AEC Magazine May / June 2021

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

VIRTUAL CREATION Arkio - redefining collaborative design for architecture

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

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Industry news 7

NXT BLD 2021 38

Twinmotion links to Unreal Engine; Unity Reflect evolves; Nvidia gears up for Omniverse Enterprise; HP & Dell launch mobile workstations, plus lots, lots more

On 14 September 2021 AEC Magazine’s future gazing conference and exhibition will return to London in physical form

Collaborative design in VR with Arkio 22 We caught up with the developers of Arkio, a new VR-centric collaborative design system for AEC professionals

about AEC Magazine is published bi-monthly by X3DMedia Ltd 19 Leyden Street London, E1 7LE UK T. +44 (0)20 3355 7310 F. +44 (0)20 3355 7319 © 2021 X3DMedia Ltd All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission from the publisher is prohibited. All trademarks acknowledged. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author and not of X3DMedia. X3DMedia cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements within the magazine.

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Autodesk Revit 2022 and beyond 26 With new features and enhancements for Revit it looks like Autodesk is trying to placate customers who complained at the BIM tool’s lack of development

Revit graphics boost 32 Autodesk is looking to improve viewport performance and visual quality through GPU ray tracing

Beyond BIM with Dassault Systèmes 34 Offsite digital construction presents a big opportunity for the developer of Catia, the aerospace and automotive design tool

SCIA Engineer 21 40 AEC Magazine caught up with SCIA to find out more about the new release and the future of the Nemetschek-owned structural design and analysis software

Getting more from onsite plant equipment 44 By combining BIM with 4D scheduling and machine learning, Aquila is looking to improve construction site equipment utilisation in real time

Station to station: the Luton DART 47 How structural BIM software helped streamline the modelling of the new stations for Luton Airport’s fullyautomated light rail link

Office of the future 50 Inevitech’s Mark Adams explores the role of technology in the new and evolving relationship between home and office working May / June 2021

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News

New pipeline links Twinmotion 2021.1 to Epic Games Unreal Engine winmotion, the easy-to-use arch viz tool that Epic Games acquired in 2019, finally has its long-awaited plug-in for Unreal Engine.

It means Twinmotion projects can now be imported into the Unreal Editor.

With this extended pipeline, an architect can communicate preliminary concept ideas—such as visually indicating the type of materials, lighting, context, and other project elements—in Twinmotion, and then pass the project on to a visualisation specialist for further refinement in Unreal Engine.

Twinmotion 2021.1 also features Early Access to a new Presenter Cloud service that lets users publish a presentation to the cloud, and then share a URL with a collaborator or stakeholder. The service uses pixel streaming technology so all the graphics processing is done on a high-end GPU in the cloud and the collaborator can work interactively with the presentation on any desktop/laptop browser.

The Presenter Cloud service is still in beta and being rolled out progressively.

At the moment it is a free and exclusive service for those with a full commercial licence of Twinmotion.

Phasing has also been added to Presenter files for this release, enabling users to remotely present different stages of a project’s construction schedule sequentially.

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Following the acquisition by Epic Games of Quixel Megascans in 2019, the new version comes with thousands of high-quality materials and assets integrated right into the Twinmotion library. Megascans 3D assets include high-quality objects in categories like buildings, food, industrial, and nature, while the surfaces offer a vast collection of high-fidelity materials covering everything from bark and bricks to marble and metal.

There are an additional 140 new scene assets for the Twinmotion asset library, including 20 new Japanese and American trees, 60 furniture assets for populating

gyms and street workout areas, and 60 new ready-posed humans.

Epic Games is also introducing a new Datasmith Direct Link for Revit, a first step in replacing the product’s Direct Link plugins with ‘more powerful, flexible versions’ that will support synchronisation with multiple files simultaneously, as well as making multiple improvements to lighting intensities, auto-exposure, and Bloom.

There are also new non-realistic rendering styles—hidden line, hidden line shaded, wood model, metal model, and white model (clay render).

■ unrealengine.com/twinmotion

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on the new release Twinmotion led the way in easy-to-use arch viz tools and the new point release does not disappoint. But it goes way beyond a functionality boost.

