AEC Magazine January / February 2021

IMAGE COURTESY OF PAUL JEFFRIES, RAMBOLL, SITESOLVE

Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

BESPOKE BIM How and why AEC firms are now developing their own tools

Rhino 7 interview AMD Threadripper Pro Streaming BIM from the cloud January / February 2021 >> Vol.112 p01_AEC_JANFEB21_Cover.indd 1

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Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

editorial

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Industry news 6

Death by COBie? 29

Rhino 7 delivers Rhino.Inside.Revit, Epic Games boosts development of new VR tool, Chaos Group delivers real-time ray tracing, plus lots, lots more

Solibri discusses common issues surrounding the production of COBie and why it seems so painful for many

Cover story: Bespoke BIM workflows 12 More and more firms are either developing their own code or paying for the creation of custom tools to refine their projects through computation.

Interview: Rhino 7 uncovered 18 The new release of Rhino is probably the most feature rich update in its history.

We talk with company CEO Bob McNeel and Scott Davidson to find out more

The future of AEC: an executive perspective 24 Four AEC technology executives discuss trends circling around the AEC industry and the impact of Covid-19

SLAM the cloud 32 With a growing trend to mix and match scanning technologies, Correvate now supports SLAM captured data in its point cloud registration cloud service

BIM documentation 34 As development of AutoCAD stagnates, competitors such as Gräbert are sensing an opportunity to improve the way documents are produced from BIM models

Virtual workstations 36 Hybrid deployments, software licensing, VR via the cloud and, of course, the ongoing impact of Covid-19

Lenovo ThinkStation P620 [Threadripper Pro] 40 Greg Corke puts the exciting new 64-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro workstation through its paces

Streaming BIM from the Epson SC-T3100M 49 cloud with Unreal 26 With its new compact 24-inch (A1) We caught up with Tridify’s CEO to learn more about its new BIM model streaming service that uses Unreal Engine

multifunction printer (MFP) Epson has plenty to shout about January / February 2021

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Š 2020 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Autodesk and Revit are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc., in the USA and other countries. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.

Nvidia Quadro P1000 cost of $339.00 on Amazon.com viewed on 14 April 2020. AMD SEP of $199.00. All pricing in USD and may vary regionally. AMD SEP pricing correct as of 01 August 2020.

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News

Rhino 7 brings Rhino and Grasshopper inside Revit

Zhongnan Center invests in new VR tool hongnan Center, part of the Zhongnan Group, one of China’s largest property developers, is to use VR software from Norwegian firm Dimension10 (D10) to aid communication and collaboration on projects.

This includes a 500m tall skyscraper in Suzhou Industrial Park which, when completed, will contain a hotel as well as residential and office space.

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■ dimension10.com

hino 7 has launched with a typical whisper campaign from its developer Robert McNeel and Associates.

The big news for architects is the official release of Rhino.Inside.Revit, which brings Rhino and Grasshopper into the Autodesk Revit environment.

According to McNeel, it bridges the gap between Rhino’s freeform modelling and the world of BIM, opening Grasshopper’s rich ecosystem to the Revit environment, enabling completely new design workflows and possibilities.

In practice, it means modelling can be done in Rhino and used to drive live geometry creation in Revit. Grasshopper scripts can also be used to create native models using actual Revit components.

Data can be round tripped, with geometry sucked out of Revit into Rhino.

New Sub-D modelling tools is the other big news for Rhino 7, primed for users new and old to create freeform organic shapes with quick editing ability.

McNeel states that, unlike traditional

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SubD objects, which are mesh-based and lend themselves well to more approximate types of modelling; SubD objects in Rhino 7 are ‘high precision’ spline-based surfaces that bring a new level of accuracy to the process of creating complex freeform shapes.

Additionally, Rhino 7 has improved its presentation tools, streamlining the workflow with a major update to the Rhino Render engine, meaning that the same look you get in your ray-traced viewport can be rendered without any changes. It has also added support for Physically-Based Rendering materials, a LayerBook command, and more.

The display pipeline has also been upgraded to match modern graphics hardware. In Rhino 7, some models will display faster on both Windows and Mac, while several refinements to the Display Modes have been made.

We explore Rhino 7 in more detail on page 18 in an interview with the company’s CEO Bob McNeel and Scott Davidson.

■ rhino3d.com

Epic boosts development of new VR tool heia Interactive has been awarded an ‘Epic MegaGrant’ to accelerate the development of its new collaborative VR tool, “BigRoom”, currently in closed beta.

Created for use with Epic’s Unreal Engine, BigRoom is billed as a virtual design planning room for distributed teams, including architects, project managers, designers, and contractors.

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The software is designed to make it easy to create and share online meeting rooms where VR and desktop users can interact, review designs, and explore and edit projects created in Unreal.

Features include material configurators, presentation boards & live video monitors, task lists & Post-It notes, and bookmarking and comparison tools.

■

theia.io

Immersive 4D to help boost HS2 site safety S2 is looking to boost worksite safety through the use of immersive 4D technology, as the UK’s high speed rail link moves into the full construction phase.

Implemented by works contractor Balfour Beatty Vinci (BBV) and software developer 3D Repo, the SafetiBase 4D system is designed to help teams identify, record and resolve site hazards as part of a virtual construction sequence evaluation and training.

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■ 3drepo.com

3D Repo links with Procore loud-based BIM platform, 3D Repo, can now be integrated with construction platform, Procore, to help streamline AEC project management.

Procore users can access their 3D Repo models and perform model validation, comparison, and metadata analysis from inside Procore.

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■ 3drepo.com ■ procore.com

www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:58

INT, BIG IMPA R P T O O F L L CT! SMA

The Epson SureColor SC-T3100M is a competitively priced, entry level, 24-inch multi-function technical printer.

The printer features an integrated 600dpi CIS scanner and copier. The scanner accurately replicates documents into different formats and sends them securly. Scan and print quality on monochrome and coloured prints are highly detailed and prints do not lose quality after repeated scanning and copying.

Easy to operate and reliable, the multi-finction printer is perect for large format CAD/GIS, reprographics, construction, engineering, education sectors and ideal for small businesses looking for their first 24-inch printer.

This simple, unobtrusive design with a small footprint enables the device to be placed seamlessly into most working environments and also makes it easy to transport. However, this compact printer is also available to purchase with a mount if required!

Brought to you by Art Systems LTD Telephone: 0115 9 380 380 Email: sales@artsystems.co.uk

ROUND UP Satellite imagery

Chaos Vantage brings ray tracing to real-time 3D IMAGE COURTESY OF NEOSCAPE

AutoCAD users can now get ‘easy and fast’ access to a ‘living library’ of satellite imagery from OneAtlas, the geospatial digital platform from Airbus.

By using Plexscape’s Plex-Earth 5 AutoCAD plug-in engineers can access up-to-date imagery to help monitor conditions on site ■ plexearth.com

Glass visualisation Glas Visualizer from Arcon, one of Europe’s leading glass producers, is a new tool designed to help architects, building designers and clients assess the visual impact of Arcon’s glazing products on building facades.

The free software generates a mockup in a few clicks, switching between light conditions (sunny or overcast) ■ arcon-glas.de

Apple silicon support Open Design Alliance (ODA), which provides interoperability software components for several of the leading CAD and BIM tools, will now support Apple Silicon in its Software Development Kits (SDKs) so applications can run on the new Apple M1 processor ■ opendesign.com

Automate Revit Ideate Automation for Revit is a new scripting tool for use with Ideate BIMLink designed to let ‘repetitive, time-intensive, low-value BIM tasks’ run silently in the background, freeing up designers and engineers so they can focus on higher-level work ■ ideatesoftware.com/ideatebimlink

Teradici on Mac Teradici, the developer of PCoIP and Cloud Access Software has now added support for the Mac. The technology can be used to provide remote access to desktop and cloud workstations with an emphasis on high resolution and colour fidelity ■ teradici.com

Site visualisation Hexagon has acquired OxBlue, a specialist in construction visualisation technology that can capture construction site progress using timelapse photography, live video streaming, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms ■ oxblue.com

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haos Group, the developer of the legendary photoreal rendering tool V-Ray, has launched Chaos Vantage, a brand new application that lets users ‘instantly explore’ 3D scenes in a fully ray traced, real-time environment.

Users simply drag-and-drop a V-Ray scene from any recent V-Ray integration, or live link from Autodesk 3ds Max, to bring it into real-time. There’s no geometry to optimise, UVs to unwrap, or lighting to bake. Users then have the ability to see every camera, model and lighting adjustment in Vantage as they create, turning Vantage into a fully raytraced viewport.

Vantage, formerly known as Project Lavina, is designed for massive scenes.

According to the developers, it can handle

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billions of polygons without any loss in detail or significant decrease in speed.

The software automatically reads V-Ray’s physically-based lights and materials to produce photorealistic results with 100% ray tracing. Chaos Group states that Vantage is currently averaging 24-30 frames per second on a consumer-grade Nvidia RTX GPU at HD resolution, with additional speed boosts available using two GPUs. Vantage also includes an Animation Editor that can create, edit and render animated sequences for presentations or pre-visualisation purposes, using a simple transition-based method. Alternatively, the ‘Record Camera’ feature allows a real-time session to be recorded as an MP4 video.

■ chaosgroup.com/vantage

Dell targets CAD/BIM with Precision 3560 he Dell Precision 3560 is a new entry-level 15-inch mobile workstation that’s a refresh of the Dell Precision 3550, which launched last May. The main improvements come from new processors, including Intel’s Tiger Lake-U 11th Gen CPUs and the Nvidia Quadro T500 GPU with 2GB GDDR6.

The 1.59kg laptop supports up to 64 GB of memory.

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Dell says the Precision 3560 is about 6% smaller than the 3550 but boasts advanced thermal designs that help keep the system running cool.

There’s a choice of four Tiger Lake-U CPUs, including the top-end Intel Core i7-1185G7. The 15W processor’s 4.80 GHz Turbo makes it well suited to single-threaded applications like CAD and BIM, but with four cores and a base clock

of 1.9 GHz, architects and engineers shouldn’t expect great multithreaded performance in applications such as ray trace rendering.

■ dell.com/workstations

www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:58

News

Tours in the Wild brings structure to VR presentations

AI predicts carbon output in buildings UK research group is developing an embodied carbon analytics AI system that predicts the carbon output on building and infrastructure projects, based on BIM data, materials carbon data and lessons learnt on past projects.

The consortium, which comprises Winvic Construction, the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol), Edgetrix and Costain, has secured £800,000 of Innovate UK funding to deliver the ASPEC [AI System for Predicting Embodied Carbon in Construction] project over the next two years.

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new immersive presentation feature in collaborative AR/VR software ‘The Wild’ is designed to help architecture, design and enterprise teams frame focused stories through their design spaces.

‘Tours in The Wild’ helps guide clients and collaborators through precise views of a project before it’s built.

“One of our greatest challenges is to cut

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through the distractions that surround us and create a focused and compelling expression of our ideas,” says Gabe Paez, founder and CEO of The Wild.

“Tours in The Wild empowers you to craft a story that will focus everyone on your desired framing. You can set the terms of the discussion and create your most powerful pitch,” he adds.

■ thewild.com

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system integrators launch their own Threadripper Pro workstations soon after.

We also expect at least one of the major workstation manufacturers — HP, Dell or Fujitsu — will take on the AMD CPU later this year, although there have been no official announcements.

Meanwhile, see page 40 for our in-depth review of the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 with the 64-core Threadripper Pro. ■ amd.com/threadripper

■ bimcollab.com

stretch them, throw them away and much more. Tools can be accessed easier using a quick menu gesture, and it’s also possible to teleport or take a picture of your work with a simple gesture.

Meanwhile, a new Autodesk BIM 360 integration allows users to import Revit models directly from the cloud.

■ arkio.is

AMD opens up Threadripper Pro MD is to make its Ryzen Threadripper Pro processor available to consumers starting March 2021.

Currently the only way to get hold of an AMD Threadripper Pro CPU is inside a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation due to an exclusive agreement between the two companies.

By opening up access to the powerful desktop CPU we expect to see specialist

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Boost for BIM data extraction and sharing IMcollab has updated its BIM-focused issue management and model validation tools by improving the way users extract and share information from BIM models.

The new Lists feature in its desktop tool, BIMcollab Zoom, is said to expand on the standard property lists that most BIM tools provide.

It uses Excel-like pivot grids, where data fields can be dragged and dropped across filters, columns, rows and values. The results are then immediately displayed in an interactive overview, where every click visually shows the related components in the 3D view.

For team collaboration, lists can then be shared and viewed via BIMcollab Cloud, to other BIMcollab Zoom users in the project team, or exported to PDF, XLS or CSV.

Hand tracking for collaborative VR rkio has added more features to its collaborative VR/AR tool, prior to its official launch, with the new beta 0.8.5 release including support for Autodesk BIM 360 and hand tracking for the Oculus Quest.

With hand tracking, users can do ‘all modelling operations’ using only their hands – create new shapes, pick them up,

■ winvic.co.uk

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ROUND UP Faro WebShare

New service for custom 3D printed architectural products CUSTOM FLOORING AT BMW WORLD IN MUNICH, GERMANY

Faro has launched an enterprise version of its WebShare platform, that offers realtime access to as-built 3D reality data for project management and scan-to-BIM workflows. Data can be stored on a company’s private server or cloud infrastructure, to give firms full control over the security of their 3D reality data ■ constructionbim.faro.com

Property management A new technology partnership between engineering consultancy Buro Happold and Microsoft is designed to help commercial office owners and operators streamline the management of their global property portfolios through the use of historic, real-time and predictive modelling data ■ burohappold.com

Unity link to BIM 360 A new integration between Unity Reflect and Autodesk BIM 360 will allow construction firms to collaborate on Unity’s real-time platform, as well as visualise variance and design-to-build intent on-site 1:1 using augmented reality (AR) ■ unity.com/products/unity-reflect

HOOPS for BIM TechSoft 3D has started the roll out of its 2021 HOOPS software development toolkits with several new features focused on BIM workflows, including improvements to the DWG, IFC, and Revit readers, faster loading of models and improved measurement operators ■ techsoft3d.com

Precast concrete Allplan and Precast Software Engineering have joined forces to combine their engineering and precast manufacturing capabilities. According to Allplan this will create a ‘unique solution’ that supports the growing demand of lean and industrialised construction processes ■ allplan.com ■ precast-software.com

Project Connect RedSky, a UK construction software company, has launched Project Connect, a cloud-based solution designed to enable project stakeholders to collaborate and share information by relying on a single source of ‘information truth’ ■ redskyit.com

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ectual has launched the beta of its ‘design-to-delivery platform’ ramping up production to industrial scale of its bespoke 3D-printed XL architectural and interior products.

The Amsterdam-based company offers modern 3D-printed architecture and interior items, such as terrazzo artwork flooring, fixtures, wall panelling, columns, façades, stairs, room dividers, planters, table screens — even entire buildings — that are all made from 100% circular, sustainable recycled and renewable materials.

According to Aectual, its design-todelivery process is said to reduce the cost of custom-made architectural products by 50%, is up to ten times faster, eliminates waste, and reduces materials usage and CO2 emissions.

The Aectual platform utilises customisable engineered parametric products, an easy-to-use (customised)

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design dashboard and proprietary robotic XL 3D-print technology.

AEC-industry professionals can upload and create their own product versions or simply go to the Aectual website, pick a terrazzo floor pattern, wall panel, room divider, or sun canopy, for example, and then customise it to their taste. Once ordered, Aectual 3D-prints and installs the product.

Prices start at $24 per square foot (€200 euros per square metre). According to Aectual, items are typically more affordable than their conventional, custom-made counterparts.

Commercial projects already deployed globally by Aectual include flooring in Amsterdam Schiphol International Airport, flooring in BMW World in Munich, printed display walls in Nike Town London, a tiny bauhaus (aka studio shed), and the temporary EU building in Amsterdam.

■ aectual.com

LiDAR scanning on the iPhone / iPad iteScape, the iOS app that offers free 3D scanning to anyone with a LiDARequipped iPhone or iPad, has come out of beta and is now available in the App Store.

This is just the start for the mobile mapping startup, that aims to lower the point of entry for reality capture with point clouds

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in the AEC sector by making LiDAR more accessible for workflows including progress monitoring, documentation, and remote site access/collaboration.

