AEC Magazine September / October 2010

September/October 2010 >> Vol.50

AECMAGAZINE

DESIGN, MANAGEMENT & COLLABORATION IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT

Urban legend Masterplanning with CityCAD

CAD in the cloud

Printing buildings

Autodesk Revit 2011

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Vol.50: Contents 4 Newsdesk AutoCAD returns to the Mac Editorial Managing Editor: Greg Corke Email: greg@x3dmedia.com Consulting Editors Martyn Day Email: martyn@x3dmedia.com John Marchant Email: john.marchant@skilstream.com

For the first time in 20 years, Autodesk has released a native version of AutoCAD for Apple’s Macintosh computer and at the same time an AutoCAD type product for the iPad, iPhone and iTouch. DWG is being made available everywhere, writes Martyn Day.

8 Newsdesk Plant industry hots up While the Process Plant software market is very mature, recent events indicate the industry is heating up. Following Intergraph being acquired, this month also see the Plant industry receiving new offerings from Autodesk and Bentley Systems. Martyn Day reports.

Digital Media Editor: Stephen Holmes Email: stephen@x3dmedia.com

12 Hardware The man who prints buildings

Design and Production Dave Oswald Email: davieos@googlemail.com

‘Printing’ life-sized buildings out of sand may be the stuff of science fiction, but Italian engineer, Enrico Dini, has developed a groundbreaking technology to do just that. By Greg Corke.

Advertising

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16 Software CityCAD 2.0 While AEC Magazine specialises in reviewing the best Building Information Modelling (BIM) systems, we rarely get the chance to look at digital city solutions. This month Martyn Day looks at a really special UK-developed solution called CityCAD.

18 Case study Worcester’s civic experiment Architectural landmark strives to be carbon neutral while housing varied constituencies.

Financial Controller: Samantha Todescato-Rutland sam@chalfen.com AEC Magazine is available FREE to qualifying individuals. To ensure you receive your regular copy please register online at www.aecmag.com

About AEC Magazine is published bi-monthly by X3DMedia Ltd Suite 77, 3rd Floor, The London Fruit and Wool Exchange, 56 Brushfield Street, London E1 6EP T. +44 (0)20 3355 7310 F. +44 (0)20 3355 7319 www.x3dmedia.com © 2010 X3DMedia Ltd All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission from the publisher is prohibited. All trademarks acknowledged.

Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author and not of X3DMedia. X3DMedia cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements within the magazine.

AEC Magazine is printed by Warners Midlands plc www.warners.co.uk Front cover: Image courtesy of CityCAD

AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

21 Case study Turning vision into reality When artist Antony Gormley contracted Had-Fab to fabricate his newest landmark sculpture, it was obvious the complexity of ‘Exposure’ would require the latest in 3D Building Information Modelling.

26 Comment CAD in the cloud

23 Software Revit 2011: first impressions Paul Woddy finds a user-friendly release that is more intuitive than older versions.

24 Gallery Get the picture With architectural visualisation projects increasingly pandering to the world of polished snapshots of photorealistic bliss, some artists are looking to create more interpretive artworks.

Without the design and engineering community really asking for it, we appear to be on the cusp of a major change in the way we gain access and use computer aided design technology.

Martyn Day investigates.

31 Software Arcon 3D Architect Professional Eleco, the developer of the Grand Designs 3D software for home builders, has just released a professional CAD solution for small architectural firms. Greg Corke reports.

33 Hardware Make it easier on the road Constantly on the road, Rob Jamieson knows a thing or two about mobile workstations.

From choosing the best CPU to how to travel in cattle class, he shares his top tips for buying a professional level laptop.

CONTENTS

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AutoCAD returns to the Mac For the first time in 20 years, Autodesk has released a native version of AutoCAD for Apple’s Macintosh computer and at the same time an AutoCAD type product for the iPad, iPhone and iTouch. DWG is being made available everywhere, writes Martyn Day.

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t has been a widespread rumour that Autodesk was developing a new native version of AutoCAD for the Apple Macintosh operating system, OSX. While in San Francisco in May I even accidentally caught a cheeky peek of the product as it was in development and it looked almost complete back then.

With much hype and hoopla, Autodesk has just unveiled the software, although it is not due for release for a month or two. At the same time, Autodesk has announced a portable version called AutoCAD WS for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch — DWGs will be everywhere.

Whatever your opinion of the Mac as a platform, for Autodesk this is a significant move and a further step away from being just a Microsoft developer.

There was a version of AutoCAD for the Macintosh almost two decades ago but this was dropped due to poor sales, along with other UNIX versions of AutoCAD. Autodesk then started incorporating lots of Microsoft technology in AutoCAD tying it in very closely to the Windows environment.

Since CEO, Carl Bass has taken the reigns, there has been a concerted effort to free its software products from being so Microsoft-centric and prepare the company for expected changes in the way software is purchased and consumed — namely the cloud/Internet.

Autodesk, like many software companies, is also seeing the rapid increase in usage of Apple’s Mac platform, especially on University campuses.

In talking with Rob Maguire, product manager for AutoCAD for the Mac, it seems the idea about doing a Mac port has been around for almost seven years. That idea was never acted upon until two years ago, when a small development team took 18 months to port the DWG library to the Mac to prove that the technology could be native and still be compatible with its Windows brother.

Once DWG had been ported, other components were looked at. One of the core engines is the 3D ShapeManager kernel, which fortunately had been already ported by Autodesk Manufacturing team to assist with the company’s Alias products, which are already cross platform.

Then it was a question of user interface and deciding what commands are the most important to port. There are some that rely too much on Windows-centric code to work, such as support for Visual Basic (VBA). The net result is a DWG native application with over 1,700 of AutoCAD’s commands that made the first release.

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According to Mr Maguire, the toughest job was getting 2D vector precision in the display. While Macs are big in graphics, in industries like desktop publishing, CAD is something else. Plot fidelity required a considerable amount of effort to ensure an AutoCAD Mac plot if overlaid with an AutoCAD Windows plot exactly matched.

The job required a complete reintroduction to the OpenGL graphics format, with Autodesk relying on Microsoft’s DirectX for Windows.

Mr Maguire told me that work done here will feed back into the Windows variant and could lead to the option of OpenGL for AutoCAD on Windows as well.

The goal of the Mac User Interface was to make it Mac native, as opposed to a carbon copy of the Windows one, as here some Mac conventions contradict the way AutoCAD on Windows works — for instance the space bar would execute the last command but on the Mac it’s pan.

With a beta test group of 5,000, Autodesk has worked through the selection set of commands that an AutoCAD for the Mac type of user would commonly use and Architects certainly helped skew this initial offering, less so structural and civil engineers.

Some other omissions will be network licensing, administration tools and a lack of a migration toolset. Subscription is offered.

Initial cost is expected to be the same as Windows AutoCAD 2011. The product is currently in beta and expected to ship in October, however this may slip should any quality issues be found.

According to Autodesk, it has already taken orders for the forthcoming AutoCAD for the Mac.

Mobile

While the Mac version was the big news, the surprise icing on the cake was the announcement of AutoCAD WorkSpace. This requires Internet access on iPad, iPhone or iTouch and streams DWGs from the cloud to your Apple mobile device.

While the Mac version was the big news, the surprise icing on the cake was the announcement of AutoCAD WS — WorkSpace. This is a non-Flashbased version of Autodesk’s Project Butterfly technology, which is currently on Autodesk Labs.

This application requires Internet access on iPad, iPhone or iTouch and streams DWGs from the cloud to your Apple mobile device, where live collaboration and geometry edits can be carried out between users.

It is due to ship this Autumn and will be available for free on Apple’s iTunes store. labs.autodesk.com www.autodesk.com/mac AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

refineries engineering data sustainability

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Chemicals Plant pipelines

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Refineries

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Engineering Data Pipes, Valves & Fitting Water

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Mott MacDonald simulates wind flow with off-the-shelf 3D city data

Laser scanning software brings Rhino designs to life Pointools, the laser scanning data processing software specialist, has released the latest version of Pointools 4 Rhino. The software allows 3D models to be created from the millions of 3D measurements collected by laser scanning devices and then Rhino’s CAD toolset can be used to further develop designs or put existing designs in context. www.pointools.com

Nova helps present real time vision of TGV station PROIN 3D, on behalf of the ADIF, Administrator of the Spanish Railway Infrastructures, has brought the future TGV station of Valencia (Spain) to life thanks to a real-time 3D model created with Nova 2009 for 3ds Max from Vertice. All the initial 3D modelling and animation was carried out with 3ds Max and Vray and the 3D model and textures were then optimised for use inside Nova. The real time scene was presented at ITUR in Madrid (International fair of Tourism) on a six-metre diameter screen with visitors interacting with it using a joystick. www.vertice.fr Mott MacDonald is using computer-generated 3D city models, CAD and simulation software to help give a better understanding of the wind environment around urban infrastructure projects. By creating highly complex engineering models Mott MacDonald simulates the flow of wind around a site and creates different scenarios based on the project design.

Mott MacDonald processes the 3D city models from Bluesky first using Pointools’ Rhino 3D – design software for CAD – to add or remove structures based on the project design and then using specialist software for surface modelling, analysis and visualisation. Having created an airtight envelope around the modelled project area the wind flow is calculated using Ansys CFX and different design scenarios can be considered.

“The Bluesky data is a key ingredient for our computer simulations, in order to understand how the wind moves around any proposed large-scale development site. The framework CAD model based on the Bluesky data lets us explore a range

of design options,” commented Dr Don Wu, senior CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) engineer at Mott MacDonald, an international multidisciplinary management, engineering and development consultancy with over 14,000 staff working in 120 countries in all sectors from transport, energy, buildings, water and the environment to health and education, industry and communications. “We are involved in a number of high profile infrastructure projects and it is essential that new buildings and redevelopments provide a safe and comfortable experience for all users. The Bluesky data helps us look at different options for access and the use of outside space and amenity areas based on the behaviour of the wind.”

Already used by Mott MacDonald for projects in both England and Ireland, Bluesky building models are available for most UK cities with a population over 100,000 including London, Edinburgh, Cardiff, Belfast, Brighton, Nottingham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Bristol and Cambridge. www.bluesky-world.com

Cadline to sell Oasys engineering software Oasys, the software house of Arup consulting engineers, has appointed Cadline, an Autodesk Gold Partner, as a reseller to sell and support its engineering software throughout the UK and Ireland.

The engineering software from Oasys is developed for structural and geotechnical engineers and ranges from Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software for general problems to more specific software for reinforced concrete analysis, piling, and soil settlement. Oasys also develops document management software, which is used by architects, engineers, accountants and many others who use email as a method of communication.

Meanwhile, Oasys has released new versions of its concrete analysis and design software AdSec and ADC. AdSec is used for the analysis of reinforced concrete cross sections, and the new version includes updates for cracking calculation to EC2. ADC analyses and designs reinforced concrete structural elements and sub-frames to a variety of national design codes.

www.oasys-software.com / www.cadline.co.uk

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

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Autodesk to bring together BIM experts for London event Experts in Building Information Modelling (BIM), including Paul Morrell the chief construction adviser to the government, will be sharing their knowledge and guidance at the Autodesk BIM Conference 2010 in London on the 30th September. The free-ofcharge event is designed to provide senior industry decision makers with an update on the current take-up of BIM, a discussion forum on the implications for the industry, plus accounts of the benefits of BIM for AEC firms from first-hand customer experience. bim-conference-2010.autodesk-service.com/uk

Google boosts modelling toolkit for SketchUp Pro 8 Google SketchUp Pro 8 is the latest version of the 3D modelling software for architects and engineers. The new release includes tighter integration with maps and according to Google, adding a geo-location to a model is now an ‘elegant, one-app process’.

Other features include ‘Match Photo’, which enables users to trace one or more photographs to build a model, and a range of new tools for additive and subtractive modelling. SketchUp Pro 8 is available now for £354 from Cadsoft Solutions.

www.cadsoftsolutions.co.uk

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CSC links design and detailing tools to Revit Leeds-based CSC has made its Revit Structure Integration software available for download.

The software enables the structural software developer’s Fastrak and Orion products, to integrate with Autodesk’s Revit Structure 2011 through model synchronisation.

Fastrak is a software tool for the design of portal frames, multi-storey buildings and connections, while Orion is a dedicated design and detailing software solution for reinforced concrete buildings.

www.cscworld.com

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Russian bid to stage Fifa World Cup brought to life by Crystal CG

Imagina seeks presenters for visualisation conference Imagina, the European simulation and visualisation event held in Monaco, has announced its call for papers.

For the architecture conference, the organisers are looking for speakers to share their thoughts on the use of, and vision for, BIM in architecture and in construction engineering. For the urbanism and landscape conference the focus is on the planning and management of cities, the adoption of Geo-referenced 3D models in the context of a project and the use of 3D applied to the preservation of landscape and natural areas. Imagina 2011 takes place from the 1-3 February, 2011. The deadline for submissions is the 15th October 2010.

www.imagina.mc

New tool for swept path analysis in roadway design CGS plus, a member of the Autodesk Developers Network and an Autodesk Preferred Industry Partner for Civil 3D, has released Autopath 2011, a new AutoCAD Civil 3D-based software product for swept path analysis purposes in roadway design. Fully integrated with AutoCAD Civil 3D, the software features dynamic plan / profile view analysis and a flexible vehicle library. Autopath 2011 can be used to analyse intersections, roundabouts, narrow streets, or garage entrances or to check manoeuvrability and clearance.

www.autopath-software.com

Get smart with Evolve Evolve Consultancy is making the training materials used in its AutoCAD and MicroStation sessions available for purchase.

The PDF guides cover all the important aspects of CADsmart, a popular software tool used for CAD skills assessment, to help CAD users understand what is needed to improve their skills and efficiency.

www.eatyourcad.com

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Digital imaging company, Crystal CG, has produced a three minute animation to support Russia’s bid to stage the FIFA World Cup for the first time. The animation, designed to illustrate Russia’s architectural and practical vision for the 2018/2022 World Cup, was presented as part of the nation’s bid to FIFA in August. The animation allows viewers to ‘fly through’ photo-realistic, scaled images of six of the 16 planned

stadia, 13 of which are yet to be constructed – transport links and fan sites. Crystal CG was commissioned to create the animation by international sports marketing firm, Helios Partners and the Russian Football Union, based on its experience and expertise in producing digital animation for the Beijing and London Olympics and other major events. The animation can be viewed at www.crystalcg.co.uk/portfolio/russian-2018

Tekla UK announces 2010 competition winners Tekla UK has announced the winners of its 2010 Model competition, in which AEC Magazine helped choose the winning projects. Consteel Technical Services took first prize in the over 150 tonne category for its role in the Terminal Hangar Facility for Spaceport America. Had Fab won the under 150 tonne category for its work on the new Antony Gormley sculpture, Exposure (pictured) in Lelystad, Holland. Finally, The Drawing Office (Chesterfield) was the multi material category winner for its work on the timber geodesic domed New Sports Academy in Scunthorpe. Full details of all projects and finalists can be found at www.tekla.com/uk/model-comp-2010

Acquisition broadens Trimbles BIM to field offering In a move designed to strengthen its building construction solutions Trimble has acquired the assets of privately-held Accubid Systems, a Canadian provider of estimating, project management and service management software and services for electrical and mechanical contractors. Accubid’s family of software products allow electrical and mechanical contractors to analyze their estimates in detail including CAD-based estimating and takeoff and then export the data into project management, accounting, and procurement applications. The acquisition of Accubid broadens Trimble’s “BIM to field” solutions for mechanical, electrical and plumbing (MEP) contractors to automate project estimating and management, modelling, detailing, layout and construction.

“BIM collaboration processes are transforming the way building construction projects are planned, managed and executed,” said Pat Bohle, general manager of Trimble’s building construction division. “Combining Accubid’s deep understanding of the electrical and mechanical trades and their detail-rich application data with Trimble’s field solutions will provide contractors additional tools to become more productive, efficient, and prepared to meet the demands of the industry in the future.”

www.accubid.com / www.trimble.com

AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Professionals of various disciplines working in a construction project are faced with the challenge to communicate and agree on the design in detail. They need a tool that enables effective centralisation and control of all stages. Sharing the Tekla model allows them to stay in the building information loop, real-time.

Tekla Structures BIM (Building Information Modelling) software provides a data-rich 3D environment that can be shared by contractors, structural engineers, steel detailers and fabricators, and concrete detailers and manufacturers. Choose Tekla for the highest level of constructability and integration in project management and delivery.

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Plant industry hots up While the Process Plant software market is very mature, recent events indicate the industry is heating up. Following Intergraph being acquired, this month also see the Plant industry receiving new offerings from Autodesk and Bentley Systems. Martyn Day reports.

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or those that follow the Process Plant industry, this year has seen some unusual and significant changes in the dynamics between the software vendors. Hexagon, which owns brands such as Leica, recently bought Intergraph, developer of PDS, for $2.1 billion.

Autodesk also shipped its first 3D piping system, and then a Process Plant bundle, and now Bentley has just significantly updated its OpenPlant Modeler V8i, which features breakthrough collaborative working technology.

While the positions of the main players have remained relatively stable for the last decade, it appears that now competition is increasing between old and new foes.

Autodesk has not always been a player in the market but there were many that used vanilla AutoCAD to create piping and instrumentation (P&ID) diagrams. Autodesk finally decided to create a 2D vertical product last year with AutoCAD P&ID. Considering this product had only been on sale for a year, Autodesk also appeared to be focussed on moving into the 3D modelling part of the market and quickly followed this up with AutoCAD 3D Plant 3D, trying to hit some of the big established developers.

Autodesk This month, Autodesk has released Autodesk Plant Design Suites, which combines groups of existing Autodesk products in value bundles.

There are two versions on offer — Plant Design Suite Premium and Plant Design Suite Advanced.

In the Premium collection the software includes AutoCAD 2011, AutoCAD P&ID 2011, AutoCAD Plant 3D 2011 and Autodesk Navisworks Simulate 2011.

The Advanced flavour offers the same design tools but with Autodesk NavisWorks Manage 2011 included instead of Simulate, offering access to such features as 3D clash detection.

Autodesk has just started to offer these ‘Suite’ bundles across its key target markets (Manufacturing, AEC and Plant) and offers considerable cost savings over buying the individual software. It is looking to expand and secure its footprint in the Process Plant industry and offer 80% of the functionality for 20% of the price of competitive solutions.

Bentley Creator of MicroStation and PlantSpace, Bentley Systems has done much to consolidate its position SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

AEC MAGAZINE

within the leading pack of the Process Plant fraternity.

Originally incubated at Intergraph, but turned enemies after an acrimonious split, the company has built a strong and vital global user base all running on its MicroStation core.

The company has had a habit of developing and showcasing technology that does not make it into its products for years and with this new version of OpenPlant, finally delivers on some of the collaborative potential I remember seeing over five years ago.

This month Bentley announced three new OpenPlan products: • Bentley OpenPlant Modeler V8i — Bentley claims is the only plant modelling software to natively support workflows that combine software standards including DGN, RealDWG, point clouds, and PDF. OpenPlant ModelServer V8i can automatically migrate

Autodesk has released Autodesk Plant Design Suites, which combines groups of existing Autodesk products in value bundles.

Intergraph PDS models, piping catalogues, and piping specifications so data can be reused for design modifications.

This is also the first 3D plant modelling software to natively use the ISO 15926 data model as specified by the iRING user community.

• Bentley OpenPlant ModelServer V8i — harnesses the collaborative power of ProjectWise collaboration services, which manages both files and components.

The support for component management means that it is actually possible for project teams to work on interoperable workflows across multiple design environments, including Intergraph’s PDS as well as Bentley’s AutoPLANT and PlantSpace.

• Bentley OpenPlant Isometrics Manager V8i — allows the extraction and incorporation of intelligence from 3D plant models, automatically and in real time.

Bentley claims this ‘on demand’ intelligent generation of isometric views benefits owneroperators throughout the plant lifecycle beyond procurement, fabrication, and construction to “as built” and “as safely operated” maintenance and compliance.

The new generation of MicroStation-based Plant products, working at the component level, finally delivers on the company’s vision of enabling real-time modelling between many live users. This was originally envisaged to be a big game changer for the company when ProjectWise was devised. The maturity of the technology and the collaborative nature of Plant projects will take the maximum benefit from this. It will be interesting to see how this technology rolls out into Bentley’s other markets.

Bentley’s global subscription pricing is also seen as targeting the expensive legacy UNIX design systems For example, with Bentley’s Designer for Piping Passport Subscription (OpenPlant), individual piping designers gain access to Bentley OpenPlant Modeler, Bentley OpenPlant Isometrics Manager, ProSteel Modeler, ProjectWise Passport, and ProjectWise Clash Resolution Visa — plus complete virtual training — for the single annual fee of $5,995. Bentley OpenPlant products through perpetual licenses, which cost $7,295 for OpenPlant Modeler V8i, $25,000 for OpenPlant ModelServer V8i, and $6,500 for OpenPlant Isometrics Manager V8i. www.autodesk.com/plant www.bentley.com

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The man who prints buildings ‘Printing’ life-sized buildings out of sand may be the stuff of science fiction, but Italian engineer, Enrico Dini, has developed a groundbreaking technology to do just that. By Greg Corke.

