In the previous post I outlined three ironies in the current BIM 2.0 landscape: the dependency on Revit, the unaddressed middle phase of detailed design, and the pursuit of documentation automation in a phase still producing 2D drawings. I also named Qonic as the player making the most interesting move on the part that matters most. Here's why.
Qonic's founding assumption was different from most of the BIM 2.0 cohort. Where others started in early-stage conceptual design — where the parametric complexity is lower and browser-native collaboration is most compelling — Qonic started in detailed and developed design. Their logic was that building a tool capable of working fluidly with extremely large, highly detailed datasets meant attacking one of the hardest technical problems they would face from day one, rather than deferring it.
The capability has been apparent since their earliest public demos. Editing a window reveal directly in the model. Filleting an edge. A level of solid modelling precision not previously seen in a browser-based BIM environment. It was genuinely impressive — and for a while, it stayed impressive without becoming practical. The question hanging over those demos was always the same: how do you take that kind of model-level precision and apply it productively across a large project, rather than one element at a time?
Last week, Qonic released Components, and it goes a long way to answering that question.
The feature allows repetitive geometry — and its associated metadata — to be found, selected, and converted into reusable component definitions. All matching geometry across a model can then be converted to instances of those components, creating a single point of control for updates that propagate automatically. The demos that previously felt like standalone capability displays now connect to something a real project could use.
The Components system includes a Variants feature that lets a single component definition carry multiple configurations, each applicable across different instances as required. Qonic is candid that there's more work ahead on the system — but the ease of creating Variants already demonstrates a capability that tools like ArchiCAD and Revit have traditionally required technical staff to implement. The barrier to entry is materially lower.
Users can also import Revit families into Qonic to seed component libraries directly, which is a sensible bridge. Years of in-house component data can move into the new environment without being rebuilt from scratch.
Alongside Components, Qonic's integrated AI assistant has been maturing separately. AI-based documentation — plans, sections, elevations — can now be generated within Qonic. Construction details derived from a fully developed model aren't there yet, but watching the product's evolution since its early release, the sequence of what has been built and in what order points clearly toward a considered internal roadmap.
The combination matters. A browser-based modelling environment that can handle detailed geometry, manage that geometry as a structured component system, and begin to generate documentation from the model state is a meaningfully different proposition from where Qonic was eighteen months ago. It is not yet a full production BIM replacement — Qonic wouldn't claim that — but it is the most credible early shape of one built on IFC.
Which brings this back to the structural point. The teams that will eventually be in a position to genuinely challenge Revit are the ones that chose the right foundations early — not the ones that deferred the hard problems in favour of faster commercial traction. The detailed design phase is still the missing middle of BIM 2.0. Qonic is the only current player who has been building toward it from the start, and the Components release is the first thing that makes that position look like the right bet.