The free software allows users to capture 9 million points in space with a single scan, or roughly 2,000sqft, for free.

Multiple scans can be

captured back to back and then registered into one continuous model.

Rob Nabney at Nabney Plans, an architectural firm based in Christchurch, England, has been using SiteScape to scan existing site conditions to bring into ArchiCAD to share as a visual reference for clients.

■ sitescape.ai

www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:58

Excitech has become Symetri Operating as one since January 2021

Last year Excitech was acquired by Addnode Group, the owner of Symetri, Europe’s leading provider of software and services for design and engineering activities. As of January 2021, Excitech Ltd has merged with Symetri Ltd. There will be no change to the support we provide our customers, however, our name has changed to Symetri and our website has been redirected to symetri.co.uk.

Customers will benefit from an increase in the breadth of skills we can offer, and access to a wider range of technologies, including Symetri’s own products such as Naviate and CQ.

Together we will achieve more

W: symetri.co.uk

E: info@symetri.co.uk

T: 0345 370 1444

Cover story

Bespoke BIM workflows With the increasing digitisation of the AEC design process, more firms are either developing their own code or paying for the creation of custom tools to refine their projects through computation. Martyn Day explores the planet of the apps.

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hen we first moved from drawing boards to desktop PC’s running CAD software, it wasn’t long before the creation of lines, circles and arcs failed to give us additional productivity benefits.

The beauty of being digitised in a computer meant that automation and higher levels of industry knowledge could be captured and used in vertical applications.

Software developers added support for programming languages (e.g. Autodesk with LISP) and created Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) for professional developers to build expert systems on top of their drawing tools.

This eventually led to industry-specific software firms, creating dedicated vertical applications, designed for very specific professions - architecture, structural, civil, CAFM etc.

Advanced users utilised the programming extensions to automate repetitive tasks and integrate with external programs such as spreadsheets. Some firms completely tailored their CAD systems to their usage. The ability to adapt and augment has been a core part of our design tools for some time.

The move over the last 20 years to 3D modelling / BIM tools has further digi12

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tised the design process, pushing beyond pure symbology and ‘dumb’ drawings, capturing 3D geometry and detailed building information. These systems, namely ArchiCAD, Revit, Vectorworks, BricsCAD BIM etc. still include programming languages for end-user extensibility as well as APIs, spawning a range of modern third-party developers, like Enscape, Testfit, Strucsoft etc. keen to add additional functionality.

For end users, computational design tools like Bentley Systems GenerativeComponents, McNeel Rhino Grasshopper and Autodesk Dynamo have provided deeper levels of automation, handling geometric definition complexity.

The net result of this has been a generation of designers acquiring scripting and programming knowledge, together with a realisation that design requires data flow through multiple software packages.

With this current incarnation of AEC design tools and user skill sets, something is different. In the last few years, I’ve noticed an increasing number of AEC firms develop ambitious in-house applications, workflow connectors, AI, simulation and specific tools for project teams.

While investing in creating in-house tools might not be a new thing, the fact that many of the firms are branding and

marketing their in-house code as a potential differentiator, indicates an increased level of programming competence.

The true scale of this trend hit me in the face when Gensler sent a press release last summer about ‘Blox’, an algorithm-powered design visualisation and computational tool.

It came with its own logo and branding and slick interface. It looked like something you could buy from a reseller and may well be a tool that many architects would like. However, it was a proprietary technology that was designed for its inhouse teams, as part of the firm’s inFORM suite of tools to boost internal design capability.

This was a new level of workflow productisation for Gensler, which was clearly making a statement to the market.

AEC firms don’t just design and construct buildings; they also write their own code.

Gensler has invested in technology to join up its digital thread, starting from the client brief to concept, all the way through to completion. The firm has its own in-house programming resources, together with strategic investments in small application developers to augment its own product stack.

The trend for AEC firms to develop www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:49

IMAGE COURTESY OF PAUL JEFFRIES, RAMBOLL, SITESOLVE

software is now becoming a lot more this area is Frank Gehry. Before using Technologies employees involved. common. In addition to Gensler Blox, CAD, Gehry had trouble winning projIn the UK in the 1980s, YRM and Bryden Wood has launched PRiSM for ects because contractors could never Richard Rogers were early into 3D modmodular development, Lendlease has fully understand his buildings from the elling. They used products like Sonata developed Podium, a ‘property lifecycle drawings and so would quote extremely and RUCAPS (Really Universal platform’ for planning, financial, perfor- high prices.

Computer Aided Production System) mance management of buildings.

He moved to deploying Dassault and were coding to complete designs.

Similarly, Space Architects has developed Systèmes Catia in-house, an advanced Similarly, ARUPs, which eventually set TwinView for Digital Twin management CAD tool traditionally used by automo- up Oasys (oasys-software.com) specifiand Ramboll has SiteSolve, a computa- tive and aerospace firms, then built a cally to develop applications for internal tional design tool for building analysis at team of experts who digitised all of his and external markets. the early-stage of the In 1998 Foster + decision making proPartners set up a cess that is capable of Modelling Many do not want to be beholden to software firms Special iterative massing.

Group (SMG) under which are attempting to own the process and On top of all this we Hugh Whitehead, also have consultants which similarly took on increase prices. As being both the client and the and resellers developing consumer of the software development, who better to the hard problems of and selling tools which geometry definition derive the feature set than the customer? they have created in the and created bespoke past for clients to solve tools for the designers specific problems. to experiment and play Proving Ground, Thorton Tomasetti, paper models and eventually got their with complex geometry.

Oasys (Arup) to name but a few. own brand (Gehry Technologies - under It still exists to this day and is heavily Jim Glyph). into R&D for project-driven development Bespoke origins By sending 3D models to his contrac- and creates in-house tools. While most of Of course, in-house development is tors, quotes came down and his buildings the developments remain in-house nothing new. Having an expert technical became less financially onerous and secrets, some do get an occasional airing, team to help bring impossible architec- risky to build. Eventually Gehry such as Sandbox I/O, a real-time concepture to reality has been done by a select Technologies was sold to Trimble and to tual design evaluation tool, written on number of firms. this day many instances where Catia can top of Unity (see this AEC Magazine artiProbably the most famous architect in be found in AEC, have ex- Gehry cle to learn more tinyurl.com/AEC-unity).

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Cover story

Lego vs geometry definition

to stay within the BIM application for the for a dedicated full-time team.

The examples of Fosters and Gehry could whole workflow, this is not an ideal envi“Primarily we are using SiteSolve as an easily be seen as the exceptions to the ronment to run CPU-heavy design evalu- internal facing tool, but we are also sellrule vs the workflows and toolsets which ation tools, such as analysis or BIM coor- ing it externally as well to our client base. most design firms use. The need for com- dination, where federated data needs to We’re working out what best fits each cliputational tools designed by aerospace be collated and shared to resolve issues. ent. Some clients are knowledgeable engineers was certainly driven by the enough to just take the software and run Gameification need to express the extreme geometric it themselves, while others want us to use vocabulary for which these signature One of the biggest changes to the applica- the software and steer it for them. architecture firms are famous. tion development landscape has been the “We’ve been using Unity for the visualHowever, this isn’t the end of the story, arrival of the game engine tools, Unreal isation aspects of it. The core itself is our as both practices reach out to work with and Unity. These mature, extensible own kind of custom C# engine which is contractors who are digitally fabricating engines are optimised for 3D perfor- doing all the calculations. We have a link building components, connecting their mance and provide firms with powerful into Grasshopper and Rhino.” designs with fabrication machines. This development platforms.

Traditionally, internally developed is the future of our AEC world and digiData flows between BIM tools and tools lack the finesse of a proper interface tal fabrication will liberate us from the these game engines have vastly improved and documentation. This can be fine for risks of non-rectilinear forms. in the last few years and are now proving internal use, where the developers are on Today’s BIM tools call to assist anyone mainly tend to be based who runs into trouble. on components; the However, selling softIn the last few years, we’ve noticed an increasing Lego approach to modware commercially number of AEC firms develop ambitious in-house elling and the convenrequires a whole new tional approach to level of quality assurapplications, workflow connectors, AI, simulation building. The software ance, documentation, and specific tools for project teams is also focused on the training and interface. conventional method of For SiteSolve Jeffries collaboration 2D explained, “Interface drawings. popular for geometry-based design wise, we’ve gone further than we would While useful in some circumstances, development. Unreal, for instance, is have ever gone if we weren’t going to sell and targeted for documentation, they are capable of displaying an entire city in it. However, I think we’ve also found that not ideal for design exploration, especial- real time and the developer of the engine, actually doing UI and documentation is ly conceptual. This appears to be a key Epic Games, has clients such as HOK, quite important from an internal uptake area where we are seeing a lot of in-house KPF, Foster + Partners, and ZHD all point of view. You save time on training, development from AEC firms trying to developing design and collaboration if you’d just built a better interface in the fill their digital voids. tools on top. Rumour has it that ZHD is first place.”

The other issue with BIM software is developing a configuration tool for modBillable hours that as designs progress, the size of the ular buildings. models increases, and the performance of In my discussions on coding with IT the system is impacted. While software Ramboll directors in AEC firms, the one term that vendors have typically wanted customers Paul Jeffries is computational design lead kept popping up like a bad penny was at Ramboll and is responsible for the ‘billable hours’.

SiteSolve development. I asked him how Only a handful of firms have dedicated Foster + Partners’ Ramboll came to develop its own programming resources, or an architect Unity-based generative conceptual or engineer dedicated to developing softconceptual design tool.

He replied, ware. The key problem was the mindset environment, Sandbox I/O “A few years of managers, which strictly adhered to ago, Ramboll the concept of allocating project billable set up hours to employees. around this Many firms could not see through this process called traditional resource allocation methodthe ‘Innovation ology when it came to hiring programAccelerator’, for mers to develop its own tools. In truth, different teams firms that cannot get past that old way of across Ramboll to thinking are not really aware of how pitch for funding, to important digital workflows have build a business case to become, or how new entrepreneurial get funding. Three differ- business models and revenue streams ent projects came out of can be associated to management and that, one of those was use of the data they create.

SiteSolve. We had a budget to Talking with Nate Miller, CEO of self-develop the application Proving Ground, he commented, “It’s and it gave us enough resource interesting to think about an architecture

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firm, trying to carve out that budget and time to develop their own solutions.

Looking for billable hours amidst the kind of significant investment that would go into building a platform, or any kind of script that works reliably, is significant.

“The business model of architecture and engineers, the construction industry is, in some ways, incompatible with the business model of running a software company. And maybe there is a clue in there, that in terms of if an architecture company wants to get into this space, does it need to change how it’s going to do business?

“When you get into the cycle of project work, you’re talking about billable hours and the need to get the job out the door, to go onto the next job. Buildings are treated as one off service-oriented outputs but when you’re developing a piece of software, it’s all about how you reinvest into that product. You make it once and then figure out a way to make money, sell licences or, if internal, maybe charge it back to a project.”

Newcastle’s own BIM supremo, Rob Charlton of Space Group, is most certainly a man who can see opportunities and is willing to change business models.

While predominantly an architecture firm, Charlton clearly understood the potential for BIM and software development, diversifying Space Architecture www.AECmag.com

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Gensler uses Blox to into BIM component developcomplete turnkey application. ment (bimstore), BIM develop massing designs Over the last five years, based on programmatic Technologies (consulting) and Autodesk has been creating designations at the more recently TwinView cloud components of all its master plan scale (tinyurl.com/AEC-twinview). core functionality.

This This latter venture is a really smart means that a developer could ‘call’ play for those architects that want to pro- Autodesk’s DWG engine, 3D viewing vide Digital Twins to their clients. As an tool, cost management or document manarchitecture firm, Charlton recognised agement engine on the cloud and wire the value of the BIM data to his clients, them into their own applications. the ongoing lifecycle of that and the fact Autodesk doesn’t just see developers there was downstream income. using Forge but also its customers to TwinView was developed to easily develop their own cloud-based solutions repurpose that data and hand it on as a by mixing and matching applications post design service. It is still possible to with Forge functionality to make project be an architecture firm, while at the same desktops or bespoke solutions. The idea time being a software developer and cre- of what an ‘application’ is capable of, is ate tools that benefit your own business going to get a lot more fluid. as well as productising and commercially Conclusion marketing those tools to others.

There is undoubtedly a reassessment Futures going on inside of mature AEC firms in I have previously stated, many times, that their approach to digital tools. Those that the AEC industry is currently at the end of want to fully digitise their processes from one generation of BIM tools and awaiting conceptual to life-cycle and can’t find offthe next. Listening to the software devel- the-shelf solutions, are undaunted at opers, it’s all going to be on the cloud. developing them themselves.

It’s worth highlighting Autodesk’s The barrier to entry in software develapproach to development with its Forge opment in the AEC space has been draplatform. Historically if you wanted to matically lowered, with the availability of build an application, a developer would low-cost, feature rich, platforms like either have to write a plug-in for the SketchUp, Unreal, Unity, Blender, Forge, desktop application, or license a version Rhino.Inside and Nvidia Omniverse. All (called OEM) to build on top of, to sell a built for speed and the ability to display

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Cover Story

vast amounts of data.

This app could be using internal resources, external consultants, or making strategic investments in up-and-coming software developers. While predominantly for internal usage, some are exploring productisation and even selling. There’s even the possibility of teaming up with enterprise investment funds or venture capital to develop with a commercial mindset from the start.

The one thing worth pointing out, is that there is a lot of reinventing the wheel

going on, especially in conwho has developed what.

SiteSolve from Ramboll, an ceptual design. Blox and algorithmic tool that can be There would surely be a used to dynamically model, SiteSolve are all playing in potential to swap and share manipulate and explore the same area as Spacemaker. tools and save a lot of duplidevelopment sites Al (Autodesk), Hypar, Digital cated effort.

Blue Foam etc.

My last thoughts on this, concern the Most firms face similar challenges. attitudes of AEC firms to software develThose that are capable of developing in- opers. Many do not want to be beholden house solutions might not realise other to software firms which are attempting to firms have also done this. If the trend to own the process and increase prices. As embrace branding, marketing and pro- being both the client and the consumer of ductisation of internal developments con- the software development, who better to tinues, there may be greater clarity as to derive the feature set than the customer?

Custom tools from AEC firms Gensler Blox Blox develops massing designs based on programmatic designations at the master plan scale. It provides preliminary budget estimates for construction, parking, and other project elements. It checks the building enve-

lope, allows infinite usage mixes, and can incorporate live data. This can all be compared against, or driven by, the client’s brief. It’s only available to Gensler’s own design team.

■ gensler.com

Ramboll SiteSolve

Foster + Partners Sandbox I/O

SiteSolve is an algorithmic tool which can be used to dynamically model, manipulate and explore development sites, allowing project teams to collaborate, explore and visualise iterative design options.

The software is used internally at Ramboll and is also available for purchase.

■ site-solve.co.uk

Built on top of Unity, Foster + Partners developed a conceptual design environment, to model, explore, simulate and analyse designs against a range of environmental conditions on desktop, iPad and in VR (pictured left). Only available within Foster + Partners.

■ fosterandpartners.com

Twinview Developed by Space Group, Twinview is a cloud-based digital twin platform, for computer aided facilities management, with a dashboard for live sensors. It was developed by architects for both their own use and as a commercial product.

■ twinview.com

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Bryden Wood PRiSM Funded by the Mayor of London, Bryden Wood designed a modular construction analysis tool for developers. Based on various configurations and layouts, the Unity-based software provides property developers with a guide as to the best modular construction methods. It is free to download.

