I started off my career in GIS, surveying and civil, really gravitated towards Revit and BIM, was really kind of put to task during the housing crisis, selling software in a very hurt economy, right? So, low staff, lots of responsibility, which greatly helped my career development. Um, and then got into industrial, uh, CM. So [00:10:00] I was really working with prefabrication from an engineering point of view, and then even a construction, uh, management point of view in the field. In industrial, we're working with large ducks, large kilns, they get shipped on trucks, they're pre assembled, right? It's actually pretty common in that industry, and, uh, the one thing that I had never done is seeing what happens after I order things and when they show up on, on site. And, uh, this job has really not only let me kind of get inside of those doors, uh, but really kind of what I feel like is bringing a fresh perspective on software user experience to a group of people that are experienced in the industry that we serve.

Um, and

You know, I'm, I'm learning pretty rapidly right there. You know, coming in,

I honestly feel like I probably know more about software or conduit vending than I probably should.

Uh, but that's just [00:11:00] how it works out. You know,

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Side effect of the job.

Brett Settles: exactly.

Evan Troxel: Brian, maybe you can give us kind of a short story of, of where Allied BIM has come from to get where you are now, just to give people a bigger understanding of what, because Allied BIM, I mean, obviously you're, you're focused on BIM. Right. And so maybe give us an idea of,

of the transition, what, what, where you've been and then what you're transitioning into currently or have been working on.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, absolutely. So, um, in 2004, I started, uh, actually at Santiago High School in Southern California, uh, which was not too far from where you were. I believe you were in Ontario, uh, working for a firm down there. Um, but what was interesting is we, we learned Revit 6. 0 and I was in Bill Brown's class, uh, was my high school teacher and I loved Revit the moment that I opened it.

Like, it was just a, a great, uh, It was fun. Uh, I grew up a huge video gamer and got into Revit and I'm like, I'm, I'm [00:12:00] being paid to play video games now. And, uh, what I didn't realize at the time until I went through architecture school and ultimately moved to Montana, uh, I'm an alum from Montana State University with a master's of architecture and going, going to Montana and what I didn't understand was the connection of what was beyond the traditional blueprints for architecture and engineering, right?

And so I saw this ad, ironically enough, this was 2014, in a newspaper, okay, and I, I, I see this little, uh, clip that says, Hiring Revit MEP Specialists, and I'm like, that's interesting, because I happen to be in a building systems class, and I feel really uncomfortable with building systems right now. It would be, what better way to learn mechanical electrical plumbing systems than using Revit, which I love to do, and learning how to model it.

And so, uh, Go in, go in for an interview. I meet Bob Harvey, who's now my business partner and I interviewed with him and I [00:13:00] found out his wife was a professor actually at my college and I initially declined the job because I didn't want to get, I didn't want to get like a conflict due to the fact that, you know, I'm in school and I'm working for your husband type thing and, uh, he called me back and he goes, I don't care about that.

Come work for me. Like just, just come work for me. Bear in mind, I was not heavily in the industry yet. I was more or less just like a student, you know, doing some architecture jobs, you know, very, very basic drafting stuff. And what Bob started to proceed to do was explain his vision for how a model should connect to a specialty contractor.

And what was enlightening about it was the amount of volume in just supplies, the amount of volume in materials, the amount of waste in materials. Uh, the, uh, the general complexity of the projects that they were doing. And at the time in 2014, when we were modeling with system families, if you open up like a [00:14:00] Revit MEP system family for an ELBO, and you'll, you'll see that the connectors just don't work.

Like you can't get linear cuts. It's not a fabrication element. And so coincidentally enough, uh, and total fate, I think, and, and it was, it was just sheer coincidence. 2015 they roll out MEP fabrication parts inside of Revit. And at that moment they had adjusted these connectors to be able to actually lego fy your building.

Like you could actually like go coupling to pipe to coupling and it knew what the distances were because it was spec driven, right? It was driven off of the actual product specification. And the light bulb went off right there. I'm like, this is incredible. Cause he, my first task was, Hey, draw this. So my guys can build it because I have to draw these isometrics and I have to explain it.

And I've got 40 plumbers and I tell one plumber to do it this way and this plumber to do it [00:15:00] that way. And they all do it 1500 different ways. And how do I want, I want to create consistency for better quality. And so, um, Kind of speeding this story up a little bit, what was interesting is as the tools began to evolve, my comprehension of their specialty trades started to evolve.

And so I was working with master plumbers and they would explain, okay, this is how this all goes together. And I'm, I'm just a dumb old architecture student, right? Like I'm just designing buildings. And what they were doing was they were teaching me how to construct the MEP system. And so as I learned how to do that, we were able to, um, Bob came into my office in 2016.

He goes, Hey, I'm thinking about buying this linear positioning system. I'm like, what the heck is that? He's like, well, it goes on the back of a saw and there's some automation on it. And I was like, that would be amazing. Cause I can give you the list and then we could go cut it. Right. And so, uh, we, long story short, [00:16:00] we bought that, we got the equipment in place and we realized major deficiencies with it.

We're like, I got to export an Excel file. I got to tell Johnny in the back, like, Hey, you know, you're going to cut this list. And Johnny doesn't know how to operate a computer. And he's like overwhelmed. He's like, I'm just going to pull a tape measure and cut it. Um, and so I got to see that and I went up to Bob one day in 2017 and I said, let's develop our own solution.

We tried other gen one solutions on the market at that time. And I said, You know, let's, let's build our own product, which at the time I had no idea what I was doing. I was like, I, we just need to build our own software to do what you want it to do. And so we ended up hiring out a development team. We ended up building out the process and kind of building the initial framework.

Bear in mind, this was all strictly for Revit. And so what we ended up doing is in 2019, Forge [00:17:00] rolls out. And I'm like General Akbar from Star Wars. I'm like, this is a trap. This is a nightmare. Like, it's going to ruin my Revit tools. You know, here, here we go. Well, I met with Jim Quancey at Autodesk and he goes, Brian, it's not a trap.

