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UNION: BIM software on a native, GPU-driven engine

BIM Evolved

UNION

Model, document and present the built environment on a native, GPU-driven engine, with real-time Vulkan graphics and an AI model developed and weighted by UNION.

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Interoperability

Open Exchange

Exchange more than 50 formats, from IFC, Rhino 3DM, DWG and SketchUp to USD, E57 point clouds and LandXML, with UNION add-ins that run inside Revit and Archicad, and round-trip analytical models with your structural analysis software.

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Sequence Animation

Build

Animate how a building goes together, block by block, with a sketch at every step.

Explore Build
Real-Time Graphics

Vulkan Rendering

One Vulkan renderer draws every view, 2D and 3D, in real time, with node-graph materials and GPU-driven meshlets: clusters of up to 128 triangles that the GPU tests against the view, drawing only those in sight.

Explore Vulkan Rendering
Game Engine Inside

Play Mode

Play the building. UNION's real-time rendering and physics engine, built on techniques from the frontier of game development, puts you inside it in the free UNION World at every stage of the design process.

Explore Play ModeWatch Play Mode
Play Mode

Plug In. Play.

Pick up an Xbox, PlayStation or Switch pad and walk the building in first or third person.

Watch Play Mode
Freeform Modelling

Freeform Geometry

Loft, sweep and revolve exact NURBS forms in UNION's own maths, with B-rep solids on Open CASCADE.

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Parametric Design

Albatross

Wire a node graph that writes native structure, services and form into the model, live.

Explore Albatross
Evolutionary Scheduling

Flow

Trace every element category into its schedules and onto its sheets, live, with every unscheduled element counted.

Explore Flow
Overview

What Is UNION?

UNION is Building Information Modelling (BIM) software for architectural, structural and building services design consultancies. It runs on a native C++ engine, UNION's own geometry kernel, Open CASCADE, real-time Vulkan graphics and Falcon, an AI model developed and weighted by UNION.

Technology

Built From the Engine Up

Explore the Technology
UNION's 3D view of a glazed office tower cut open at Level 11 by a section box, with ductwork and desks inside.

Native Engine

Run every tool, view and command in native C++, with no interpreted layer in the product, so every click answers at once. The whole tower pair and its city context render live from one model.

Explore Native C++
Realistic view in UNION: a white masted dome across open water at low sun, the sun's path reflected on the water.

Vulkan Rendering

Plans and 3D views drawn in real time on Vulkan, with cascaded sun shadows, screen-space reflections, coated glass and sky in every 3D frame.

Explore Vulkan Rendering
UNION's Select Levels window over a Level 1 plan of forty desk pods, pasting them to Levels 2 to 12 in one edit.

Lazy Evaluation

Each edit commits only the rows it changed, and every view rereads just those rows when it next draws, never the whole model.

Explore Lazy Evaluation
Black-line cross section through two shell-roofed halls, with dense rib linework in the shells, raked seating, level lines at each side and rooms below the podium.

Geometry Kernel

Extrusions, section cuts and projections, computed in UNION's own compiled C core: a geometry kernel written by UNION, running in the same program as the views that draw its results.

Explore the Geometry Kernel
The Albatross canvas in UNION with the Weathered Brick material graph: colour, normal, roughness, height and AO maps wired into dirt and relief settings.

Node-Graph Materials

Materials built as Albatross node graphs on 4K texture sets, with parallax relief in Play Mode: each set's height map gives the surface real depth with no triangle added.

Explore Materials
A shell-roofed hall in UNION beside a read-only SQLite readout of the project file's tables, the largest by rows element, mesh, group_member and group_placement.

Open File

One SQLite file per project, its 54 tables readable by any SQLite tool, holding the model as structured, queryable elements, so the practice queries its own model in standard SQL.

Explore Open File

Jolt Physics

One Jolt Physics world, each body tied to the element it stands for. Jolt computes Play Mode's gravity, collisions and falling debris.

Explore Jolt Physics
UNION's Model Compare window checking a local copy against the central model: grid 6, its six columns and four walls listed as changed, 23 in all.

Worksharing

Several people can work on one model at the same time, synchronised through UNION Central on the practice's own server, which keeps the version before every sync. Every conflict is named, never overwritten.

Explore UNION Central
Capabilities

Built for Every Discipline

The core of architectural, structural and building services work, built into one native engine.

Vulkan CAD Engine

Drafting views streamed to the GPU, every stroke drawn at its pen's weight. The linework stays on the graphics card as a few pen streams, so the processor's work on them each frame does not grow with the drawing.

Parametric Blocks

Every element driven by its type, its parameters and their formulas.

Custom Block Editor

Author your own parametric blocks as exact solids on Open CASCADE, their arcs kept true, with a live 3D preview.