■ prism-app.io

www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:49

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25/01/2021 09:13

Interview

Rhino 7 A new version of Rhino is a rare and unpredictable occurrence and therefore always welcomed by its broad, devoted user base. The latest release is probably the most feature rich update in its history. AEC Magazine talks with company CEO Bob McNeel and Scott Davidson, business development

R

BOB MCNEEL

hino occupies a very special ital workflows, and digital fabrication place in most AEC firms’ starts to become more common, Rhino’s armouries. Despite the success importance is becoming even more of the multi-purpose 3D CAD apparent. tool, its developer, Robert McNeel and In addition, there is Grasshopper, Associates, doesn’t operate like an which sits inside Rhino and has become American corporation. In the single most used genfact, it is the very antithesis erative design platform, of how most CAD software driving everything from firms function. simple Python scripts to McNeel is employee defining the surfaces of owned, privately held, and the most complicated these things combined are curved buildings being probably the reasons why manufactured today. the company is so loved by However, defining its customers. Of course, it’s geometry isn’t Rhino’s also low cost and an absolute only superpower. With monster when it comes to broad support for industry defining complex geometry. formats and the unique At the heart of the devel- A user may think ‘Rhino.Inside’ developopment ethos is the concept they’re working ment platform, the power that Rhino is a generic modof Grasshopper and Rhino in Rhino and elling tool, neither skewed geometry can actually be another one may used as a glue to link BIM towards manufacturing nor architecture, and equally systems and drive geomethink they’re applicable to both. creation in popular working in Revit. try While new features may BIM modellers that lack But they’re provide core functionality, the generative ‘chops’ or such as mould design, it’s actually working are notoriously unfriendly not essentially a full or dediin this combined in OpenBIM environcated feature set, and other ments. product developers or customers are Rhino Inside has been welcome to develop on top. in development for some Rhino is just as at home in time and Rhino 7 sees the sneaker development, jewellery design, official release of Rhino.Inside.Revit, auto body, CAM, as it is in ZHD or Foster + which brings Rhino and Grasshopper Partners - the only rule being that the into the Autodesk Revit environment. geometry it defines can be manufactured.

Rhino.Inside also works with ArchiCAD, As the AEC market moves towards dig- Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender, BricsCAD

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BIM, ACCA Edificious and many others.

It’s a potential invisible wire harness for all data between BIM and / or viz systems.

Rhino 7 includes a host of other new features and is arguably the biggest release in the product’s history. These include SubD (SubDivision) surfaces, which look to be great for exploring organic, manufacturable shapes in architecture, a new display pipeline, enhanced drawing creation, better rendering and easier access to Grasshopper scripts. More details can be found in the box out on page 21.

With such an epic release, AEC Magazine caught up with company CEO Bob McNeel and Scott Davidson (business development) to dig a little deeper into the feature set of Rhino 7, together with some exploration as to how Rhino is developing into a collaboration and data sharing tool within the broader AEC space.

AEC Magazine: We’re finding that architects are getting increasingly frustrated with BIM tools because they want to get back to designing, as opposed to getting bogged down in detail documentation.

They want design fluidity through applications from various providers. Rhino.

Inside is already making a mark here.

Scott Davidson: If you look at the philosophical BIM process, what we’re seeing is very much a move toward wanting the freedom to design and not to worry so much about the details of Level 300. I know it’s important at some point in the project, but it’s not important now.

And we’re also seeing where part of the www.AECmag.com

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2

model might be at a LoD 300 already, but a different part might still be an LoD 200 because not the whole project gets done at once. The only reason this became clear to us is because of Rhino.Inside.Revit. We are starting to see how people are using the two applications. Customers want to be able to use Rhino longer in the process, get more analysis, more data, more freedom to design, and then they want to get it over to Revit quicker.

Now, what’s also interesting is I’m finding many times, they want to take parts of the building out of Revit and they want to put it back into LoD 200.

It’s beautiful. People can now literally, with Grasshopper, wire that system up and as the project moves forward, they can wire the relationships - those relationships are dynamic.

A stupid, but good example would be that the floors are pretty set, you’re in design development, but you’re still kind of messing with facade. In this case, we’re feeding floors into Revit. And they’re real floors, they’re super hard coded. The floors may live in Revit and we can pull those floors into Rhino dynamically.

If we are just doing the façade in Rhino - here’s my maximum span and my material - I can embed that in the Rhino model and have that automatically fill into the Revit model. When I’m ready I can have it fill in. As I’m messing with the façade in Rhino, the Revit model is updating, and the drawings are getting done.

Bob McNeel: Yeah, once we move into the same memory space, we share the two www.AECmag.com

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SDKs (Rhino and Revit). It’s is that basically all plug-ins 1 With QuadRemesh, Rhino can generate quad meshes possible to write lines of code to Rhino and Grasshopper from pretty much any group in Python, where one call is of surfaces, solids, meshes, now run in Revit. And every using a Rhino geometry funcRhino plug-in, including or Sub-D surfaces tion and the next call is writCAM products and our 2 Rhino.Inside.Revit brings Rhino and Grasshopper ing something to the Revit development partners’ into the Autodesk Revit SDK library. We’re deeper applications, they can all environment core with Rhino.Inside than run in Revit.

Dynamo is.

It’s almost too hard to get your head SD: Also, the 49 file formats that Rhino around what’s possible. I mean, we’ve reads and writes…. now Revit reads and even gone as far as writing a widget in writes those file formats too. It’s the bigGrasshopper that runs a Dynamo cluster. gest new version of Revit they’ve ever had!

SD: Yes, you can actually drive a Dynamo definition as a component in Grasshopper.

A whole Dynamo one dimension is a single component Grasshopper. But its integration is crazy. I mean, the workflows that are possible are just nuts.

You do have to understand both. That’s part of the problem. There are only a few people that understand Rhino, Grasshopper and Revit to the extent in Revit API where this is possible.

BM: Of course, we’ve had this in the field for a while, but what we’re basically finding is those internal teams are the ones actually using this. What they’re doing is they’re actually just rolling out new tools to their user community of Revit users.

And these Revit users may know nothing about what’s happening underneath. A user may think they’re working in Rhino and another one may think they’re working in Revit. But they’re actually working in this combined product.

Another thing that may not be obvious

AEC: We are amazed by how many features you’ve crammed into this new release. It’s like three releases in one!

What were you thinking about when you decided on this feature list? Is it just a case of a whole load of things that didn’t make the previous release overlapping?

BM: It was a timing thing. Part of it was that we needed to get the SubD stuff up to par. A lot of that was core work that had to be done by very small group of people just because of the type of work it is. And so basically, it allowed other people to work on all the other stuff, which just needed to be hooked up. It wasn’t inventing stuff from scratch, like the SubD project was, which was really going on for about three years.

This is core geometry. What that means is that you touch every Import/Export function, display pipeline, the picking engine, plus, then you’ve got to do all the core geometry work. And, the SubD stuff is a classic problem.

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Interview

SCOTT DAVIDSON

The classic SubD implementation is part, there’s not an obvious way to basically just a mesh or refined mesh at always go back. various levels. For the Rhino community, where everything’s got to be at manufac- SD: Every SubD has a NURBS equivaturable precision, we had to develop the lent, but not every NURBS model has a core technology to have the limit surface SubD equivalent, because they’re two difbe a spline surface, not a mesh. ferent geometry types. But going back the That was the first bit of work, doing the other way, you know, that’s where robust math for that. While there are QuadRemesher comes in. We can many (research) papers on how to do it, it QuadRemesh and go back to SubD. turned out most of them had a lot of Now it’s a different SubD, but it’s close to errors and actually didn’t the NURBS. work. I mean, they were just While you can take a proof of concept. mesh and QuadRemesh it But then the other piece of and go to SubD, and thereit, once you got that calculafore go to NURBS, there is a tion to work reliably, was that limit to how damaged the it had to be fast as we needed mesh can be. We don’t have to build a system that allowed all the tools to do mesh push / pull on a SubD object. repair in all cases.

That was actually a spline surface that would change BM: We’re not dealing with and update as quickly as a crap scans. I mean, that’s a mesh-based version. whole another ballpark Customers AEC: So how much better is this than T splines?

‘‘ want to be able

SD: If you have a mesh, and the mesh is somewhat well defined, we can get it to SubD, therefore we can get it to NURBS. That makes sense. The whole idea that you can repair a mesh is not exactly how we would put it.

It would be more like, ‘we can take a mesh and get it to a SubD using the QuadRemesh technology’.

And QuadRemesh is really the glue that allows us to go from mesh to SubD to NURBS. And in fact, many times from NURBS back to SubDs, if you need to do that.

to use Rhino longer in the process, get more analysis, more data, more freedom to design, and then they want to get it over to Revit quicker

BM: Well, it’s better and it’s different in a couple ways.

There’s no patents involved, so that means that we can publish this, we can let people play with it, we can expose it in SDKs [Sofware Development Kits], we can put it in open source projects that we support.

In terms of data structures and stuff, our SubD is actually compatible with Pixar’s open SubD. So, if you use the same control net from our SubD, and hand off to another open SubD project, they’ll get the same limit surface with their calculations.

Now, the other system’s output may be a mesh, but for downstream applications like rendering, STL printing and, of course, animation and all of that stuff in the movie industry, they are identical, so there isn’t a loss going that way.

But on the same hand, it can go the other way as a spline surface, so you can export it as a STEP file or whatever, and it’ll come in as ordinary B-rep.

’’

AEC: But then you can also turn it back into a SubD on demand?

BM: You can in certain cases. It depends on what somebody does with it later. If you take a trimmed B-rep, something with round holes, a typical mechanical 20

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AEC: Rhino 7 was the first time the Windows and Mac versions were released on the same day. What’s changed?

SD: I think part of getting a shorter timeline between multi-platform releases is that we’ve gotten to the point where we’re not writing the Windows version, and then releasing it, then turning around and having to essentially write the Mac version again.

BM: Yeah, we build from the same source code now. And a lot of that work went on with Rhino 6.

AEC: You’ve added some additional 2D drafting features to Rhino? I thought you were leaving 2D to other applications?

BM: My view is we need to let people stay in Rhino as long as long as they can. It’s not that we feel like we need to replace something else that people are using. If people already have a solution out there, I mean, as long as AutoCAD or AutoCAD clones are out there, I don’t think we need to do drafting.

Some of those things are cheap, some of them are basically free, and they are great drafting tools. That said, of course, you know it’s a time consuming bump in the process for customers.

The one place that we can get away with doing drafting, I think, is what I would call shop drawings - put enough stuff on a piece of paper so you can hand it to the guy in the shop, and maybe he understands what you’re talking about, even if you’re also sending him the G code. He’s still got a picture he can look at, as maybe he’s not able to look at the 3D model. You’ve got to give the people those tools. Consequently, we’re continually moving the bar up with each version.

One of the things which is not really a drafting tool, but sort of fits in that category of toolsets, is single stroke fonts.

Yeah, these are used everywhere, all the laser guys don’t want to burn the hell out of things, and welding robots that do bead welding. There are all kinds of applications downstream that aren’t really 2D drafting tools, but they’re 2D, right?

We’re always kind of bumping into those corner cases and we try to remove them because somebody’s exporting this stuff out of Rhino, they’re putting it into some kind of illustration or drafting programme, and then they’re trying to figure out how to get it off to a machine, or out to the shop.

AEC: Laser scanning is now much more in focus and you’re enhancing point cloud support. But you’re targeting large point clouds, which I’m guessing is for architects?

BM: That’s another area where we just tweaked things a little bit. Luckily for us, there’s also still some third parties out there that are working in that area. I just saw some new stuff from ETH [ETH Zurich]. They had a big research project going on and they just released a whole suite of tools in a Rhino plug-in to deal with this kind of stuff.

The great part about the universities they get a ton of money from the EU, research funding, and then they release most of it to the public. So, somebody can build products on top of Rhino, or use www.AECmag.com

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pieces of it. I would avoid promising anybody anything in that area.

AEC: How about rendering tools?

BM: That whole area is such a rat’s nest of stuff. We’ve always had a rich environment for plug-in rendering in Rhino. The first thing with Rhino 7 was to replace the rendering tools that we had in Rhino and replace the core rendering technology with Cycles, which is what’s in blender. And that just opens up a whole bunch of capability.

One of our guys is on the core team for Cycles in the blender project, so he’s going back and forth between what he’s implementing for us plus, making sure its compatible with a bunch of stuff, particularly on the material side, which is looking pretty good.

SD: This is good to talk about because it’s a pretty sophisticated advancement and not just as to what we have in Rhino. We have Cycles and Cycles is modern and supports a bunch of modern technologies like denoisers, right? Everybody has come out with denoisers lately - Nvidia, AMD and Intel all have their own denoisers, and we support all three. It takes renderings from 20 minutes down to two!

Kind of crazy numbers.

Then you’ve got the materials. One of the things that people have asked for, for decades, is can I have compatible materials across multiple rendering tools? PBR (physically based rendering) done by Disney and Pixar and whoever else, is a step in that direction. We support PBR materials.

Now, PBR is really great, because you can do a lot of sophisticated maps and we can take the bitmaps and textures from another product and use those in ours.

But, there’s some kind of unspoken advantages here such as Adobe Substance Designer outputs PBR materials.

So now you can use Substance and read Substance materials into Rhino and use them in your renders. You can also use Substance as a kind of a 3D painter.

But if you want to talk about AR and VR, and virtual worlds, and all those things, if you look at Unity, or Unreal, or Nvidia’s Omniverse - they use PBR materials too!

Now, we’re pushing out to those, and have ongoing work to be compatible with Enscape, TwinMotion (which is free for Rhino users) and all of those type of tools. Rhino 7 is very much a play into all of this but it’s also a lot of the foundation work that’s going to play into AR/VR virtual worlds. We want to play, and we want to play well with all these tools. We

want to be able to store their information and to be able to write their information out. Enscape is a great example; it’s very important and very popular.

AEC: So what is the AMD ProRender play for you then?

SD: ProRender is there. It’s AMD’s play into using their GPUs and we can support all that stuff. It’s one of our strategies and you’ll see this throughout Rhino 7, is that we are really trying to be compatible with the SubD engines, PBR materials, the way we can get in and out of other products.

We are trying to be a better player on the world stage of CAD information. The possibilities are crazy, whether you’re a movie artist, a jeweller, or an architect, all have different platforms to work with.

As renderings change from the static image to the virtual, AR, and then at some point totally immersed, different universe (you know, aka the Unreal, Omniverse etc.), we’re working with all those partners to try to push forward and let people play.

This is an edited version of an extended article that can be found at tinyurl.com/Rhino7-AEC It covers additional topics such as the forthcoming support for Apple’s new M1 processor, injection moulded parts and toolmaking.

Rhino 7 - technology highlights SubD surfaces SubDivision surfaces are nothing new to the world of CAD, but the Rhino implementation, new for Rhino 7, is incredible, dynamic and totally interactive. This is great for exploring organic shapes quickly and removes the faceted nature of complex geometry meshes. McNeel’s SubD surfaces (pictured right) can be converted directly to manufacturable solids, derived from scans or meshes, as well as translated into NURBS.

QuadRemesh Following on from SubDs, Rhino now has a very powerful command called QuadRemesh, which can generate quad meshes from pretty much any group of surfaces, solids, meshes, or SubD surfaces.

Display pipeline GPU development is the one constant in the computer world that continues to drive acceleration of 3D software.

Rhino’s OpenGL display pipeline has evolved to make use of the latest GPUs, shaders and graphics memory.

The 3D display is now even more

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silky smooth and handles larger models, shaded working views, unlimited viewports, draw order support, clipping and full screen. Both Windows and Mac versions of Rhino 7 are significantly faster. McNeel claims up to 10x performance improvement in wireframe and shaded modes.

Documentation Rhino is predominantly a 3D modelling package but McNeel occasionally enhances the drawing capabilities as the company recognises that there is still a need to provide drawings for fabrication. Rhino now has a Layouts panel, which simplifies many of the tasks associated with layout management, which was perhaps not as easy to use before. Gradient and transparent hatches have been added to enhance 2D drawing layouts and can be accessed from the horizontal tab below the viewports.

Grasshopper A new GrasshopperPlayer command lets the authors of scripts distribute their Grasshopper files to run directly from the Rhino command prompt.

The concept here builds on the idea that many firms have tool makers for projects and design teams, and this is easy way to include non-Grasshopper users in computational design.

Clash is a Grasshopper component that can search through any selected objects to find objects that touch each other. One wonders whether, if this was combined with Rhino.

Inside.Revit, it would be a quick way of clash detecting without ever really leaving Revit.

rials, with emerging standards being backed by Pixar and Adobe, they are becoming the standard for material libraries, content authoring and scanning applications.

Similarly, McNeel has added support for the latest swathe of denoisers in Rhino, improving the quality of images and rapidly decreasing render times.