It's actually a great product and we're building it for this purpose. And we want to learn more about why you're building what you're building and how we can incorporate it into, into this whole APS life cycle. And so, uh, 2020 pandemic hit. Um, I ended up kind of going to Bob and, and we're like, you know, well is drying up.

We, we got to go present this and pitch this and let's start going the VC route. And we start going the VC route and we ended up raising 2. 25 million in a seed round. And, uh, that really helped us get the traction that we needed now. So we're now, we're, we're doing very well at Allied [00:18:00] and it allowed us to bring on Brett and we've fully evolved the system to be a web based fabrication workflow platform where now we can take a Revit model from design, whether it's conceptual all the way through fabrication ready, directly out to the machine.

Evan Troxel: And you have like, no, that's cool. I, I, I think what one thing I, I even want to expand on it because when you say like, you machine ready, like you, you showed me,

and and we're gonna have a link to a separate video that you're

gonna put up that

shows people what that actually means because it's

more than just like, file export.

Right. And so take a second and just talk about what that actually means, because I think it actually puts you in the shoes of, or at least it gives you a footing in the

shop when you're actually building these cutlists and you're, you're working in this interactive model, but you're

also directly connected to [00:19:00] the shop to see the output, which then in four, I would assume informs kind of both

sides of that equation so that you get a tighter. Connection,

not just between the, the transfer of data, but also the people who are doing this job.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, no, uh, what was happening in the beginning was the communication breakdown of putting it onto a, uh, USB stick, handing it to them, walking it to the back shop, putting it into the computer and then fighting the computer to organize the list. In fact, not even being able to pack optimize the materials accurately to mitigate waste.

It was just cutting stuff. We, we reached a point where, you know, a tail end of the stick, they were nearly chopping their fingers off on the saw just out of the box. Right? And so, Leading and segwaying into what you're talking about, Evan, where we've gone model connected to machine. Now the design modeler can publish for fabrication, link the [00:20:00] machine to the actual model that they're going to be building from and translate and organize the data in a way that's safer, more efficient, less wasteful, and just overall faster.

We're seeing an eight X improvement speed over. what a traditional thumb drive export is. And let's face it, we all hate exporting and importing data. It's the worst thing ever, right? So oh, sorry, Brian.

Brett Settles: Well, one of, one of the things that I was going to bring up, and I think it's so important with software, and it's something that I kind of bring across most of my jobs with me, and it's something I remember really vividly from doing it, is context switching, right? This, no matter what job you do, the idea of saying, all right, I've got this, shut this system down, now open it back up in this system. It is a very jarring experience, no matter what you're doing, and so whenever we were [00:21:00] tackling, you know, coordination software, we focused on where is the context switching and how do we make that smooth handoff? And I think fabrication and its link to the BIM world suffers from that greatly right now. And the more you smooth that out, in addition to reduce the menial tasks that people do,

uh, the more value you get,

right? So,

um, and there's a lot of opportunity for that here. So we're kind of taking the low hanging fruit first,

and, and then, you know, working our way up that tree.

Evan Troxel: And you, you talked about kind of this idea of, I'm going to put context switching even in context because, you talked about workflows earlier, right? And so the idea, like, in an architectural workflow, there's a lot of context switching, right? It's like, I'm going from this tool Export, Import into this tool, Export, Import, like wait, like there's all, all these different context switching things that are going on because, you know, when, when I, back, [00:22:00] back in the day, right?

It's like we had to wait

for a certain thing.

You had to wait for the thing

to export. You had to wait for Photoshop to, to, Pre process the image

before it could actually process the image. You

remember that in

Photoshop, we had, we had like a progress bar for like what it was, it was thinking about what it was going to do before

the real progress bar of

actually doing what it was going to do when you applied the

filter or whatever, or preparing to save.

That's what I'm thinking of. Photoshop used to tell us it was preparing to save.

Brett Settles: to save.

Evan Troxel: Right.

Um, but, but then even rendering, like it used to take hours. Right. And so, and so to your

point

about like keeping this workflow in.

Like, I don't know what you would call it. It's just like this one system,

Brett Settles: Like a stream.

Brian Nickel: keeping it connected,

right? Like there, there's so many disconnects from design, even, even on the receiving side of a specialty contractor from the design side. there's a lot of rework,

constant rework that's done, right?

And that's all driven based on, you know, that [00:23:00] particular, particular specialty contractor that's going to put whatever content they build into their model.

Um, but the moment that you can start to control that connection between what has been published versus what is being produced and, and connect that back to the models to give the designer a status of progress. You can now accelerate that production. An example of this was Williams Plumbing and Heating in Bozeman.

They were doing 10 model assembly spool drawings, which for those viewers that are listening, or for the audience, a spool drawing is really just a fabrication drawing. So for somebody to be able to have instructions like a Lego sheet to build. So they'd get 10 assemblies or 10 Lego kits to build. and what we were able to do by creating that connection was accelerate it on day two to 20, on day three to 40, and on day, uh, four, they were like, okay, we're ready to go 80.

We're going to just do [00:24:00] 80. And that's where we get our 8x production number from, is them accelerating the number of spool books or spool fabrication drawings that they can produce. And, and so it's all about that connection, really.

Evan Troxel: But then, but then the other kind of side effect of that, like, how is it possible? I mean, and I'm just kind of stepping back and from a manufacturing standpoint

for a manufacturer to say, let's go eight times faster and

it's safer like that. That's just gotta be kind

of a, another level of disconnect.

It's like

how's that

even possible?

Brian Nickel: Yeah. And, and that's a really good point that you bring up. They're like, you're so full of shit. Like there's no way that you're going to be able to make it 8X faster and safer. And it's like, no, we actually are controlling a work cell, which enables us to have a less skilled worker operate it.

It actually attracts the less skilled worker to the trades where we have a massive trade shortage right now. You know, I ask, I do a poll, I [00:25:00] teach at Montana State University in my Revit class. Um, I teach the construction engineering technology students. I do a poll. How many people are familiar with the trades?