Users have been crying out for the ability to import Twinmotion scenes into Unreal Engine for some time.

The new workflow means AEC firms can now more confidently start to develop viz assets in Twinmotion at the early stage of design and

then use them as the foundation on which to build high fidelity, cinematic quality interactive experiences in Unreal Engine. These could include accurate lighting and material scenarios, higherquality visualisation outputs, animations, and other advanced behaviours.

This is by no means a finished project – for example, the importer does not bring across all Twinmotion assets

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and it’s not yet possible to bring Unreal Engine assets into Twinmotion – but it’s certainly an important first step and gives Epic Games a big advantage over the competition.

The Presenter Cloud service is another notable advancement for Twinmotion 2021.1 as it means anyone can now view Twinmotion content in full interactive 3D regardless of which device they are using.

Like most real-time viz tools, Twinmotion needs a high-end GPU to get the most out of the software, so putting this in the cloud makes huge sense. And, in true Epic Games fashion, the service will be free, at least for the time being.

Twinmotion and Unreal development show some joined up thinking and 2021 is when the conversion really starts to deliver end-to-end arch viz workflows.

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News

Cityzenith to develop digital twin for luxury skycraper ityzenith is to create a multipurpose digital twin for an ultra-luxury residential skyscraper in the Middle East. The digital twin will be used for building operations and to enhance marketing and sales, as well as the overall tenant experience through a mobile app.

Lamina Tower will be the first of several digital twin projects awarded by Lamina Tower developer, Hajaj & Associates, to Cityzenith over the next 24 months.

Under the agreement Cityzenith will deliver a 3D digital twin of the property and the surrounding area using Cityzenith’s SmartWorldOS digital twin desktop application.

The software will be installed securely on the premises and is primarily intended for use by building operations professionals, architects, engineers, and contractors.

A web-based application version of SmartWorld will be embedded in the Hajaj website for sales and marketing, to allow prospective buyers to tour the property ‘virtually’, from outside

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the building to inside individual units.

A mobile app will also connect residents to services, as Michael Jansen, Cityzenith CEO, explains, “Residents will have access to a mobile version of SmartWorldOS, delivering a fully integrated and connected experience allowing them to find parking, book appointments such as the spa or beauty salon, check out local restaurants, inspect security camera footage in real time inside and outside the building, customise temperature preferences at home, switch lights on/off, lock/unlock doors and so much more to complement life at Lamina.”

■ cityzenith.com

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he Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) is creating a 3D virtual map of London which can bring together real-time data streams including sensor readings, TFL transport updates as well as social media information such as geolocated tweets.

CASA is part of the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment at University College London.

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■ ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/casa

Solibri seals long term deals olibri has announced a trio of enterprise software agreements with leading AEC firms in Northern Europe.

Services business WSP, Nordic construction company Peab, and the Construction & Real Estate (C&RED) division of VolkerWessels will all get unlimited access to Solibri’s BIM quality assurance software.

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19% boost for 11th Gen Intel Core CPUs ntel has launched its new 11th Generation Intel Core H-series (code-named “Tiger Lake-H”) and Intel Xeon W-11000 series mobile processors.

Both families of CPUs will soon be available in mobile workstations from all the leading manufacturers.

This includes the new HP ZBook G8 family (see page 13) and the Dell Precision 3561, 5560, 7560, 5760 and 7760 (see page 15).

According to Intel, the new mobile processors feature double-digit single core performance improvements (which is important for CAD and BIM software) and up to 19% better multi-core performance improvements (which is important for multi-threaded applications like rendering, simulation, photogrammetry and point cloud processing).

Bartlett creates London twin

Single and dual-core turbo performance goes up to 5.0GHz, while the maximum 8 core turbo goes up to 4.5GHz. There are two Intel Xeon W-11000 series mobile processors, the Intel Xeon W-11955M, (8 Cores, 2.60GHz up to 5.00GHz) and the Intel Xeon W-11855M (6 Cores, 3.20GHz up to 4.90GHz), both of which support ECC memory.

There are several 11th Gen Intel Core processor models, including the top end Intel Core i9-11950H (8 Cores, 2.60GHz to 5.00GHz).

New platform features also include: 20 PCIe Gen 4.0 lanes, memory support up to DDR4-3200, 6GHz Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E (Gig+) support and Thunderbolt 4 with transfer speeds up to 40Gbps.

■ intel.com

■ solibri.com

Topcon updates Magnet suite opcon has introduced Topcon Magnet 7, the latest release of its site, cloud and office software suite for construction and survey professionals.

According to Topcon, the new version is designed to utilise the strength of cloud-based connectivity in streamlining workflows through GNSS receivers, total stations, and other positioning tools and instruments, and address common needs to increase productivity and efficiency across the construction site.

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■ topconpositioning.com/magnet

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Unity Reflect evolves with new capabilities for collaborative design/review on any device nity Reflect, the BIM-centric real-time 3D tool, is evolving from a single product to a suite of purpose-built applications.

There are two versions: Unity Reflect Review, for collaborative design review on desktop, mobile, AR and VR; and Unity Reflect Develop, a platform for building custom applications.

When Unity Reflect launched in 2019 it stood out for its streamlined workflow with Revit. Thanks to a partnership with Autodesk, it boasted much tighter integration with Revit than other applications get through the standard Revit API. And, most importantly, it included all the BIM metadata.

Since then, the product has expanded to work with several other key AEC applications, so users can create federated models inside the software. There are now plug-ins for Autodesk BIM 360, Rhino, SketchUp and Navisworks, all of which maintain live links to the original models so users can view changes in real time.

New features were also added such as 1:1 scale on-site AR to make it easier to view BIM models in their on-site context to guide the construction process; cloud hosting to make it easier to share models; and support for the Universal Render Pipeline (URP) to allow for higher visual fidelity and greater customisation.

Despite these developments, the focus of the software remained very much on ‘viewing’, albeit on multiple devices, as suggested by the now retired branding of

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Unity Reflect Viewer. It was possible to view detailed BIM information by selecting an object, make better use of BIM filtering, and perform sun studies, but it lacked some of the functionality one would expect from a dedicated collaborative design/review tool.

With the launch of Unity Reflect Review this has started to change. The re-branded product introduces multi-user collaboration, where users can ‘walk through’ a model together in VR and AR, see others viewing the model, shadow them in ‘follow’ mode, and also see what they are seeing. It has voice chat and measurement tools built in and when a user selects an object, other users can also see that same object highlighted.

However, it still lacks the all-important design/review ability to add annotations,

although this is in development.

Further down the public roadmap, there are plans to add a two-way Live link between Reflect and other applications so data can be sent back to the source app in a ‘controlled way’. Support for Microsoft HoloLens, support for point clouds and a plug-in for Archicad are also on the horizon.

It’s always been possible to create custom solutions by building on top of Unity Reflect. This has now been streamlined with the launch of Unity Reflect Develop, a solution built specifically for developers – both AEC firms and dedicated software developers alike – who want to build custom apps.

Examples include digital twins, construction sequencing, and BIM coordination. It includes an SDK. ■ unity.com/products/unity-reflect

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on the new release We’ve been excited about the potential of Unity in the AEC sector ever since Unity formed a closer relationship with Autodesk in 2018.

Getting ‘under the hood’ access to Autodesk’s tools, especially Revit, gave it something that other vendors simply didn’t have.

But 18 months after the initial launch and Unity Reflect, as an off the shelf

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product, still feels like it has some way to go to fulfil its true potential. Yes, Unity Reflect Review has plug-ins for many AEC applications and the power to push federated models out to multiple devices and platforms, including VR, AR, iOS, Android, and PC, but it’s still lacking essential design / review tools like markup, and interoperability with BIM

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tools only goes one way.

At Autodesk University 2019, for example, Autodesk spoke of a workflow in development that would allow users to flag design issues in Unity in VR and have them show up automatically in BIM 360’s issue registry so they can be resolved later on. However, as far we understand, this is not yet available.

Of course, there’s also

custom app development, which has now been reinforced with Unity Reflect Develop. At Unity’s 2019 Unite conference we were impressed by some of the AEC-focused applications in development, including SandBOX I/O, a conceptual design tool from Foster + Partners. Now, it should be a lot easier for AEC firms to tap into the power of the real-time engine.

www.AECmag.com

24/05/2021 08:42

News

Cesium for Unreal: geospatial content for real-time 3D

Faro launches Freestyle 2 scanner aro has released a new portable hand-held scanner, the Freestyle 2, designed for creating as-built documentation.

Unlike the firm’s other scanning solutions, the Freestyle 2 is ideal for details which may be hard to capture with traditional tripod-based scanning solutions.

This could be tight spaces, such as mechanical rooms, interstitial voids, or above ceilings.

Faro has also released BuildIT Construction 2021, a new release of its QA / QC management tool for real-time comparisons of CAD data and 3D scans.

New features include a new guided user interface for concrete floor flatness analysis and objectbased analysis to simplify reporting to all stakeholders.

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esium for Unreal is a free, opensource plug-in for building real-time 3D experiences with Unreal Engine using high-resolution, real-world 3D geospatial content.

The plug-in provides integration with Cesium ion, to which firms can upload their own geospatial content or gain access to curated, commercial 3D content like global terrain, 3D buildings,

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photogrammetry, and satellite imagery.

Once inside Cesium ion, geospatial data is converted into streamable 3D Tiles, where only the content that is most important to the user’s experience is loaded into the system. This should allow firms to visualise massive high-resolution real-world photogrammetry and 3D content at runtime inside Unreal Engine.

■ cesium.com

Schneider brings 3D stereo to desktop BIM chneider Digital has teamed up with Xeometric, the developer of 3D CAD/BIM tool EliteCAD, to help architects become more immersed in their designs by using a stereoscopic 3D monitor rather than a standard desktop display.

EliteCAD Architecture 15 is now ‘fully compatible’ with Schneider’s 3D PluraView

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monitor, which features two displays (one per eye), a semi-transparent mirror and passively polarized stereo glasses.

According to Schneider Digital, the solution is particularly useful in architectural planning and 3D modelling, especially if combined with laser scanning and point cloud visualisation.

■ 3d-pluraview.com ■ elitecad.eu

NavVis launches reality capture platform avVis IVION, formerly known as NavVis IndoorViewer, is a new reality capture platform for owners, operators and contractors.

Developed by indoor mobile mapping specialist NavVis, the platform can be used to transform point clouds of buildings and assets into web-based ‘intelligent spaces’ which are accessible to all stakeholders through a browser. Scans can be shared simply by sending a link or

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a deep link to specific content or a location within the scan.

NavVis IVION Core, a special version for AEC professionals, provides tools to manage 3D scans more effectively through creation, collaboration, and publication.

A cloud processing add-on allows the processing of laser scan data captured by NavVis mobile mapping devices anywhere with an internet connection.

■ faro.com

Robot swarms in construction rimble and Piaggio are working on a new trial for construction robots that can follow workers or other robots around a job site.

The companies have integrated Piaggio’s ‘PFFtag’ smart following technology into the Boston Dynamics Spot robot platform while being controlled by Trimble’s advanced positioning technology. This removes any necessity to control the robot via joystick. It would seem our robot overlords can now operate independently in packs together.

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■ construction.trimble.com/spot

■ navvis.com

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ROUND UP Design context

Advanced feasibility tool MetricMonkey.io launches

Design studio Buttress is using 3D building models from Bluesky to create interactive walkthroughs and VR presentations in a dedicated design viz tool, via Revit. Created from aerial photography, the Bluesky models are used to provide context, giving stakeholders the opportunity to explore a design in its real-world location ■ bluesky-world.com

Mobility simulation Bentley Systems has acquired Inro Software, a specialist in multimodal transportation planning, traffic simulation, and mobility visualisation software. Customers include some of the world’s busiest transit systems and metros such as Transport for London and São Paulo SPTrans ■ inrosoftware.com

Free drone app HCSS is offering a free smart app called ‘Drone Mission’ to its dronebased analytics platform, Aerial. The app can be paired with ‘any drone’ and used to capture high-resolution images of construction job sites, which can then be analysed in Aerial to estimate job progress, earthwork volumes safety inspections and more ■ hcss.com

BIM partnership Japanese multi-disciplinary firm Takenaka Corporation has deployed StreamBIM from Norway-based Rendra AS (JDM Technology Group).

The software allows users to view BIM models, 2D and 3D data across many different devices, including PCs, smartphones, and tablets ■ streambim.com

Satellite imagery Plex-Earth, an aerial and satellite imagery platform for AutoCAD, is now available for BricsCAD customers, enabling the import of up to date or historical, high-quality imagery and terrain data ■ plexearth.com

Free IFC viewer CAD and BIM interoperability solution provider Open Design Alliance (ODA) has released Open IFC Viewer version 22.3, the latest release of its free viewer for the open standard IFC format ■ openifcviewer.com

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ustralia-based architect and software developer, Parametric Monkey has launched MetricMonkey.io, a feasibility design tool for buildings, cities and masterplans.

The software runs on Rhino and Grasshopper and is designed to remove the heavy lifting, complexity, and guesswork from each step of the feasibility process.

It offers automated building massing,

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generated from footprint sketches, simply by entering height or storeys. Massing can also be hand crafted.

Users can get real-time feedback on designs, from areas to ratios, and there are tools to explore mixed-use developments.

Designs can be placed in context by importing GIS datasets and data can be streamed into Revit via Rhino Inside.

■ metricmonkey.io

V-Ray bundled into SketchUp Studio rimble has added the high-quality rendering engine, Chaos V-Ray, into its SketchUp Studio bundle.

Trimble’s professional bundle customers can now

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add global illumination, artificial lighting, realistic materials and textures, atmospheric effects and more to their 3D models.

As part of the V-Ray integration, SketchUp

Studio users will now have access to V-Ray’s webbased 3D content library, Chaos Cosmos, which includes a variety of render-ready content.

■ sketchup.com ■ chaosgroup.com

AR/MR tool now supports reality models rvizio Immerse 3D solution can now incorporate drone and UAV mapped 3D models and point clouds into multi-user, multi-location mixed and augmented reality collaborative sessions.

It means AEC firms can visualise and interact with 3D aerial photogrammetry and/or LiDAR scans for

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project planning and progress tracking, along with 3D CAD / BIM models and IoT data.

According to Arvizio, the addition of reality models provides a new dimension to design reviews, marketing demonstrations, new project pursuits and QA inspections.

Arvizio Immerse 3D uses ‘hybrid rendering’, a

combination of dynamic level of detail processing and GPU accelerated rendering, to stream point clouds and ‘extremely large’ 3D CAD/BIM models to a variety of standalone mixed and augmented reality headsets and mobile devices, including HoloLens, Magic Leap 1, iOS and Android tablets.

■ arvizio.io

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24/05/2021 08:42

News

HP ZBook G8 pro laptops launch with 11th Gen Intel Core H-Series processors P has unveiled its HP ZBook G8 portfolio of mobile workstations, featuring 11th Gen Intel Core H-Series CPUs, Nvidia ‘Ampere’ RTX GPUs and (on select models) Intel Xeon W-11000M series CPUs and AMD Radeon Pro GPUs. The pro laptops also feature enhanced security, PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, new Dreamcolor display options and support for Thunderbolt 4, which allows users to plug in dual 4k displays or a single 8k display.

The industrial design and aluminium / magnesium chassis, complete with military spec testing and durability, carry over from the HP ZBook G7 editions.

HP has also extended its focus on sustainability by utilising recycled product metals, plastics, and 100% recyclable packaging materials.

There are four new HP ZBook G8 models: the ZBook Power G8, ZBook Studio G8, ZBook Fury 15.6-inch G8 and ZBook Fury 17.3-inch G8. They join the ZBook Firefly G8, which launched earlier this year.

With a total of five machines, it appears that HP is now consolidating what was by far the largest range of mobile workstations from any single vendor, including the 2-in-1 ZBook Studio 360 and HP ZBook x2.

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integration with HP ZCentral Remote Boost software, which comes free with all ZBooks and allows individuals to remotely connect to a dedicated HP Z workstation.

According to HP’s Brian Allen, there are several scenarios where the remote graphics software could be used in AEC. One, an architect with an HP ZBook Studio could have other designers from around the world remote into the laptop and collaborate on a 3D BIM model.

Two, it could be used to remotely show 3D BIM models to prospective clients, which could be particularly useful during COVID restrictions.

Three, it could allow the user to tap into more power and performance. So, an architect, for example, using an HP

Security HP has beefed up the security on the HP ZBook G8 portfolio with two new features: a Tamper Lock intrusion detection system and a new Tile device location feature to help find a lost/stolen laptop through an app, even when it’s turned off, as long as the laptop has battery power.

The Tamper Lock can give alerts or take actions if the bottom service panel is removed. It’s designed to prevent people from stealing memory or drives or trying to input malicious data into the system, says HP. The admin can define what action to take if the bottom comes off. It could be as simple as an alert (either locally or to the admin), or the system could automatically shut down, the BIOS automatically lock, or TPM or BitLocker keys become enabled.

ZCentral Remote Boost For the launch of the new HP ZBook G8 family HP is also highlighting the www.AECmag.com

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ZBook Studio at home, could remote into an HP Z8 desktop workstation in the office which has more powerful GPUs and multi core CPUs.

HP ZBook Studio G8 For the HP ZBook Studio G8 edition, HP has consolidated two products into one.

Previously the HP ZBook Studio G7 came with a choice of Nvidia Quadro pro graphics with ISV certifications, while the HP ZBook Create G7 offered Nvidia GeForce consumer graphics.

The new HP ZBook Studio G8 now offers both pro and consumer graphics options in the same machine, including the Nvidia T1200 (4GB), RTX A2000 (4GB), RTX A3000 (6GB), RTX A4000 (8GB), RTX A5000 (16GB) or GeForce RTX 3060 (6GB), 3070 (8GB) or 3080 (16GB).

The highly portable 15.6-inch mobile

workstation is 17.5mm thick and starts at 1.79kg. It offers a choice of 11th Generation Intel Core H-Series processors up to the Intel Core i9-11950H (8 core, 2.6 GHz up to 5.0 GHz) and up to 32 GB RAM. It also features an optional 120Hz HP DreamColor display with a billion colours, 100% DCI-P3, and ‘end-to-end’ colour accuracy with Pantone validation.

HP ZBook Fury G8 The HP ZBook Fury comes in two sizes: a 15.6-inch and a 17.3-inch model. It’s thicker and heavier than the HP ZBook Studio G8, so offers more storage, including high-capacity HDDs, and up to 128 GB RAM. It has a similar choice of CPU and GPUs but also adds the AMD Radeon Pro W6600M into the mix.

The 120Hz HP DreamColor display is also available as an option.

As the HP ZBook Fury is significantly larger than the HP ZBook Studio we expect it will be able to get more performance out of the high-end GPUs through better cooling and increased power draw, especially when CPU and GPU are both in heavy use. But this might not be the case.

On the slimmer HP ZBook Studio, HP makes a big noise about the ‘vapour chamber’ cooling, which includes custom fans for GPU and CPU. “It gives us the capabilities of being able to have a high-performance system that’s unthrottled and still managing key and acoustics and to give you that best experience possible,” says HP’s Brian Allen.

HP ZBook Power G8 The HP ZBook Power is HP’s ‘most affordable’ mobile workstation targeted at entry-level users and students. The 15.6inch laptop offers similar CPU options, up to 64GB of RAM and more mainstream graphics options up to the Nvidia RTX A2000. It’s 22.8mm thick and starts at 1.89 kg.

The HP ZBook Power G8 is expected to be available in select countries in June 2021. The HP ZBook Studio G8 and HP ZBook Fury G8 will follow in July 2021.

■ hp.com/aec

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ROUND UP DEC teacher training

Autodesk adds grading optimisation to Civil 3D

Cadventure has teamed up with Class Of Your Own, the UK-based creator of the “Design Engineer Construct!”

(DEC) Learning Programme for secondary school students.