Rendering Rhino has always had a range of options when it comes to rendering, either out of the box, or through the broad developer community. With this release, McNeel has sought to take the latest technologies for collaborative working with photorealistic modelling. Rhino 7 natively supports PBR (Physically Based Rendering) photorealistic mate-

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Sponsored content

Flexibility for BIM in the cloud AMD-powered cloud-based instances maximises remote productivity for leading Dutch construction firm TBI

A

s one of the largest networks of construction companies in the Netherlands, TBI certainly has the power to reach its key objective – to make a better world for people and for the environment.

And it’s leading by example. With the Triodos Bank in Driebergen, The Netherlands, for instance, it built one of the most sustainable bank buildings in the world. With a green roof, solar panels, and natural provision of light, air and water, the building is completely energy neutral. And at the end of its life, its unique wooden construction means it can be easily disassembled, and the parts and materials reused.

Technology pioneer TBI innovates in many other areas and is widely recognised as an IT pioneer. As Frank Wolbertus, BIM solution specialist at TBI SSC-ICT explains, the company’s eager embrace of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has helped further its capabilities and leadership in the world of construction. Using an optimised BIM process on the Western Scheldt Tunnel project, the longest highway tunnel in The Netherlands, TBI not only delivered the project within budget, but completed it three months ahead of schedule.

TBI is continually looking for new technologies to drive the company forward, so when Microsoft Azure released its latest GPU-accelerated NVv4 family of virtual workstation instances, TBI took notice. It realised this new AMD GPU+CPU platform was a great way to extend its strategic investment in Azure with a virtual desktop solution that offers both impressive performance and affordability, making it ideal for CAD, BIM and other demanding 3D applications.

A VDI veteran Forever breaking new ground, TBI is not new to the idea of virtual desktops. It invested in its first on-premise Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) solution way back in 2010, but the cloud offers

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something different, as Wolbertus explains, “Our on-premise VDI solution was out of date, whereas the Azure Cloud is completely new. What’s more, we only have to do the imaging part and not the infrastructure, and don’t have to invest in hardware and GPUs - we only pay as we use it.”

Partners you can rely on TBI’s engineers use a wide variety of CAD and BIM tools, including Autodesk® AutoCAD®, Revit®, Navisworks® and BIM 360®, as well as Solibri®, Bluebeam®, Bentley Systems®, Unity Reflect®, and Enscape©.

To help transition its core 3D applications to a virtual environment, it was essential to have the right partners in place, so TBI enlisted the help of external advisors from Autodesk Consulting and Thomas Poppelgaard. TBI is a Microsoft house, so it was a natural choice to go with Microsoft Azure. The company is also a long time user of Citrix who has a long-standing collaborative relationship with Microsoft, which meant that TBI could deploy Microsoft Azure resources seamlessly with its existing Citrix Cloud Services.

Both companies have a good track record and great support, plus a guarantee of great performance, stability and support for Hybrid Cloud.

The decision to go with the AMD CPU and GPU-accelerated Azure NVv4 instances was, as Wolbertus explains, for “a typical Dutch reason”.

“It was cheaper, and it performed the same as before,” he says, adding that TBI currently uses the Standard_NV8as_v4 instance in Azure for its BIM workloads. This is made possible by AMD’s innovative SR-IOV-based, GPU partitioning technology and Microsoft’s GPU-P technology, which allows the GPU resource to be split into different increments along with the CPU cores, memory and storage. The Standard_NV8as_v4 instance uses ¼ of a GPU resource and is priced accordingly, helping to better match the resource needs for the intended workload.

Cloud advantage Moving to a cloud-based virtual desktop solution has delivered several benefits for TBI, as Wolbertus explains, “All machines are running on the same versions, all CAD is the same build,” he says, adding that instead of having to update 200 individual machines, VDI means only one machine needs updating as a golden image.

“We also have more graphical performance in VDI than local workstations/laptops. And it’s easier to keep up with technology in the cloud,” he adds.

Data security was another influencing factor in TBI’s decision to invest in a centralised workstation solution, as Wolbertus explains. “In the past we had a laptop that was stolen with high security documents, and with this new solution there are no documents stored on the laptops the users are provided with, as they connect to the TBI Cloud workspace.”

The move to virtual desktops has also delivered major benefits to the construction site, specifically in the way engineers and

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Triodos Bank -Driebergen, The Netherlands

site managers access plans and designs, as Wolbertus explains, “TBI engineers went from large notebooks to small notebooks and iPads for access, so they don’t have big workstations anymore. And because everything is stored in the cloud, and delivered via Citrix, they have the latest information, including models, drawings and documents.”

The impact of COVID-19 Like most AEC firms, TBI has felt an impact from COVID-19. Prior to the pandemic, most of TBI’s engineering staff worked in the office. However, the company’s flexible IT infrastructure helped smooth the transition to working from home. If required, engineers were allowed to take their laptop and dual monitor setup with them, then simply connect to the Azure Virtual Machines (VMs) as usual.

On one recent project - the renovation of the famous Binnenhof complex in The Hague, The Netherlands - the cloud proved critical through its ability to connect teams and other stakeholders

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in a completely virtual environment.

LiDAR scans of the prestigious historical government buildings were hosted in the TBI Cloud workspace where they could be accessed using Azure NVv4 and Citrix Cloud. A ‘live’ meeting between client and contractors meant all preparations and coordination could be handled completely digitally via video conferencing, allowing the project to move forward.

Technology futures Always on the front foot, TBI is already looking to the future. According to Wolbertus, there are plans to expand access to Microsoft Azure and to also get more out of its project data. By tapping into the vast amounts of data it generates, it hopes to get better insight to help improve projects of the future. TBI continues to learn from the past to keep it one step ahead of the competition.

About TBI TBI is an agile network of companies that renews, caters for, and maintains a physical environment of homes, offices, schools, hospitals, roads, tunnels, bridges, locks, factories, and ship installations. With a mission to “make the future,” TBI aims to improve the quality of life, work, and mobility for people by developing and realizing smart, sustainable, and future-proof solutions. TBI companies have expertise in the fields of engineering, construction, and infrastructure and are recognized as IT innovators across a range of industries, providing leadership and advice at a national level in their native Netherlands.

To learn more about TBI visit tbi.nl.

For more information visit www.amd.com/nvv4

25/01/2021 09:12

The future of AEC: an executive perspective

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ow is the Covid-19 pandemic forcing the AEC sector? to digitise and modernise faster than it otherwise would. How will the AEC industry change? Which areas will be first to evolve, and which will be resistant to transformation? And ten years from now, which aspects of AEC that we take for granted today will look like something out of the Stone Age? Offering their thoughts on these and other matters are: • • •

•

Anand Mecheri, CEO of Invicara, a developer of digital twin solutions Clifton Harness, CEO of TestFit, an automated building configurator Hilmar Gunnarsson, CEO of Arkio, a provider of collaborative design tools for architecture Richard Humphrey, Vice President of Product Strategy and Product Management at Bentley Systems, a provider of AEC software

A lightly edited and condensed version of the conversation follows.

Q: What will the medium- and longerterm impact of the pandemic be on construction software companies and the AEC space in general?

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Mecheri: We can already see some of the medium-term impact. I was on a call with some clients in Singapore today, and construction there has nearly ground to a halt, simply because there are no construction workers. We see similar impact in India. Also, there’s an overriding concern about demand contraction in the commercial real estate space. Retail, of course, already was contracting, and the pandemic has accentuated it like crazy.

Long term, things will be fine and back to normal – but there will be some lessons learned. I think this pandemic will be a trigger for change. For starters, there’ll be more investments in technology to optimise usage and management of built assets, ensure occupant wellness, and create more efficient buildings overall.

Harness: Operationally, I think companies are learning to do things differently during the pandemic. You’re starting to see various companies in the AEC ecosystem adopting new technologies like Zoom and Slack. But those tools are disrupting email, so we’re still pretty far behind as far as investing in the right things to push everyone into the 21st century. For example, there are only around 500 prefab modular construction projects in the US. I think we’re still really far behind in the means and methods of construction.

RICHARD HUMPHREY, BENTLEY SYSTEMS

HILMAR GUNNARSSON, CEO OF ARKIO

CLIFTON HARNESS, CEO OF TESTFIT

ANAND MECHERI, CEO OF INVICARA

RON FRITZ, CEO OF TECH SOFT 3D

Recently, Ron Fritz, CEO of Tech Soft 3D, hosted a roundtable discussion with four other technology executives to discuss trends circling around the AEC industry and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic

Gunnarsson: My company is pretty much a “remote first” company, with employees scattered across four different countries in Europe. We’ve been working this way for a long time. What’s interesting is that if I look at my customers – the architecture firms and engineering firms – they are in the same boat now. They have had to ask themselves: “How do we do business and get work done remotely? How do we collaborate if we’re not in the same place?”

Because we develop VR and collaborative design tools, we have an answer to those questions. I’m a big believer that in the long term, the idea of all of us having to physically be present in the same place to do something will start to diminish.

Humphrey: The key to planning and executing construction projects used to be to get as many people on site and to collaborate in a common location where you’re close to the project, because the project is the context by which you can have a discussion and make your plans and execute and make sure the project is in control. When that can’t happen anymore – like during this pandemic – collaboration has to happen digitally.

We’re seeing a lot more virtual design in construction, whether that’s taking task-based workflows and capturing data in the field, or tracking performance metwww.AECmag.com

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Comment

rics via cloud data repositories and analytics. 3D, 4D, or 5D model context provides a way to navigate that data and collaborate with teams that are no longer colocated on the project site, while making sure that the teams that are on the project site are working in the right areas. Covid19 has helped drive a lot more interest in those types of applications.

Q: It seems that the Covid-19 pandemic has forced the construction industry to digitise faster than it otherwise would.

What areas do you think will gain traction first, and which areas will be slow to change?

Harness: I think this is the time to shine for technologies like VR. I think it helps solve the core problem with the Zoom meeting, which is that we’re all still in a room somewhere. If you can use something like VR to basically hijack the visual system of your brain and transport you somewhere else, that’s very valuable.

To return to remote working, I think that’s only going to continue to gain traction. My father, who is obviously from a different generation than I am, said “Wow! That’s amazing how productive people can be just on their laptop at home.” I think we’re finally starting to see the rigid, old-school mentality of how you manage people and run a business evaporate. That, in my mind, has got to be the biggest win from Covid-19, especially for knowledge workers like those in the software industry.

Humphrey: Although Covid-19 has accelerated some digitisation and the desire to get into virtualisation of work, particularly around model context, the reality is that our industry still doesn’t deliver a model as a contractual document. So, I think you’re going to see the existing task- and form-based workflows accelerate faster than the model-based workflows.

Mecheri: A lot of what my company delivers – a digital twin – focuses on how to operate and optimise the built environment in the operations phase.

Doing that requires a convergence of data from all the distinct data silos that sit inside buildings and in the operation space today. You have building management systems, energy management systems, space management systems, maintenance management systems, islands of IoT implementations, and so on. There are a lot of different silos. www.AECmag.com

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The industry is realising that truly converged, data-driven contextual solutions can help them deliver things faster and more efficiently – and as a result, I think there’s going to be a clear acceleration towards convergence.

much of our work on 2D screens. Not just architectural design, of course – nearly everything. That’s your focus, and that’s the thing that you work on and get information from: this 2D screen on a PC or mobile device.

In the future, people will look at the idea of designing a 3D object on a flat screen as something completely out of the Stone Age. I think that paradigm shift is going to probably happen faster than people think once AR/VR technology is mature enough, and it’s already taking rapid steps in that direction.

Gunnarsson: In our case, what my company primarily focuses on is the early stages of the design phase. What I find most interesting is this idea that we can evolve beyond getting together in the same place, into meeting more virtually.

With VR, more and more people are starting to experience going into a space – and it might be a relatively simple Mecheri: People have realised that with a space, it doesn’t have to be photorealistic tool like Google Maps, you can go into any – and feeling present with city in the world, including somebody else during that ones that you’ve never been early design phase. They to before, and find your way The AEC see that you can use tools around perfectly fine. industry can’t like this to truly underWhereas in a building, you stand the space before it’s still need that one guy who have 15,000 even been built and make point solutions, knows the building and better design decisions. knows how to fix things to most of which be around if something goes Q: Ten years from now, don’t talk to each wrong. That’s one of the bigwhat aspects of the way gest changes that we believe other, solving things get done in the AEC will happen coming out of really small industry will have people this pandemic. People will scratching their heads and problems. There realise it’s crazy not to have saying, “Why on earth did converged building data needs to be an we ever do things that institutionalises API approach, that way?” in the same way that knowledge and brings like in other we look back now on landtogether actionable inforindustries – lines or televisions without mation. remote controls? otherwise, Harness: I think the AEC you’re just Humphrey: We’re already industry is going to recogseeing initial momentum creating barriers nise that it can’t have to adoption around prefab offsite manu15,000 point solutions, facturing. Robotics will take Clifton Harness, most of which don’t talk to that even further. Even other, solving really CEO of TestFit each though a lot of robotics is small problems. There still in its early stages, it needs to be an API will bring in advancements approach, like in other around sensors and real-time data, to the industries – otherwise, you’re just creatpoint that a decade from now, many ing barriers to adoption. So, ten years aspects of construction will be automated, from now, I think people will look back and people will say, “I can’t believe you and say, “What was that all about?” used to manually build a lot of this stuff!”

I’m a millennial, so I’m a digital native.

On a similar note, the industry has But the generation after me, Gen Z, are been doing machine control automation internet natives. So, their concept of work for earthworks for a long time. There is going to be very different than even my won’t be any people driving that equip- concept of what work is. And their ability ment 10 or 15 years from now – it will to wield technology is going to be far most likely be fully automated, thanks to beyond anything that we can imagine real-time feedback from sensors and right now. They’re just going to bring a advances in robotic processes. completely new perspective to the industry, and I’m really excited about it.

Gunnarsson: One of the things that somebody might find strange in 10 ■ techsoft3d.com ■ arkio.is years’ time is the idea that we do so ■ invicara.com ■ testfit.io ■ bentley.com

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Interview

Streaming BIM from the cloud with Unreal Engine Tridify recently launched a new BIM model streaming service that uses Unreal Engine. Greg Corke caught up with the company’s CEO, Alexander Le Bell, to find out more

T

ridify is well known for its BIM-to-web service. Users upload an IFC file to the cloud and it is automatically turned into a web-optimised model that can be shared online for collaboration with teams, partners and customers.

While the resulting models are lightweight, they still have to be rendered on the local device — be that a laptop, tablet or mobile phone — using the local GPU. This is fine for smaller BIM models, but, for the larger ones, users won’t always get the best experience - and, we expect, some models will simply too big.

To help get around this challenge, Tridify was recently awarded an Epic MegaGrant to develop a new service that allows its models to be rendered with Unreal Engine in the cloud with the pixels

then streamed to a mobile device. All the end user needs is a URL, so the model can be viewed using a standard web browser.

As all the graphics processing is now done on a powerful GPU server, the service is said to work with ‘any size of model on any device’. And, while models are currently rendered quite simply, as the system is based on Unreal Engine the world is really your oyster when it comes to visual quality.

With the new service now being made available to selected customers we caught up with Tridify’s CEO, Alexander Le Bell, to find out more.

Greg Corke: Will you be able to view BIM object data?

Alexander Le Bell: This will be the first feature that we are going to implement because there is no use in viewing a BIM

model, if you don’t know what part of the model you are looking at.

GC: Is the primary reason for the Epic Games partnership to give the ability to view larger models, and the secondary benefit is render quality?

ALB: The first step is to give our customers the ability to view bigger models with any device. In the future, our aim is to provide an automated content pipeline to Twinmotion and Unreal developers. This means that you will be able to have an easy-to-use workflow where BIM data is used to filter content from large amounts of data and then use it in Twinmotion or Unreal applications. Or even import content in real-time to those software applications using Tridify APIs. By default, the render quality will also be constantly improving but the main objective is not to compete with software like Twinmotion that is geared towards high quality rendering. Our aim is to push the limit of how large and complex models can be viewed on mobile devices.

GC: How will customers pay for the service? (as they will be using your GPU hardware resources?)

ALB: The customer will buy a normal Tridify subscription plan that allows them to have all the current features of the Tridify service, where customers can publish to the web using the Tridify web viewer. In addition, they will now also be

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able to publish to the streaming service.

