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Alvar works inside the software your firm already runs. Give it a brief and it builds the site model, checks the zoning, sketches massing, updates the drawings and renders the boards. It also takes the work around the work: proposals, invoices and finding anything your office has done before.
An example brief
To Alvar
“There's a library competition for the lot on 9th Avenue. Check what zoning allows, give me a massing option and boards I can show the client on Friday.”
Scroll to follow Alvar through it, one program at a time.
Step 1 of 5
Alvar pulls the lot, the streets and every building around it from open map data and the city's GIS, with real heights, and models the context. Here that is hundreds of buildings.
ArcGIS 
Rhino
Step 2 of 5
It reads the zoning code for this lot and turns the setbacks, height limit and step-back into a buildable volume. Each limit links to the paragraph that sets it. The rules shown here are example values, inferred from the buildings around the lot.
Rhino, with the city's zoning code
Step 3 of 5
Inside that volume it models an option on your firm's templates and keeps the area schedule current: the floors and area, computed for this lot.
Rhino 
Revit
Step 4 of 5
The scheme goes into Revit with grids, walls and dimensions. When the design changes, every sheet it touches is updated and listed for you to check.
Revit 
AutoCAD
Step 5 of 5
It sets up the view and the light, renders the scheme in its setting and places it on your InDesign board template. You review all of it on trace before anything leaves the office.
Enscape 
Photoshop 
InDesign
RevitAutoCADRhino
SketchUpEnscape
BluebeamInDesignPhotoshop
IllustratorArcGIS
QuickBooks
OutlookMost of a studio's week isn't design. For the same library, Alvar drafts the proposal, tracks the hours against the fee and writes the month's invoice, in your templates and your accounting software. Nothing goes out until you approve it.
An example project with example rates. The budget starts at $650 per square foot of the massing above. Change either one and all three documents update.
Drafted in your InDesign template
Your studio
Proposal for architectural services
| Phase | Time | Fee |
|---|
Relevant work
Three libraries from your archive, placed with their photos and project pages.
From your timesheets and QuickBooks
Hours against the fee
Bar: hours used. Mark: how complete the phase is.
Progress this month
Drafted in QuickBooks, sent from Outlook
Your studio
Invoice,
| Phase | Fee | Done | Earned | This invoice |
|---|
Waiting for your approval
The jobs that eat a studio's week, and what comes back when Alvar does them.
Brief Alvar the way you'd brief a colleague, in a sentence or two, and point it at the project.
Alvar opens the same Revit, Rhino, AutoCAD and InDesign files your team uses, works on a copy, and pulls what it needs from past projects.
Its changes come back on a layer of trace over your drawing. Nothing is saved over your files or sent to a client until you approve it.
Where a program has an API, Alvar uses it. Where it doesn't, Alvar works through the screen, the way a new hire works at a studio workstation. That is what lets one assistant reach across a toolchain nobody designed to fit together.
Your team keeps its tools, its templates and its files. Nothing has to be moved or converted first.
Through an APIThrough the screen
Alvar keeps the whole history of each job together: the site, the fees, the photos, the models, the drawings and every decision. Ask it what a colleague who worked on the job would know.
Set a lot and a simple zoning rule. The buildable volume and floor area are computed as you drag. Real codes have more cases than this; Alvar reads the ones that apply to your lot.
Drag to turn the model
We come to your studio, set Alvar up on one project with the people who run it, and stay with you for thirty days. We're starting with firms of eight to twenty people.
Book a studio visit