Is Cloud CAD a serious option for your architecture firm?

Yes. But it's nothing that Autodesk or Graphisoft will ever offer.

Ask Google. Ask ChatGPT. You'll get a list of cloud CAD software — Onshape, Fusion 360, AutoCAD Web, the most commonly referenced names in this space. Browser-based tools built for product engineers designing components and gadgets. Not for firms running Revit or ArchiCAD on a live building project.

So let's have the right conversation.

When people talk about "the cloud," they mean four things: someone else manages it, predictable pricing, works from anywhere, and you can scale up or down like a tap. For 80% of business software — your CRM, your HR system, your accounting — that promise is real and delivered. And your Common Data Environment probably lives there too. Forma — formerly ACC, formerly BIM 360 — is cloud. Your files, your documents, your coordination workflows. All managed, all accessible.

But not your CAD software. For Revit and ArchiCAD, that promise never arrived. And it won't. Autodesk does offer Forma — a cloud-native tool with early building design and site planning capabilities — but as Autodesk itself has stated plainly: "Forma is not replacing Revit, it's extending it." Revit stays on your workstation. That decision isn't changing.

So the question isn't "when will there be a cloud version of Revit?"

The right question is: why do architecture and engineering firms need their CAD to run in the cloud at all — and what does that actually look like?

The answer came from an unexpected place.

A project in trouble

Somewhere in Europe, a plant engineering project worth nine figures was falling apart.

The contract was turn-key. The penalties for delay were stiff. And the engineering phase — the foundation everything else depended on — was already slipping.

The decision was made to throw more resources at it. The engineering team needed to double in size to sixty engineers, pulled together from locations across Europe, all needing to work on the same project immediately using the AVEVA E3D plant engineering software. Each of them was given a VPN connection to access the AVEVA E3D model hosted on-premise at headquarters — the standard setup for a team working out of one building, now stretched far beyond what it was designed to handle.

It collapsed under the load. A VPN connection routes every user's traffic through a single point — fine for ten people in the same city, unworkable for sixty engineers spread across a continent all opening, syncing and saving a large model simultaneously. The connection became so congested that work ground to a halt entirely.

AVEVA proposed a solution: a hosted cloud version of AVEVA E3D. On closer inspection it was not viable — it only supported the latest release, while the project had been contracted and was already partially built on a different version. Migrating mid-project was not an option.

A trusted reseller introduced them to Designair. At the time, we treated it as a routine enquiry — running CAD software in the cloud is what we do. We suggested they test it for themselves. Two days later they came back with a contract request.

There was one thing they could not tell us upfront: how many cloud workstations they would need, or for how long. Given the nature of the project, that was entirely understandable — and given that Designair's pricing is fully pay-as-you-go, it was never a hurdle. They would pay only for the workstations they actually used, for as long as they used them.

The entire setup took less than a day. Sixty engineers, distributed across Europe, working on one model, in one software version, at full speed. Nine months later the engineering work was complete and the project was back on schedule.

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From this story — and from many customers since — one insight keeps surfacing. It sounds almost obvious once you hear it, but let it sink in: their CAD only works inside the building.

Architecture and engineering firms are increasingly built to work everywhere — and their CAD setup hasn't kept up. Here's why that gap keeps growing.

Talent doesn't live next door. The architects you want to hire won't always live within commuting distance. Why let geography decide who's on your team?

Your firm doesn't stop at one building. Two offices working on the same model. A joint venture with a firm in another city. Everyone needs to be in the same Revit file, on the same version, at infinite speed — regardless of where they're sitting.

Projects breathe. Ten people for a competition sprint. Four for the quiet phase after. One specialist for six weeks. Building projects don't run on stable headcounts — you shouldn't be ordering hardware for people who'll be gone in two months.

Not every hour needs to be a senior hour. Drafting, detailing, documentation. Good work, but not work that needs your most expensive people. If they can run Revit from anywhere, you can move that work to wherever it makes sense.

Two types of Cloud CAD — and only one that works for architecture firms

Working outside the building is what Cloud CAD is solving. But not all Cloud CAD is the same. There are two fundamentally different approaches — and understanding which is which matters before making any decision.

Which CAD? Cloud-native CAD means adopting a new platform. Cloud-hosted CAD runs your existing software, including plugins, data and workflows.

Vendor managed. With cloud-native CAD, the vendor manages everything. With cloud-hosted CAD, the vendor manages everything except your software.

Self-service. You decide when a new workstation exists. You create it, configure it, hand it to someone. The whole thing takes minutes.

Works from anywhere. Both run in a browser, on any device, from any location — office, home, site visit or anywhere else with an internet connection.

Scale up & down. Cloud-native CAD is typically sold per user per year. Cloud-hosted CAD follows the project — a workstation created today can be removed tomorrow.

Pay per use. In both models, you pay for actual consumption rather than owning infrastructure.

Architecture firms face a straightforward trade-off: keep your existing software, data and workflows and own the management — or hand everything over to a vendor and start fresh. There is no middle ground.

What does it cost?

With cloud-hosted CAD, you're paying for two separate things: your software license, which you already own (Bring Your Own License), and the cloud infrastructure that runs it. With Designair, that's a platform fee of €50 per workstation per month, plus an hourly usage fee starting at €2.25 per hour. Most customers use around 75 hours per month — roughly €220 per user per month all in. You pay for actual usage. A workstation that isn't running costs nothing.

For a first estimate based on your team size, the pricing page has a calculator.

But my Revit files are already in the cloud — why do I need CAD in the cloud?

It's a fair question. And for a two-person firm working from the same office on the same project, the CDE may well be sufficient. The complexity starts when the team does.

Picture a large building project. The lead architect's team, a structural engineering firm, a MEP consultant, and two specialist contractors. Each company brings their own hardware, their own software installations, their own Revit version, their own plugin stack. Getting all of them into the same model, on the same version, without corrupting the central file — that's herding cats. And no CDE solves it.

Designair solves it at the root. Every user gets the same workstation in the cloud, created from one master template — same software, same version, same plugins — deployed in minutes, regardless of where they're sitting or what laptop they brought.

And then there's the performance problem that CDEs never addressed. Your files might live in the cloud — but when Revit opens them over a standard internet connection with 50 Mbits/sec, they're still travelling at internet speed. Moving CAD to the cloud — the full CAD cloud setup, not just file storage — is what changes that. On Designair, the software and the CDE are both in the cloud — which means they communicate at cloud speed: 5 Gbits/sec (5000 Mbits/sec).

Your CDE solved where the files live. It didn't solve how fast your team can work with them.

So — is Cloud CAD a serious option for your architecture firm?

Cloud CAD for architecture firms doesn't mean replacing Revit or ArchiCAD with a browser-based tool. It means running the software your team already uses on a cloud workstation — so they can work from anywhere, at cloud speed, on the same model, in the same version, regardless of where they're sitting or what project phase you're in.

The right answer depends on how much your firm works outside the building. In other words, how your projects are staffed, where your teams work, how you handle security. That's why we built a tool to answer that question. 30 seconds to find out if cloud-hosted CAD is the right answer for your firm.

If you already know enough and want to see it running on your own workflow — start your free trial here.