Help & Support

On this page we have collected the most frequently asked questions about the product, licensing and data management. If you have any further questions, you can of course contact us at any time or write to us directly at support@qbitec.com.

General questions

Qbitec for Revit is a plugin for Autodesk Revit that integrates point cloud data and 360° images from a wide range of manufacturers and from various data sources (cloud, local network, local hard disk) directly into Revit. 

This makes it possible to work with reality capture data of any size in Revit smoothly and with unprecedented visual quality.

Revit natively supports the processing of point clouds through its Recap integration, which has some severe disadvantages.

  • Scalability: Revit can process point clouds with a few million points before memory consumption spikes and performance drops. Our plugin makes it possible to work with point clouds of any size, up to several billion points. This makes pre-processing steps such as thinning or chinking unnecessary.
  • Performance: The native support for point clouds in Revit requires data to be copied locally to guarantee interactive performance. This does not only require significantly more resources but increases chances of errors. Qbitec for Revit enables high-performance streaming directly from the company network.
  • Visual quality: Revit shows point clouds in a very primitive way, for example closed surfaces are often shown as a see-through grid. Our visualization method creates visually closed surfaces, which makes working with the data much more convenient.
  • Customized visualizations: Qbitec for Revit introduces a number of new visualization modes, such as tomographic visualization. This makes features such as walls directly visible without any data filtering.
  • Working with cloud data: Qbitec for Revit has a direct connection to a growing number of cloud providers, e.g. NavVis IVION. Point cloud data can be streamed directly from NavVis IVION without having to cache the data locally.

Yes, the point clouds are processed within Revit in such a way that they are available to most third-party plug-ins for point cloud processing. Analysis and data evaluation works as usual - only with significantly larger data.

Our plugin focusses on a single challenge: the interaction with point clouds. At the moment, automatic extraction is not part of the solution. By connecting the point clouds to many third-party plugins for data analysis, you can continue to use your usual plugins.

Yes. The plugin handles a smaller amount of point clouds very well. The software has been optimized in this sense because several point clouds are created naturally in NavVis, for example. 
But there is an increased memory requirement and possibly also performance drops if many point clouds are inserted.
Performance can be significantly increased - despite the huge number of points - if all points were saved in a single point cloud.
 
It's a bit like several people talking at the same time. Even if they are talking about the same topic or even the same thing, understanding is much more difficult than if only one person is speaking.

Thank you for your help. Please report any errors directly to support@qbitec.com.

Yes, all updates are included in the license. We constantly add new features and corrections.

In the Qbitec for Revit plug-in, you will be notified of new versions (red dot on the gear wheel button). You can download the latest software here at any time.

Simply follow the videos on our landing page. If you have any further questions, you can contact support@qbitec.com at any time.

Privacy and Telemetry

No! If you are converting files locally and stream them into Revit, the data stays within your computer. The converted point cloud files are stored on your device (and your device only) and will be partially loaded by the Revit plugin on your computer. There will never be an upload of your data of any kind.

In fact, we do not have any infrastructure to store point cloud data.

If your data is streamed from cloud providers like NavVis, it comes directly from the vendor's servers into your device.

Yes, in a very limited way and strictly GDPR compliant. We gather two types of data:

Crashes: In the unfortunate event of a crash, a report is sent to our partner Sentry. It is strictly anonymized: per session, a random ID is assigned. To us, this data is a random number that we cannot use to track any activities. The only way to associate this data with you is by you taking action and sending us an email with the session ID. Whenever a crash occurs a message window shows, asking to send us an email, which will have the session ID in its title, that you can actively choose to send.

Usage data: the plugin transmits statistical usage data. It can neither be used to identify you in any way, nor to track your actions. The data is purely statistical and not associated to any specific user id. We can neither reconstruct your path of actions nor track your work in any way. In fact, we do know nothing about what you are doing specifically.

Here are examples of questions that we can answer with the data we acquire across all users:

  • Across all users, how many times was functionality XYZ used?
  • Across all users, what is the ratio of successful versus failed conversions?
  • Across all users, which file formats are the most relevant?
  • Across all users, which versions of the plugin are used?
  • ...

Here are examples of questions we cannot answer using the telemetry data

  • We do not know, what a specific user is doing (even in pseudonymized form)
  • We do not know, which actions were taken in what order by a user
  • We do not know the contents or any attributes of a user's point clouds
  • We do not know any credentials or any secrets of the user
  • We do not know any hardware details of users
  • ...

Our telemetry is strictly GDPR compliant. That means we reduce it to the absolute minimum of data necessary for us to improve our product. For usage telemetry, we do not store any identification data, be it in anonymized form or pseudonymized form. Your data and your actions is strictly yours only and will never be sent in any form to us, that allows any form of personalized or anomyzed reconstruction of your actions.

No credentials, like user names or password, are permantly stored on your computer or sent to any third party whatsoever.

For example, during login to NavVis, we strictly follow NavVis' policy to establish a connection with their API. The plugin shows a login window with NavVis' login webpage. Technically, this happens in a browser window, that is embedded into the plugin, which is an independent sandbox. The Qbitec plugin has no technical way to ever read your user name and password in any way. 

If you actively agree, login credentials are remembered by the password manager of the embedded web component, which is handled by Windows with no way for us to access its content.

Once login is complete, the plugin receives a short-lived session ID, that it can use to make queries to the remote source. Once the session ends, that means, the plugin terminates, this session ID is not stored anywhere.

Managing subscriptions and personal data

We offer monthly and annual subscriptions. If you have different requirements, please contact contact us directly.

Yes, you can test the plugin for 14 days by following this link.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to generate an additional test license. If you have any further questions, please contact us.

Monthly and yearly licenses can be canceled at any time. The subscription will then end at the conclusion of the respective term. For a monthly license, the subscription will end one month after activation, and for a yearly license, it will end 12 months after activation.

You can cancel your subscription via the subscription customer portal. Please note that we use Stripe as a partner.

Yes, you can purchase multiple licenses during the purchase process. These can then be assigned in our license portal. The company ID requested there is QBITEC. Note: We work with LicenseSpring as a partner.

Yes, this is possible via the subscription customer portal, taking into account the respective subscription periods.

Via the subscription customer portal. Our partner ist Stripe.

Qbitec for Revit should run smoothly on all mid-range computers. For converting very large point clouds, a fast, large local or USB SSD drive is recommended. In general, the hardware requirements are significantly lower than they would be for native point cloud support.

Customer groups

To leverage reverse tax charge, we focus exclusively on business customers. As a start-up, it would otherwise not be possible for us to trade internationally.

In this case, please contact us directly.

In this case, please contact us directly.

Generally, we do not offer discounts, as we believe that our price fairly reflects the provided value. However, we are happy to find an individual solution for key accounts. Please contact us for more information.

Please get in touch with us to find an individual solution.

License management

No, a license can only be assigned to one device at a time. However, you can remove the license from one device at any time and assign it to another - directly via the Revit plugin: Click on the gear wheel (Config/License) and “Deactivate”. Then enter your email and password on the other computer). Alternatively, you may go via the license portal. The company ID requested there is QBITEC. For example, if you do not have access to the last computer you used, you can withdraw the license via the license portal and use it on another computer.

First remove the license from the current hardware (in the plugin: click on the gear wheel (Config/License) and “Deactivate”) and then assign the new access data via the LicenseSpring portal. The company ID requested there is QBITEC.