OpeningDesign.com is an open community of A/E/C professionals asking and answering technical questions, exchanging feedback on designs/details, sharing content, and posting/bidding on small gigs/projects.
Video Narration:
So if you're an architect, engineer or contractor, or somewhere in between, you’re no doubt accustomed to the endless barrage of questions you come across in any one project. Whether these questions are immensely complex or annoyingly simple, we too were stuck either paying a consultant for the answer or taking the time to do the research ourselves. Although we were smart enough to find the answer, more often than not, we didn't really have the time to do the research, or the budget to pay a consultant. Especially if we just needed a quick, one-off answer. We were just a small firm after all.
As we labored through our research, we thought, surely there has to be an online community out there where building professionals can ask and answer these down and dirty technical questions. Perhaps, even, a virtual studio of sorts, where we could come together and critique each other’s designs. We checked from one end of the Internet to the other and came up dry.
Sure, we found social networking sites for our kind. But no place that invited us to ask such mystical questions as, "Can I make a 3-hour fire-rated wall out of 6-inch concrete block.” Or conversely, nowhere were we encouraged to share our extensive knowledge on, say, the friction coefficient of granite floors or simply a place where we could just get a second opinion on whether we should go with a gable or butterfly roof... or perhaps even a mansard.
As building professionals, we just didn’t think this was fair. Heck, other professionals like doctors, lawyers and scientists had lots places on the internet to collaborate, critique and exchange expertise. Why didn’t we?
Out of pure fairness to folks in our industry we took it upon ourselves to create OpeningDesign.com. It’s become our mission to create an online environment where a virtual community of building professionals, especially those from smaller firms, can come together and provide the kind of deep resources only enjoyed by those few large firms out there.
OpeningDesign is an open, online community where building professionals can ask and answer all manner of building-related questions, whether it be a quick technical question, or quick critique of a design. A website where professionals can share content, from a simple BIM or CAD detail to complex spec document. And, if your looking for more than just asking and answering questions, OD.com is also a place where you can solicit and bid on small scopes of work.... whether that be a quick 3d rendering job or help drawing up a simple building elevation.
And finally, OpeningDesign is place where the online collaboration tools used to help the community run smoothly, can also be used privately, to help your firm’s projects a little more smoothly as well. In this way, we like to think of OpeningDesign as 51% community, and 49% online tools.
Like Rome, we wont get it all built in a day, (heck rome is 'still' being built), but if interested and are a building or construction professional of some kind, jump over to OpeningDesign.com and shoot us an email and we'll send you a private beta invite to kick the tires.
We'll even give you some virtual ODEs for your thoughts. What are ODEs, you may ask, well, we'll have to make another fun video to explain that one.