“We were driving BIM technology before BIM was BIM. We made symbols smart and tied them product databases which allowed us to offer accurate pricing and eCommerce fulfillment. We have been operational in this field since early 2003” said Douglas Lopez, Founder of 1st Pricing. Lopez continues “Our original patent was one of the first BIM patents issued and, primarily, covered comparison pricing. Now it has been expanded to cover many more critical issues like accessing a “Live Data Feed” from within CAD and eCommerce emanating from BIM.”

Some of the items covered in the additional intellectual property protection are:

 Inserting a price schedule into a construction plan drawing
 Component cost/pricing and comparison cost/pricing
 Live Data Feed (static or dynamic)
 Building Code
 Accessing BIM Data Outside of CAD
 eCommerce (5e or E-BIM)
 Exporting a BOM price schedule into a separate data base.

“We feel that this protection solidifies 1st Pricing’s leading role in the BIM process as the sole provider of critical product data including pricing, features and availability. We know that we have delivered a proven, practical solution to the 5D supply chain part of BIM that really no one else has addressed” said Lopez. “We are excited that the USPTO continues to reward our hard work and that we can deliver a segment of BIM that will transform the process of building a building. So many of our solutions are from my days as a general contractor and, in my opinion, it is about time we utilize useful technology to improve this process that needs it so badly.”

With the click of a button, the 1st Pricing technology accesses an internet portal and pulls comparison pricing of multiple brands to fill out a detailed bill of materials with all related content on demand. An online shopping cart is also automatically created for easy fulfillment from a local material distributor. Changes and updates are made within seconds so that everyone is on the same page. Today, the Company is focused on building materials for residential construction but plans to add commercial building products in the near future. In the CAD industry, the supply chain component is often referred to as the “fifth dimension of CAD” or 5D.

“Our technology transforms a set of plans from an interpretive document to a declarative statement,” adds Lopez.

About 1st Pricing

1st Pricing currently offers free plug-ins for users of TurboCAD® AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD Revit®. A Plug-in for Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD® is currently in beta and is expected to be released in the second quarter of 2010. More platforms will be released during 2010. The 1st Pricing technology was initially released in TurboCAD in 2003.

1st Pricing is part of California Distribution Center (CDC), a building material distribution company focusing on fenestration products. CDC Also operates 1st Windows.com – the only site on the Internet that offers instant, real-time, dynamic pricing and purchase of both replacement and new construction windows. The website, which also offers doors, skylights and acrylic glass block windows, has been online since April of 2000.

Phoenix, November 11, 2009 – ecoScorecard, the technology platform that helps building product specifiers evaluate environmental attributes of products, today revealed the new ecoScorecard plug-in that works with Google SketchUp and provides a critical link between popular BIM (Building Information Modeling) tools and important environmental rating systems such as LEED. The announcement was made today in conjunction with the opening of the US Green Building Council’s annual Greenbuild Expo.

The new integration will enable users to easily access environmental product attributes and rating system calculations for ecoScorecard enabled products that are in the Google 3D Warehouse, resulting in faster and more accurate rating system documentation for Google SketchUp users.

“The BIM process is built on the concept of coordinated information, and ecoScorecard takes that process a step further by providing an immediate to link to environmental product attributes and rating system calculations,” said Martin Flaherty, president of ecoScorecard. “Users can now pull data from ecoScorecard enabled products directly into the model and use that information throughout the design process.”

Introduced in 2007, ecoScorecard provides product specifiers with the ability to search and evaluate products based on environmental characteristics. The program does the calculations necessary for rating systems such as LEED, GGHC Labs 21, CHPS, and the NAHB Green Home Building Guidelines and includes and accounts for other third-party product certifications. The tool also produces the product documentation necessary for inclusion in the submission process. ecoScorecard is free to users and is supported by manufacturers interested in making the specification of green products easier for both their customers and their salespeople.

“Our original mission for ecoScorecard was to help make the specification of green products easier, and that has not changed,” explained Paul Shahriari, CEO of ecoScorecard. “Now, parallel to the growth of the green building movement, BIM is changing the entire building process. Never before has there been a single system that could provide context to all parties thinking about building. And the ecoScorecard technology platform is perfectly poised to link environmental product attributes and rating systems to BIM tools.”

Mr. Shahriari explained that ecoScorecard’s initial BIM integration was designed for Google SketchUp because of the accessibility and popularity of a Google tool. Plug-ins for other BIM tools such as Revit are slated for release next year.

For more information, visit http://ecoscorecard.com/.

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Media Contact: Reva Revis, ecoScorecard
reva@ecoscorecard.com 312.929.5025

LEED is a registered trademark of the U.S. Green Building Council
Google SketchUp is a registered trademarks of Google, Inc.
Revit is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc.