Context
Role
UX designer · UI with a UI designer
Duration
5 months · live since June 2026
Scope
Discovery · UX · UI · Design QA
A redesign that became a facelift
BIMcomponents.com is Graphisoft's official platform for sharing Archicad objects, such as chairs, doors and lamps. Users find objects in many places, but this is Graphisoft's own site where they can both upload and download them.
The site hadn't been redesigned since around 2014, and traffic and uploads had dropped. In 2026 the platform had to be modernized, and the project included a UX update.
Our first designs went beyond a facelift: a photo-led homepage, a curated Trending row and an image gallery on every detail page. When the scope was cut midway, we had to choose what to keep. The visual extras could wait. Anything that helped people upload, find and trust objects could not.
The homepage shows the trade-off best. The first version was built around a kitchen render with clickable objects in it. To save development time, the developers suggested postponing those hero items, and without them the photo had no job left. The final hero became an illustrated search band with the categories as chips: no renders to source, and search still comes first. The Trending row went too; the homepage now goes straight into all objects, sorted by relevance.
The first homepage: a kitchen render with clickable objects. It didn’t survive the scope cut.
Three fixes stayed in: a simpler upload, a clear difference between objects and libraries, and visible activity on every card.
Every field had to earn its place
The upload form asked for things no one used, and refused two of the three file types.
Archicad objects are shared in three file types:
| File | What it is | Think of it as |
|---|---|---|
| .gsm | One object | One photo |
| .lcf | Many objects packed into one file | A zip folder of photos |
| .libpack | The newer library format, introduced with Archicad 28 | The same folder, in the new standard format |
Archicad itself shares a single .gsm with one command, but the website took only .lcf, so sharing one object from the browser meant packing it into a library first. And the form asked for details that nobody could say who needed. I went through it field by field with the product owner and a GDL library expert, asking each time: who uses this, and what breaks without it?
| Field | Answer | Decision |
|---|---|---|
| Attribute set | No one. It's not in the file and not shown anywhere | Removed |
| Language versions | Only country-specific objects need it, and older uploads already carry it | Removed from upload; kept as a search filter |
| License | A usage right nobody could explain at first | Renamed Usage rights |
I designed the upload for all three file types. Web upload for .gsm and .libpack depends on work by another team, so this release takes .lcf only, and that changed two of my decisions. The product owner had suggested a preselector, where the uploader first picks the file type and the form adapts. Earlier versions also colour-coded the file by type. With a single format, neither had anything left to tell apart, so both went: the icon and the file name are enough.
For the page itself I tried three structures:
One step: the drop zone and every field on one page from the start, like the old form. A long form greets the uploader before there's even a file to describe.
Two steps, as the developers suggested: one page for the file, the next for its details. Clean, but a short task is split across two screens.
1.5 steps, the one we built: a single page that starts with only the drop zone. Once the file is read, it appears as a tile and the form opens next to it, with the usage rights already taken from the file.
Nothing to fill in until there's a file. The live version takes .lcf for now.
Next to the old form, the difference is in which fields are left, not how many. The attribute set and the language list are gone. License became Usage rights and is read from the file, so the uploader can't change it by accident. Tags are new, required fields are starred, and the form only appears once there's a file to describe.
The old form and the new one.
The bathtub that was a library
An object page that downloads seventy objects isn't an object page.
While testing the live site I opened Bathtub Octagonal and got the whole library it belongs to. The button said Download library, and the only hint why was the library's name after a slash in the title. Every object looked the same, whether it stood alone or was one of dozens in a package.
So there are now three kinds of card and page: a single object, an object inside a library, and a library. An object that only exists in a package now says so in words, Part of HÅG Furniture, with a library icon and a link, so the Download library button is no longer a surprise.
The same chair, before and after.
Three things changed between my design and the build.
The colours are parked. I first told the types apart by colour: blue for objects, warm yellow for libraries. On the detail pages the colour change fell to the scope cut, so for now the labels and icons carry the difference. The colours can come back when the other file types do.
Single objects lost their download button. I designed a Download object button for them. During the build it turned out a single .gsm can't be downloaded on its own: it can depend on macros and textures, so Archicad fetches it through its library manager. The button went from the card, and Drag to plan on the object's preview loads it straight into Archicad instead.
One card shows less. I designed the object-inside-a-library card to show two sizes, the object's and its library's. At the developers' request, the library's size and object count were cut from it, so the card shows the object's own size, format and counts.
Single object
Object in a library
Library
Show that someone is home
A community site that hides its activity looks empty, even when it isn't.
Likes and downloads used to appear only on the detail page, at the bottom of a long list of fields. A washbasin downloaded almost 95,000 times looked no different in search than one nobody had touched. Now the numbers are on every card, and library cards got a download button on hover: before, you had to open the detail page to download anything. Single objects don't have one, for the same reason as on their detail page.
The dislike button went, so a new upload can't be voted down and nobody is put off sharing their work. Comments stayed, because conversation is the other sign that someone is home.
Hover, and the card shows its numbers and a download button. No need to open the page.
Where it stands
The site went live on 3 June 2026 with the new homepage, object and library pages, and .lcf upload. Web upload for .gsm and .libpack is designed and handed off, but not yet scheduled. Before launch I handed off an annotated Figma file and ran a design QA round.
What I took from it
When scope shrinks, protect the flows. The visual refresh could shrink without anyone noticing; the upload form and the content types couldn't, because those were where users actually got stuck.
Ask about goals, not features. Midway I got feedback that I was showing stakeholders options and asking for preferences. I switched to asking who visits the site and what's broken, then made the calls myself.