Cadventure will develop and deliver Bentley Systems software skills training to DEC teachers in schools ■ designengineerconstruct.com

Radeon Pro boost AMD has completely redesigned the user interface of its Radeon Pro professional GPU driver. According to AMD, Radeon Pro Software for Enterprise 21.Q1 features a simplified and revamped design that lets users more easily adjust settings while meeting workflow needs ■ amd.com/radeonpro

Crash risk protection Transoft Solutions is working with the Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) in Ontario, Canada to develop a crash risk prediction system, which includes near-miss notification alerts to improve traffic safety. It uses artificial intelligence and deep learning to automate video analysis of traffic flow ■ tinyurl.com/AIRoadSafety

StrucSoft acquired StrucSoft Solutions has been acquired

by Autodesk VAR and construction software developer, Graitec. According to Graitec, StrucSoft’s MWF software completes the functional coverage of Graitec’s Fabricate offering, by adding light gauge steel and wood to existing rebar, prefab concrete and steel ■ strucsoftsolutions.co.uk

Electrical BIM Schneider Electric says the latest release of its Electrical BIM software LayoutFAST improves user experience and cuts design time in half. The software makes it easier to utilise parametric product models in a building or electrical system design ■ se.com

Mobile data deal Collaborative BIM and construction SaaS provider Thinkproject has acquired London-based Digital Field Solutions, the developer of Formworks, which is used to capture and process data on mobile devices ■ digitalfieldsolutions.com

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utodesk has announced the 2022 releases of its infrastructure design tools InfraWorks and Civil 3D. New features include automation for site grading, improved multi-disciplinary bridge design workflows and more.

Grading Optimisation for Civil 3D 2022 is designed to bring automation to manual site grading processes to help save time while optimising terrain surface and 3D geometry.

It works by taking user defined parameters and generating an ‘optimal grading solution’ that is ‘mindful of earthwork quantities’. The result of the optimisation can be sent directly back to Civil 3D.

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Meanwhile, Autodesk ReCap Pro 2022, the latest release of the 3D scanning software, introduces ‘Scan to Mesh’, a new workflow that allows users to turn a point cloud into a textured 3D mesh.

The 3D mesh can be used for early clash detection and ‘more effective project data coordination and verification’. It is also smaller in size, so more manageable.

Users can choose to convert the entire point cloud or a select part. Editing tools such as the Limit Box/Clip/Region/Deletion tools can be used to control how much of the point cloud is displayed in the scene and only the visible area will be meshed.

■ autodesk.com

More control over remote workstations irms that use Teradici’s PCoIPbased Cloud Access Software (CAS) can now broker, provision and monitor workstations located in AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and on-premise desktops and datacenters, from a single management environment, installed locally or in the cloud.

This has been enabled by extending the capabilities of Teradici’s CAS Manager, a software layer used by IT administrators to manage remote workstations.

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According to Teradici, the new capability will provide its customers with greater flexibility for scaling their remoting infrastructure to support hybrid workplaces, as well as supporting larger deployments with more concurrent sessions at a higher throughput.

Meanwhile, Teradici has teamed up with MacStadium to develop a cloud solution that enables Mac users to remotely access Apple hardware.

The service uses MacStadium’s cloud-hosted

Apple Mac infrastructure to ‘streamline and accelerate’ the delivery of Teradici CAS. Finally, in other Teradici news, Amazon EC2 G4ad cloud workstations, powered by AMD Radeon Pro V520 GPUs and AMD EPYC CPUs, now support Teradici CAS as an alternative to Amazon’s NICE DCV protocol.

Teradici CAS uses the PCoIP protocol, which places a big emphasis on high-fidelity ‘lossless’ image quality ■ teradici.com

www.AECmag.com

24/05/2021 08:42

News

Dell launches 11th Gen Intel Core and Intel Xeon W-11000M mobile workstations 3200MHz memory. The Dell Precision 7560 also offers enhanced display options up to the brighter (800 nits) 15.6”, UHD HDR 600 4k panel with 100% Adobe colour gamut. There’s capacity for up to three M.2 SSDs and it starts at 2.45kg.

The Dell Precision 7760 is Dell’s highest performing 17.3-inch mobile workstation with almost identical CPU and GPU options to the 15-inch Precision 7560, as well as 128 GB memory. At 500 nits, the top-end 4K display isn’t as bright, but still offers 100% Adobe colour gamut. The machine can hold up to four M.2 SSDs for up to 14 TB of storage and starts at 3.01kg.