R

apid prototyping and 3D printing technology has had a huge impact on the manufacturing industry. Manufacturers can build up enduse components and products layer-by-layer that rival those made with traditional mould and die manufacturing techniques.

Within the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry, however, such additive manufacturing processes are mostly limited to scale models of architectural designs, which are used to help visualise and assess designs or to present all manner of 3D information in a form that everyone can understand.

One of the most popular technologies in this field is from Z Corp, a US company that uses technology borrowed from inkjet printers to literally ‘print’ a model in 3D. Using a combination of loose powder and binder, Z Corp’s machines can build a physical model, layer-by-layer, and in a matter of hours present a finished design in glorious 3D that architects and engineers can pick up, hold and interact with.

But what if you could print an entire building this way? Put a machine on site and set it going to automatically construct an entire building? This is the dream of Italian born Enrico Dini of Monolite UK, who has already created D-Shape, the largest 3D printer in the world, capable of printing sandstone structures up to 6 x 6m in plan and with little to no human intervention.

His largest structure to date, the Radiolaria, is a 2m tall sculpture inspired by the architect Andrea Morgante, but Mr Dini has already started work on a full scale, 8.5m high version, and that is only just the beginning.

Without the need for formwork and traditional labour, Mr Dini believes the impact on the construction industry could be huge, in terms of reducing both time and cost. With the technology able to build complex architectural forms, just as easy as it can produce rectilinear structures, it could also have a major impact on the face of architecture.

The personality behind D-Shape Like his father before him, Enrico Dini (pictured right) trained as civil engineer, but he chose to work with his brother in automation and robotics in the footwear, automotive and marble industries. This offered him more of a challenge to solve problems as the majority of civil engineering projects in Pisa, Tuscany, his home region, involved fairly repetitive work.

Here, he gained experience in offline programming CNC machines, which he has since applied to the idea of construction-scale rapid manufacturing.

The Radiolaria Enrico Dini’s largest structure to date is the Radiolaria, a 2m tall structure inspired by the architect Andrea Morgante. The structure was modelled in CAD, then stress analysis software was used to validate its integrity without having to add additional reinforcement. The next stage was to export to STL, the industry standard for rapid prototyping, and then import the file into D-Shape’s dedicated software ready for ‘printing’.

It took ten days to print the structure, which included a containing shell comprising the binded model and loose sand, which was carefully removed by hammer. Mr Dini admitted that he was afraid that the structure would collapse during this process, but to his relief it remained intact. It was then hand finished to add to its aesthetic appeal.

A full scale, 8.5m high version of the Radiolaria has been commissioned for installation in Pontedera Italy later this year. This will be located on a roundabout and due to the scale Mr Dini admits that it will be impossible to print on site, so he is currently working out how to assemble piece by piece and at the same time maximise the number of components that can be printed in a single build. Due to scale of this structure it will also require reinforcement as he cannot be confident that the strength of the stone material alone will be enough to support the structure.

Material science Mr Dini’s dream began in 2004 and he immediately acknowledged that in order to ‘print’ 3D buildings he would need to design a brand new technology rather than adapting current 3D printing technologies, which are designed to print minute amounts of material.

The primary challenge was to find a binder that would be able to fuse a granular material, and would have sufficient structural strength for a ‘printed’ building. His first attempts focused on

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Enrico Dini is a huge fan of Antoni Gaudi and many of his dreams centre on the Catalan architect’s work.

epoxy resins, but he came to the conclusion that they not only suffered from technical challenges, such as flammability and toxicity, but they were far too expensive.

Instead he started researching and developing a new binder, made from environmentally friendly materials, which would be combined with a sand/stone powder-based granular material to make an ‘artificial stone’, with similar physical properties to sedimentary limestone. From here he refined the material to reduce lithifaction over time and improve waterproofing.

Proving the strength of such a material is essential to its success and the artificial stone has been subjected to a range of traction, compression and bending tests. According to Mr Dini, the results have been extraordinary. “The binder transforms any kind of sand into a marble-like material (i.e. a mineral with microcrystalline characteristics) with a resistance and traction much superior to Portland Cement, so much so that there is no need to use iron to reinforce the structure,” he says. “This artificial marble is indistinguishable from real marble and chemically it is 100% environmentally friendly.”

The printer The D-Shape machine is a large aluminium gantry structure, which uses CAM software to drive a huge print head during the building process. Like traditional rapid prototyping machines, the powder (in this case sand) is laid down and then cured with a binder.

Excess material acts as a support to the binded structure and at the end of the process this is removed and can be reused.

With a current build area measuring 6m x 6m, accuracy is very important and in order to raise the printer head precisely it requires an extremely rigid frame. Despite these structural requirements, the machine is light and according to Mr Dini can be easily transported, assembled and dismantled in a few hours by two workmen.

In order to achieve the kind of speed required to construct a building, the machine features 300 nozzles on a 6m print head. Moving across the print area it is capable of producing one 5mm layer every four to six minutes.

Of course, the volumes of material involved in the process are not trivial. On a 30m sq building it needs 150 litres of ‘sand’ for each layer, which, with a print rate of 30cm-40cm per day, is the equivalent of 15 tonnes of sand per day. Given additional funding Mr Dini is confident he could build a machine to operate AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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at 1m per day, which would make it possible to build a two storey freeform house in fifteen days.

Scaling the technology so it can build even larger structures is not a technological barrier. Additional funding would make this possible and plans are also underway to increase the resolution and reduce layer thickness to add detail to the structure and reduce the need for hand finishing.

Cost is a major driving force behind the D-Shape technology. Structures currently come in at €1,000 per cubic metre, but the goal is to bring this down to €250 per cubic metre or less. According to Mr Dini, despite the higher cost of the binder compared to Portland cement, the realisation costs of D-Shape structures are 30%-50% lower than manual methods, which involve the production of formwork and labour.

Tech Specs Build area Current – 6m x 6m Output printing resolution Current – 2dpi-4dpi (target 12dpi-25dpi) Layer Thickness Current – 5mm-10mm (target 3mm) Tensile strength Current 35-55 kg/cmq (target 80-100 kg/cmq) Printer process cost Current €1,000 / cubic metre (target €250 / cubic metre)

The future Mr Dini is continually looking to improve the printing process, not only enhancing the resolution of the system, but developing walls or shells with integrated building services and improved thermal properties and acoustic absorbance. For more organic structures, additional research is also being carried out into forming joints in a single process and the use of post tensioning reinforcement.

A major attraction of the technology is its ability to work with local materials. While in more traditional terms this means any type of sand, dust or gravel, the D-Shape technology is also being lined up to print a building out of Moon dust. Mr Dini has been appointed by the European Space Agency to undertake this research project and the D-Shape will initially print a concept structure based on a simulant of lunar soil with a view to building a structure on the Moon’s surface in 2020.

Back on Earth Mr Dini is a huge fan of Antoni Gaudi and many of his dreams centre on the Catalan architect’s work. The organic forms prevalent in many of Gaudi’s designs are perfectly suited to the D-Shape technology. Within five years Mr Dini is confident that he will be able to build a portion of Gaudi’s Casa Batlo, with a structure ensuring strength, thermal, and mechanical properties. His dream, however, would be to complete one of Gaudi’s unfinished buildings, the Church of Colònia Güell in Barcelona. For a man who has put his heart and soul into printing 3D buildings this would be the pinnacle of what looks certain to be a fascinating career. www.d-shape.com

The D-Shape advantages • Automated construction • No formwork • Freedom of geometry • Materials used are abundant • Similar fire resistance to concrete and stone • Material strength higher than concrete • Low waste • Environmentally benign and recyclable

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AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

The D-Shape machine is a large aluminium gantry structure, which uses CAM software to drive a huge print head during the building process.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

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CityCAD 2.0

While AEC Magazine specialises in reviewing the best Building Information Modelling (BIM) systems available, we rarely get the chance to look at digital city solutions. This month Martyn Day looks at a really special UK-developed solution called CityCAD.

C

omputer Aided Design (CAD) has moved from drafting to design with the latest suite of BIM solutions, such as Revit, ArchiCAD and Bentley Architecture but what software is available for urban design or city planning?

A number of the products AEC Magazine has looked at in the past, such as Google SketchUp, Autodesk’s Land Explorer and 3ds Max, have tended to side more on the visualisation aspect of the equation and offer little feedback other than shadowing and aesthetics. This is more akin to drafting than design, requiring all the analytics to be performed by specialists, making most of the initial development work, at best, educated guesses until refined later on.

There is an emerging market for town planning software, despite the lack of computer-related assistance or knowledge in the majority of local government current working practices. The main contenders include CityEngine (www.procedural.com), CityScape (www.cityscapedigital.co.uk) and CityCAD (www.holisticcity.co.uk).

To me it would appear that CityCAD, from Holistic City Software, is the more interesting of these offerings due to its professional analytical and parametric nature of the software, actually assisting by providing analysis, costs and quantities throughout the planning stages. CityCAD is like BIM but for cities.

Developed in the UK by a small team of ex-town planners, CityCAD is an accurate, parametric, 3D, Windows modelling system for the early stages of the design process. The system is easy to use and incredibly quick to model with, although design can be quickly imported via DXF too. The CityCAD basic front end is a multi-level grid, which can cover miles, kilometres, 100s of metres, tens of metres and metres — enabling the creation of really large models.

On the horizon giant N, E, S, W letters provide quick orientation. The sunlight provides shadowing and the rendering quality has a pleasant cartoonlike quality, not so bad as to look like SimCity but certainly something that is engaging and can connect to all in a presentation.

When CityCAD blocks are adjusted in the 3D window, all quantities — floor areas, densities etc — are updated in the city analysis panels

Buildings can be shaded according to data — for example net value per unit area — allowing developers to quickly understand the spatial distribution of value.

City design The user interface of CityCAD is clear and straightforward, with a menu bars, model view, properties window and a tab of dynamic analysis.

The core elements are routes (roads), which can be automatically generated from straight or curved 2D lines in modelspace, or imported via 2D DXFs. These vector lines act as centre lines and automatically generate routes/roads. Areas that are

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SOFTWARE

In the Advisor tab, users can set thresholds such as maximum building heights, and receive alerts when these thresholds are crossed.

enclosed with routes are automatically identified and blocks are created. All of the roads, pavements and block definitions can be user-edited or created and changed at will. These blocks could be parkland, variable density housing, offices, shops, research and development, light industrial, heavy industrial — whatever is required. With all these definitions the performance criteria, densities and floor areas are dynamically calculated.