GC: With the Unreal service do you (or will you eventually) get all the same functionality as you get with the existing tools? The press release states “future tools will include mark-up, annotations, measuring and cutting planes.”

existing web viewer or to the new streaming service. Then you will be able to choose what tools you will give to the viewer, since the two different viewing options do not have the same tools available yet.

with control over materials / lighting etc?

ALB: First step is to get the process fully automated. Then we will be able to get to the features of the Unreal engine that are the best in the world. We are going to GC: How are materials applied to the BIM implement raytracing, physical materimodel (does it use BIM object data and auto- als and lighting effects, so you will be matically replace with Unreal materials?). able to get closer to the quality of renALB: We will give users the tools they dering that Unreal users are used to. need for viewing and working with BIM ALB: Currently, our Unreal application is Keep in mind that we are going to create models. The tools will come in stages. We mapping basic materials from the BIM all these features as a fully automated are working with our key clients to get model automatically to Unreal materials. service. So, if you compare our approach the feedback on that enables you to what are the most publish hundreds of important tools you models in a matter need when viewing You will have an easy-to-use workflow where BIM data is of minutes, with an used to filter content from large amounts of data and large and complex Unreal developer models. Some tools that is using 100+ then use it in Twinmotion or Unreal applications - or are more important hours on just one even import content in real-time to those software than others, so from scene, to fine-tune applications using Tridify APIs the feedback we will every Unreal feabe able to decide the ture, there will most important use always be a differcases and give the tools to solve them.

However, at the end of this November we ence in the end result. are releasing our Revit material exporter GC: Once you’ve uploaded your model(s) plug-in that will enable you to export the GC: Is there currently any workflow from do you get a choice to use the existing materials that you used in a Revit BIM Tridify to Twinmotion or Tridify to workflows or Unreal streaming, or do project to our service. Then you will get the Unreal Engine? you have to choose at time of uploading? same materials as in Revit in the Unreal application and to the current web viewer.

ALB: This is one thing that we are workALB: The workflow stays exactly the ing towards. The Unreal team is working same. First you upload and process your GC: From the images we’ve seen it looks on adding Datasmith as part of the BIM files. Then in the publishing phase like you are not making the most of the Unreal Engine. This means that we you select the content and the data that you render quality in Unreal Engine. I pre- would be able to generate Datasmith files want to publish. Then you select the media sume this is not the point of the software in real-time from the content that we where you’d like to publish the content. (the focus in on geometry) or are there show in our Tridify streaming service.

Either you select to publish to the current tools where you can improve the quality ■ tridify.com

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www.AECmag.com

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Interview

On the subject of COBie AEC Magazine caught up with Simon Gilbert of Solibri UK to discuss common issues surrounding the production of COBie and why it seems so painful for many AEC Magazine: There is always a lot of complaining about IFC and COBie deliverables. Has IFC improved over the last five years?

Simon Gilbert: Yes, massively. I think the problem actually is back down to education, where people have to understand that it’s not just about IFC being a ‘File Save As’. It’s about a snapshot in time of a delivery, combining data and geometry, a project deliverable. If you think of it that way, you have to ask, ‘What are we delivering?’ It’s not just a file format; it’s a subset of data that users have to configure and understand.

If users know what they are doing from a mapping point of view they can get really a good quality IFC file that can be

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used by other people with confidence in its consistency.

AEC: A lot of the complexity isn’t helped with the way certain popular products, like Revit don’t handle IFC properly.

SG: This is what we struggle with on a day to day basis. Many people really not understanding this. A common and basic problem is users can’t get the models in the same location, with the fudging that Autodesk has done on coordinates. I have to teach people who need to work with COBie how to get their models aligned.

Zoning is also an issue because Revit doesn’t understand the concept of containers and zones. They are created in Revit MEP, but they not in the Revit

Architecture part. You end up doing the same work over and over again.

A system for Revit in the MEP is basically only pipe and duct services but, actually, in IFC a system is a collection of any objects, but you can’t create your IFC systems with anything else. So, you are absolutely jumping through hoops to try and get it to work. You can’t create property sets, you can only use the property sets that are inside Revit, which means they have to be mapped out to the right location.

This means you end up with a disconnect between the properties inside Revit, against the properties inside the IFC file.

There are all these things that users need to understand. People aren’t using the right builds of IFC exporter, or they use the one straight out of the box. Some haven’t even

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Interview

been updated to the latest patches of Revit.

We’re talking absolute basics.

AEC: Do the customers actually know what COBie is?

SG: There are clients who ask for it but don’t really understand what they are asking for and were still in the educational process with people. Intrinsically many people want to stay as they are, they want to stay just providing their usual deliverables. It’s really hard. But then you do get customers that really understand exactly why you would be doing it, and what benefits it actually has and it makes sense. So, there’s no excuse to actually deliver it badly.

AEC: What’s the fix for the quality market?

SG: Policing and it’s got to come from the client end. The client needs to understand that it’s no longer acceptable to have a building which is apparently coordinated correctly and has some sort of data. They have to also understand when a model has been fudged in order to fix coordination issues. It’s about education of the clients to understand and to get more involved in what they are actually asking for, and what they’re demanding and making sure that they get those data dumps on the right dates.

they’re trying to do it correctly. Many people don’t even think about the naming convention for objects and just take the family name. In COBie your component sheet, your type sheet should be real world values. So, if you’ve got doors, for instance, the door should be the same name in the model as in the door schedule, so that you can look at a door schedule and identify the object that’s in the COBie datasheet.

It has to make sense to people. People are just taking the defaults and AEC: What percentage of using the COBie extenusers do you think write People aren’t using sion for Revit. First of decent COBie? they try and do it the right builds of all, inside Revit, and then IFC exporter, or SG: A very difficult quesfind out that what tion. I don’t know to be they’re doing is generatthey use the one quite honest. In virtually straight out of the ing each individual every project that we for architecturbox. Some haven’t delivery work on there’s usually a al and MEP and somelot of misunderstanding. even been updated body stitches the two Saying that, the project Excel sheets together, to the latest I’m currently working on patches of Revit. which never works with an architect who’s because they’re not We’re talking delivering it for the conusing the same sets of absolute basics tractor, is probably the data. It doesn’t take a closest that we’ve actually genius to work out that got to a true definition of you should be doing all COBie, as in the actual parameters are this from a federated model. all named correctly, they’re all going to the right part of IFC. AEC: How can firms build quality into The property sets are all correct, and their models?

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SG: People look at Solibri as a way to get good quality COBie; they want quality assurance. They need understand that quality assurance and the quality of their models actually starts right back at home.

They then need to go through the process of understanding how bad their data is in the first place, how poor their modelling techniques are. Then you have to fix those and create a quality manual, a modelling standard for the whole office. Then, when models are created, they get good quality data and good quality geometry, which means Solibri can dynamically check it.

AEC: Sounds like in the future we might need Solibri to monitor in real time when people are creating BIM geometry?

SG: That is where it’s going, yes. We are also involved in two of projects with the Central Innovation Hub and Innovate UK. Here, we’re looking into the automated compliance for building regulations too.

AEC: With all the focus on 3D deliverables, lots of firms are looking to automate the 2D drawings and don’t want to be sucked into the traditional deliverables.

SG: What we need to do in the industry is change the delivery mechanism. We need to move away from 2D documents somehow, and actually just deliver quality model data, so that we can actually dump the 2D part completely, and actually move to real models and real data and real geometry.

■ solibri.com

www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 16:59

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L

aser scanning is rapidly becoming a commonly used technology within the AEC sector. While it has traditionally been the realm of surveyors, smaller and lower cost devices have now started to drive wider adoption.

Innovations such as SLAM technology (Simultaneous Location and Mapping) liberate scanning devices from tripods, to enable real-time data capture on the move. This rapidly speeds up capture, lowering the cost, but sacrifices some degree of accuracy.

With portable scanning becoming a common practice, users are starting to mix-and-match scanning technology on the same projects. SLAM is also set to benefit from the huge amounts spent by automotive firms, developing automated driving systems and in aerospace for unmanned UAVs, where it provides mission critical ‘vision’.

Last year London-based Correvate launched its Vercator service, a cloud platform that automatically registers static-captured, scanned data from a series of overlapping scans.

The registration engine, which uses technology developed by University College London’s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, finds multiple features within each scan and auto-aligns the huge data assets.

Correvate estimates its cloud service is 60-80% faster than manual alignment and has a simple token-based system for processing data. You can read more about it in this AEC article from April 2020 (tinyurl.com/correvate)

SLAM dunk Correvate has now incorporated SLAM into its service, so AEC Magazine caught up with Correvate’s Charlie Cropp, a laser scan industry veteran, to find out more.

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UK start-up Correvate offers cloud-based registration for laser-scanned point clouds.

With a growing trend to mix and match scanning technologies, the service recently added support for SLAM, terrestrial LiDAR and UAV captured data. Martyn Day

“The first thing to say is that we’re not solving the SLAM algorithm. We’re leaving that to the likes of GeoSLAM, Paracosm and NavVis,” explains Cropp.

“We’re just taking their processed point cloud, once it’s been captured and solved, and uploading the point cloud into our system to then align with other scanned data.

“We’ve seen a couple of big shift changes. The first is that people are deploying different arsenal. Firms who’ve traditionally always had a Leica or a Faro static scanner, are starting to run with GeoSLAM or Paracosm scanners and doing data capture to capture different levels of detail, different accuracy, tolerances, to match different project requirements.

“There is a realisation that they don’t need to be sending £50/60/70k pieces of kit to site when they could do so with a £15,000 to £20,000 solution. So that’s been a shift change in how the industry is working with SLAM data.

“Secondly, we are also seeing people actually use these devices in the same way they would a traditional scanner.

So instead of having long, large linear scans that potentially have drift, they are truncating their capture and keeping that data section quite small.

“The challenge with doing that is they end up with lots of small sections — chunks of scan data which their hardware provider’s software can’t actually manage.

They then have to look for an alternative software programme for

processing, such as CloudCompare, which is less than ideal.

“We’re seeing firms producing ‘hybrid’ datasets; capturing core areas with a higher accuracy scanners and filling in other areas with a GeoSLAM (or equivalent SLAM) scanner.

“We get a lot of people coming to us with mobile data or the SLAM data captured from drones, handheld scanners, and they’re wanting to align them all together. Our core algorithm initially came out of the static scan world where the centre point, the zero point, was in the centre of the scan.

“With SLAM that centre point can be outside of the scan data and we would typically see that data fail. We’ve been able to enhance our algorithm and go from a 0% success rate to 100% success rate, enabling automated registration for SLAM data as well as static data.”

Data trade-offs SLAM has always been seen as ‘dirty’ or ‘noisy’ data as it’s far from clean and usually not colourised. Cropp shared her thoughts, “Laser scanning has always been a compromise.

There’s always been trade-offs. Do you want data quality? Do you want speed of capture? How much data do you want? How much can you work with? And those three key elements are still relevant today.

“Looking at a GeoSLAM scanner,

The NavVis VLX wearable mobile mapping system

www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:45

IMAGE COURTESY OF LOGXON / GEOSLAM

GeoSLAM’s ZEB Horizon scanner can be mounted on a drone

what actually are you trying to do with it? I get asked quite a lot ‘which scanner should I be buying?’ And I always say ‘ignore the hardware for the moment, start with the workflow’. Start by thinking, ‘what am I trying to do? What’s the purpose of scanning? What’s going to be 90% of what I do and capture, and why and what’s the deliverable I need?’ If you need to deliver to Autodesk Recap, work back from the deliverable and that will then dictate your hardware.”

It’s clear Correvate is seeing a change of attitude in scanning. While SLAM might not be as accurate as it would like, firms are weighing that up. Do they need to be as accurate as a Leica or as clean as a Z+F scanner and spend the £70/80k on each scanner? Or can they actually increase productivity using SLAM to do more work, while still achieving what they need from a deliverable perspective. If you can be four times more efficient or productive because you are able to capture or generate four times the number of projects, many firms are easily making that call.

5G potential While scan registration in the cloud means firms get the benefit of large processing power, the other advantage would be having real-time registration fed live from the survey site.

When we first met Correvate, 5G had yet to be rolled out and it was somewhat of an unknown. Now that 5G is starting to become available and phones are capable of submitting large amounts of data quickly, the reality of feeding Vercator from site is a possibility.

AEC Magazine asked Cropp if there had been any uptake of 5G. Cropp explained, “Not as yet. I think we will start to see a difference when there is actually a hardware shift. With something like the Z+F scanner, they have a www.AECmag.com

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tablet which can synchronise to the scanner. It essentially pushes out the scans complete from the hardware to the tablet.

“What we anticipate, and what we’d like to see a bit more adoption from the hardware vendors, is actually making that push out from the scanner to the tablet, and from the tablet to the cloud. If that starts to become commonplace, that will drive 5G use.

“There’s two things here. The first is getting data into the cloud in the first place, and the second is connecting the cloud to your downstream production. If we can get data into the cloud more readily, and here there will be the naysayers saying ‘laser scans in the clouds, they’re too big’ but actually if we can send the data up in truncated chunks, almost without their knowledge, the data is in the cloud ready to work with.

“If we can then connect that data to our algorithm, which actually knows the order of the scans, from the timestamps, you can plot that route and resolve the registration.

“The other thing that will be key for us will be the downstream connectors. If we can securely connect to Autodesk’s or Bentley’s cloud via APIs, we can start processing point cloud data that’s held there. That will also be another huge turning point in the market.”

Scan-to-BIM At the moment Scan-to-BIM, where point clouds are automatically turned into building information models, is still a pipe dream. However, there are a number of companies working on trying to bring this to reality.

Correvate has declared that it intends to compete in that market. This is data alchemy, turning the dumbest data possible — 3D points — into intelligent walls, doors and windows.

Cropp told AEC Magazine that the company is aiming for its first beta in March, as in-house development resources scale up. To improve the quality of scan-to-BIM, it’s important to get as much data out of the scanner as possible.

This requires access to APIs, colourised registrations etc. and some scanner companies are reluctant to give potential competitors deep access.

Correvate is vendor neutral but will work best with firms who are open with their developer communities. Some scanning firms are very defensive of their high-cost point cloud software.

Registration is the start point, but the company intends to offer additional segmented offerings from deep analysis of identified components within a scan.

Conclusion For a long time, we have been waiting for better price competition in the laser scan market. Faro was the first to bring out a highly portable scanner for around £20,000, then Leica brought out the £15,000 BLK360, but we have not seen a rush to commoditise professional point cloud capture.

While we are now starting to see LiDAR on phones and tablets, it’s a long way from the accuracy and density required for professional applications.

For now, the market is adopting a hybrid approach and using the best technologies depending on need.

The SLAM market appears to be winning the productivity stakes and is carving its own niche.

With Correvate’s Vercator cloud-based services now being able to handle SLAM scans this will surely only accelerate that trend. AEC Magazine looks forward to seeing Correvate’s Scan-to-BIM technology later this year.

■ vercator.com

January / February 2021

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Feature

Gräbert targets BIM documentation In the BIM world we hardly ever talk about the evolution of 2D in pursuit of the ultimate model definition. While industry leader Autodesk stagnates the development of AutoCAD, competitors such as Gräbert are sensing an opportunity to improve the way documents are produced from BIM models, writes Martyn Day

T

he CAD industry is entering unknown waters, in terms of technology changes. The cloud, for many software firms, is seen as the ultimate destination for everything: applications, data, communication, processing, AI — you name it. However, the design software world is still predominantly about applications which run on local hardware.

Sure, the cloud has been used to aid collaboration, share data, manage licences and as a project repository, but we seem a long way off the all-singing cloudutopia which software firms envisage.

Companies like Autodesk, which have exceptionally successful, but mature desktop applications, have the strongest visions for how the cloud will be all things to all designers.

Autodesk has spent billions on developing its Construction Cloud offering, which is growing every year in scale and capability. The issue is, what does the roadmap of getting everything in the cloud look like and how soon?

Regular readers of AEC Magazine will know of the consternation felt within the Revit community on its lack of development. This actually could be expanded to users of other important Autodesk desk34

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top applications, such as Navisworks, as well as Autodesk’s flagship software application, AutoCAD. The reality is that these are mature products. The incentive to completely rewrite a desktop software application has vanished; the next generation will be written in the cloud. This period of stagnation is a danger, even for a company as mighty as Autodesk.