On average, I have about 75 to 100 students a semester. I average about 5 students that even know what the trades are. And so, what I do as they go through my Revit class is I kind of explain, you know, here's the options that you have to you. Here's why it's so attractive to check it out.

And with, with that, it's like now we've made the machine safer.

We're using a machine that's easier to teach somebody than it is to even pull and read and interpret a tape measure to mark with a sharpie. Because now they can punch in the dimension that they want and the system does it on its own. And it's less hands on. Um, so in a traditional shop, you've got guys out like skill sawing or using a chop saw.

That's a lot of manual labor. With these fully automatic machines, you literally push a [00:26:00] foot pedal and it does it on its own, and then it advances it on its own. So now you're not having to pull a tape, set a backstop, pull a tape, set a backstop, and advance. I remember from my woodworking class how frustrating that was, right?

And so, to your point, Evan, it's all about the safety. the training of the skilled trade labor, like being enticed to want to come work in the trades, right? Because now we've got this digitally connected system. Um, and it's, it's, it's pretty interesting. Brett, you can probably add a little more to that as well.

Brett Settles: Yeah, absolutely. Um, you know, I have been connected in my life with people that have worked in a more traditional manufacturing environment, right? And, and I've been in those shops, not near as much as I've been in these sort of contractor AEC shops. And, you know, there's a couple big things that you guys bring up.

One is the safety. In order to use a brake press in some of the shops I've been in, you have to be standing on a pad and push two [00:27:00] buttons with both your hands, right? Meaning that you have no extremities available to get stuck. in the machine, right? There, it is not possible. Uh, as to where you make a site visit, like what we did last week, there's nothing wrong with what was happening, but the opportunity for injury is, is higher because of the nature of the tools being used. Skill saw in hand. You know, dusty floor, um, situations that are very common in construction. And so, what we learned is, is, uh, in the visit we just made, you can actually prefabricate your cuts and add two people back to the labor crew building and remove them from the dangerous situation.

Um, and keep that all in, in one workflow,

uh, and so it's really an organizational value proposition that has to be explained in multiple [00:28:00] ways because it gives everyone value,

um, not to get too sidetracked there, but hopefully that kind of,

uh, helps kind of our thought process there.

Evan Troxel: That's super interesting to kind of think about the business that you're actually affecting, right? Like, you're not just affecting process. You're actually affecting the way that they can conduct their business from a labor standpoint and where those labor units are applied in the shop versus out on the site, doing installation versus that prefabrication.

I think that's really interesting. And so, like, just building on that, Theme for a minute what tell me like how those conversations go like you just said you had to explain you usually have to explain It multiple different ways what what do you hear is kind of the

objections and the pushback throughout that process?

And and that you're kind of overcoming through that conversation. I

Brett Settles: you know, usually, uh, I have, uh, uh, two conversations with almost all [00:29:00] clients, depending on, and this goes for a lot of different verticals, GCs, subcontractors, and the two conversations are first with the technical team, what are we trying to achieve from a technical standpoint? And then the second is this a buy in from the people that are actually doing the work. Um, and those are two very different conversations, right? The first one is a very advanced, lots of acronyms being thrown around, lots of terminology that if you're not in this industry, you're not going to understand what we're talking about, right? As to where when we go to the field, Brian and I went to a field visit last week, and I, you know, we met with the superintendent.

We said, um, you know, just explain to us, you know, what's the most important thing to you? And he said, going fast, speed, you know, safety is always number one concern, but second to that is speed, right? Um, yes, he did say safety [00:30:00] first. I reversed it on him, but, uh, you

It was one of those things where we thought it was going to be a very technological process,

and it turned out to be a very simple one, where he said, all I need are these certain types of parts marked and cut and labeled and brought out to site.

We will do everything else that will accelerate our process. and

so, does he understand that assemblies are being created, files are being processed? Uh, you know, we're post processing PDFs into the parts that he's getting delivered. He knows none of that. All he knows is that he's going to get a package that tells him where those parts go. And that was where he was like, oh, that's nice.

Brian Nickel: What they want, Evan, is they want the big, fat, red, that was easy button, and that's what we're trying to build in the platform to make it simple for them to use to where they don't need to necessarily know what's happening on the, [00:31:00] happening on the backend.

They're just getting the lists and the files and the organizations so that they can produce and build the building faster.

Brett Settles: Brian and, and, oh, go ahead, Evan, I was gonna say it makes sense that you want it on the surface to be simple and you want it to be approachable and intuitive and, you know, it feels good and the complexity is below the surface and it's difficult to build software and processes that are actually like that, right? I mean, I'm sure you've gone through a

Evan Troxel: lot of iterations to actually get to that point.

Like,

what do you

put on the surface? what

do you hide below the

surface?

So that That overwhelm doesn't happen.

Brian Nickel: Yeah, what the hardest part was, was realizing that we're,

so when we segued at Harvey's from building it internally for a company to selling it to other companies, that was the most difficult thing for us to overcome is you build something initially [00:32:00] for your operations and it has purpose for the internal operations.

But how do you blow the lid off of that and make it accessible to everybody? And we've successfully done that because we learned through trial and error how to do that. And one of the best parts was once we built that web environment, it became understandable of how it was all going to tie into where we didn't have to worry about what parameters were in the Revit model anymore.

We can now map data through our platform to the equipment that we've built on the back end. And that's what's really powerful about it. I mean, Brett brought up the tube bending side. Uh, the CNC tube benders, I showed a video just a few moments ago. Um, but the CNC tube benders are traditionally built for the aerospace industry.

So like SpaceX, um, NASA, like JPL, those kinds of companies typically use this and automotive. And those companies are batch [00:33:00] producing the same part over and over and over again for each air, aircraft. In our world, we're building new buildings over and over again, but it's nothing but variation. No two projects are the same unless they're actually the same, right?

And even, even then, I would say 95 percent or more of all projects are constantly different, done by different people. And so one of the other battles that we've built into the layer is we were able to make this machine handle, and all machines that we work with, handle that variation. with our construction industry.