Due to the fact that CityCAD has a parametric engine, the model displayed can also be driven depending on the requirement. For instance the density of housing can be adjusted, which automatically updates the 3D model. Using a default the system will attempt to fit the most houses on a plot given the density criteria and limits applied. So CityCAD is also useful for developers.

Different block definitions can be created and simply painted on to blocks, which dynamically update with the relevant information. It is also possible for a user’s own library of frequently used urban typologies to be ‘dragged’ from a list straight into the model space.

Once created, the model can be interrogated through a list of tabs and tools. This can be as simple as how far is this house from a supermarket or how far is it to the nearest school. Liveability is a big issue in urban design and CityCAD brings that clearly into view, combining a spatial model with all the latest regulation. The software even allows for phased design, showing how from start to finish these important metrics alter. Everything can be filtered by group or by phase, allowing quick manipulation of the model city.

While model creation is fast, once the design is modelled, the level of analysis provided from that work is truly fantastic. With accurate roads, housing and population density the system offers many analytical tools to understand the community needs and additional infrastructure required to comply with regulations and green initiatives such as BREAM and LEED. CO2 analysis is included in the model definitions and can be set per block or unit.

In the latest version of CityCAD, version 2, there is a new advisor panel, to provide instant feedback through the planning process. Criteria and thresholds can be set to provide warnings should important design criteria, like distance from nearest shopping, be exceeded; and road capacity issues can be identified while still modelling.

Environmental standards can be applied to individual blocks or subdivision of blocks, giving feedback on average and maximum distance to places e.g. schools, bus stops, post boxes, active frontage AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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and diversity. This analysis will prove very useful in future green design projects and building standards that are bound to come into law.

One of the key benefits to building this city database is that as the model grows, ballpark costs can be allocated to units within the project and are immediately available. In the past urban designs have gone through complex iterative workflows with multiple disciplines to design and then assess costs and impact. With CityCAD the first design can be a better informed design, leading to fewer iterations and more accurate predictions of the cost of development.

Urban design resource CityCAD includes a new online service, available under its ‘City Design Assistant panel’. The new urban spaces library and housing projects library means that just by selecting elements of a model, the software will go and find relevant existing designs of the same size or type.

Reference users CityCAD has met with success both here in the UK and in the USA, with it featuring in a number of high profile projects. One of the existing customers of CityCAD is the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, which has used the software to aid its challenge of combining residential and commercial growth with a significant SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

CityCAD includes liveability and quality of life analysis features, which can assist compliance with BREEAM Communities or LEED ND standards.

legacy of post-war housing development, as well as predominantly hosting the next Olympic games.

Typically the borough imports an Ordnance Survey map and then uses block drawing tools to model the surrounding area before examining the different options available for the site, using the feedback from the analytical tools.

Conclusion CityCAD is a great application for urban design, developers, architects and anyone wanting to model and analyse large-scale projects. The inclusion of the Urban Design Reference Library allows new designs to

Pricing and free viewer CityCAD is not available for outright purchase but costs £200 per seat per month for a six month license. The first seat actually comes with two extra seats (that is £66 per seat per month). For yearly contracts, support is given free.

The company has also just launched a free viewer for models created in CityCAD. The viewer offers many of the analysis tools but with no geometry creation capabilities, this will undoubtedly raise awareness of the design tool and will quickly share understanding of projects captured in CityCAD. The application is a 90MB download, expanding to a 130MB application when installed. Models are saved in an Open XML format under a .URB filename and can be shared safely with interested parties.

be measured against best in class work that has been completed in the past, so not only measured against the original brief but can also against global peers.

There are some obvious omissions, such as relying on DXF when there are so many other contemporary and compact file formats. An integration with Google Maps makes sense and in discussion with Chris Sharpe, one of the founders of the company, it seems that these are already being worked on for the next release. I could see this being used by UK companies in global projects but multi-language support is not yet built-in. I understand this would take a considerable amount of work to include, so perhaps in the future.

From this base platform, CityCAD is really a brilliant application with many solid uses and well worth downloading the 30-day demo to get a feel of what it can do for you. The big task is to get the concept that CAD can benefit all town planners and developers beyond providing just pretty pictures and detailed 2D plans.

We now have the capability to capture and model geometry and information that improves our productivity and design choices. With the increasing importance of ‘engineered’ solutions to cope with lessening our impact on the environment, planning has to change and checking for conformity will increasingly rely on computer analysis in conjunction with traditional methodology. www.holisticcity.co.uk

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Worcester’s civic experiment supports sustainability criteria Architectural landmark strives to be carbon neutral while housing varied constituencies.

T

he Worcester Library and History Centre, in Worcester, England, is a bold civic experiment that brings together, in one building, a fully integrated public and university library, the Worcestershire Record Office, the Worcestershire Historic Environment and Archaeology Service, and the Worcestershire Hub Customer Service Centre.

The notable architectural landmark also combines indoor and outdoor working areas with quiet spaces, and aspires to be carbon neutral in accord with strict sustainability guidelines set by Worcestershire and the University of Worcester.

The building is the first in Europe to house these varied functions and constituencies under one roof.

As it turned out, getting the roof right proved to be

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Worcester Library and History Centre is the first in Europe to house varied functions and constituencies under one roof. Image courtesy of Bentley Systems and Feilden Clegg Bradley

the key element that made the rest of the building work, according to designers at Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios.

“The design aspires to live up to the wonderful opportunities presented by the site and the community’s needs,” explained Feilden Clegg Bradley partner David Appel. “The distinctive roofscape echoes the undulations of the Malvern Hills, and the fractured form ensures it is in keeping with the relatively fine grain of historic Worcester. The funnellike roof shapes, which evoke the Royal Worcester pottery kilns, are as fundamental to the building’s interior as they are to its external appearance because they provide natural ventilation and natural lighting.”

Feilden Clegg Bradley aspires to be a school of

architecture that implements research-led design. On this project, it used parametric modelling enabled

by GenerativeComponents. The model allowed its experienced architects to apply environmental analysis techniques to their design and continue to refine sustainability aspects very late in the design process.

“We produced an intricate yet very flexible representation of the design in GenerativeComponents,” said Richard Priest, Feilden Clegg Bradley architectural software engineer. “This gave our team the power to alter many variables and produce options that responded to our brief while also providing real-time feedback that ensured we stuck to stringent sustainable design requirements.”

The complex, non-organic forms of the roofscape raised issues that made conventional analysis difficult.

“We found that the baffle surfaces under many of the design solutions tended to twist out of plane, which was not obvious on paper or even from some manual 3D modelling,” Mr Priest explained. “Without the parametric model, we wouldn’t have discovered this until construction.”

Using the model also meant that functional and sustainability design factors could keep pace with aesthetic changes. “The component nature of the model allowed us to make aesthetic changes without adverse effects. We could simply swap in the newly designed component without remodelling the whole structure,” he said. “At one stage, the layout of the entire roof changed, which would have been a major issue if we had been using manual modelling methods. In this case, we simply rearranged the structural centre points of the roof, and the model readjusted itself to the new layout.”

AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Worcester Library and History Centre ventilation system. Image courtesy of Bentley Systems and Feilden Clegg Bradley

The Feilden Clegg Bradley team spent a lot of time implementing the environmental and structural constraints of the GenerativeComponents model, but this meant that structural forms, such as the baffle buildups, were generated automatically in response to changes in form.

“We saved time producing accurate construction information,” Mr Priest said. “Working off the structural centres of the funnels and using variables, we could change the internal and external depths of the funnel walls to fit changes in the materials specifications.

“As these changes were made to the funnel walls, the follow-on effects to the geometry of the baffles was automatically regenerated with no further user input, saving huge amounts of time. We could be comfortable that the regenerated form still satisfied all sustainability requirements.”

A balancing act Each rooftop funnel — there are seven in the completed design — serves as a skylight and ventilation shaft, with large glazed areas that let in natural light. Balancing the amount and placement of glass with the ventilation and natural light requirements proved to be one of the most useful aspects of the parametric modelling approach. Feilden Clegg Bradley designers could monitor and adjust funnel shapes and glazing layouts and immediately analyse the results.

“The ability to do this with real-time feedback meant we didn’t have to use a model-analyse-remodel system.

Rather, it all happened as one process,” said Priest.

Feilden Clegg Bradley began work on the model SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

“The funnel-like roof shapes, which evoke the Royal Worcester pottery kilns, are as fundamental to the building’s interior as they are to its external appearance because they provide natural ventilation and natural lighting” Feilden Clegg Bradley partner David Appel during the bid stage of the project in order to produce visualisations. Front-loading the modelling effort meant that once the bid was won refined design could begin immediately, and the company used iterated versions of the original model throughout the project lifecycle. Mr Priest said: “This saved us many weeks while moving from winning the bid to final design.”

In addition to the university, public, and civic functions, the centre includes retail space and public outdoor space and serves as a hub in downtown Worcester. Commendably, Worcestershire and the university used this major public investment as a way to support the local economy by sourcing local materials and as a proving ground for progressive sustainable architectural ideas. This fit very well with Feilden Clegg Bradley’s design philosophy, as the firm was named the UK Sustainable Designer of the Year for 2009.

“Communities thrive on a sense of belonging and

shared cultural heritage, particularly in places like Worcester that have had a rich and varied history,” Mr Appel said. “Social and environmental responsibility is at the heart of our practice, and we set out to provide an iconic landmark building that contributes to the quality and diversity of the city. Sustainability has been central to our design approach and has been a primary influence on all design decisions.”

The architecture was used to address issues as varied as biodiversity, water conservation, energy efficiency, microclimate enhancement, and reduction of pollutants.

“A key feature of the scheme is two water meadow basins fed by rainwater collected from the building roof,” said Mr Priest. We were able to streamline the environmental and structural requirements and create an efficient structure while also eliminating 250 tons of steel from the roof structure.”

Other sustainable features include biomass boilers for heating and the use of water from the River Severn for cooling. To verify the natural ventilation scheme’s effectiveness, a physical model of the centre was tested in wind tunnels at Cardiff University. Since the building is near the river, flood mitigation measures were treated as an opportunity to create natural habitat in the Worcester urban area, encouraging plant, animal, and bird life characteristic of the Worcestershire region.

By applying cutting-edge design techniques to implement rigorous sustainability standards, Feilden Clegg Bradley was able to build a striking architectural landmark that will be efficient to operate and will serve its many constituencies for decades to come. www.bentley.com

CASE STUDY

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Turning vision into reality When artist Antony Gormley contracted Had-Fab to fabricate his newest landmark sculpture, it was immediately obvious that the complexity of ‘Exposure’ would require the latest in 3D Building Information Modelling software and steel fabrication technology.