Material & Compound Elements

Walls, floors and roofs built layer by layer: function, material, thickness and core.

Explore Materials

Sun Studies

The true sun for your site, date and hour, cast in real-time shadows and saved with the project.

Explore Sun Studies

Reinforcement Detailing

Rebar shapes, area and path reinforcement, with bending details labelled from the bar.

Explore Structural

Steel Connections

Welds, bolts and automatic copes where members meet.

Explore Structural

Mechanical Ducting Systems

Ducts fitted as you draw and insulated, with open ends and unassigned runs found in one check.

Explore Building Services

Electrical Circuits & Panels

Power, data, fire alarm and nurse call circuits, cable trays and panel schedules.

Explore Building Services

Hydraulic & Fire Protection

Supply and drainage pipework laid to slope, and sprinklers placed on any face.

Explore Building Services

Automated, Integrated Clash Detection

Interference Check runs inside UNION. No export, no second tool.

Explore Coordination

Parametric Sheet Generation and Editing

Sheets bound live to the model, drawn on the GPU and issued as vector PDF at true pen widths.

Explore Documentation

Dynamic and Intelligent Scheduling

Schedules read live from the model, with Flow tracing every category into them.

Explore Flow

B-rep and NURBS Modelling

Freeform curves, lofts, sweeps and revolves, computed exactly in UNION's own NURBS maths, the surface form of automotive and aerospace design, with B-rep solids defined by their true faces and edges.

Explore Freeform Geometry

Extensive 2D CAD Library

Detail components and repeating details, served from UNION's own Block Database.

Browse the Library

Automated Tagging & Revision Tracking

Tag on Placement, Tag All and revision clouds tracked on every sheet.

Game Engine Inside

Play the Building

Press play on any UNION model and you are standing in it, with Jolt physics, people, weather and 3D sound. Export one UNION playable file and it plays in the free UNION World.

Plug in an Xbox, PlayStation or Switch pad and play.

Explore Play ModeWatch Play Mode
Drawing of the UNION Controller: a black wired pad with pearl buttons, one orange button and the UNION U mark.
Plug In. Play.

Pick Up a Controller

Xbox, PlayStation, Switch or any USB-C pad works the moment it is plugged in. Keyboard, mouse and pad share one set of controls, and the pad rumbles on hard landings, crashes and shatters.

XboxPlayStationSwitchUSB-CRumble

The UNION Controller, free with every licence. Our own wired USB-C pad, in UNION colours, with UNION buttons on screen the moment you plug it in.

Play Mode

Move
  • Walk, run, crouch and jump
  • Climb ladders and stairs
  • First person or third person
  • Call a lift and ride it floor to floor
Impact
  • Ragdolls and fall damage
  • Glass and services that shatter
  • Debris as physics bodies
  • Dust, sparks and impact decals
  • Camera shake and rumble
Inspect
  • Point at any element for its real data
  • Type, material, size, level, mark and Build step
  • Tape measure with true distances
  • Torch, laser level and camera
Modes
  • Site tour and collectables
  • Photo mode
  • Watch the Build sequence rise, then walk it
Weather
  • Volumetric clouds and fog
  • God rays
  • Rain and wet surfaces
  • Snow
  • Lightning
  • Time of day

The Engine

Every view in UNION, plans and sheets included, runs through this renderer.

Rendering Core
  • Vulkan, end to end
  • Light and material shaders, compiled to SPIR-V when UNION is built, never on your workstation
  • Pipeline cache, keeping each view's compiled GPU set-up for the next launch
  • Geometry uploaded in the background; the interface never waits on it
  • HDR lighting, tone-mapped so sun and shade both keep detail
  • Post-process stack, the effects computed on each frame once it is lit
GPU-Driven Geometry
  • Meshlet clusters
  • Level-of-detail hierarchy, coarsening distant clusters only where no pixel shows it
  • Compute culling
  • Occlusion culling, skipping all that walls, floors and roofs hide
  • Indirect draws, the draw list written by the GPU, not the processor
  • Trees and street props as GPU instances: one mesh, many placements
Lighting and Surfaces
  • Physically based lighting, each highlight shaped by the finish's roughness
  • Image-based lighting, every surface lit from an HDR sky
  • Night luminaires
  • Cascaded sun shadows, sharp up close and still cast far off
  • Parallax occlusion mapping
  • Glass, and decals that lay paint and tile cleanly over the face beneath
Post-Processing
  • Ambient occlusion, darkening the corners and contacts indirect light cannot reach
  • Screen-space reflections, drawn from what the frame already shows
  • Bloom, the glow a lens spreads around bright highlights
  • Auto-exposure
  • Depth of field
  • Temporal anti-aliasing, smoothing edges across successive frames
  • Aerial perspective, the haze of distance computed from the air
Physics, Animation and Sound
  • Jolt Physics
  • Rigid bodies, and ragdoll figures that fall limp joint by joint
  • Walk and run blended by speed, each foot set on stairs and slopes
  • GPU skinning, each character's mesh moved by its skeleton
  • 3D positional audio and reverb zones
World
  • Terrain from Copernicus GLO-30 elevation, a 30 m grid of ground heights
  • Aerial-photo drape
  • OpenStreetMap buildings, roads and trees
  • Façades by storey, lit at night
  • Water with wind ripples
  • Rain, snow, dust and smoke as particles simulated on the GPU
Programs

