Review
New kid on the block 1. 3DExperience Platform provides construction project customisable working dashboard including project status, material lists, site map and social communities
There is a new player in the Building Information Modelling world. French CAD giant, Dassault Systèmes, is tailoring its powerful Catia modelling solution to address all aspects of BIM.
2. Users can select the cloud applications from the compass 3. Users can create social communities related to construction projects 4. Façade Design for Fabrication Industry Solution Experience: Quickly make multiple building concepts
by Martyn Day
I
n 2011 Bernard Charles, CEO of the French high-end CAD developer Dassault Systèmes (DS) told AEC Magazine that it was going to get into the AEC market with a product called SolidWorks Live Buildings. Up until that point, DS was mainly a provider of engineering design and management solutions, especially for automotive, aerospace and product design firms. Its flagship product, Catia, is the Ferrari of the CAD world and comes with an equivalent price tag. The decision to brand its AEC solution under the SolidWorks brand hopefully pointed to a more mid-priced solution. The dream here is that DS may actually produce an AEC design system that can handle huge models and data complexity in the same way its customers, such as Boeing, use Catia to work on the 777 and the Dreamliner. Too many BIM solutions lack scalability and require models to be cut up to be managed in system memory. In the past, DS partnered with Gehry Technologies, the consulting and technology arm of Frank Gehry’s practice, by part funding and licensing Catia to enable Gehry to create an AEC flavour, which was eventually called Digital Project (DP). Digital Project had limited success in signature architectural and structural firms, most notably used by Gehry’s own firm and Zaha Hadid. Eventually DP became more a tool for Gehry Technologies to use in its own consulting business. In the subsequent three years of development there have been some changes in thought and direction of approaching the AEC market at DS. Now coming to market, the AEC product is no longer branded under the ‘SolidWorks’ mark or called Live Buildings. DS has also rebranded Catia V6 as ‘3DEXPERIENCE Platform’ and this year has started to announce AEC applications that run on this 3DEXPERIENCE architec30
July / August 2014
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ture, namely ‘Building Space and Planning’, and now ‘Façade Design for Fabrication’.
Cloud Management To be honest the current BIM developers have only just started to address the collaboration issues that have maligned group work. Any demonstration of the DS AEC portfolio starts with logging into its management portal, powered by its Enovia engine, which is a mature management tool, originally developed for the company’s manufacturing clients. With the V6 generation of products, DS has embraced the cloud and this Enovia management tool is, by default, hosted on the Internet or can be run behind your own firewall, as a project Intranet. DS realised that AEC projects run differently to those of manufacturing firms, so offers a different interface more suited to project work than a pure file-based system. Enovia also integrates community capabilities, powerful tag-based project search, user-specific pages, project management (gant charts), workflow and ‘widgets’ for quick access to functionality. Using the Enovia platform project teams can access project models at a granular level, locking out components in work packages. This way it would be possible to work on parts of a design collaboratively, although this requires an active connection. It is also possible to work offline by downloading the model locally for resubmission when a connection is available. There are also viewing tools, such as 3DPlay, which uses DS’ lightweight 3Dxml format. This enables other project members to view and interrogate project data either on a workstation or mobile device. The DS vision of the cloud is one which blurs local desktop with functionality on the Internet. Its EXPERIENCE Platform is architected to use Enovia on the cloud, so all the data is centrally located. The Catia portion is a desktop downloadable, while some applications and features may be
hosted online or locally. To the end user this appears seamless, unless heavy network traffic causes transaction delays.
Massing All this sounds like where the next generation of BIM tools should start, however, those looking for a ‘Revit killer’, will have a long wait. As the development stands, there are two main AEC applications: Buildings Space Planning and Façade Design for Fabrication — neither of which will replace any of the mainstream BIM tools. With Catia as the geometry creation platform, all of DS’ AEC tools work in a common environment. Buildings Space Planning (BSP) is more akin to SketchUp than it is Revit or ArchiCAD, however it is considerably more capable and potentially points the way to eventually becoming a full BIM solution. For now BSP is a mass modeller, where layout sketches can be made, floors automatically added and quickly turned into masses. Using Catia’s dynamic constraints management system, parametrics can be associatively applied to drive the geometry. It’s all easy to use and made incredibly simple with a push / pull interface. Holes can be punched in walls and simple geometry created. Advanced functionality includes complex roofing, spline-drive geometry and curtain walls. The model can also be driven from space dimensions in a spreadsheet, which import as boxes conforming to the required area, which can be moved, placed and edited in the mass model. One assumes that DS is working on the next step but for now, the company is cleverly opting to find holes in the current BIM market offerings, to potentially offer something relevant, than truly competitive.
Façade Design Catia is an industry proven design to fabrication tool and comes from a strong manufacturing heritage, so complex façade www.AECmag.com
25/7/14 16:54:24
