cadwork Joins Passive House Accelerator as an Innovation Partner

By the Passive House Accelerator Team

Passive House Accelerator is pleased to announce that cadwork has joined the Accelerator community as an Innovation Partner. A global company with more than a dozen offices spread across Europe, North America, and Australasia, cadwork develops 3D-CAD/CAM software written specifically for wood construction. Its users are timber framers, modular builders, panel manufacturers, mass timber producers, engineers, and architects who rely on modeling software to successfully turn their ideas into the structures that make up the built environment.

What separates cadwork from a general-purpose modeling tool is that it never had to be talked into thinking about wood. The system is modular, and a shop can start with the 3D engine alone and add to it as their workload grows and diversifies. For fabricators, cadwork allows them to incorporate new modules that can give firms the ability to integrate with CNC machine interfaces, while the Rhino/Grasshopper interface handles parametric work, the Lamella module is designed specifically to work with glulam, and Shop Drawing Export generates fabrication drawings out of the model rather than alongside it. Other modules can be used to address more general challenges for designers. For example, the Element module automates the framing of walls, floors, and roofs; Stairs is designed to generate 3D models of stairs; and WebViewer/BIMteam allows teams to seamlessly share their models across devices and with clients without the need for special software.

For teams creating enclosure systems capable of meeting Passive House standards, building a 3D design helps them better visualize wall and roof assemblies. This goes well beyond the so-called “red pen test” and allows teams to work with contractors to discuss proper sequencing during design and to make sure the assembly is actually constructable in the real world. The devil really is in the details with Passive House construction, and cadwork allows teams to use a single platform to take a project from design to installation. cadwork allows designers to model every connection, every opening, and every intersection in three dimensions before anything is cut, allowing teams to catch breaks in the air barrier and thermal bridges well before fabrication begins and while such fixes are still cheap and easy to make. cadwork has imported and exported IFC for more than a decade and reads SketchUp, Revit, and ArchiCAD files directly, so an architect’s model can move into the shop without the data loss that so often sends someone back to the beginning.

The company’s roots reach back to 1980, when a research team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne set out to develop a CAD system for wood construction. The team then founded cadwork in 1988. Laurent and Barbara Decosterd established the Montreal branch in 2003 and became its owners in 2010, taking on Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand.

In September, cadwork will join the Accelerator for a Prefab Spec Session, a closer look at how the modeling and fabrication chain actually comes together on a panelized Passive House project.

“As buildings become more energy efficient and construction moves increasingly toward prefabrication, design teams need digital tools that connect design intent with manufacturing reality,” said Laurent Decosterd, CEO and Co-Owner of cadwork North America. “At cadwork, our mission is to help architects, engineers, manufacturers, and builders collaborate through a single workflow, making high-performance buildings more buildable, more efficient, and ultimately more successful.” 

Passive House Accelerator Director Zack Semke said, “Software determines what a shop can fabricate, how tight its tolerances can be, and whether the architect’s detail survives the trip to the CNC machine. cadwork has been creating and refining that kind of software for wood specifically since before the Passive House standard was invented. We couldn’t be happier to have them bring their expertise to the Passive House community.”

“Prefab is going to carry a huge share of the building we need to do over the next decade, and I don’t think that’s a controversial thing to say anymore,” said Passive House Accelerator Founder Michael Ingui. “The key to unlocking the full potential of prefab is going to be software, and cadwork has spent four decades getting that part right for wood. As more architects start designing for fabrication from the first sketch instead of the last set of drawings, having them in this community is going to matter more than people expect. It’s an honor to welcome them as an Innovation Partner.”

To learn more about cadwork and its modules for panelized, mass timber, and passive construction, you can check out their page on the Accelerator site or visit cadwork.com.