So now it doesn't matter if it's building the same part over and over again, or if you

have 150 million different parts.

Evan Troxel: Interesting.

Brett Settles: What's interesting about that is, is that is also a requirement of that, and the ability to act on variation very quickly is a result of the [00:34:00] connection to the model. If we go back to the beginning of our conversation, when Brian was talking about, you know, generating a USB and taking it to a saw, well, at the point where that USB is put into your hand, anything on that model that changes.

is is unknown to you,

right? Um, in this environment,

it doesn't

feel different. You're still getting a cut list,

but that cut list can be changed based on decisions made that are out of your control and further up the process.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. I want to go back to that easy button idea, um, because I think that a lot of things that fabrication struggles with is the design

side, not understanding what a model that is ready for development is. fabrication really means.

I've heard this from, on the, on the timber side, on the, on the, you know, Greg Howes over at Cut My [00:35:00] Timber, he, he's talked about that a lot, like the, just the, the, vocabulary of the design side isn't there, the knowledge on the design side isn't there, the understanding of how the tooling works, what the processes are.

And so I'm just wondering, like, when you are bridging the gap, Between design and fabrication. Talk about kind of, okay. So, so you're, you're intentionally keeping stuff below the surface. You're bringing stuff up so that people can see certain

things, but you're really talking about

that from. The, the operator side at the moment, right?

You're talking about the fab shop, but from the design side, talk

talk about it from that direction too. And like

what architects and design teams need to know about the process that they are, because

I

think they think it's an

easy button. They actually

assume the easy button already exists and I'm just chucking this model over the fence and it's all

good. And that's,

that's not the case, right?

Brian Nickel: No, it's, it's actually interesting that you bring this up because my thought process on this has changed so many times over the last couple of years. I was a really disgruntled architecture student coming out of [00:36:00] school. I was disgruntled because my mindset was we're going to be the master builder.

We're going to know everything that goes into the building. We're master designers, right? We know how to master plan and master layout and, and put together construction CD sets that we can convey and get permitted. And we can, it's, that's going to get bid through the GC and they're going to go build that project.

And, um, what we've seen and what we've done really well with our platform is once it goes out to the subcontractors, they're the master of their craft in

installing those things. And that creates a nice separation. Um, because now in a modeling standpoint, you know, starting with system families where you're going through and you're doing spaghetti, right?

Like you're just modeling, you know, generic sizes, doing your collision detections, just validating that things are going to fit and systems are going to go. I look at it more kind of like the Russian dolls, like stacking dolls concept, where [00:37:00] it's like, you know, architect gave us, you know, the whole set, we're going to take that one off and drill in a little bit further.

We're going to drill in a little bit further to that. And then eventually, you know, you've, you figure out how they've all stacked together, right? And I think, um, what we've seen and what we've been able to do is, Revit has regulated and controlled that to some degree. The specialty contractors that are using Revit didn't have the tools ten years ago

to make a manufactured model, right?

And over the last decade, there's been solutions that have come out and the industry's really evolved into creating higher level precision models. The problem is the time that goes into build those models, fighting Revit, and how large those models are. And so the, the exciting part about the web for us is it no longer even has to be modeled technically in Revit.

We can actually digitally manufacture, you know, from a [00:38:00] model that's generated in the web. And so that, that's kind of exciting because if I could take the blueprints and the, the engineered models that are, call it, you know, um, magnified level or magnified level of detail, right? It's not microscopic level, it's just magnified a little bit.

We've got enough detail in there. Um, and then make it microscopic through an upload and process it and generate it and fabricate it. That's really where this industry's headed is, you know, with all this, for better or worse, adoption of AI, you know, there is the opportunity for us to publish, generate, and manufacture.

Right? So, just kind of, it's, it's changed where in our today's, today's,

It's Plan, Design, Send a Model, Receive Model, Remodel, Fight Revit, Export,

Evan Troxel: You forgot to fight [00:39:00] Revit in the earlier part too.

Brian Nickel: I should've put it earlier, Fight Revit.

Evan Troxel: That's

at

Brian Nickel: do love Revit. I do love Revit, but we fight it a lot.

Brett Settles: You know,

I talk about this with clients all the time, and I first recognized it when I stepped into the construction industry, when I realized that the models that were being used were generally authored by the subcontractors and not the designers. When early in my career, I always thought the subcontractors model would be an evolution of the design model, not A complete rework. of the design model. And what we've discovered over the years, and I'm not talking anything that anybody doesn't know, Is that there's now, uh, and I've, I've used this comment in other parts of the industry. There's essentially a sub economy of, of, of tools that float in this space of taking an engineered, uh, detail, an [00:40:00] engineering level detail model and taking it to something that can be built. Um, that was never addressed in the native software. And there is now a whole bunch of tools that do that on top of Revit. But as technology has gone on, now we're questioning of, is Revit the base, the best place? And we'll use some base level AI talk here, and, and,

Brian Nickel: Very base.

Brett Settles: Preface this, this could absolutely be described as rule based automation. If I'm an engineering person, and I say, I want 50 foot of conduit, Right, point A to point B, from this box to this box. Everybody in this project knows that that's going to have to be chopped into five 10 foot sticks and couplings are going to have to be placed there. Everybody, the engineers, the construction workers, the, the, everybody. But we still have to go into Revit [00:41:00] and say, cut it here. What coupling do you want? I want this coupling. Put it here.

Why? Right? Those are all things that we all know has to happen. And, and when we look at like rule based AI type stuff, those are the types of things I think that us as an industry should be looking at is, is that the things that we all know is going to happen and, and leave the hard stuff to the people. Um, and, and so that's why that part of the industry is big in flux is because there are tools to fit that gap. But they are very human driven.

Brian Nickel: One follow up point to that, that you made Brett, that kind of relating it to the architecture industry. Do you remember when like Lumion came out for the I love that.

And, and they're like, they're like, how can we make rendering sustainable? Right? Do you remember when we were spending all of our budget rendering

and then Lumion came along and then it gave us more budget to actually focus on the [00:42:00] model?