A

ntony Gormley’s sculptures, often based on casts of his own body, adorn public spaces and galleries across the globe, from wellknown works like ‘Angel of the North’ to his newest creation ‘Exposure’.

Exposure, a 25.6m high statue of a crouching Gormley, was formally unveiled on 17 September in Lelystad, Holland. In order to realise his design, Gormley needed to work with an experienced steel tower fabricator and first approached Had-Fab in 2005 having received a recommendation from a contact in the electricity industry.

Exposure is a 25.6m high statue of a crouching Antony Gormley.

The web viewer also proved invaluable during the fabrication process, as Paul Mair, steel fabrication chargehand and site erection foreman at Had-Fab explains. “The web viewer was a necessity to gain the true angles of members as well as rotational and other important dimensional checks. Trying to establish all this from just a 2D assembly drawing would have been very confusing.”

The fabrication team also had a laptop with the full model on at their disposal for clarification purposes allowing them to rotate the model and interrogate from any angle.

From vision to ‘as-built’ model

From ‘as-built ’ model to reality

Simon Harrison, managing director of Had-Fab, was under no illusion as to the difficulties that lay ahead.

“When I first saw the project, it was apparent that there would be a number of challenges if we took the job on. However, I was confident that the combination of our design and fabrication team, Tekla Structures, Steel Projects and Ficep would ensure the success of this high profile project.”

The initial shape was designed in collaboration with Cambridge University and Royal Haskoning then design models were created in both Staad Pro and SCIA Engineer software for analysis before the SCIA model was transferred directly into Tekla Structures for detailing by Had-Fab. Reference models from other software packages were also imported to assist with checking rotation and alignment of the node members from the original design.

Like transmission towers, Exposure is fabricated from rolled steel angle (RSA) sections but that is where the similarity ends. Although the main model was created in Tekla Structures 13, Version 14 was used for modelling the individual nodes, the heaviest of which weighs 280kg. Such was their complexity, Had-Fab relied on Tekla’s detailing tools, and most notably the powerful cutting and automated split functions, to formulate an efficient process for modelling the nodes.

In addition, Tekla worked with Had-Fab to develop a number of useful macros and user-defined components for cutting and intersecting the node members.

With such a complex and precisely engineered structure, effective collaboration was critical to the success of the project. Had-Fab used Tekla Structures’ web viewer tool to provide Royal Haskoning’s engineer Eelco de Winter with 3D details of the nodes, which enabled him to confirm that their construction met his design requirements.

Had-Fab invested in a new Ficep CNC machine specifically for the Exposure project to add to its three existing machines.

The new HP16T6 CNC angle line offered a host of new technology which, when combined with the in-feed transfer speed of up to 100m/min, offered Had-Fab a number of advantages. The machine can be equipped with automatic feeding and loading, punching, drilling with tool changer, notching, marking utilising cassette or individual characters, quickchange punch and die sets, quick-change shear blades, and automatic part unloading for the out-feed conveyor.

The machine was further enhanced by Steel Projects WinSTEEL software, which interfaced directly with Tekla Structures to create the codes for the Ficep machine.

By directly importing Tekla files and contract phases, WinSTEEL allows for control and management of parts, profile databases, machine and tooling cycles to automatic part routing to machines. Users are also able to view graphical representations of the parts or bars at all stages of the production process.

The steel was punched and sheared to length by the equipment and skilled, labour-intensive shaping of the material was carried out to form 547 nodes consisting of up to 29 angles meeting together to form locating points around the structure. These were subsequently joined together with longer angles bolted and welded in position.

In total there were 32,000 holes punched or drilled in the angle profiles.

The complexity of fabrication required that HadFab undertake a full trial erection of ‘Exposure’ before commencing delivery to site in Holland. This involved the design, fabrication and erection of a crane in its assembly yard, for which Had-Fab also poured 540 tonnes of concrete foundations. The total weight of the project is 60 tonnes and it took 18 months to complete fabrication and erection. www.hadfabltd.co.uk / www.tekla.co.uk

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

CASE STUDY

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Revit 2011: first impressions Paul Woddy takes a look at Autodesk Revit 2011 and finds a user-friendly release that is more intuitive than older versions.

I

t is not quite 2011 yet but just to keep people like me permanently confused Autodesk Revit 2011 has been launched and is already at service pack one before I even get around to writing about it. Looking on the bright side, at least that means I have a fair amount of usage under my belt upon which to comment.

The controversial User Interface has had some further tweaking, the most noticeable feature being the always-on nature of the properties box. While this takes some getting used to, and I tended to find I was actually switching it off when I forget it was already on the screen waiting for me, now that I am accustomed to it, I love it — being able to scan through the properties of a collection of objects is so much better and quicker.

As to the rest of the user interface and the changes to icons, Autodesk has introduced far more consistency into the mix with common buttons being in the same place across all the context menus which is great, but as for the improved icons and layout of the tools, I sometimes wish they would leave things alone a bit. Don’t get me wrong, I always have and still do think that the Ribbon is a better system, and I also think that the placement of some commands was a bit dodgy, but for the average user trying to get work done, it was not so bad that it needed to be moved around again.

Keyboard shortcuts While I have a head of steam I may as well get my other rant out of the way — keyboard shortcuts. I have for many releases circulated a revised set of keyboard shortcuts that congregate around the left-hand end of the keyboard, leaving the right-hand on the mouse. I know this does not suit wrong-handed people, but it suits me.

Most of the keys within easy reach of my left hand had at least one, often two common commands attached to it, if you include the thumb hovering over the spacebar. So for instance W-Space would draw a wall and WW would add a window, so the ability to use the spacebar was a huge bonus to efficiency.

Lots of shortcuts may start with a W but when listed alphanumerically, the first of these could make use of the spacebar, hence the fact that WA was assigned to wall meant that it was the first of the W’s.

Then the new XML format was brought in, and while the same principle exists, the shortcut that can be used in conjunction with the spacebar is now based on which one comes first in the XML file. So instead of a wall, I now set my work-plane, cascade my views or any number of activities before I get to my trusty wall. Now I guess that some of you may be thinking, ‘the A key is next to the W key so it is no big SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

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Some other notable improvements to look out for include the ongoing improvements to interoperability with other Autodesk products such as AutoCAD, Inventor and 3ds Max; a ‘Repeat Last Command’, which I know a lot of users have been requesting for some time, as they have for the ability to change the font size for temporary dimensions; the select all instances now allows differentiation between the current view and the whole model, which I guess will save some time as well.

Much of my time of late is spent with larger teams on multi-discipline collaborative projects, sharing models between the stakeholders and dealing with the issues of document control, element ownership and BS1192, as well as the technical aspects of worksets and model linking.

While Autodesk has yet to really tackle some of the protocol issues, it has at least made the file linking and transmittal process easier with a few neat improvements:

•

Ability to open/close Worksets for linked models • Ability to apply View Filters to linked models from host model • Ability to tag elements in linked files, with the exception of rooms, spaces, and areas • Ability to automatically generate a ceiling grid from walls in a linked model

Multithreading for rendering in Revit has been around for a few releases now but now the four-core limit has been removed.

deal’ but it is the principle. We have precious little we can tinker with in terms of the Revit UI and the old process was not broken.

Staying with keyboard shortcuts, but heading back into my usual ground of being upbeat about Revit, we finally have the ability to drill down into the depths of a command with the shortcuts, and do what AutoCAD has always been able to do. I can enter a shortcut to draw a rectangular or circular wall rather than just a wall and then pick the circle or rectangle shape.

Autodesk has moved to a web-based help provision. Not sure what advantage this gives but I can see it being a problem for those who use commuter time to learn new products and features. I also don’t know if this is just me, but every time I try to search a topic, I get ‘No Matches Found’.

Multithreading for rendering in Revit has been around for a few releases now but in 2011, the fourcore limit has been removed so powerful machines can be used to speed up the production of highquality imagery.

Hardware acceleration (DX9) is switched on by default, although this is only available with appropriate hardware and so even though I had a brand new machine, I had to switch it off to get even sensible performance.

Previous versions of Revit were unable to maintain the expected level of geometric accuracy at locations farther than one mile from the project origin. Revit will now maintain a high level of geometric accuracy for elements placed within 20 miles of the project origin.

Revit MEP is finally ready for release in the UK. Up until now, the only people moving to Revit MEP have been the brave and adventurous or those with their arms firmly twisted. Many of these pioneers have managed to produce some great results — despite Revit. In MEP 2011 however, with new UK-specific libraries, oval ducts and cable containment we finally have a product which is a viable option for Building Services Engineers and technicians on its own merits rather than simply because other stakeholders in a multi-disciplinary team have bullied them into it.

The impact of this market-ready MEP module will be larger than may at first be considered. Many larger firms, usually slow in adopting a new release, have pushed or started to push all disciplines across to 2011 in order that the Building Services teams can use the new tool. Added to this the snowball effect of peer pressure and I think this may well be a defining moment in the growing BIM story.

Revit 2011 is a good user-friendly release.

Users will find it more intuitive than older versions, and I can operate 2011 faster and more efficiently than I could 2010, which I guess is what we are all looking for. www.autodesk.com

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Get the picture W

ith architectural visualisation projects increasingly pandering to the world of polished snapshots of photorealistic bliss, some artists are looking to create more interpretive artworks, writes Stephen Holmes.

The non-photorealistic artist’s impression tool, Piranesi, is a tool of choice for visualisation artists seeking to create a ‘scene’ rather than a shiny, if

Matias Garza Known for its soft stylings, artistic flourishes and ability to mimic paint tools, Piranesi can also be used to develop photorealistic visualisations into something more creative.

Matias Garza of BBA Architects, Brenham, Texas has used Piranesi alongside more photorealistic tools such as 3ds Max to great effect.

“When done properly, photorealistic computer generated renderings can express with great accuracy and even artistically the design intent of the project,” says Matias. “However, with Piranesi we can remain flexible in the design and still convey creatively the intent of the project.

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a little sterile, photo. Often its many effects are combined with those of 3D CAD data and 2D software to build up layered images with a great deal of character and flair, or broken edged ‘sketches’ with watercolour washes.

AEC Magazine spoke with three visualisation artists to find out what leads them to create works with a more impressionist edge.

“Illustrations created in Piranesi have a warmer feel to them as opposed to their counterparts whose images are much more rigid.

“Piranesi has a unique style of post production, which allows our office to touch up, add foliage and provide a variety of out of the box effects to images created from SketchUp and Autodesk 3ds Max. “We use Piranesi with other ‘photorealistic’ visualisation tools. Along with artistic renditions, our experience has been to use Piranesi not only for artistic images but for photorealistic images as well.