While there are very few alternatives for Revit at the moment, AutoCAD users are more fortunate. Both BricsCAD and Gräbert have mature DWG applications that are not only substantially cheaper but are also developing at greater velocity, providing more capabilities.

In recent years, these firms have identified that deeper integration with BIM, to provide greater productivity savings in automatic document automation, would be their focus. While the cloud is seen as a useful infrastructure, it’s not necessarily the only destination for all software.

Gräbert is based in Berlin, Germany and has a suite of DWG drawing tools which come under the Ares brand. The desktop application — Ares Commander — is available on Windows, MacOS and Linux. Gräbert has also enabled access to, and editing of, DWGs on desktop, tablet /

mobile (Ares Touch) or through a web browser (Ares Kudo). It’s possible to access your designs or create new ones wherever you find yourself, on whatever device is close at hand. This is unique in the industry.

Before looking at what is new in the latest releases, it’s worth noting that Gräbert has identified that BIM users need better drawing production tools than are available today.

The whole promise of automated 2D output from 3D models was never really delivered, and plans, sections and elevations are regularly edited in products like AutoCAD and LT, breaking the automatic updates should the model change.

For the last two years Gräbert has been expanding Ares’ capability to readin and work with BIM models. As this work goes on, new DWG workflows are emerging, aiming to take a lot of the drudgery out of creating detailed drawing sets and healing the disconnect between iterative BIM design changes and any ongoing 2D editing.

The ultimate goal being associativity between model and DWG throughout the design and documentation processes, even if they are from two different appliwww.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 12:44

“If you refresh the model, after making changes, say the metadata on a door, or the geometry, all those will update in Ares, as will the dimension chains appropriately. The next step we are actively working on is to deliver this across the design workflow.

“An architect may think spending a week creating a set of boring drawing plans is not a great use of time. But they accept it. The real frustraton is doing it for the second, third and fourth times!

That’s the problem we want to tackle first. We’ve been working with architects and having them report the time they spend producing drawings from BIM models. We’re just looking at those and seeing which ones of those we can tackle.

“We have so much data from the original BIM model, if we really use that to our advantage, we understand what these things are, because all the properties are in there, I think we can do a lot here.”

Moving on to the topic of Apple Macs, it’s also worth noting that Gräbert is ahead of the game when looking at the new Apple silicon machines. The company is already building and testing an ARM64 compatible beta of Ares 2022.

Conclusion cations, from different software houses.

It seems like a big issue to chew on but at least recognising the frustration that users have with BIM documentation aligns Gräbert’s intentions with the industry feedback we have been getting for the past few years.

BIM features In last year’s release, Ares had significant BIM capabilities added. It could read in RVT and IFCs, read BIM properties, extract BIM data (into tables or CSV files for quantity take-offs and cost estimation), filter BIM entities and navigate through models.

The new ‘2022’ version, coming out in March, supports the creation of floorplans, elevations and sections, layouts with multiple views, BIM labels and dimensions, and materials. Most importantly, it has the ability to refresh the drawing when the BIM model is updated.

Gräbert states that its ultimate goal is to increase the automation of drawing production from manual to semi-automatic by a factor of 10x.

Some of the automation capabilities can be seen in the way Ares automates tedious tasks, including the insertion of symbolic graphics such as doors, stairs www.AECmag.com

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or swing symbols.

Callout generation is also automated, referencing the other BIM drawings.

When the spatial volumes represented by two or more drawings overlap, callout symbols “call” other drawings and indicate their position, drawing number, and sheet ID. This is done according to the logic of overlapping drawings.

The BIM drawings in ARES Commander retain all the BIM information and keep associativity with the BIM model. Consequently, automated dimensioning is also available. This is especially powerful when there have been changes to the original BIM model, as Ares will automatically update any dimensions within the drawing.

To find out more about Gräbert’s views on BIM and how it intends to improve BIM workflows, AEC Magazine caught up with Robert Gräbert (CTO). “With BIM, you’re going do drawings multiple times. Designers need support here, because they are going to make five sets of drawings, as every month the model will keep changing. And here, you’re not ever 100% sure it’s going to be the final set of drawings. Reworking persists over multiple iterations and that is the problem we want to solve,” he says.

In the past it’s been easy to look at what are essentially AutoCAD clones and not expect to see much in the way of innovation. The primary reason for buying a clone has been to switch to a drawing tool with a lower cost of ownership.

This is no longer the only reason.

Autodesk’s competition is now actively developing new capabilities beyond the functionality of AutoCAD, targeting inefficiencies in current BIM workflows, integrating more tightly with models and workflows and using innovative approaches to deliver on the automation of drawing output.

If the cost of ownership hasn’t been a compelling enough reason to switch DWG tools, the increase in automated documentation productivity in successive releases of Ares should concern Autodesk, especially as cost of ownership increases and AutoCAD development velocity falters.

For now, you may not be aware, but there is a CAD arms race happening to better automate, if not fully automate the 2D part of the documentation process.

Customers want it and from the efforts so far from Gräbert and Bricsys, the developer of BricsCAD, it’s coming sooner rather than later.

■ graebert.com

January / February 2021

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Interview

Q&A: virtual workstations Greg Corke talks virtual workstations with graphics virtualisation specialist Adam Jull, CEO of IMSCAD and IMSCAD Cloud, touching on hybrid deployments, software licensing, VR via the cloud and, of course, the ongoing impact of Covid-19 Greg Corke: Has the Covid-19 pandemic changed the attitudes of design and engineering firms towards virtual workstations?

of your workforce. Most firms still have an on-premise set up at their core, so using the cloud for certain key services really makes sense.

Adam Jull: Obviously, the Covid pandemic has sent everyone home to work, so there was a sudden need for remote working, so over the lockdown, many firms used their corporate VPNs to connect to their offices.

Most firms have M365 [Microsoft 365], so Internet and email was always fine, but when it came to doing production design work, the VPN in most cases was found wanting. Opening and saving design data files and just general performance is slow. After a few months, we started getting enquiries about this specific issue and how maybe they could work remotely better with local workstation performance. Then you get asked about cloud, both public and private, as well as VDI on-premise. So, the answer is yes, I believe attitudes have changed and firms want to investigate both technically and what the financial impact could be to them.

GC: Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, what challenges have you faced with sourcing and deploying hardware – for on-premise, private, and public cloud?

GC: As many offices have been shut during lockdown, have you seen an increase in interest towards cloud (both public and private cloud deployments)?

AJ: Yes, for a number of reasons, not always about hosted desktops either, but [also] services such as data storage, offsite back-ups and disaster recovery for business continuity. The reason being that now that everyone generally works at home, losing access to your IT environment would cause a complete shutdown 36

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AJ: For on-premise, delays from the main OEMs in shipping servers, which was completely understandable, taking double the time it usually took, but right now, things are improving and getting back to the four- to six-week timeframe for a GPU-based server.

For private cloud, there was a similar challenge, as our cloud partners purchase servers like you would on-premise to host in their data centres for customers. The work for us is the same though, deploying and supporting remotely.

For public cloud, there were a number of stories of capacity issues during the initial lockdown, as many wanted something from the cloud – usually Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud – but, to be honest, every time we have deployed anything, there has always been capacity available.

We recently did a 500-user deployment in Microsoft Azure, which when using the GPU-based NV series instances, is always a gamble to know you can acquire that many when you need them – but so far, so good.

GC: We’re hearing a lot about hybrid deployments, where firms maintain their existing investment in hardware by giving some of their newer desktop worksta-

tions a remote capability, then supplementing them with virtual workstations.

What are your experiences of this?

AJ: There is no question a hybrid approach is required. You just cannot go full cloud in one go, let alone when running graphical applications and workflows where back-end resource is the key to success. As I mentioned, it is a journey to the cloud, which happens over years, not months, and much of the public cloud is just not geared up for the way AEC and manufacturing firms operate.

There is still nervousness around IP and data security, general performance as well as cost. Although billed monthly, the cloud is still expensive versus an onpremise deployment. We have customers that invest in on-premise VDI with a view that, in four years, they can take that up to a private or public cloud. User adoption is so critical and, by starting now, they have users who are tech savvy in how to work in this new environment, so when they do decide to move to the cloud, it should be seamless.

GC: What types and sizes of firms are you getting most interest from? Also, what are the smallest and largest deployments you have done?

AJ: Smallest being six users in Microsoft Azure and largest being 850 VDIs in a private cloud across US and Europe. The largest on-premise VDI is 680 users. All using graphical applications such as Autodesk, SketchUp, Adobe, Solidworks, Catia, Siemens and so on. Citrix or VMware is used for on-premise and private cloud deployments. www.AECmag.com

27/01/2021 13:17

Data Management for Information Managers

Capture is an information management toolkit that sits on top of the already powerful Twinview platform.

It replaces the manual process of defining, collating, validating and delivering asset information on your project. Whether using a defined schema such as BS1192:4 (COBie) or a custom deliverable, Twinview makes it easy using an intuitive, fully collaborative process.

With built in classification manager, automated rule-set based data validation, AIR automation, query sets and document production, it is a powerful tool for any information manager.

For a platform demo, contact: demo@twinview.com

www.twinview.com

Interview

GC: Five years ago, there were many stories of proof of concepts (POCs) that went on forever. Now the technology has matured, and customers have more confidence in it, are deployments being rolled out faster?

AJ: Yes, I believe the technology is more accepted now. For example, we have demo servers in the US and Europe, which we allow 48-hour access to, with your own datasets to test. Once that is completed, we generally get to doing a paid production deployment.

GC: What’s the quickest deployment you did during the pandemic?

AJ: Two days in Microsoft Azure. It was not complicated, but one of the benefits of the public cloud is that it is resource on demand.

GC: What different types of endpoints do your customers use and has there been a shift over the last few years?

run on local workstations. Has this changed now and are firms tending to run everything in the cloud/datacentre?

AJ: I would say VDI is the go-to solution and the most popular, as you get a likefor-like resourced desktop with dedicated resource for each user. Application virtualisation is still a valid option, but more customers want all applications and, importantly, their data in the environment.

GC: The hardware requirements for CAD haven’t changed that much over the years.

With CPUs getting more cores and GPUs getting faster, does this mean you are able to a get much better density of users in the datacentre, or are you finding firms are now demanding more powerful workstation instances, because their workflows have changed, maybe to support complementary applications for visualisation, simulation and so on?

AJ: Yes, for sure. CPUs in servers are getting closer to local workstation speeds and they all tend to turbo up if required to handle more HPC-type workloads. Even using apps, such as Enscape or 3ds Max needs both GPU and CPU running at high speed. Normally, with Nvidia’s current crop of graphics cards, you can do it all on one card – desktops, rendering and visualisation, which is great.

The density of users per GPU, as always, depends on the application mix and required resource.

Sometimes it just makes sense to leave some applications on a workstation.

AJ: Firms are still willing to spend on heavily resourced laptops to help users work remotely, but the same performance issues will still remain The cloud is the around data access speed and reliance on your home future, no doubt, internet. We like Igel – they but for the next are great endpoint, thin-clifive plus years I ent devices and they have a don’t see firms software version too.

I have even heard stories changing from the of workstations being hybrid approach. taken home from the There is a place office. I guess people get for all of this in by because they have to, but I do feel that through any enterprise to the new year, firms and one size does should be really looking at not fit all this properly to find the most robust solutions for their users to work GC: Software licensing remotely, more effectively, with slick per- was originally a big challenge for virtual formance. Ultimately, you can work on workstations (on-premise and in the any device you currently own; there’s no cloud). While software developers have real need to buy new hardware if run- become more flexible, some customers ning VDI or from the cloud. have told us that there can still be barriers in place.

GC: When we spoke a few years ago, you What are your experiences, specificalmentioned that it was not uncommon for ly with the major players like Autodesk firms to simply virtualise key CAD/BIM and Dassault Systèmes. Do firms have to applications like Solidworks / Revit/ get special types of licences and how AutoCAD, while other apps continue to readily are they made available?

‘‘

’’

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AJ: Traditionally, we have mainly deployed Autodesk customers, both onpremise and in the cloud, with Citrix and VMware. In fact, we helped Autodesk certify AutoCAD for Citrix back in the day, but the recent changes they particularly have made to moving licensing to ‘Named User’ really simplifies any deployment method you may want. This takes away any issues around virtualisation or cloud, as there can’t be any audit issue if there is one user per licence. This has really solved the issue with Autodesk deployments, but there are still a few ISVs that have been slow to adapt. In my experience, there is never a technical barrier to doing anything and normally ISVs will allow it if you ask nicely.

GC: Have you had any experiences of (or requests for) streaming VR from the cloud or data centre using Nvidia CloudXR or other technologies?

AJ: Not too many, as yet, although I am sure we will. I still think there are many new technologies that will take years to be properly adopted. As always, it is all about bandwidth but, once 5G gets there, many of these things could be possible.

Many firms still have not taken on virtual or cloud desktops, so running VR from the cloud could be a while.

GC: And last but not least, here’s the mandatory futures question. Where do you see the workstation landscape in five to 10 years?

AJ: One thing I always think is new technology always takes longer than you think to get adopted into businesses. The cloud is the future, no doubt, but for the next five-plus years, I don’t see firms changing from the hybrid approach.

There is a place for all of this in any enterprise and one size does not fit all.

My view is more firms should be looking at ways to make remote and homeworking the best it can be and consider using the public cloud for HPC, storage and disaster recovery. One thing we must not forget is cost and still the most cost-effective way of doing a quality VDI solution is buying your own servers.

Adam Jull is chief executive officer of IMSCAD Global and IMSCAD Cloud, specialists in delivering public cloud and private cloud solutions for graphical desktops and applications, including CAD. ■ imscadglobal.com ■ imscadcloud.com

www.AECmag.com

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Untitled-2 1

27/07/2020 18:27

Lenovo ThinkStation P620 [AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro] For AMD, the tide is turning and the launch of the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 feels like a pivotal moment in the workstation market. Greg Corke puts the exciting new 64-core AMD Threadripper Pro workstation through its paces

O

ver the last 12 months AMD has emerged as a serious competitor to Intel. We’ve seen great price / performance from the consumer focused 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen, but it’s with 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper that AMD has really turned up the heat.

When Lenovo unveiled its ThinkStation P620 in July 2020, it caused some serious ripples in the workstation market.

Powered by the AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPU, it meant Lenovo was the first major workstation manufacturer in nearly 15 years to launch a workstation with an AMD processor.

And, with an exclusive agreement with AMD, it will be the only way you can get Threadripper Pro for at least a few months.

Ryzen Threadripper, as the name suggests, is a family of desktop CPUs with lots of cores (and threads) to rip through multi-threaded applications like ray trace rendering, point cloud processing and simulation. With up to 64-cores, more than any other desktop / workstation CPU, it offers something that Intel simply can’t.

As a brand, Threadripper is no stranger to the workstation market. Specialist manufacturers including Armari, BOXX, Scan, Workstation Specialists, Puget Systems, Boston, Velocity Micro, and InterPro have been offering workstations with the ‘consumer’ Threadripper CPU for some time.

We use the word ‘consumer’ loosely here, as one can’t imagine many consumers have a need for a 64-core CPU. Semantics aside, there is no doubt these are insanely powerful processors.

When third generation consumer Threadripper launched just over a year ago it made a huge statement.

In multithreaded workflows that make 40

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maximum use of every single CPU core, like ray trace rendering, it not only left all Intel CPUs for dust, but its single threaded performance was better than Intel’s best 28-core Xeon CPUs. What’s more, to get anywhere close to Threadripper’s 64 cores, you needed two Intel Xeons in a desktop workstation, and a much larger budget.

The performance argument for consumer Threadripper is extremely compelling, but for major OEMs this was not enough. In order for the

likes of Dell, HP, Lenovo and Fujitsu to take Threadripper seriously, AMD needed to develop a professional version.

What is Threadripper Pro? In short, AMD Ryzen Threadripper is to AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro, as Intel Core is to Intel Xeon.

