Speckle — The Complete Guide: Moving Models and Data Between Design Tools Without File Exports
Speckle solves a different problem from the viewers: not how to see a model, but how to move it back and forth between tools without losing information. Instead of exporting and importing files, you send objects with their properties, and every send is stored as a version.
Speckle
Speckle Systems
Moves geometry and data between design tools — instead of exporting and importing files.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Connectors — Revit, Rhino, Grasshopper, Blender, AutoCAD, QGIS, Excel and structural analysis programs.
- Version control — a full history of every model.
- Browser viewing — a visual comparison between two versions.
- Data, not just geometry — element properties travel together with the shape.
- Automation — programmatic access to the data, for example from Python.
Licence and use
The core is open source, and you can run your own server at no cost. The managed cloud service offers a free plan with limits and paid extensions. In practice, a structural engineer can send an analytical model to the architect and see in the browser what changed between versions.
Related tools
For open-source IFC editing — Bonsai. For scripts on the data — Python. For version control of code and files — Git.
Bonsai (BlenderBIM)
IfcOpenShell
Native IFC editing inside Blender — open-source BIM.
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Blender
Blender Foundation
Full 3D suite — modelling, visualisation and presentation-quality rendering, with Python scripting.
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Python
Python Software Foundation
The language behind most modern engineering computation, and its full ecosystem.
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Git
Git project
Version control for code, scripts and input files — who changed what and when, and return to any version.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Speckle is the missing communication layer between design tools — open, free at its core, and an end to the export-import battle.