Right? went from eight tower PCs running a whole weekend to running Lumion in 15 minutes to achieve the same results.

Exactly. And, and that's what we want to do for the fabrication industry. It's that same concept is like, instead of spending, you know, 90, 000 hours or whatever it is, you know, a hundred thousand hours, what, whatever it may be on a project, modeling, modeling, modeling, slicing every coupling, you know, let's spend more time manufacturing and getting awarded more projects so that we can build more buildings and sell more buildings.

Right. Right.

You know, these guys that we met with last week are building massive data centers all throughout the United States. And, um, what's exciting to me about it is not only is our core principle of automating the trades to build more buildings, but the buildings that they're building are actually powering the system that we're relying on to build the software as well.

So it's, it's kind of [00:43:00] exciting to see that kind of transpire.

Evan Troxel: It is interesting to me to think about it from the standpoint of the complaints that I was hearing about like the design team doesn't know enough to be effective in on the design side before it gets thrown over the fence and then it magically works itself out. But the reason it magically works itself out is because the trades are doing a deep dive, rebuilding everything from scratch because they have the expertise, right?

It totally actually makes sense because Revit, Any CAD, any hand drawing, for that matter, was design intent, right? Architects think in assemblies, they don't think in components, for the most part, right? Floors, Ceilings, walls, we think in categories. I mean, if you want to think about it that way, right? And, and uh, and, and it always made sense.

I rem remember when I started off when it was on paper and it was like MEP was single line [00:44:00] diagrams, right? Electric. It was single line diagrams. Like there was no way. All of that information needed to get front loaded onto the designer. Number one, they didn't know what those pieces and parts needed to be, because we're not component experts. But number two, like,

a lot of that was

just actually figured out in the field. There was no Prefab like point on the

timeline. Right.

Brian Nickel: the art of the trade.

Evan Troxel: it was the art of the trade and, and, and you could rely on that. And that, and that was part of like the handshake that happened there. And it was, it wasn't adversarial, right?

It was, it was like a necessary piece of the puzzle stepped in when they needed to be there. And what I'm hearing from you guys is like, that's actually still possible here because the, like, I shouldn't as a Revit operator need to know. that the EMT needs to cut down into 10 foot sections. And we need to use this coupling, which is specified here from this pull down menu, and I got to pick it and all that.

No, like that's what software is [00:45:00] really good for. Right. And, and that to me is actually reassuring. That we can actually make even simpler front end design software that is a joy to use, which everybody knows the current software is actually not a joy to use, right? It's, it's with that, we've talked about fighting it, right? Um, and, and, and we see a lot of potential in that part of the industry right now with people who are developing some really incredible stuff. But, but the reason is, is like, that's because our value is not in doing that deep dive that early. Like it's great if it would be great if the software said, Hey, red flag right here. Um, something, you need to address something, but I don't necessarily need to know what those things are until I need to know what those

things are, right? I mean, so, I mean, am I, am I talk, is this crazy talk or are you nodding your

head in agreement like,

Brian Nickel: it's, I

live it, I wear it every day. I lost all my hair from pulling it out using those tools, right?

It's like, it's like how many times have we sat there and we've just been like, Oh my gosh, [00:46:00] why do I have to do this again? Right? It's, it's, it's, it totally makes sense what you're saying. And what I, what I'm really enjoying about this conversation is, From your perspective, Evan, I'm actually thinking about it in a different way than I have prior to this.

And it's, so it's, it's really exciting for me because, you know, hearing your thought process on it, and then you're, you're kind of more on that design side out to construction. We're kind of more on that specialty side. And what the software providers have been doing is they're kind of stuffing that and forcing these architects and engineers to learn the constructability side, but it just doesn't need to happen.

Right? We can allow the software to do that translation for us. And that's kind of the exciting part about what Brett and I are building here.

Evan Troxel: But that sounds like a very recent development, right? Like

that the software and the hardware have kind of come together at this moment of like really great [00:47:00] capability

to be able to do that. Because I think that was just a big cloudy mess for a long time.

Brian Nickel: Totally. I mean, just the amount of, we've done several pivots as most startups have. Um, our last pivot was probably about two years ago, prior to building the electrical segment out. And, uh, I gotta give major credit to Kyle Sponseller from CNR Electric, cause he came in as this, really young, but a master electrician, professional engineer.

So not only did he know how to design it, but he also know that he also built it. Right. So he's kind of that master electrician that knows how to build it. And so his, he kind of informed the process. He's like, let's mark the material. Let's cut the material in an automated fashion. Let's bend it automatically.

Let's reduce it down. Uh, in some of the examples that we show online, you know, the bends on 4 inch [00:48:00] EMT that are going into data center work take about 15 minutes to do it the manual way, the traditional way. And with the automation, we can do it in less than 15 seconds per bend. So it's pretty wild to see, you know, that translation.

What that translates to me is being able to do more projects, do more bends, produce more work. So,

Evan Troxel: curious, like, how, so, so, I mean, there's been conversations led by, uh, software companies previously about retooling AEC, and this is really the C side, right? The, and, and you even have kind of the pre construction side, if we're talking about prefab, kind of, offsite fabrication, right?

So talk about that side of it and how, what the appetite is for retooling the trades, because now you're actually talking about less people running the machines, the machines are way smarter, you [00:49:00] have a lot less waste, you have less in like, there's all of these things kind of

floating around that conversation, but how does that, how, what is the appetite for that conversation?

Brian Nickel: when we came into this showing the

moonshot, which was the whole entire work cell, which is like auto marking, auto cutting, auto bending, we're asking for a pretty substantial investment into equipment to retool that shot. You know, they're, they're looking at a work cell that's anywhere from 650, 000 to 1.

2 million, depending on what they put into it. These guys are used to using, you know, 881s, 555s, 747s, and a hand bender. All of the tools that range from 100 to 8, 500, upwards of maybe 30, 000 to 50, 000, depending on what they type of machine they're using. And so what we've had to do and what Brett [00:50:00] pointed out, which I think was absolutely brilliant is we've had to actually scale the product back to what the existing trades do today.

