Fixie | Architectural Quotes for 3D Models

Ever needed a 3D printed architectural model but have no idea where to start? Fixie has your back - and we’ve got theirs.

Fixie has spent a lot of time perfecting 3D printing architectural models, so you don’t have to.

Through them, you can have models created with just the click of a button. They’ve made it that simple. The only problem with this is that architectural models aren’t really designed to be 3D printed. Darn.

It’s a hard challenge - to automate all the complexities that the team were doing, taking hours, into software that is easily accessible without needing any downloads and letting the client create their own accurate quote within seconds.

The files that architects use aren’t such that they can be easily rendered or manipulated in a browser. Even further from being able to provide an understanding of material usage and model complexity so that an accurate idea of the time and cost for printing can be gained.

The wonderful team at KTN suggested Fixie work with us to find a solution to fixing the architectural models for printing.

Fixie had also received some grant funding to be used with a research institution, which is why they started working with the talented University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) and we were delighted to collaborate with them on this venture.

Working with the AMRC, we did our usual thing, stood back a little and reframed the problem (we do like to ask “why” and “why not” a lot).

Together, we discovered we didn’t need to rebuild the entire file to create a quote for their customers and it was possible to approach it differently that opened up even more possibilities.

You won’t be surprised that we can’t tell you exactly what we did here. It’s super valuable and super secret. Almost as secret as the 11 herbs and spices! (If you know, you know…)

As with almost all of the work Razor does, what we do makes a huge difference to the organisations that we work with and is not something that we can give away or share, our work becomes IP, and that’s value right there.

What we can tell you is this; we worked some extreme magic and leveraged our extensive knowledge of software engineering and Azure that automated the process (yeah, we know, it’s cool isn’t it?)

We came at the problem with a combination of ignorance, broad experience and skill. We were able to leverage seriously cutting edge technologies and techniques, automated everything you can imagine and iterated tirelessly.

The entire wish list wasn’t possible within the boundaries of time and investment that we were working within. This constraint coupled with many unknowns meant that we had to be pragmatic.

Working closely with the Fixie team, we were able to prioritise what was important, make the right decisions and work in a truly agile way to deliver immense business value. .

Fixie recognised the value we could bring to them as a company that lacked the internal resource for what they wanted to do. Before we started they had nothing but an idea and our integration into their team for this project not only turned this idea into a reality, but has enabled them to gain momentum - taking on their own team to continue this work alongside us.

Take a look for yourself - flipping cool, right? There is something about 3D in the browser, it’s mesmerising!

This is the first product of its kind and we are astonishingly proud of being a part of its journey and being instrumental in bringing it to market.

The solution reduced the quoting time by 97.5% (yes very precise measurements there) - a drop from a massive four hours to just five minutes. The power of computers!

This isn’t the end of what can be done with so much more in the pipeline and many more ideas building on the success of this project.