Both AMD CPUs share the same core silicon, but there are several features that set the workstation CPU apart from its ‘consumer’ sibling. These include more memory channels (8 vs 4), higher memory capacity (2TB vs 256GB) and additional PCIe Gen4 lanes (128 vs 64).

Memory is arguably the biggest differentiator, and this will be especially important in memory intensive applications like Computational Fluid

Dynamics (CFD) or Finite Element Analysis (FEA), which are both used heavily in the automotive and aerospace industries, but also in AEC. Some of the more complex fluid flow or multi-physics simulations can literally eat up memory and by offering more capacity and the ability to feed data into the CPU much quicker via 8-channels, it should have a big impact on performance.

In addition, those looking to use their workstation for multi-tasking, perhaps to run several different compute intensive tasks in parallel, should also see benefits.

The increase in memory capacity has been enabled through support for RDIMM and LRDIMM modules – DDR4-3200.

Error Correcting Code (ECC) is also supported, which is important for those running simulations over several hours or even days – and want to minimise the risk of crashes. Consumer Threadripper does support ECC memory, but not on all motherboards.

Threadripper Pro also covers a wider range of cores and 12, 16, 32 and 64-core models are all available as options in the ThinkStation P620. In comparison, consumer Threadripper comes in 24, 32 or 64-core variants, while consumer CPUs with 16-cores or less come under the AMD Ryzen brand.

Clock speeds for the 32-core Threadripper Pro 3975WX (3.5GHz to 4.2GHz Turbo) and 64-core 3995WX (2.7GHz to 4.2GHz Turbo) are slightly lower than consumer Threadripper CPUs with equivalent core counts, both in terms of base and boost frequency.

According to AMD, this is because Threadripper Pro offers more functionality within the same power budget – specifically referring to memory bandwidth, capacity and the number of PCIe Gen4 lanes. www.AECmag.com

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Hardware While the slightly lower frequency will have an impact on performance in most applications, the benefits from increased memory bandwidth and capacity in memory intensive workflows could outweigh the loss of a couple of hundred MHz. Consumer doesn’t mean faster frequencies across the board. The 12-core Threadripper Pro 3945WX (4.0GHz to 4.3GHz Turbo) and 16-core Threadripper Pro 3955WX (3.9GHz to 4.3GHz Turbo) actually have higher base clocks than the equivalent Ryzen CPUs, even though the boost speed is lower, so should deliver better multi-threaded performance.

This is because these CPUs have a much higher thermal design power (TDP) (280W) than the equivalent Ryzens (105W), so more watts can be pumped in.

At this point it’s important to note that AMD Threadripper Pro is based on AMD’s ‘Zen 2’ architecture, the same architecture used in the consumer AMD Ryzen 3000 Series, which was introduced in 2019.

It is not the same as the new ‘Zen 3’ AMD Ryzen 5000 series which launched at the tail end of 2020 with 6, 8, 12, and 16 cores models. With high frequencies and impressive Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) it looks to be the processor to finally take Intel’s performance crown in single threaded applications like CAD.

(3.3GHz to 4.5GHz Turbo), 16GB RAM, a 256GB SATA SSD and no GPU. And then to get anywhere near the same level of cores as the top end 64-core Threadripper Pro 3995WX, you’ll need a dual Xeon workstation, such as the ThinkStation P720 or P920, but these are virtually non-existent on Lenovo’s UK site.

So far, we’ve quoted starting prices, but it’s hard to imagine anyone buying a Threadripper Pro workstation with 16GB RAM. It’s simply not enough.

For a designer who uses CAD or BIM software with a little bit of CPU rendering, a more likely starting point would be a 12-core Threadripper Pro 3945WX, 32GB RAM, 512GB SSD, and an Nvidia Quadro P2200 GPU (£1,546 + VAT).

For simulation, one might start with a 32-core

The cost As Threadripper Pro is presently a dedicated OEM chip, and the only place you can currently buy one is inside a Lenovo ThinkStation P620, there is no retail price.

On Lenovo’s UK website, the ThinkStation P620 starts at £1,189 Ex VAT for a base model with a 12-core Threadripper Pro 3945WX (4.0GHz to 4.3GHz Turbo), 16GB RAM, a 256GB M.2 SSD and no GPU. The exact same spec, but with a 64-core Threadripper Pro 3995WX instead, will set you back £4,917 Ex VAT. With this in mind, we can say with some certainty that Threadripper Pro does cost more than its consumer equivalents, but no one would be surprised to hear that.

Impressively, the ThinkStation P620 is significantly cheaper than ‘equivalent’ Intel-based workstations.

The ThinkStation P520, for example, which shares an almost identical chassis, costs £1,902 Ex VAT for a base model with a 10-core Intel Xeon W-2155 CPU www.AECmag.com

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2.2GHz (with 4.0GHz Turbo). Configuring with an Intel Xeon Gold 6238R (2.7GHz, 4.0GHz Turbo) would add an additional £2,000+, and for a dual Intel Xeon Platinum prices go off the chart.

Pricing aside, the beauty of the ThinkStation P620 is that it can hit a sweet spot for many different workflows.

To get this kind of spread on Intel you’d need at least two different models of workstation. For enterprise IT departments who need to manage vast pools of machines, being able to standardise on a single workstation could be a major attraction.

Enterprise credentials From a security and manageability perspective, Threadripper Pro comes with several features that will be really important to some enterprise customers.

For example, AMD Memory Guard allows the contents of system memory to be fully encrypted, adding an additional layer of security. This is designed to reduce the threat of a physical memory attack, even if a workstation is left in standby mode.

As you would expect, there is a small overhead when using encryption but it’s only a few percent says AMD. And, for those who need to protect confidential IP, it’s probably a small price to pay.

Threadripper Pro also features AMD Pro Manageability, which includes a set of features designed to speed and simplify deployment imaging and manageability within an enterprise IT environment, making it easier to support remote workers. AMD Secure Boot offers boot protection to help prevent unauthorised software and malware from taking over critical system functions.

Lenovo ThinkStation P620

Threadripper Pro 3975WX, 64GB RAM, 1TB SSD and an Nvidia Quadro P2200 (£3,372 + VAT).

And for high end design viz, you could do a lot worse than a 64-core Threadripper Pro 3995WX, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD and an Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 (£6755 + VAT).

To give some kind of comparison, an equivalent dual Xeon workstation – a Dell Precision 7920 – would cost you just over £9,000 + VAT and that’s with the baselevel 28-core Intel Xeon Gold 6238R CPU which has a significantly lower clock of

The Lenovo ThinkStation P620 is the first Threadripper Pro workstation and will be the only one for at least a few months, as Lenovo has an exclusive launch agreement with AMD. While the ThinkStation P620 is a new product, it has not been designed completely from scratch. It shares the same chassis as the single socket Intel Xeon W-based ThinkStation P520, although Lenovo has enhanced the cooling to accommodate the 280W Threadripper Pro CPU. The main chassis fans remain the same, but the CPU features two heatsinks with built-in fans, custom designed

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Importantly, Lenovo has not opted for a benefit. This would mainly be from Most firms investing in a workstation liquid cooling in the P620. In the enter- significantly increased sequential with so many CPU cores won’t necessariprise space, stability and serviceability are read/write speeds, but also from ly need such an array of high-end GPUs. of paramount performance. And while improvements in random read/write per- In saying that, a twelve core custom cooling solutions, such as the Full formance.

Threadripper 3945WX would be a great Water Loop (FWL) system used by The P620’s motherboard can host two foundation for a GPU render box.

Armari in its Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL M.2 NVMe SSDs, which can be configAs we’ve come to expect from Lenovo, (see our review - tinyurl.com/AEC-TR64), ured in a RAID array to boost perfor- the build quality of the machine is superb. allow Threadripper to hit 3.9GHz on all mance (RAID 0) or safeguard data in the The chassis is incredibly solid, though 64-cores, most enterprise IT departments event of a failure (RAID 1). There are still very portable thanks to the built in prefer to keep things simple. optional add in boards which can host handle at the front.

The ThinkStation P620 chassis is a fair- one or up to four M.2 SSDs, but they are On the whole, serviceability is excellent, ly compact 33 litres, around the same size both PCIe Gen 3 boards, so you miss out from the lockable push and click handle as most single socket Intel workstations, on the performance benefits, even when on the side panel, to the red touch points but not as expandable as a typical dual PCIe Gen 4 SSDs are available. inside, which make it easy to change fans, Xeon. It’s perfect for mainstream to highFor those just interested in capacity, the drives, GPUs, memory and even the end users, but it does mean Lenovo is not ThinkStation P620 can host up to four 1000W power supply. able to take full advantage of the 3.5-inch Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) interOne small gripe is that it’s quite hard to Threadripper Pro architecture. nally and one more in the Flex Bay at the get to the M.2 SSDs on the motherboard.

With 8 memory slots, the machine is front of the machine.

First, you have to remove the full length limited to 1TB, whereas some dual Intel Unfortunately, Lenovo hasn’t added GPU and then the heat sink, which is Xeon Platinum workstations can go all M.2 SSD support to the Flex Bay, so you attached by two screws. So should an SSD the way up to 3TB or even more, although have to take off the side panel to access fail, it’s not exactly a quick pit stop. you do pay a massive premium for that the SSDs. The machine is well equipped with much memory.

The ThinkStation P620 can also host ports. At the rear, there’s four USB 3.2 512GB (8 x 64GB) is currently the maxi- more GPUs than comparable worksta- Type A and two USB 2.0. mum configurable on Lenovo’s UK web- tions. With four PCIe Gen 4 x16 slots it At the front, there’s two USB Type C site, but we’re told 128GB and two USB 3.2 Type A, modules will be available one of which has a chargvery soon.

The beauty of the ThinkStation P620 is that it can ing function.

Memory is arranged in All four front USB hit a sweet spot for many different workflows. To ports two banks of four, each and the headphone get this kind of spread on Intel you’d need at least port are backlit, which is which its own active memory cooler with a small a nice touch, as it stops two different models of workstation fan. To complete the coolyou scrabbling around in ing, there’s a single fan at the dark. the front of the chassis and another at the can support up to four single height Above the ports, there’s a four-digit rear. All of these fans work together well GPUs (up to the Quadro RTX 4000) or LED diagnostic display, which displays a in harmony, for what we’ve found to gen- two double height boards (currently up to code when an issue or error is detected. erally be a pretty quiet system, even the Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000).

The user then simply punches in the code under heavy load.

Hosting four Quadro RTX 4000s is at Lenovo.com to find out what’s wrong.

One of the headline features of something that can’t be done in an Intel Finally, there’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet on Threadripper Pro is support for PCIe box. It could be an interesting proposition board rather than the standard 1 Gigabit, Gen 4, which is not yet available in Intel for GPU rendering or even virtualisation which will be useful for shifting large workstations. The new interface standard with GPU passthrough, as the P620 can design viz, simulation or point cloud dataoffers double the bandwidth of PCIe be rack mounted in a data centre. sets quickly across the network.

Gen 3, which means the workstation can All Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs are curImportantly, the ThinkStation P620 transfer data to GPUs and NVMe Solid rently PCIe Gen 3, so if you want a PCIe supports Linux (Ubuntu and Red Hat State Drives (SSDs) much faster.

Gen 4 Nvidia GPU, you’ll need to wait for Enterprise) as well as Windows 10 Pro. Unfortunately, many of the PCIe the Ampere-based Nvidia RTX A6000 While most software used in product Gen 4 components that Lenovo has lined (we expect it to be offered by Lenovo in development and AEC runs on Windows, up for the ThinkStation P620 are not the early part of 2021).

Linux is widely used in simulation, so this yet available.

You can get hold of a PCIe Gen 4 GPU if should help Lenovo break the Intel The most important is arguably the you go for AMD, and Lenovo currently monopoly in this space.

Samsung PM9A1 SSD. While Lenovo offers the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 and waits for a firmware update, all W5700 GPUs. However, doubling the Test machine ThinkStation P620s will ship with PCI bandwidth won’t make a noticeable differ- With a top-end 64-core Threadripper Pro Gen 3 SSDs. In our test machine this was ence in most workflows.

3995WX and Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 the Western Digital SN730.

To take full advantage of Threadripper GPU, our Lenovo supplied test machine When the Samsung SSD PM9A1 does Pro’s 128 PCIe Gen 4 lanes and offer sup- was very focused on design viz. become available (hopefully any time port for four double height GPUs, Lenovo To make the most of the 8-channel now), those working with large datasets, would need a bigger box but, as things memory architecture all eight RAM slots particularly in the areas of simulation stand, the ThinkStation P620 should still were populated with 16GB RDIMM modand point cloud processing, should notice satisfy the requirements of most users. ules, giving a total of 128GB.

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Hardware 1

1 The Threadripper Pro CPU is flanked by two banks of four memory slots 2 Each memory bank has its own active memory cooler with a small fan 3 Backlit headphone port and USB ports 4 Lenovo ThinkStation P620 FlexBay 5 Lockable side panel 6 Easily removeable power supply unit

A solitary 512GB Western Digital SN730 M.2 SSD rounded out the spec, which can be seen in full below.

Lenovo ThinkStation P620 • AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3995WX (64 cores) (2.7GHz up to 4.2GHz Turbo) • Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 GPU (24GB) • AMD WRX80 mainboard • 128GB (8 x 16GB) RDIMM DDR4-3200 ECC memory • 512GB SSD M.2 PCIe 3.0 NVMe Opal (Western Digital SN730) • 9.0mm DVD±RW • 15-in-1 Card Reader • 1x 10GbE RJ-45 • 3 Year On-site warranty • £8,073 Ex VAT

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Computer Aided Design One of the beauties of the 64-core Threadripper Pro 3995WX is its suitability for a range of different workflows.

Historically, if you wanted a workstation with buckets of cores, you had to take a big hit in single threaded performance, which is what counts in CAD and when modelling in most 3D applications.

While its base clock speed (the minimum frequency you would expect when all 64-cores are being hammered) is relatively low (2.70GHz), the thing that makes the Threadripper Pro 3995WX so well suited to a desktop workstation is that it can Turbo all the way to 4.20GHz. And this isn’t that far off a comparable ‘Zen 2’ CPU with far less cores, such as the 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X (3.5GHz, up to 4.7GHz Turbo).

When exporting an IGES model from single threaded CAD software Solidworks, for example, we saw the CPU go up to 4.05GHz. And it only took 88 seconds to complete the test – not that far behind our current leader, a 5.0GHz overclocked Intel Core-i9-10900K (75 secs). www.AECmag.com

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Hardware Ray trace rendering While single threaded applications like these will still run best on lower core count CPUs like the Intel Core-i910900K, and the new ‘Zen 3’ AMD Ryzen 5000 series, it’s in highly threaded workflows like ray trace rendering where the 64-core Threadripper Pro 3995WX comes into its own.

In design viz software KeyShot, for example, the ThinkStation P620 rendered our 4K test scene in a mere 47 secs, miles ahead of a typical CAD-focused CPU like the 8-core Intel Xeon W-1270 (346 secs). And the CPU maintained a consistent 3.0GHz, even when rendering for over an hour.

We saw similarly good results in the V-Ray NEXT benchmark, though the frequency fell from 3.05GHz in the first run to 2.90GHz on subsequent runs, which saw the benchmark score of 72,410 ksamples (bigger is better) drop by around 4%. This is significant if you plan to render large scenes or frame by frame animations.

While these scores are comparable to a Threadripper 3990X (2.9GHz, up to 4.3GHz Turbo) run at stock clock speeds, AMD’s consumer CPU does have a trick up its sleeve in the form of Precision Boost Overdrive, a feature that’s not available on Threadripper Pro. In simple terms, Precision Boost Overdrive is automatic overclocking. It allows more power to be pumped into the CPU, as long as the workstation can cool it adequately, which pushes up its frequency.

The Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL, which we reviewed in February 2020 (tinyurl.com/AEC-TR64), does this with a Full Water Loop (FWL) cooling system that features a pump / reservoir, tubing and a giant radiator that takes up one third of the chassis. This is something you are extremely unlikely to ever see in an enterprise workstation.

However, as a result of this extreme cooling, all 64-cores can be pushed to 3.90GHz, delivering substantially better performance. For example, the Armari Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL came in at 38 secs in KeyShot and 92,978 ksamples in the V-Ray NEXT benchmark.