“For our final photorealistic images, we create a barebones scene with other visualisation software and use Piranesi to apply the photorealistic cut outs, touch ups and material alterations.”

ecco lau ecco lau is an architect working for JZFZ Architects in Chengdu, China, creating diverse visualisations using a mixture of Google SketchUp and Piranesi.

“In China, the time for design is always short,” says ecco. “With this method all I need is just 2030 minutes to complete one rendering.

“Piranesi is compatible with the 3D files from SketchUp, having a similar process to the SketchUp renderer and Photoshop. It is faster, more diverse and even more artistic, so I choose Piranesi to be the tool for my work.

“Piranesi is much more like a 3D Photoshop and painter: all effects and styles can be built or imitated,” explains ecco, adding that the style library makes it a fast and efficient way of producing effective renderings. “I created some of my own styles and save them here, including day-time style, night style, watercolour style and some other special styles.

“Not all the clients can understand the ideas of the designer just by the non-intuitive plans, elevations and sections, so it is necessary to use creative visualisations to express the inspiration and ideas.

“If there is some moderate-looking house, in a visualisation it is possible to make customers feel the different charms of the house.”

AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Elder Cavalcantti In a profession where customers are becoming used to photorealism, it can be a case that the least ‘lifelike’ visualisations are the ones that catch the eye.

Based in Brazil, Elder Cavalcantti treats his visualisations as an artist would a painting, adding lighting effects to create a mood.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

“I still believe in the power that the concept can pass to people,” says Cavalcantti.

“Piranesi brings with it a number of facilities that allow me to work with my pictures dramatically, giving them the most impact as possible. I refer especially to my night scenes that in many cases exceed the expectations of customers who often expect only a photorealistic image.

“A photorealistic image causes the designer make the

terrible mistake of compromising too much with an idea that may be not fully matured or not exactly what the customer is looking for.

“A conceptual idea leaves the architect with more freedom to turn back a few steps and make adjustments as necessary.”

“For even an intermediate Piranesi user it is really easy to give life to a project — this often doesn’t happen when it is shown as a photorealistic image.”

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When it rains it pours? Backed by many of the major software developers we could soon be flooded by cloud-based CAD applications.

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AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Design forecast: CAD in the cloud Without the design and engineering community really asking for it, we appear to be on the cusp of a major change in the way we gain access and use computer aided design technology. Martyn Day investigates

T

his year’s hot topic in the world of design software has been ‘the cloud’. For those not up on the scuttlebutt, most software houses appear to be falling over themselves to develop products and services which can be delivered to your desktop via the Internet. True ‘cloud’ products don’t arrive on a disc in a cardboard box, they are remotely streamed, run through a browser or are partially downloaded; they are on-demand and hosted on huge server farms around the world and require little local processing.

Have no doubts, this will lead to a big change in how we buy, access and use design tools.

While talking with Carl Bass, CEO of Autodesk, he explained how he sees the move to cloud-based

applications as a possible ‘extinction level event’ in computing. Looking back many large software firms that were big in the days of DOS fell from grace when we moved to Windows and new firms came to the fore. Bass noted that Autodesk was almost one of those, producing R13, a disastrous first true Windows version of AutoCAD. He is convinced that the increasing prevalence of cloud applications will again be a hurdle for CAD developers to jump and not all are guaranteed to make it. Bass isn’t alone in this thinking, the same mindset has been exposed in conversations with Jeff Ray, CEO of SolidWorks and Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systèmes. All of which are actively porting their well-known brands into the cloud. There is a belief that the company to get there first, with the right technology, will have commercial advantage.

As an engineer or architect reading all this, I would not blame you for wondering what any of this has to do with benefiting the real world? In fact, it’s worrying as the necessity of having a fat internet connection to do your job sounds completely unappealing and a retrograde step. This is like back to the future, 1970s client-server architectures, but instead of LAN you’ll be relying on public networks

number of benefits for customers:

• The processing power available at these server

farms means near instant analysis/rendering results.

• Agility, in that all engineering software will be

immediately accessible, everywhere.

• Managing and installing CAD software or updates

across an enterprise is no longer an issue.

• Design data is hosted remotely, accessible

anywhere.

• Software will run on any platform that has a browser.

• Cost savings in reducing the need for expensive

hardware purchases.

• Unlimited storage.

• Increased mobility for employees.

However there are intrinsic benefits for the software developers too:

• Piracy is difficult when software is never sent

outside the company.

• Subscription becomes mandatory, smoothing

revenues.

• The software vendor can identify and deal directly

with all active users.

• Dealer and distribution channels move to servicing

Cloudy benefits

Given that some pretty fundamental current technology problems can be overcome, there appear to be a

clients rather than selling and taking a % of sales.

• The need to develop for multiple operating systems reduces.

• There’s extra money to be made selling processing

time for quicker results.

• With huge processing resources, developers can

offer powerful new analysis tools to the masses.

• An increased potential to take market share.

• Support can be centralised.

So while there are benefits for the software developers, there are some upsides for customers too, though most of these are more easily identified at the enterprise level of business. For a designer the easiest advantage to identify is the speed of analysis but there are still fundamental worries about reliability or service, required bandwidth and the need for the umbilical attachment to the internet to do your job.

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Delivery While you may read PC magazines which state that these cloud applications are some way off, think again. In some industries they are already here and incredibly popular, Salesforce.com, the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) company, springs to mind. CAD applications are a little more tricky than a CRM application, as they need fast 3D graphics.

However, this year that problem already looks to be a null point with companies like onlive.com offering high-resolution real-time access to server-hosted games. Onlive compresses the graphics and squirts that down the Internet to a thin client giving frame rates of up to 30 frames per second, all this while taking the mouse and keyboard commands back from the client machine to control the game. If it takes off, who ever needs to buy a console again?

To some extent, the cloud is already here Since 2005, PTC has offered ‘PLM On Demand’ in conjunction with IBM, which provides Windchill engineering document management via the web. This year Autodesk launched its first cloud-application, Autodesk Homestyler, in the USA (www.homestyler. com), formerly project Dragonfly, the software allows the creation of pseudo-3D housing floorplans with the ability to add interior decoration.

In terms of professional graphics-intensive cloud applications, you don’t have to look far to see what’s coming. Autodesk has multiple cloud applications under test on its Labs website and at this year’s SolidWorks World we were shown SolidWorks running on an Apple Macintosh via the cloud. The company’s CEO, Jeff Ray, has also stated that it will be launching a cloud-based application later this year (I am expecting this any month now). Similarly Siemens PLM Software recently gave a demonstration of its high-end NX application running on an Apple iPad! Expect to see more cloud applications and services start to be included in the main mix of offerings from the key CAD vendors from this month onwards.

Doubt With the software developers running to compete with one another to launch themselves into the cloud, the interesting role we have had is watching the

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bemusement of many engineers by all this activity. A case in point was the ‘Twitter’ reaction to SolidWorks’ demonstration of its cloud technology at SolidWorks World. After the initial elation at seeing some very cool technology, delegates then started to wonder if they really needed this and what the implications would be for their jobs. It really did appear to be more of a hangover than euphoria, which I assume was not the intended response.

The current downsides are very obvious. Internet connections go down or degrade to snails pace. What happens then? Do you really want your data stored on a public server? What happens if everything becomes

“This is like back to the future, 1970s client-server architectures, but instead of LAN you’ll be relying on public networks” a micro-payment- pay as you go CAD? What happens if you stop subscribing, how can you see your data?

And I get the feeling that nobody really wants to give up control.

PTC From talking with all the key software vendors on this issue, there is only one voice of caution and that’s Boston-based PTC, developer of Pro/Engineer and Windchill, amongst many others.

Brian Shepherd, executive vice-president, product development, wanted to go on record as to how PTC saw all this talk of the cloud and CAD as hype. He explained, “We are agnostic around the cloud. We don’t feel the need to, or think we should be championing CAD on the cloud to our customers. With our conversations with customers, they have not identified a problem that cloud delivery of CAD would address.

To be clear, we are not anti-cloud. Areas such as grid computing around CAE is interesting, and can make some sense but there just hasn’t been the demand for CAD on the cloud.”

So, while PTC can see PLM as a cloud service and potentially for CAE analysis, when it comes to modelling over the cloud, Shepherd appeared at a loss as to what the benefit would be.

He continued, “Will CAD be faster on the cloud than it is on the desktop? Maybe for CAE that could be true but for CAD that might not be true, which is a surely a step backwards In fact, cloud computing in CAD sounds like a solution in search of a problem today.”

“We are not trying to get distracted by all this hype. It seems to me that our competitors aren’t exactly sure what the cloud is actually good for but they sure are worried about it. The value proposition of the benefit of CAD in the cloud has not been articulated well by them or anyone today, and that’s the definition of hype.”

“Maybe our competition have different customers to us but this conversation simply does not happen when we talk to our customers.”

While PTC’s stance certainly seems to make sense, my main fear is that the company, like Autodesk, almost dropped the ball when the engineering market moved to Windows. PTC ignored SolidWorks and Windows and it almost got eaten alive. PLM On-demand was certainly released ahead of the curve and perhaps the low take up of that product has clouded the company’s view of the potential demand. Certainly, I could not find a similar opinion at any of the other vendors I talked to.

Siemens PLM Software This summer Siemens PLM issued press releases showing its first moves into the cloud. The company is porting its Tecnomatix DPV Quality software onto Windows Azure Platform to deliver quality management via the cloud which will offer a ‘closed loop’ management and analysis process with its Teamcenter database. It has also demonstrated NX on the Apple iPad and has announced plans to deliver cloud-enabled viewing tools of its popular JT 3D format with Microsoft.

To find out more, I talked ‘cloud’ with Eric AEC MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Sterling, senior vice-president of global marketing.

He said, “We see the cloud as an emerging place to do business and while there are social and process questions that everyone is asking about, we are looking for business processes where using the cloud to deliver value makes sense. For every instance we are evaluating the business and process benefit. For the Tecnomatix DPV announcement, there is a great customer benefit, getting information from plant floors and bringing that to a central location. It’s efficient, fast and enhances the process.”

When it comes to the broader question of CAD applications, like NX and Solid Edge, Sterling was more open minded, stating that the benefits still remain to be seen but he could see ‘internal clouds’private networks inside companies as being of value, especially for users of Teamcenter. On the issue of NX and Solid Edge, a lot of the work appears to have been done, the iPad demonstration a case in point.

However, Sterling told me Siemens PLM Software recognises that customers are still questioning the benefits and have similarly yet to hear a clamour for cloud-based design tools. I asked what if Autodesk and Dassault Systèmes were to hit the market running with their forthcoming cloud-applications? Sterling replied, “We are prepared.”

