How does buildingtech.pro grade AEC tools?

Every tool is scored on five fixed criteria (value, agent friendliness, ease of adoption, portability, interoperability), each 1-5, averaged into a composite. Red flags can cap a criterion or the whole verdict. Nothing is listed from memory -- every tool passes an existence gate and is backed by an independent source.

What are the five grading criteria?

C1 Value for the price, C2 Agent Friendliness (can a coding agent drive it), C3 Ease of adoption, C4 Portability/lock-in (can you leave), and C5 Interoperability (does it fit your existing stack).

What are the red flags that cap a score?

RF1 pricing wall caps Value; RF2 agent-hostile caps Agent Friendliness; RF3 hard lock-in caps Portability; RF4 failing the existence gate means the tool is not listed; RF5 abandonware caps the verdict at Situational or below; RF6 training on your data with no opt-out caps Portability.

How is the composite score calculated?

The composite is the simple mean of the five criteria (C1-C5), each scored 1-5, giving a single 1-5 number.

What do the verdict labels mean?

Worth it (4.0-5.0) is strong and recommended on its merits; Solid (3.0-3.9) is good with minor friction or price tradeoffs; Situational (2.0-2.9) only pays off for specific needs; Skip (1.0-1.9) is weak or has better alternatives.

How we grade

Every tool gets a composite score: the simple mean of five 1–5 criteria. No vendor sponsorship, no paid placements — a score reflects what the evidence shows, not who's buying an ad. This page walks through exactly how a grade is built, criterion by criterion, ending with a real scorecard so you can see it composed from evidence.

Composite at a glance

Composite = mean(C1, C2, C3, C4, C5), each scored 1–5. The composite then maps to a plain-English verdict:

1.0 Skip 2.0 Situational 3.0 Solid 5.0 Worth it

Composite	Verdict	What it means
1.0-1.9	Skip
2.0-2.9	Situational
3.0-3.9	Solid
4.0-5.0	Worth it

4.0–5.0 Worth it: strong, recommended on its merits. 3.0–3.9 Solid: good, minor friction or price tradeoffs. 2.0–2.9 Situational: only pays off for specific needs. 1.0–1.9 Skip: weak, or better alternatives exist.

The five criteria

Tap a criterion to expand it.

C1 Value for the price

A 5 looks like: A free tier that covers real use, or flat/transparent/affordable pricing with no per-seat surprises.
A 1 looks like: Quote-only, "contact sales," or opaque pricing.

Backed by: the tool's own pricing page.

C2 Agent Friendliness

A 5 looks like: Agent-native: an official MCP server or a first-class CLI, plus a public API with key-based auth and agent-readable docs.
A 1 looks like: GUI-only, closed, interactive-auth-only.

Backed by: API / developer docs.

A tool's own built-in AI is recorded as a fact, not this score -- C2 is whether an agent can drive the tool, not whether the tool has AI features.

C3 Ease of adoption

A 5 looks like: Self-serve, learnable in a day, no IT/SSO/vendor implementation required.
A 1 looks like: Requires IT, enterprise SSO, or a vendor onboarding process.

Backed by: the signup, plans, and onboarding docs.

C4 Portability & lock-in

A 5 looks like: Open formats (IFC, DWG, PDF, CSV) with easy export -- you can leave whenever you want.
A 1 looks like: Proprietary format, no export -- your data is hostage.

Backed by: import/export and data-export docs.

Higher score = freer.

C5 Interoperability -- fits your stack

A 5 looks like: Native integrations/plugins plus open formats -- joins the Revit / Bluebeam / QuickBooks / Microsoft 365 stack you already run.
A 1 looks like: An island: no integrations, manual export only.

Backed by: the integrations / marketplace page.

The three "connection" axes are distinct. C2 is whether a coding agent can drive the tool. C4 is whether you can leave the tool. C5 is whether the tool joins the stack you already run. A tool can score well on one and poorly on another -- they aren't the same question.

Red flags

When present, a red flag caps the criterion it touches -- or, for abandonware, the whole verdict -- regardless of how the other criteria score.

RF1 Pricing wall Caps C1 (Value) <= 2. No public pricing -- you have to book a sales call to find out.

RF2 Agent-hostile Caps C2 (Agent Friendliness) <= 1. GUI-only, no API/CLI/MCP, interactive-login-only -- an agent can't drive or extract anything.

RF3 Hard lock-in Caps C4 (Portability) <= 1. Proprietary formats with no clean way to export your own data.

RF4 Fails the existence gate The tool is not listed at all. A dead or parked site, or no independent source confirms the tool.

RF5 Abandonware Caps the verdict at Situational or below, regardless of composite. In maintenance or sunset -- no meaningful release in a year.

RF6 Trains on your data Caps C4 (Portability) <= 2. The vendor confirms training on customer data with no opt-out (silence isn't this flag -- we mark it unknown).

Provenance & trust

The rule: nothing is listed from memory. Before a tool earns a page, we open its live site and confirm it exists and does what it claims, and we find at least one independent source (a directory listing, press, funding news, a named-customer case study) that isn't the vendor's own marketing -- fail this existence gate and the tool isn't listed at all (RF4). If we can't verify a claim, we drop it rather than guess.

Every claim is checked against the live site. The verdict-driving claims — agent access, sector targeting, pricing — require two independent sources. Each tool entry records the source(s) we checked it against and a lastVerified date; we re-verify pricing every 90 days and everything else every 180 days.

See it graded: a real example

Here's an actual scorecard from the catalog, so you can see a grade composed from evidence rather than take our word for the method.

Autodesk Forma Site Design

Cloud-based AI platform for early-stage urban design, massing, and microclimate analysis.

3.8 /5 composite

Solid

Criterion	Score	Why
C1 Value for the price	4/5	Subscription pricing (verified 2026-06-30); no confirmed free tier on the record.
C2 Agent Friendliness	4/5	No MCP or CLI, but a documented REST API (OAuth 2.0 via Autodesk Platform Services) and an embedded SDK -- an agent can drive it, just not zero-setup.
C3 Ease of adoption	2/5	Web-only signup fits the small-team/growing firms it targets, per the catalog's firm-size fit.
C4 Portability & lock-in	5/5	Exports IFC and glTF (open formats) alongside native RVT -- your data isn't hostage.
C5 Interoperability	4/5	Native integrations with Revit, Civil 3D, Autodesk Tandem, Esri ArcGIS -- joins an existing stack instead of sitting apart from it.

Verified against aecmag.com on 2026-06-30.

See the full Autodesk Forma Site Design page →

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