While an overclocked consumer Threadripper will almost certainly beat Threadripper Pro in a straight rendering race, there are still design viz workflows where its superior memory bandwidth www.AECmag.com

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will likely win out.

When compiling shaders in Unreal Engine, for example, we understand that the software spins up multiple instances and each instance needs to be fed data. An AMD spokesperson told AEC Magazine that Threadripper Pro has been seen to deliver a 30-40% jump in performance over an overclocked Threadripper workstation simply because it has the memory bandwidth to ‘feed the beast’.

Simulation Most ray trace renderers follow a general pattern, where the relationship between render time and number of cores is linear and inversely proportional. However, simulation software is much more complex. All appli-

came out top. However, in some workflows the dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 still had the lead. Both machines had a similar amount of memory and were maxxed out in terms of memory bandwidth.

What we found interesting was that in three out of the 21 tests, the 32-core Threadripper Pro was actually faster than the 64-core model. In simulation software, as we’ve seen before, more cores isn’t always better.

As discussed earlier, memory is really important for simulation and this is where Threadripper Pro beats consumer Threadripper hands down, both in terms of capacity and bandwidth – and we’d love to see how the two compare.

The potential of having up to 1TB of super-fast memory in an ‘affordable’ desktop workstation really could change the way engineering firms think about simulation – doing more on the desktop and less in a cluster or the cloud.

However, while bringing down solve times, or being able to obtain more accurate results through the use of more dense meshes, is great, firms do need consider the cost of software licensing. Ansys, like many other simulation software providers, charges more if you use more cores. So, in some cases, choosing a more powerful CPU might not be worth it for what could be a small performance gain. Certainly, firms need to understand exactly how their software works with their datasets before splashing out on a 64-core CPU.

Point cloud processing cations are different, and performance can also vary dramatically within the application itself, depending on the size and kind of dataset, the type of solver and the nature of the analysis (linear / non-linear, etc.).

We explored this topic previously in our sister magazine, DEVELOP3D, in an article on Ansys Mechanical (tinyurl.com/ D3D-ansys). Unfortunately, this level of testing was not possible for this review, but Lenovo did share some benchmark figures from Ansys Mechanical (FEA) and Ansys Fluent (CFD) and we were impressed with what we saw, although we cannot share the results Lenovo compared various Threadripper Pro models to a dual Intel Xeon Platinum 8280 (2 x 28 cores) and other Intel W-Series CPUs. In the majority of tests, the 64-core Threadripper Pro 3995WX

Leica Cyclone Register 360 is an AECfocused application that is used to register point clouds, taking individual laser scans and combining them in one unified coordinate system. It’s an interesting application insofar as is doesn’t dynamically allocate workstation resources; instead, it predicts in advance what CPU resources will be needed for any given dataset and then allocates them accordingly.

For example, with our 99GB test dataset, which comprises 39 laser scans and 500 million points, a workstation with 16GB RAM will use one thread, one with 32GB will use two, one with 64GB will use five and one with 128GB will use six. The application is currently nowhere near being able to take full advantage of the 64 cores in the Threadripper Pro 3995WX, although AMD told us it is currently January / February 2021

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Hardware working with Leica to improve this.

To help users manage the substantial Conclusion In terms of benchmarking, we were resources of the ThinkStation P620, The launch of Threadripper Pro in pleasantly surprised to see our Lenovo offers a freely downloadable util- the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 feels like ThinkStation P620 complete the test in ity called Lenovo Performance Tuner. a defining moment in the workstation 2,296 secs, setting a new record with clock Instead of letting Windows decide how market. speeds hovering around 3.70GHz. This is an application uses the workstation’s The performance of this machine, parsignificantly faster than a 4.0GHz over- CPU cores, users can set processor affini- ticularly with the 32-core and 64-core clocked AMD Threadripper 3990X with ty, so when an application launches it Threadripper Pro CPUs, is incredible and 64GB RAM (2,899 secs) and even faster only runs on specific cores and doesn’t even though Intel can compete in some than a ten core Intel Core i9-10900K with compete with others. This is particularly high-end workflows with its dual Xeon 128GB RAM (2,332 secs), even with its sig- useful for a demanding workflow like ray CPUs, AMD wins hands down on price/ nificantly higher 5.0Hz clock. trace rendering. performance.

We immediately put this down to memTo find out how far we could push the In many ways, AMD’s biggest competiory bandwidth. With 8-channels, system we tested it out by running a ridic- tor is itself. In some workflows — ray trace Threadripper Pro has significantly more ulous number of concurrent processes – a rendering in particular — consumer than consumer Threadripper (4-channels) CPU render in KeyShot, a CPU render in Threadripper offers more performance, and the Intel Core i9-10900K (dual-chan- V-Ray, a CPU/GPU render in Solidworks especially in water cooled machines. In nels) and considering the size of the data- Visualize and then interactive modelling in other workflows, memory bandwidth and sets involved this made total sense.

Solidworks. And, remarkably, the machine capacity gives Threadripper Pro an However, we were puzzled by what remained pretty responsive, even without advantage. happened next. To level the playing field using the Lenovo Performance Tuner.

But this isn’t just about performance. with consumer Threadripper we reduced Lenovo offers something that really matthe memory to 64GB, taking out four Graphics ters to large design, engineering and memory sticks. Now with four channels As this review is very much focused on architecture firms, which is global supinstead of eight, and the registration Threadripper Pro, we won’t go into a great port, reliability through extensive testing, being calculated on five threads instead deal of depth on the Lenovo ThinkStation software certification, and a broad portfoof six, we had expected lio of products that can serve processing times to rise the entire organisation. This is significantly, much closer The performance of this machine is incredible something that the smaller, speto consumer cialist workstation manufacturand even though Intel can compete in some Threadripper. However, simply can’t offer with conhigh-end workflows with its dual Xeon CPUs, ers it made very little differsumer Threadripper.

AMD wins hands down on price/performance ence at all, completing While Threadripper Pro the test in 2,311 secs. excels in multi-threaded workWhile we can’t explain flows, in the grand scheme of this behaviour, we are certain that memory P620’s graphics performance. things ray tracing rendering and simulabandwidth is having a massive influence In short, the Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 tion are relatively niche. Single threaded here, and we’d be exceedingly interested to is the fastest GPU we’ve tested at AEC performance continues to be more imporsee how some of the lower core count Magazine, and is great for real time viz, tant to the masses of CAD and BIM softThreadripper Pro CPUs performed in this VR and GPU rendering, especially consid- ware users out there, and Threadripper test. With their higher clock speeds, we ering its 24GB of memory.

Pro isn’t quite there yet. imagine they could be an excellent choice In Autodesk VRED Professional we got However, this is only just the beginning for users of Leica Cyclone Register 360. an impressive 16.75 frames per second out for Threadripper Pro. With its new ‘Zen 3’ To find out more about our Leica of our automotive test model at 4K resolu- Ryzen 5000 series, AMD looks to have Cyclone Register 360 testing, read this in- tion with anti-aliasing set to very high. taken Intel’s single threaded performance depth article (tinyurl.com/AEC-cyclone).

It also set a new record in real-time arch crown – and with the same architecture viz tool Enscape, navigating our test scene almost certainly making its way into the Multi-tasking at 38 FPS at 4K. And, in Solidworks next gen of Threadripper Pro last this Threadripper Pro isn’t just about throw- Visualise, it rendered the 1969 Camaro year, the future looks incredibly bright for ing a huge compute resource at a single model at 4K with 1,000 passes in 222 secs AMD in the workstation market. And task. With so many cores to play with, and 100 passes with de-noising enabled with that in mind, it’s surely only a matter high memory bandwidth, and (soon) high in 24 secs. All impressive stats. of time before other tier ones like HP and performance storage, the Lenovo However, with the Quadro RTX 6000’s Dell follow suit.

ThinkStation P620 is also very adept at replacement, the Nvidia RTX A6000, just Of course, Intel will fight back – not just multi-tasking. around the corner, those who need this in technology, but marketing as well. Intel For example, one could model in CAD, level of performance from their GPU Xeon, as a brand, has been built up over while running a simulation and a render- might be advised to wait. many years. So even if AMD does win the ing job in the background or run multiple Of course, the Quadro RTX 6000 is performance war, it will still have a big job simulation jobs in parallel to explore how complete overkill if you simply want the on its hands to change the mindsets of different design iterations stack up. This P620 for simulation, point cloud pro- architects and engineers. While gamers could even extend to using the cessing or CAD-centric rendering. might be more easily swayed by benchThinkStation P620 as a network Replacing it with a Quadro P2200 mark charts, brand loyalty in the workstaresource, as is possible with some ren- would bring the cost of our test machine tion market is very strong. dering / simulation tools. down to £5,804 Ex VAT. ■ lenovo.com ■ amd.com

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Review

Epson SC-T3100M The wide format printing market is so dominated by HP that it’s often hard for other manufacturers to be heard. But, with a new compact 24-inch (A1) multifunction printer (MFP), Epson has plenty to shout about, writes Greg Corke

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hen large format printer distributor ArtSystems asked if I’d be interested in reviewing Epson’s new multi-function printer (MFP) I have to admit I was a little hesitant. Where on earth would I find room for a 24-inch (A1) printer / scanner / copier in my space constrained home office? And how would I even get it up the stairs?

The reality is, the Epson SC-T3100M is not your average wide format MFP. The compact unit is considerably smaller and lighter than comparative products from HP and Canon. It measures 970mm (w) x 505 (d) x 292 (h) and weighs 35.3kg.

This means it’s relatively easy for two people to carry and sits comfortably on a desk or sideboard (although there’s also an optional stand with catch basket). And because the device is WiFi-enabled it can go anywhere.

The SC-T3100M is not a completely new product. It’s an evolution of the SC-T3100 and SC-T3100N inkjet printers that Epson www.AECmag.com

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launched a couple of years ago, but the new model has an integrated 600dpi Contact Imaging Sensor (CIS) colour scanner. Impressively, turning it into a 3-in-1 device has not increased its size one bit.

As a printer, the SC-T3100M supports a single 2-inch core roll of paper up to 24-inches wide x 100m long and cut sheets up to A1. It can automatically switch between the two with no manual intervention. There’s also a built in auto sheet feeder for up to 50 sheets of A4 or A3, so the machine can double up as a standard office printer.

Like all Epson inkjets, the SC-T3100M features micro piezo print head technology, rather than the more common thermal inkjet print heads that you get with HP and Canon.

The technology works by applying an electrical voltage to a piezo crystal, which then expands and contracts to propel thousands of ink droplets through the nozzle. In contrast, thermal printheads feature a heating element that creates an

air bubble which ejects the ink.

According to Epson, because piezo print heads are not subject to the same heating and cooling stresses as thermal print heads are, they don’t lose their shape or accuracy over time and therefore don’t need to be replaced. In fact, the print heads are included in the machine’s one year warranty, which is a big plus for a product type often known for its big running costs.

The SC-T3100M uses four inkjet cartridges — Black (50ml or 80ml) and CMY (26ml or 50ml). At £23.20 (ex VAT) for the 26ml cartridges and £36.59 (ex VAT) for the 50ml, these seem reasonably priced and even though our 26ml colour starter cartridges drained quickly on initial setup they actually ended up lasting for a considerable number of prints.

The machine uses pigment ink, which has a better resistance to water and smudging than dye ink, making it well suited to construction sites. It’s also lightfast, so good for display posters.

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intuitive 4.3-inch colour LCD touchscreen panel. Setup is incredibly easy, aided by a visual user guide that steps you through the process, including animations that show how to add paper and ink cartridges. Once everything is installed, initialisation takes about 20 mins, and then you’re ready to print.

You can print in several different ways.

The easiest is with a USB flash drive, which you plug in at the front of the machine and then browse for JPGs or TIFFs (but seemingly not PDFs) on the touchscreen. But to get the most out of the machine you need to hook it up to a laptop via USB or, better still, get it on the network (WiFi or Ethernet).

Drivers are available for Windows and Mac OS, while support for Apple AirPrint offers wireless printing from iPhone, iPad and Mac without having to install a driver.

For CAD drawings, it can emulate HP GL/2 and HP RTL, but for best results Epson recommends using the CAD/line drawing mode in the Epson driver.

Unfortunately, my preproduction unit had WiFi disabled, so in order to get it on to my home network I had to plug it into a £20 WiFi Extender using an Ethernet cable.

This delivered most of the same functionality as you would get from the built-in WiFi, but it did mean I couldn’t test out WiFi Direct, which allows you to connect directly to the printer when a WiFi network isn’t available or only exists in the form of a closed corporate network.

Printing from an iPhone via AirPrint is a really easy way to get prints out quickly. Simply select the device from the list and hit print. Vector PDFs and raster JPGs worked a treat, but we did have some problems getting a large raster PDF file to print. The same file printed fine on an HP LaserJet shrunk down to A4.

AirPrint is great for its simplicity, but it does have its limitations. In Windows and Mac OS you get much more control over scale, orientation, media type and print quality.

Using plain coated paper we printed a selection of CAD drawings from AutoCAD and Solidworks eDrawings and were impressed with the results. It took just over 40 secs to print an A1 colour line drawing (including the 10 secs it took to send the file over the network 50

January / February 2021

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after hitting print). Printing in monochrome was slightly quicker.

Both delivered super sharp linework, with great detail on small dimensions and text. Roll fed paper is automatically cut at the end of the print, but is still held by the printer so it doesn’t just drop onto the floor.

Photorealistic architectural and consumer product renderings also looked notably good on the coated paper.

However, the results with premium semigloss photo paper on the super fine setting were a different class entirely — incredibly vibrant with subtle variations of colour and greys. This is a mature print technology, so no major surprises there, but printing at this best quality setting does take time. Expect to wait over 10 mins for an A1 print.

example, strips out off-white backgrounds, but to get the best results we found we needed to adjust the value manually. The higher the setting, the more background is removed, but this can also mean you lose important detail from the drawing, so a balance needs to be found. Background removal can also be controlled using the ‘Tracing paper’ and ‘blueprint’ original type settings.

There are no specific settings for scanning full colour photos / renderings but we got the best results from text/line drawing.

As with prints, scanned documents are held in place at the end of the scan, so they don’t drop onto the floor. To scan an A1 colour line drawing took around 30 secs at 300 dpi and 75 secs at 600 dpi.

Monochrome scans are much faster.

Scanning

Copying

For scanning, everything is done at the device, controlled through the touch panel. There are three ways to save / send data: network folder / FTP, email or USB flash drive.

The easiest way is to send files directly to a shared folder — simply type in the address and log in credentials. To get

Copying follows pretty much the same process as scanning in terms of settings for quality, background removal etc. On top of that you can select the number of copies, specify the output size and scaling (25 - 400%).

On the whole, copies of line drawings were good, but not perfect. On the fastest copy setting, there was a slight stepping effect on vertical lines due to small deviations. This didn’t appear to be down to skewed paper as it went both directions. It was much less noticeable on the super fine setting, however, but copies took far longer.

We also tried a full colour copy of a printed architectural rendering on photo paper. The results were OK, but they’ll never be as good as when printing from a digital original.

this working on my local net- w o r k , however, I needed to replace ‘computer name’ with the local IP address of my PC. Setting up email wasn’t plain sailing either. Google Gmail complained about security, although it did work fine with an Outlook.com account. This is all done via SMTP and POP3, but I’m told there’s a workaround for Exchange Server. Once setup, scans can be automatically emailed to recipients in an address book.

To physically scan, documents are fed in from the rear, face up, and the paper size automatically detected. You’ll need to make sure the document is precisely aligned with the right hand edge guide.

The machine will warn you if it’s not and ask you to reload.

Documents can be scanned to JPG, PDF or TIFF and there are several different settings to control the output, including resolution, colour mode and compression.

Automatic background removal, for

Conclusion The Epson SC-T3100M is an impressive entry-level multi-function printer, especially considering its budget price of £1,346 + VAT. It’s easy to set up and operate, and incredibly small given its A1 print and scan/copy capabilities.

While many design, engineering and architecture firms have expanded their digital workflows during the Covid-19 pandemic, many are still missing physical prints and the ability to scan original documents. With its price and compact footprint, Epson can give you this capability at home, or in a small office, if we ever come out of this seemingly endless lockdown.

■ epson.co.uk ■ artsystems.co.uk

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27/01/2021 12:42

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