AI for BIM: Closing the Implementation Gap with SketchPro

The AEC industry is changing faster than it has in decades. AI is rewriting how architects produce construction documents, how firms staff projects, and what early-career practitioners need to know. The firms investing now in the right tools and the literacy to use them will set the benchmark for the industry.

That’s the frontier we’re working at. This semester, SketchPro is joining ELVTR’s AI for Architects course for a hands-on live workshop on AI in BIM. Across multiple cohorts totaling hundreds of practicing architects, the curriculum has gone from surveying the AI landscape to going deep on the tools shaping how firms actually work.

The course is taught by Jacob Russo, Senior Computational Design Architect at SOM, alongside Matt Turlock, also a Senior Computational Design Architect at SOM. It brings architects from firms across the industry together to build with AI across parametric, generative, and BIM workflows. We were honored to join last semester and to return this semester as the featured AI for Revit tool.

From Experimentation to Implementation

Most architects have tried ChatGPT. Far fewer have integrated AI into the actual workflows their teams run on. Closing that gap takes more than a demo or a license. It takes time with the tool, on real projects, with someone to work through it alongside you.

That's why our approach isn't a download link on a website. We partner with firms through structured onboardings tailored to their standards, weekly 1:1s with practitioners, and ongoing engagement as workflows evolve. The same approach shapes how we show up to teach: sitting with architects, walking through their workflows, and helping them apply what they're learning to live projects.

It's the loop ELVTR's course creates. Hands-on time, real models, real assignments, and space for practitioners to find new ways to apply it.

What Practitioners Are Actually Building

The most telling moments come from what students do on their own.

One architect in the last cohort, running her own practice, started using SketchPro on real client work. She uploaded a set of plan check comments and asked SketchPro to identify the affected elements in her model and recommend resolutions. SketchPro can understand the intent of the comments, evaluate the context of her model, and suggest fixes to bring the documents into compliance, turning a multi-hour review cycle into a structured, editable list.

That workflow didn't come from us. She developed it once she was fluent enough in SketchPro to see the opportunity. It's a pattern across firms: once architects learn how SketchPro works, they stop asking what it can do and start showing us.

What This Signals

ELVTR's course is part of a bigger shift in how architects are learning AI. Not from webinars or vendor demos, but from working through real problems on real projects, with real practitioners.

The firms making the biggest bets on AI aren't the ones with the longest tool lists. They're the ones investing in the fluency of their teams on the tools that actually move work forward.

That's why we're showing up to teach, and why the firms leading the next era of AI in BIM are choosing SketchPro.

Thanks to Jacob, Matt, and the ELVTR team for the invitation. If your firm is thinking about how to train teams on AI for BIM, we'd love to talk.