One Platform, Four Desktop Programs

UNION window with the Setout ribbon, Attributes panel and Project Tree beside a hidden-line floor plan of two concert halls, with seating, stages, stairs and dashed gridlines.

UNION

Albatross, Build, Falcon, Flow, Play Mode and UNION Wind, all in one native program, working on the same open model.

Explore UNION
3D view of a shell-roofed building cut open lengthwise by a section box, showing ribbed roof shells, a hall with red seats and floors below.

UNION World

Free. Filter, clip, measure and mark up UNION and IFC models on UNION's own Vulkan engine, no seat needed.

Explore UNION World
Marked-up plan of two tower floor plates and a rounded column-grid podium, with a red box, a blue ellipse, revision clouds, an arrow and a dimension line.

UNION PDF

Clouds, callouts, stamps, layers and calibrated measurement, included with every UNION seat.

Explore UNION PDF
2D floor plan in white lines on a dark background: an outer wall around four rooms with openings between them and one cross-hatched area.

UNION 2D

A standalone 2D drafting program on UNION's own engine. Every line, arc, hatch and letter drawn on the GPU. Included with every UNION seat, and sold on its own.

Explore UNION 2D
Disciplines

From Footings to Fascias

Architectural

Walls, floors, roofs, stairs, curtain walls and freeform forms, in node-graph materials and real-time walkthroughs.

Explore Architectural

Structural

Columns, beams, trusses, bracing, footings, steel connections and rebar, with the analytical model round-tripped to SPACE GASS, ETABS, SAFE, SAP2000, RAM Concept and IDEA StatiCa.

Explore Structural

Building Services

Ductwork, pipework laid to slope, cable trays and sprinklers on any face, with energy models exported by gbXML to IES VE, Carrier HAP and TRACE 3D Plus.

Explore Building Services

BIM Management

Query any project in standard SQL, check IFC against IDS, and write IFC with classification and georeferencing, plus COBie.

Explore Interoperability
49categories
1,318blocks
16,526types
281materials

Structural, mechanical, electrical, hydraulic, fire and architectural, in UNION's own Block Database. Browse the library

Interoperability

In and Out, From the Ribbon

Read and write IFC, Rhino 3DM, DWG, SketchUp, DXF, DGN, PDF, SVG, OBJ, glTF, USD, COLLADA, E57 point clouds, LandXML, CityJSON, GeoJSON, COBie, gbXML and more, with UNION add-ins that run inside Revit and Archicad. Exchange straight from the ribbon with SPACE GASS, ETABS, SAFE, SAP2000, RAM Concept, Tekla Structural Designer, Tekla Structures, IDEA StatiCa, Dlubal RFEM, IES VE, Carrier HAP, TRACE 3D Plus, DIALux evo, ETAP, AMTECH and h2x, and share issues by BCF.

View the Interoperability Matrix
FAQ

Questions Practices Ask

What does UNION run on?

Windows 11 or 10, 64-bit, on a GPU with a Vulkan 1.1 or later driver.

Does our project data stay with us?

Yes. Each project is one open SQLite file, held by your practice. Falcon requests go to Union Industries, never to a third-party AI provider, and the licence check carries no project data.

How does Falcon run?

Falcon's model is developed and weighted by UNION and hosted by Union Industries, so no AI hardware is needed in your office.

Does UNION design or check structure?

No. UNION models and documents; the analytical model round-trips to your own analysis software, and design responsibility stays with the engineer of record.

Does a playable file need UNION?

No. It plays in the free UNION World, and nothing broken in play is ever written back to the model.

Will it work with our consultants?

Yes: IFC, DWG and the formats above, with issues shared by BCF.

How do we get started?

Request early access and we will send the terms.

Next Steps

Get Started With UNION

Request Early Access

Run UNION on a live project with your team.

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Watch the Film

One UNION model, from the plan to the Realistic view to first person.

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Get UNION World Free

Share models with everyone on the project.

Explore UNION World
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