So now there's an option. Are you a manual shop? Do you do manual work? Great. We have a tool for you. Hey, are you a semi automatic shop? Yes, I am. I use a little bit. I want to, I want to start with cutting. I want to start with marking. We have a way to do that. And then there's the whole, you know, like big end goal of manufacturing, like a manufacturing work cell for electricians.

And we have that too. And so it's interesting because you, as you're developing your product, you know, we were very visionaries. Like as the founders were, you know, we're like, we need to get out Go all the way,

Yeah. Go all the way here. And then people are like, you're absolutely out of your mind. You're all the way out there.

Like what's.

What's going on? Uh, and then we've met, you know, we've, we've actually, we're currently working with the [00:51:00] top 50 in our, uh, 100 electricians and we're in about 10 to 15 percent of those currently today. And what's wild is, um, we, as Brett came on board and Brett can speak to this, as he started to scale it back, It's been easier to kind of lay out the breadcrumbs to get them into understanding how there's a bigger picture to do full automation.

Evan Troxel: Before you

jump into that, Brett, cause I, I want, I want to hear that. I just want to add one, one extra thing is that

I, to me, what this seems like it would do for you is help you build relationships with your customers because you're

not just going all the way. It's like, let's start here.

And then once you're ready, we can go to the next step.

And then once you're ready, we can go to the next

step. That seems to me like a much more sustainable business

model, right? For, for Allied.

Brian Nickel: We're not, we're not just giving them a platter and saying here feast, right? Like, it's like

we're going in there and listening and [00:52:00] understanding what their pain points are. We're responding to those pain points in our development. and making that development suitable for anybody so that we can build a better relationship over time.

This trip to Atlanta at England and Stubbs last week was one of the most eye opening experiences because they truly understood, Hey, we're not ready to cut right now. We don't want to deal with cutting. We just want to start with the bender, right? Let's get the bender rolling. And After we finish the bending work, so they're like, okay, you've proven the bender works.

Let's get the cut stations rolling.

Let's let's let's automate

Evan Troxel: next step, right?

Brian Nickel: Yeah Mm hmm

Brett Settles: just as forward thinking, same exact industry, and they chose to go the other way where they're like, we're going to saw, we're going to cut and mark first and we're going to bend the old way. And, uh, they are now [00:53:00] like, okay, let's get these vendors going. Um, you know, there are two big, big things I'd like to touch on over that conversation arc that you guys had. Uh, one is that do we get pushback in certain areas of the country, uh, that say, hey, you're kind of encroaching on jobs or something of this nature. Yes, people brought that up, but there's a couple of things.

There is a skilled labor shortage, and what that requires is, is for the industry as a whole to market to young people and their interests, right? However, that may be, and I'm not a marketing expert, but I can tell you that whenever I go to career fairs, if I stick to we're electricians, we or, you know, we're industrial engineers, we break up rocks. You know, people walk on by, but if I have a VR headset and an interactive way for [00:54:00] them to engage with the type of work that they're doing, then you get that engagement. So, there's one aspect of getting new people on, but then there's the other aspect of that same skilled shortage, in that we don't have 50 electricians running around that know how to do all this stuff. Um, we have much less than we have ever had, and we also don't have a good entry level position for people in this industry. What better than a safety oriented environment to hire an operator to work under a journeyman electrician to learn the ropes of this new, of not only the way electricity is installed in our country and in the world,

But, you know, learn from someone that's got that experience while they still provide value.

Um,

to me,

it seems like a huge win all the way around. And, you know, people that make that leap are finding

that to be [00:55:00] pretty valuable in those regards.

Evan Troxel: You mentioned VR and I know Brian you've got like this really interesting kind of I don't know. I want to call it a workflow, I guess, for the moment, for the meantime, but

explain kind of this, the thing that, like, build on what Brett was just talking about, like the, the type

of software that you've done that's

enabled through the web, but gives you a, uh, a view, a window into the shop itself and, and kind of

this immersive experience that you guys

have created, which is

more than just like, cause I think maybe

what people think is okay,

Revit, is maybe what people

are thinking when they're thinking about what you're talking about, but it's not

that at all.

Brian Nickel: No, a hundred percent. Um, you know, in, in what we,

as we orchestrated and what APS, what Autodesk platform services, like I'm going to plug them. It's a shameless plug for them, but I I'm plugging them because I actually believe in them and they helped us a lot. And what [00:56:00] they kind of showed us was that now that we have all the model data information accessible through this environment, Now we can actually communicate beyond what the generation one set of tools did.

Now we can actually start to create this linkage to the equipment to be able to manufacture. So what I did is I, I, just tried it out. I'm like, I, you know, the MetaQuest 3's out, bought a MetaQuest 3. They're really pretty inexpensive, 600 bucks, right? Um, and, um, throw the thing on, open up a web browser. I opened up our Fabrication Connected software and I was like, wait a minute.

So we have some proprietary software that runs on the machine that I can connect to. Let's see if it connects from the headset. And so I go in and I log into our ring camera on our shop that's up in Bozeman, Montana. Uh, I'm based in Boise, Idaho. So being, you know, at the shop through the headset on the machine is like really important to me because I can [00:57:00] work with it.

I can actually. In the VR environment, I can touch it because it's got hand tracking, so I can actually tap and learn it through the headset. And what it did is it actually, real time, through the internet, ran the machine. It cycled the machine. I was able to load materials from my home office in Boise to the machine there.

Our development team's on the other side of the globe. They're remoting it and controlling the machine digitally now. And so where that all came from was the skilled trade gap. And I know we're, that's a whole nother subject, but I'm going to keep it real simple. I experienced it. My business partner is 60 plus year old master plumber.

Okay. He's retired. He's got 35 years of experience all up here. Okay. How does he teach that emerging generation how to actually use it? , and I believe it's through VR or you know, [00:58:00] these glasses, meta just talked about these new, I think it's called Osiris or something like that, or Iris. Um, but you basically put these glasses on and it's passed through technology that overlays all the screens while you're walking through society.

