BIMcore Engineer — Rust-First BIM Platform

Challenge

The AEC (Architecture, Engineering, Construction) industry is stuck with 30-year-old software architecture. Autodesk Revit struggles with models beyond 500MB, cannot handle true multi-user editing, and crashes when federated models exceed 1GB. Large industrial projects (power plants, factories, data centers) routinely hit 100GB-1TB — forcing teams into complex workarounds.

Build a ground-up BIM platform that treats terabyte models as first-class, editable objects.

Solution Architecture

Overview

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    BIMcore Studio (Client)                        │
│     Rust + egui + Vulkan 1.3 | 60 FPS interactive editing        │
└────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┘
                         │ gRPC + Protobuf
                         ▼
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                   BIMcore Nucleus (Server)                        │
│     Distributed: PostgreSQL + Redpanda + Raft Consensus          │
└────────────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────┘
                         │
         ┌───────────────┼───────────────┐
         ▼               ▼               ▼
   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐   ┌──────────┐
   │PostgreSQL│   │ Redpanda │   │  MinIO   │
   │ + PostGIS│   │ (Events) │   │  (Blobs) │
   └──────────┘   └──────────┘   └──────────┘

Tech Stack

Canonical Parameters (from 00-SHARED-CONTEXT.md)

Key Features

1. Terabyte-Scale Model Handling

• On-demand geometry loading: Only visible elements in GPU memory
• Columnar bcx format: Compressed, audit-hashed, open specification
• Spatial indexing: PostGIS R-tree for frustum culling
• Delta snapshots: Versioned changes without full model duplication

2. Native Import/Export

Import:
├── Revit 2020-2026 (.rvt) via ODA BimRv SDK
├── IFC 2x3 / 4 / 4.3 via IfcOpenShell
└── Point clouds (.las, .laz)

Export:
├── bcx (native columnar format)
├── IFC 4.3
└── glTF 2.0 (for web viewers)

3. Real-Time Collaboration (MVP-3+)

• CRDT-based editing: Conflict-free concurrent edits
• Operational transforms: Merge without locks
• Presence awareness: See other users’ selections live

4. 3D Editing Operations

// Transactional edit with automatic undo
let tx = model.begin_transaction();
tx.select(element_ids);
tx.move_by(Vector3::new(0.0, 0.0, 1000.0));  // Move up 1m
tx.commit()?;  // Generates inverse operation for undo

Roadmap

Documentation Coverage

requirements/          # 96 documents, 35K+ lines
├── 00-SHARED-CONTEXT.md    # Canonical parameters P-001..P-026
├── 01-business/            # Market analysis, business case
├── 02-product/             # PRD, features, personas, roadmap
├── 03-functional/          # 24 FSDs (import, edit, save, cluster)
├── 04-technical/           # Architecture, data model, 50+ ADRs
├── 05-quality/             # Test plan, acceptance scenarios
└── 06-security/            # Security architecture, threat model

Build Targets

Architecture Decisions

Why Rust?

• Memory safety without GC pauses (critical for 60 FPS)
• Zero-cost abstractions for geometry processing
• Excellent async ecosystem (Tokio) for distributed coordination
• Native Vulkan bindings (ash crate)

Why Not Electron/Web?

• GPU-bound workloads need native Vulkan, not WebGL limitations
• Memory management must be deterministic, not JS GC
• CAD users expect desktop-class responsiveness

Why columnar bcx format?

• 10-100x faster spatial queries vs row-based formats
• Columnar compression (zstd) yields 5-8x smaller files
• Append-only for audit trail (every change is versioned)

Security Model

• Zero-trust network: mTLS between all components
• Audit logging: Every edit traceable to user + timestamp
• GPL isolation: GPL code (IfcOpenShell) runs in subprocess with IPC
• SBOM: CycloneDX generated each release

License

Dual Apache-2.0 / MIT (your choice). Dependencies tracked via SBOM.