Autodesk I have saved the two most aggressive cloudenvisioned companies till last. Autodesk has no pretensions as to where it thinks technology is heading, on a recent visit to Autodesk Labs I counted no less than nine cloud-based applications on trial:

• 2D/3D share now — for sharing files on the web

• Inventor Optimization — a cloud-based design optimisation program.

The final demonstration was Project Twitch, which uses onlive’s video compression technology (Autodesk is an investor) to deliver live sessions of AutoCAD, Maya, 3ds Max, Revit Architecture and Inventor over the Internet. If this works and it goes live, then Autodesk is ready to deliver its key applications via the cloud anytime it sees fit.

Behind the scenes and outside of labs, Autodesk is undertaking a massive rewriting of all its code to be less reliant on Windows and more cloud-deployable.

There is already a Mac version of AutoCAD in the works and other key applications may follow.

In a recent conversation with Brian Mathews, vice president of Autodesk Labs, he explained how the key benefit of cloud-computing is being missed.

In the current pricing, it costs the same to ‘hire’ 10,000 processors for an hour, as it does to hire one for 10,000 hours. So for the same price, you get an instant solution to your analysis problem. It’s a nobrainer, as they say.

Because of this, CEO Carl Bass believes that the move to the cloud is inevitable, both for mainstream applications and high-end CAD, behind and in front of a firewall. Bass also sees private clouds are becoming a reality as everyone’s data is being moved to datastores, the success of Salesforce.com and Google shows that mindsets about data and applications have changed.

Bass made an important analogy as to where the cloud is today and where he believes it will go, “I think most of the (negative) noise about cloud apps is misplaced — it’s like looking at a (Intel) 286 and saying it will never replace SGI and Sun workstations.

We all know what happened there.”

service and we believe it will be important to offer our tools on demand too. We are doing a lot of research as to how we can make this possible.”

At this year’s recent SWYM conference in Paris, it was obvious that Dassault Systèmes is on the cusp of delivering some serious web-based applications and as owner of SolidWorks, this now appears to be a company-wide strategy, with the previously mentioned SolidWorks demonstration.

From reading between the lines, it seems that Enovia — the company’s collaborative PLM database — has been built-into the core of its applications and through a cloud-based service can connect multiple users to a single model. Here, a lightweight user-interface of Catia (and even SolidWorks) could be downloaded with the CAD data kept on the web. Access to the multitude of powerful engineering analysis applications could also be hosted and delivered on-demand.

Dassault Systèmes has been keen on this vision for years. Back in 2008, Charlès said, “The next big thing for AEC [Architecture Engineering Construction] will be a new type of on-line application for 3D design in architecture. The 3D processes in that industry are far behind and I believe it will change and it will happen online.” The benefit of a web-based AEC application for Dassault is that it doesn’t have an AEC sales channel, going online will bypass this problem and for this to work, Catia needs to be a cloud-based application. I don’t think we have long to wait to see more detail on this.

Dassault Systèmes is gunning for Autodesk, not only in MCAD but soon also in AEC. For Dassault, the cloud levels the playing field and gives potential access to its competitor’s customers via a web browser.

Dassault Systèmes

Conclusion

I first realised Dassault Systèmes was looking to deliver its flagship Catia modelling tool on the web when I interviewed the company CEO, Bernard Charlès in 2008. Then Charlès said, “The web isn’t only the future, it’s the present — we live in a connected world.

It’s an enabling technology for so many things and a foundation for many fundamental business processes, like PLM 2.0.... There’s a big move to software as a

Despite current limitations, the overwhelming feedback is that you will see commercial designapplications arrive via the cloud this year, increasing dramatically over the next five. Analysis and rendering is the sweet spot at the start, to make use of all those server-farm processors but core cloud-based designapplications are coming fairly soon, as we move to a more on-demand model of computer usage.

via the Freewheel DWF server.

• Project bluestreak — a web-based collaboration

environment.

• Project butterfly — a web-based review and mark- up tool.

• Project Freewheel — a DWF server.

• Project neon — cloud-based rendering.

• Project Photofly — turns 2D photographs into a 3D model.

• Project Showroom — view and edit photorealistic scenes in real time.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

COMMENT

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AP Urbanism&landscape A4(4):Mise en page 1

19/08/10

16:33

Page 1

2011 www.imagina.mc

The european 3D simulation and visualization event

+ Urbanism and Landscape conference track: How can 3D improve the prospects of an urban area, town or city?

How is georeferenced 3D adopted by engineering firms?

Natural environments – can 3D help us to preserve them more effectively?

+ Architecture conference track: Digital modelling – in all its forms What BIM could and should be – and what it will be in the future

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Arcon 3D Architect Professional Eleco, the developer of the Grand Designs 3D software for home builders, has just released a professional CAD solution for small architectural firms. Greg Corke reports.

I

t takes a considerable commitment to invest in a fully-featured Building Information Modelling system, such as Revit or ArchiCAD. While the rewards can be huge, the cost of software and training can be off putting for some small architectural practices. With this in mind keeping things simple and performing all design and documentation in a 2D package continues to be a popular option. With a new wave of free 2D CAD software available in the market, such as DraftSight from Dassault Systèmes and DoubleCAD from IMSI, it has never been easier.

But what if you want more than just lines, arcs and circles? What if you want to produce architectural drawings and rendered images, but don’t want to spend a fortune on high-end software?

This is where Eleco’s new £495 Arcon 3D Architect Professional software comes into play. It is designed for architects, town planners and property developers who want to document their designs with dimensioned 2D drawings, elevations and sections, and then generate 3D rendered views for presentations and planning purposes.

The software is typical of dedicated architectural design systems. You lay down cavity walls in 2D, at set distances and angles, or by snapping to a grid or guides. Internal walls can then be added and each space is defined as a room with the system able to automatically calculate floor areas.

Doors and windows can be dragged and dropped from a library with wall openings automatically created on the fly. If these are then deleted or moved the wall heals automatically. Double clicking on a door or window allows the dimensions to be edited and a dedicated door and window designer can also be used to develop more complex fittings such as bays for existing walls.

Beyond standard doors and windows Arcon 3D Architect Professional comes with a huge library of parts – 7,000 in total – and these can be added to with a custom object designer.

While drafting takes place in 2D, walls, doors windows and other objects include height data so a 3D model is actually being built in parallel. This makes it easy to produce elevations and sections and the entire design can also be viewed in an interactive 3D preview window.

Arcon 3D Architect is capable of dealing with multi-storey buildings, with support for up to 30 floors. To help reduce workload, entire floors can be duplicated and all elements, such a doors and windows automatically transferred.

Looking to streamline what are typically complex parts of the architectural drafting process, the system includes dedicated macros to help design stairs,

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

roofs, frames and chimneys. For roofs, users can set pitch, height of eaves, etc and the resulting system is automatically generated. Advanced editing tools enable overhangs to be applied and additional polygon points can be added to allow for non-standard shapes and styles. Dormer windows, skylights and solar panels can also be incorporated into the design.

For final 2D documentation the software ships with a separate application called Creative Lines 3.5.

This enables users to load in an Arcon 3D Architect project and create multiple drawing views on a single sheet. A dedicated 2D drafting solution in its own right, Creative Lines can also be used to add drawing details, gradient fills, title blocks and much more.

For 3D visualisation, Arcon 3D Architect Professional has a raytraced rendering engine built into it. The software includes an extensive library of textures, which can be dragged and dropped onto the 3D model and scaled and oriented. As with most architectural rendering solutions a good understanding of lighting is required to get the best effects.

Despite the claims of its developers the system is not photorealistic, but some good results can be achieved as illustrated by the render that accompanies this review. Import and export of 3ds files is also included to make use of existing rendering investments. N.B. On the subject of interoperability the software also offers import/export of DWG/DXF files.

The rendering engine can also be used to perform sun studies, in relation to geographic location,

Product Info Product: Arcon 3D Architect Profesional Supplier: Eleco Price: £495 Website: www.3darchitect.co.uk

season and time. However, as each frame needs to be rendered from scratch to see the results, unlike the real-time updates offered by many BIM applications, it is not a particularly efficient workflow for design exploration.

For more interactive presentations, projects can be exported and viewed in a free to download viewer. This enables walkthroughs, though only basic collision detection is included and it is not possible to ‘walk’ up stairs.

Conclusion With Arcon 3D Architect Professional Eleco is looking to provide a one-stop shop for small architectural practices. The software not only offers a broad range of productivity tools for creating architectural plans and elevations, but also helps users build on their investment by transforming drawings into 3D visualisations.

In terms of its usability the interface is a little dated, but everything is clearly laid out, and the dialogue boxes are easy to understand. It also comes with a quick start guide and tutorials to help get users up to speed.

Arcon 3D Architect Professional will not suit everyone, but for those that want to add automation to their drafting and present their work in 3D without going the whole BIM route the software is worth further investigation.

Render of a house modelled in Arcon 3D Architect Profesional.

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PHOTO CREDIT: SKY1/RED EARTH STUDIO LTD

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Make it easier on the road Constantly on the road, Rob Jamieson knows a thing or two about mobile workstations. From choosing the best CPU to how to travel in cattle class, he shares his top tips for buying a professional level laptop.

I

n recent years there has been a change in work methods at modern companies with individuals increasingly working from home or in remote locations. For CAD users one of the enabling technologies for mobile computing must be the workstation laptop, but which one?

Every year (or so) a new generation of workstation laptops are released. They are generally split into three groups with the size of the monitor dictating the perceived use. This means you get 14, 15 and 17-inch screens with options for backlighting and screen use.

graphics card, why do I get artefacts in the background when running my software.” The answer is, driver support is paramount.

Larger format laptops can support multiple drives that can be ‘Raided’ or use a SSD (Solid State Drive) or a mix. Due to their design SSDs suffer less from movement where hard disks can crash. The down side is if there is a failure you lose all the data on the drive.

They also have quicker read speeds.

Larger laptops have more memory slots, which is always useful as all CAD applications love RAM. Many 17-inch workstation laptops now have 4 DIMM slots, whereas 14 and 15-inch models only have two. When weighing up the comparable cost of different sized machines it’s a consideration that 4 x 2GB DIMMs might be cheaper than 2 x 4GB DIMMs. A good example of a 17-inch laptop with 4 x DIMM slots is the Dell M6500 with ATI FirePro M7740 and 1GB just for the graphics card. That’s a lot of power in a mobile workstation if you are prepared to carry it.

Super-sized Seventeen inch laptops are considered more of a desktop replacement and can be quite heavy with separate, larger power supply units (PSUs). These offer the highest specifications with more options for memory, and multiple hard disks, and they have the fastest CPUs and professional graphics. The most powerful workstation laptops have the option of a four core CPU. Of course this costs more but if you have multithreaded applications, like rendering and simulation, the extra cores will help.