They're like 10 grand. They're really expensive right now.

Evan Troxel: Yeah, they're

not for sale. Yeah.

Brian Nickel: but I envision

him, I envision these guys popping in. on our headsets and seeing through our eyes on the job site and actually instructing us how to build and model. And as things start to get more intuitive with VR, like imagine being able to open up a toolkit and start modeling out your systems on site, like just with real content and then manufacturing that on the equipment, right?

It's, it's not even. It's not even modeling the building anymore, it's just going out on site and just, here, I want this here. Send it [00:59:00] to the shop, they're going to ship it to the site, I'll install it. Uh, it's, it's wild. So

that's, that's kind of the vision I see with it.

Evan Troxel: the interesting thing to me about that is scale, right? Like, like the, okay, the best case scenario is in person, right? Like you're, you're the, you're the master plumber

and I'm here learning this trade. Let's connect and let's do this. But that doesn't

scale, right? And,

and now with the internet, with technology, with what we're doing right here on this call,

right?

We're

in three different locations. You're also talking about tuning into the shop in Bozeman from Boise

and having direct control over the machines is you've, you've now got this broadcast scenario potential, right? One to many, right? And you have this interaction, but you can have an, a,

A huge number of people tuning in to watch and learn that in real time from the source, from the person who

is the master plumber to do that right there.

I think it's really incredible, [01:00:00] and that you can run all this software from that.

So, is VR magical here in this scenario? Not really, except it enables This whole thing to scale and it enables you to connect from anywhere to

anywhere and

feel like you're actually immersed in the situation Not just watching it on a small screen like on your phone, right?

Brian Nickel: I, it gives me a medium to convey the vision of it

so that someone other than me can build that, like, like, build that platform to be able to communicate so I can get that done, right? Like, we've looked at, like, ResolveBim. Angel say is amazing over there. I think he's probably going to be the one to pull something like this off.

Um, but being able to have that platform that. leverages our data to work with it, to pass it through those systems. We've built the network of fabrication shops. Now we just plug it into that headset and we're ready to roll, right? Or, or even just the network of people that are, that are [01:01:00] fabricating. So it's, that's moonshot.

Always have to scale it back to reality that we're using tape measures and sharpies, right? So, Gotta scale it before we can get there, but, uh, it's, it's just an interesting way of us being able to convey that vision.

Evan Troxel: It's a cool, cool thing. Brett, I have a question for you being the product manager for this and just talking about kind of why you guys chose the web. I know there's a lot of kind of, there's both sides to that argument, right? Doing it on machines versus in the cloud or on the

web. And I'm just curious to hear your thoughts on that side of it. And what that's enabled you guys to do.

Brett Settles: Yeah, the, the interesting thing is, is that the decision on the WebSocket was actually developed before I got here. However, it was new. So, while it wasn't necessarily my idea, it was thought of by Brian and Kyle, it is something that I immediately recognize is extremely valuable and something that me personally, um, [01:02:00] I have a unique perspective on a lot of my projects because, you My projects that I worked on were always prefabbed, very far away from where they were being built, shipped to where they were being built. And one of the things is, is solving the problem of localization for a prefab operation. and and what I mean by that is, is that if you wanna scale prefabrication the easiest. And, and I'm sure there's someone out there that has done this, but I'm sure it's very difficult to prefab one large project from three to five addresses,

right. So, you know, you get a project, you're doing something like a, you know, a 20 story hotel, um, and you've got three 5, 000 square foot shops, not a 25, 000 square foot shop. So, The first thing you got to do is you got to start [01:03:00] thinking about your resources, right? In a desktop bound environment, the connection between those three shops and the communication is going to be Excel and IT heavy at best. And that's if you have a very good team doing it, right? As to where, with the decision that they made beforehand, It allows it to where everything's automatically labeled, and you cannot possibly step on the toes of each other, even if shop 1 is doing, you know, 1 through 2 inch, shop 2 is doing 2 through 4, and shop 3 is doing 4 and up, in terms of, like, conduit sizes, or, or something of that nature. So, the integration of the data, and the way that the UPCs, the QRs, the package labels sort

themselves out, allow them to be shipped and not confused. I think it's something that's often overlooked about the difference between [01:04:00] desktop and web based software, mostly because No,

one's tried that yet,

or, or has tried it on a large scale. So we'll see how that goes over the next few years. I have high hopes, but you know, I've been wrong before, but we'll see. So that's kind of my take. Brian, am I on, on base

with what you're thinking?

Brian Nickel: what I really am glad that Brett just narrated there is just that

a lot of these shops have three to five different, like, buildings that perform different sequences of

operations. Like, one might be mechanical, one might be electrical, one might be plumbing, one

might have electrical split up between, you know, different sizes all the way out to different racking systems.

And the beauty of that web environment and answering your question, Evan, about like why we chose web is we have an internet system, right? So because every shop has a computer, it's much easier for a guy to open up a web [01:05:00] browser and create a simple interaction than it is to have him download and install and find his serial code to install a C sharp desktop application, right?

Right. And so what we've done is we've simplified it on different medians to where they can run it on the iPad, they can run it on their iPhone, they can run it on just a standard computer. And now, now that all those stations have been identified, it's rolling out a map of all of those workstations for an overall metric system to be able to understand what's happening at each work cell, at each machine.

Um, And it gives us data that traditionally is lost through that export. When, the moment you export a model, you've immediately just like vomited, you know, all this information that has no traceability, right?

And

Brett Settles: You know,

Brian Nickel: even if, you can import it, there's data loss, right? And it's just a nightmare, right?

This is [01:06:00] all connected. It all communicates. There's no data loss. It's all being put into one central core.

Brett Settles: and Brian, I mean, the only reason I was going to jump in there, and I'll be real quick, right? Like, classic problem in our industry,

uh, hey, BIM changed something. What'd they change? Disassembly.

Well, it's sitting right there.

Evan Troxel: Yeah. Already made it, Yeah.

Brett Settles: So like, what are we going to do? This is a huge solver of that problem.

