1st Pricing to be Awarded Building Information Model (BIM) Pricing Patent

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1st Pricing Strengthens BIM Patent Spectrum

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

April 13, 2010: Signal Hill, Calif. – 1st Pricing, a Southern California-based eCommerce and Technology Company, announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has issued the Company a “Notice of Allowance” (a precursor to a patent – approved not yet issued) that will grant additional intellectual property protection for their revolutionary Building Information Modeling (BIM) technology. The technology works as an add-on to CAD programs. This plug-in allows architects and other designers to utilize libraries of real-world, commercially available products.

“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.