While giving ‘desktop workstation’ levels of performance 17-inch laptops are compromised on portability and battery life. Because of their bulk it’s also hard to use them on a train or plane.

One of the big problems with laptops is how to extract the heat produced from the CPU, GPU and hard disk. Putting four cores into a notebook requires good power and heat management. To solve this manufacturers use the smallest die chips and management routines that make cores idle if the machine perceives limited usage. It’s worth spending some time investigating these power saving modes as some multithreaded applications might not be flagged as ‘multi threaded enabled’ inside the management software and as a result not run all the cores.

The other issue is that the current highest clock speed processors available in laptops are dual core (this might change soon). Most CAD applications still prefer a high clock speed. In some recent tests carried out by a CAD distributor based on price the dual core chip out performed its quad core counterpart in graphics and compute, primarily because it had a higher clock speed.

One of the primary reasons that workstation laptops exist is the support of the professional graphics card for CAD applications. These follow a certification process and offer features that CAD applications require. I’ve been asked before: “I have a Sony Vaio with a standard SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010 AEC MAGAZINE

Rob Jamieson likes the balance between portability and performance offered

by Lenovo’s W500.

The compromise I like mobility and a top spec so I compromise with a 15-inch laptop. You can get the top speed dual core CPUs and save your shoulder from injury. I like the dual hard disk option so I’ve swapped out a CD/DVD burner for a SSD drive to store data. I can also transfer this to my main desktop as a backup if you get an external SATA cable, and these are quite cheap as an option for desktops. I also carry a DVD burner with me so I can

“In recent tests the dual core chip outperformed its quad core counterpart in graphics and compute, because it had a higher clock speed”

swap it with the SSD as and when required but I find I use it less and less now with the advent of USB drives.

The backup One of the biggest problems with mobile computing is remembering to do a backup. Laptops can be lost or damaged easily. Who hasn’t gone to the pub for a swift drink after work and ended up rolling out at closing time. “Did I have my laptop with me?” We ask.

Docking stations and auto backup routines are a good way but we all know that the laptop becomes unusable while a backup is going on. If you do have a backup like this, test it by putting the data onto another machine. Countless times I’ve seen people backup rubbish or the wrong files. It took a colleague of mine a week to recover after having a damaged laptop drive.

I backup my PST (Outlook) and data files. If I have a major crash I expect to have to reinstall the applications from scratch. I find imaging a system and then restoring it to a replacement system is always hard work.

I have a Lenovo W500 with 4GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 160GB SSD and an ATI FirePro V5700 512Mb graphics card. I use fingerprint recognition software and carry it everywhere. I’m a big fan of the build quality.

Thinking small In my personal opinion, 14-inch workstation laptops aren’t worth the time. The screen is too small and there is not enough power in CPU or graphics to drive CAD. For a review laptop in the field it might work but for me they are not good. If I need to travel light I take a netbook for browsing the web and doing a basic presentation. I’m lucky enough to have one, but not all of us have the luxury of two machines.

One of the biggest benefits of a notebook/laptop can also be one of the biggest problems. With a powerful mobile workstation you can work anywhere and this is not always good as companies expect you to do this. I’m not advocating skiving but sometimes time away from a problem means you can think clearly and solve it. When I work from home it’s often when I’m making or eating lunch that I solve a problem or have a new idea. For me it’s not just about mobility but your working practices to get the most out of your time.

Rob Jamieson is a marketing manager at AMD. In case you don’t believe that 17-inch laptops and standard class don’t mix, just ask the poor guy sat next to him on BA0285 a few years back. This article is his own opinion and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. robert.jamieson@amd.com

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InterPro workstations IPW-Ci7

This six CPU core workstation is an excellent proposition for mainstream 3D CAD users who use rendering or analysis as an integral part of their workflow, writes Greg Corke.

I

nterPro’s latest CAD/CAM/CAE workstation, the IPW-Ci7 (ATI Edition) is another six-core workhorse, a variation on the machine the Staffordbased system builder submitted for review in May 2010. Gone is the premium 3.33GHz Intel Core i7 980X Extreme Edition CPU and in its place is the more

Specifications • Intel Core i7 970 processor (3.2GHz) (six core) • 6GB (3 x 2GB) 1,333MHz DDR3 memory • MSI X58 PRO-E Mainboard (Intel X58 Express chipset) • 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E Solid State Drive (SSD) + 1TB 7,200RPM Samsung ‘Spinpoint’ F3 hard drive • AMD ATI FirePro V7800 (2GB) graphics card • Windows Windows 7 Professional 64-bit • 36 month return to base (RTB) (parts and labour) warranty

£2,095 ipworkstations.com CPU benchmarks (secs — smaller is better) CAD — 285 Simulation — 112 Rendering — 243 Graphics benchmarks (frames per sec — bigger is better) CAD — 30

cost effective 3.20GHz Intel Core i7 970. Then, giving the machine a greater emphasis on 3D graphics, it has been enhanced with one of AMD’s new generation professional boards, the 2GB ATI FirePro V7800, taking over from PNY’s ageing 768MB Nvidia Quadro FX 1800.

This new balance of CPU and GPU power is sure to put it directly in the line of sight of CAD users who work with large 3D datasets, though those with BIM or visualisation models of exceptional size may benefit from boosting the memory from 6GB to 12GB, either at time of purchase or as a relatively straightforward upgrade later on, populating the three spare memory slots with 2GB DDR3 modules.

In what is becoming an increasing trend in workstation storage, InterPro has coupled a Solid State Drive (SSD) with a standard mechanical platter hard drive. The 60GB OCZ Vertex 2E 2.5” SATA-II SSD takes pride of place in the machine’s drive bays playing host to the Windows 7 Professional 64-bit Operating System, applications and datasets. As far as drive capacities go 60GB is not a huge amount

Workstation Specialists WS2610

A dual CPU powerhouse that boasts exceptional compute performance, but with a price tag more at home on a small car it is likely to play a niche role in the AEC market says Greg Corke.

W

orkstations do not come much more powerful than this dual processor machine from Derbybased Workstation Specialists. Featuring two of Intel’s highest performing Xeon chips, the X5680, the machine boasts a total of twelve CPU cores running at 3.33GHz. This means exceptional amounts of power for rendering and multi-tasking, credentials that were proven out in our benchmarks.

Under our rendering test we barely had time to put the kettle on as the machine ripped through our HD scene in a mere 123 secs. Here, Intel’s HyperThreading technology plays a significant role and the mental ray rendering engine at the heart of 3ds Max Design 2011 means that the 12 virtual cores are also used to maximum effect.

Performance is one thing, but the WS2610 was also able to set the pace without breaking into a sweat.

With each Xeon X5680 CPU featuring a maximum thermal design power (TDP) of 130W, this was no mean feat. Fan noise became more apparent with repeated testing, but was still relatively quiet for such a powerful machine.

The WS2610’s low duty fans are also tasked with keeping PNY’s new Nvidia Quadro 4000 graphics card

The lowdown on Intel’s Core 15

34

HARDWARE

Specifications • 2 x Intel Xeon X5680 processors (3.33GHz) (six core) • 12GB (6 x 2GB) 1,333MHz ECC DDR3 memory • WS motherboard (Intel 5520X Workstation Chipset) • 120GB OCZ RevoDrive + 1TB 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda hard drives • PNY Nvidia Quadro 4000 (2GB) graphics card • Windows Windows 7 Professional 64-bit • 36 months full parts and labour system warranty

£5,055 workstationspecialists.com CPU benchmarks (secs — smaller is better) CAD — 270 Simulation — 111 Rendering — 123 Graphics benchmarks (frames per sec — bigger is better) CAD — 46

running cool – though for what is arguably the hottest running graphics card we have ever touched, cool is maybe not the best word to use here. The Quadro 4000 is one of three new Fermi-based professional graphics cards recently launched by Nvidia and under our 3D CAD graphics test delivered exceptional performance.

Workstation Specialists also offers the 2.5GB Quadro 5000 for an additional £840, but we would not expect much additional benefit for most 3D CAD users.

The rest of the WS2600’s spec is as you would expect from an ultra high-end workstation. 12GB of 1,333MHz ECC DDR-3 memory is included in 2GB modules, leaving six slots free for future upgrades.

There is also plenty of space for additional hard drives as there is only one ‘traditional’ drive in the form of a 1TB 7,200 RPM Seagate Barracuda. While this is reserved for ‘data’, for the main system drive a new generation solid state drive (SSD) technology slots directly into the PCI Express Bus, instead of using the more common SATA-II interface. Boasting a maximum read speed of 540MB/sec and a write speed of 480MB/sec, the 120GB OCZ RevoDrive is a serious piece of kit. To put it in perspective, typical SSDs claim maximum

and those that work with multiple applications should probably consider upgrading the capacity of the SSD. But with prices falling all the time, this should not impact the overall price of the system by a huge amount. Meanwhile, the 1TB Samsung ‘Spinpoint’ F3 7200 RPM Hard Drive SATA-II takes on the role of data storage and archive.

Overall, the IPW-Ci7 (ATI Edition) is a good all rounder for 3D CAD users who use rendering as an integral part of their workflow, and a serious alternative to more costly dual CPU machines. It is well built and quiet and would be a welcome addition to the desktops of many engineers and architects.

The changing role of the single CPU workstation First there were two, then four, and now six cores can be packed inside a single CPU. This, combined with the limited scaling of CAD applications over multiple CPU cores, means the role of the single processor workstation has changed considerably in recent years.

The boundaries between the entry-level and mid-range (the traditional stomping grounds of the single processor workstation) and the high-end have blurred.

So when do you double up? If you want to slash your render times there is no substitute for a dual processor system and with each CPU having its own dedicated memory there can be major benefits for multi-tasking

read / write speeds in the region of 200MB/sec.

From CPUs and memory to hard drive and graphics, the WS2610 is an incredibly high-spec workstation, specifically targeted at those serious about rendering or multitasking. As a result it comes with an equally serious price tag, which at £5,055, is likely it make it a one off purchase for most architecture or design visualisation firms.

AEC MAGAZINE

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2010

Rendered Speechless...

“Thanks to the performance and stability of our WS Workstations and rendering systems, we are able to complete our projects on time and on budget without any sleepless nights. Thank you WS” Nick Homer – F10 Studios

1 of F resy u o c ge Ima

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and rendering system technologies, we have a unique understanding of the industry and are able to customize EACH workstation, around the exact needs of EVERY customer, (Project, Budget or Application).

For your free consultation or demonstration please contact us.

© Copyright Workstation Specialists – Acecad Software Ltd. E & OE - Prices exc. VAT & are subject to chqnge without notice. All rights reserved. Logo & company/product names are trademarks of their respective owners.

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