And that was really the only point I wanted to bring up there.

Evan Troxel: And again, I just want To kind of, like, I'll give you a moment to, and we'll have a link to a video where people can actually see the Allied BIM. Connection, like what that actually means, but it's, it's more than a spreadsheet. Like it's, it's a 3d interactive. You're clicking on, or maybe in VR touching parts, spinning models. To fully understand what is being sent to the [01:07:00] fabrication shop, right? Like there's, there's a level of fidelity there to give me the peace of mind that what has been modeled or, or maybe what is the intention of, of the design. Is actually being

sent to the shop. I get to see it and I get some, I get, I can actually see what the parts are and I can look

for red flags because as a human, I have really great pattern recognition by visually inspecting what's going on. Maybe I don't need to go through all of the parts list to on my end to do that, but that due diligence would need to be done on the, on the other side. But it just gives that kind of more accountability

in the system. At a really high fidelity right to enable the best product to be produced in the end.

Brian Nickel: You bring up an incredible point there is that most of these shops are putting out two dimensional paper drawings with a 3d isometric in 2d format on the sheet reference to a schedule on what to cut. And I [01:08:00] can't, I can't tell you how many times we've sent that out

and the guys, there there

Evan Troxel: you can't mess that up

Brian Nickel: he's looking at it and he's like, what does this say?

Like he's got to interpret that drawing now,

right?

And so the beauty of showing the 3D model is the interpretation is through the connection out to those positioners to cut. The interpretation is out towards those generated files to bend. So that interpretation layer goes away. It's more of a QA, QC process of saying, check, that looks correct.

Let's let the work cell do the work.

Evan Troxel: nice nice Very cool. Is there anything that we've missed here? Um, I, I, again, we'll just reiterate, uh, that there will be some links in the show notes that you can click on to watch some videos on the, the types of facilities that you're talking about, but also the software and kind of the interactivity of, of, you know, through the VR potentially, um, you know, as kind of a future statement of, of what it might be [01:09:00] like to work in these, but also

just showing kind of what the software is doing.

What else? Is there anything else that we need to say before we wrap up here?

Brian Nickel: Um, I just like to say, thank you, Evan, for, you know, hosting today and for bringing us on your show. I've been a listener for quite some time. I love the content that you're putting out. Um, really, really appreciate the time that you've gone through our product today and, For anybody that's listening that would like to get in touch with us, feel free.

Brett and I are very approachable. Uh, we, we enjoy conversations just like what we had today. And, and we also like learning about, you know, other ideas that can kind of further and enhance and better our industry together. I mean, this is an allied pursuit, you know, we're, we're building industry alliance status, like with different, you know, disciplines in mechanical, electrical, plumbing.

This is truly a collaborative effort and we can't do it without a network. Uh, it's, you know, this is our [01:10:00] network.

Evan Troxel: Nice. And I

want to give you guys a chance to plug your show too, so I'd

definitely talk about that if people want to learn more and do a deeper

dive into this particular kind of content.

Brian Nickel: Yeah,

I'll let Brett kind of,

Brett kind of came up with FabFab and I, I would love for Brett to kind of explain what we're doing there because it's, it's really exciting, uh, and it's focused on an area of the industry that's generally less understood from the design intent through the fab side.

And I think it gives us kind of a place to, to showcase that. But I want to, I want to, I want Brett to kind of cover that. Thanks

Brett Settles: Yeah,

it was, it was a whole bunch of things that came together. One is that we're a fan of a lot of podcasts. We both watch upwards of three or four a piece, and we truly generally like them. One of the things, uh, that we wanted to do was cover exactly that, [01:11:00] that sort of design intent through the beginning of fabrication, uh, because it's, it's an area that usually you're talking about BIM or you're talking about fabrication.

You're never talking about the interface of the two. Um, and that was something that RCN always did really well, was the interface of BIM and surveying and reality capture, and it's a super important area. Uh, so that is where we kind of like to live. We do it live. A couple reasons we do it live is because we don't have time to edit it, and There are a lot of people that do a much better job than Brian or I could do, so we just don't even try to compete in that area, right?

So we make mistakes, we go live, um, and yeah, I mean, it's just really, it's really based on that interface. And the term FabFab came from [01:12:00] a lot of conversations we had, and it was actually a goofy conversation where it's an abbreviation of Fabulous Fabrication, is essentially what that name means, and it was snappy, it hashtagged really well, uh, all of the internet analysis said that it was a good SEO, Opportunity. And so that is how we ended up with it. And it's fun. We don't do it as often as we would like, most likely because we're chasing funding, you know, but once we

staff up and stuff, we hope to make it a very regular thing and our next episode should have a very important client that has stepped through this process with us. So as long as they agree to come on, our next, uh, episode should be very insightful for anyone that's thinking about doing

Brian Nickel: He has agreed. Um, so Austin

Bruner from England and Stubbs is joining us, [01:13:00] but.

Yeah, the grittiness of it is why we like doing it live. It's like, you know, we're in a shop in a live environment working and stuff happens. And so we, we like to kind of fit that mantra of this is live or human.

Like we're not going to, we just, we're off the cuff. Like if we screw up, it's, we screw up.

Evan Troxel: Yeah.

Brett Settles: We're still waiting on our first ban. We haven't been banned from anything yet, so that's good.

Brian Nickel: Yes, correct.

Evan Troxel: Well, I will put links to, for people to connect with both of you in the show notes as well. So

they actually can get in contact if they want to learn more or talk through kind of what you've been working on at a deeper level. Thank you both for taking the time today to tell the story of Allied BIM and what you've been up to.

And it's really exciting. I'm, I, I find it. intriguing that you've kind of gone a different direction than a lot of other startups in this space. Like you're going directly to the trades and solving those problems between design and [01:14:00] fabrication, right? And that to me is just a, that, that's a sweet spot for you guys to be in.

Obviously your passion is there. So thank You for doing that and for telling that story today on the show. Yeah. Great to have you.

Brett Settles: Absolutely. Thank you. Evan.