For years, AEC software companies have touted multiplayer as their magic bullet. “Real-time collaboration,” “multiple cursors,” “everyone in the model at once.”
And yet, traction has been limited. Why? Because multiplayer has been sold as a gimmick, a Figma synecdoche awkwardly bolted onto a very different industry.
Architects do not wake up wishing for more people in their model. They wake up worrying about missed markups, outdated PDFs, and expensive rework. The true opportunity for multiplayer is not social design. It is reducing risk and friction at scale.
Objections We Hear (and Why They Matter)
“Our projects last years, not weeks.”
Unlike a product sprint, buildings often take two to five years from concept to ribbon-cutting. Multiplayer here is not about “move fast and break things.” It is about maintaining continuity over time: one source of truth that outlasts staff turnover, consultant swaps, and design iterations.
“We already have a system that works.”
Every firm has its patchwork of PDFs in Bluebeam, exports to Rhino, IFCs for consultants, Dropbox for versioning, and Miro for notes. These Franken-systems limp along, but they are fragile. Multiplayer is not about ripping those workflows apart overnight. It is about replacing the weakest link in the chain, the endless exports and markups where information leaks and costs compound.
“Version control in real time will be a nightmare.”
The fear is understandable. Too many hands in one model feels chaotic. But the real nightmare is the current state: mystery markups, file sync conflicts, and no clear audit trail. Multiplayer done right does not blur accountability. It sharpens it. You know exactly who changed what, when, and why.
“What if someone junior messes something up?”
This is not Google Docs. Permissions, safeguards, and rollbacks are essential. The bigger risk today is that mistakes go unseen until it is too late, buried in an outdated export.
“What about my IP being copied?”
Multiplayer is not indiscriminate openness. It is controlled transparency: who gets in, what they can see, and how their input flows back. The goal is not exposure. It is alignment.
“Legal liability will get fuzzy.”
When more stakeholders touch the model, the instinct is to worry about blurred responsibility. In reality, multiplayer provides the opposite: a full, auditable history of who did what. That kind of traceability strengthens liability protection instead of weakening it.
“Some people just like working alone.”
And they should be able to. Multiplayer does not force collaboration. It simply ensures that when collaboration does happen, it is not through a three-day delay and a Dropbox link.
The Invisible Problem
Figma’s IPO made history. It opened at $85, closed at $115.50, and briefly touched a $68 billion market value. The company had the largest first-day gain in three decades for a U.S. IPO raising more than $1 billion.
What made Figma different was not better drawing tools. It was the fact that designers, engineers, PMs, and executives could all see and comment on the same live file. In other words, it turned design from a siloed process into a shared conversation.
Two-thirds of Figma’s users are not designers. The company won not because it had the best features, but because it solved design’s real problem: broken communication loops.
Before Figma, collaboration was a mess of AI files, JPG exports, Slack threads, and endless “is this the latest?” pings. Every handoff was friction.
AEC suffers the same fate, only worse. Revit files exported into Rhino. IFCs for consultants. PDFs for markups. Bluebeam redlines. Notes scattered across Miro. Every export is a broken conversation. Every delay adds cost.
McKinsey estimates construction inefficiency wastes 1.6 trillion dollars globally each year. Most of that is not a geometry problem. It is a communication problem.
Multiplayer as Risk Management
Every project is already multiplayer. The problem is that it happens everywhere except in the model. Revit files get exported into Rhino, then passed as IFCs to consultants, then reviewed via PDFs in Bluebeam, then annotated in Miro.
That chain of custody creates leaks. Context gets lost. Deadlines slip. And firms pay the price in overruns and lawsuits.
Multiplayer is how you build a single source of truth. Not because it is fun to co-edit, but because it prevents the costliest failure in AEC: designing from outdated information.
Multiplayer as Client Transparency
Owners and developers do not want a 50-page PDF every Friday. They want visibility. Live updates, clear comparisons, and instant validation against zoning or energy targets.
Multiplayer reframed: it is not a collaboration feature for your internal team. It is a business development tool, the thing that makes your client say, “I trust you. I see the work. Let’s move faster.”
The Arcol Wedge
This is why Arcol’s approach is different. We do not treat multiplayer as a flashy add-on. We treat it as the insurance policy against fragmentation.
- Tasteful design makes the model trustworthy to use.
- Cross-platform friendliness ensures Arcol plays well with the ecosystem, not against it.
- Multiplayer as default guarantees every stakeholder sees the same thing, reducing error, friction, and risk.
That is the multiplayer story AEC has been waiting for. Not a party trick. Not “Figma for buildings.” But the connective tissue that keeps billion-dollar projects on track.
The Bottom Line
In industries like AEC, where every mistake compounds into cost, multiplayer is not about more voices. It is about certainty.
Yes, projects run for years. Yes, people fear errors or exposure. Yes, some prefer to work alone. That is reality. But multiplayer done right does not ignore those truths. It is built for them.
That is why Arcol is building it from first principles, with patience and craft. Because when trust is on the line, multiplayer is not a feature. It is the future of building.
One live model. Less chaos. More trust.