New desktop workstations ell has launched five new mobile workstations featuring 11th Gen Intel Core and Intel Xeon W-11000M series CPUs, Nvidia ‘Ampere’ RTX GPUs, and PCIe Gen 4 SSDs. This includes three 15-inch models – the Dell Precision 3561, 5560 and 7560 and two 17-inch models, the Dell Precision 5760 and 7760.

The entry-level Dell Precision 3561 has been completely redesigned, from the use of reclaimed carbon fibre and bio-plastics on the outside, to the ‘significant performance features’ on the inside.

The 15-inch laptop features a new Pro2 keyboard and larger touchpad and can now support Hard disk drives (HDDs) as well as Solid State Drives (SSDs) to offer budget conscious users a lower price per GB for storage.

Compared to the Dell Precision 3560 it replaces, CPU and graphics have been beefed up considerably with a choice of 45W 11th Gen Intel Core CPUs (compared to the 17.5W CPUs in the Dell Precision 3560) and Nvidia T600 (4GB) and Nvidia T1200 (4GB) GPU options for mainstream 3D CAD / BIM work. These changes have resulted in a slightly larger and heavier chassis, but the Dell Precision 3561 still starts at 1.79kg.

All other new Precision models have inherited chassis from their predecessors.

The Dell Precision 5560 features the same lightweight combination of aluminium and carbon fibre, 92% display to body ratio and a 4-sided 15-inch InfinityEdge 16:10 aspect ratio display.

With an incredibly thin chassis (7.7mm front and 11.6mm rear), the Dell Precision

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5560 features entry-level graphics options including the Nvidia T1200 (4GB) and Nvidia RTX A2000 (4GB), which are best suited to 3D CAD / BIM and entry-level viz workflows. However, there’s no compromise on CPUs with options going up to the Intel Xeon W-11955M (8 Core, 2.60GHz up to 5.00GHz). The laptop supports up to 64 GB of DDR4, 3200MHz memory. It starts at 1.84kg.

The Dell Precision 5760 is somewhat unique as it remains the only thin and light 17-inch mobile workstation from a major vendor.

It is a replacement for the Dell Precision 5750 but features an enhanced thermal design including dual output fans, vapour chamber and hidden exhaust venting through the hinge.

Like the 15-inch Dell Precision 5560 it features a combination of aluminium and carbon fibre for the chassis and a 94% display to body ratio thanks to the 4-sided InfinityEdge, 16:10 aspect ratio display.

The thin and light design means some compromise on graphics with the Nvidia RTX A2000 (4GB) and Nvidia RTX A3000 (6 GB) being the only options, although the latter is ‘VR Ready’.

However, it offers the same broad choice of 45W Intel Core and Xeon CPUs. It supports up to 64 GB of DDR4, 3200MHz memory and starts at 2.13kg.

The Dell Precision 7560 is Dell’s highest performing 15-inch mobile workstation with the main boost coming in graphics. It offers a choice of Nvidia GPUs, from the entry-level Nvidia T1200 (4GB) up to the Nvidia RTX A5000 (16GB). It supports up to 128 GB of DDR4,

Dell has also launched two new ‘entry-level’ desktop workstations, the Dell Precision 3450 SFF (pictured below) and 3650.

Both machines feature 11th Gen Intel Core or Xeon W-1300 CPUs (up to 8 cores), up to 128 GB of 3,200MHz memory, PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, WiFi and a choice of Nvidia and AMD professional graphics options.

With a ‘small form factor’ chassis, the Dell Precision 3450 comes with a more limited set of processor options, maxing out at the 65W Intel Core i9-11900 (8 core, 3.3GHz, up to 5.2GHz) and 80W Intel Xeon W-1390 (8 Core, 2.8GHz, up to 5.2GHz).

With a larger chassis, bigger PSU and more thermal headroom, the Dell Precision 3650 increases the choice with the 125W Intel Core i9-11900K (8 Core, 3.5 GHz to 5.3 GHz) and Intel Xeon W-1390P (8 Core, 3.5 GHz up to 5.3 GHz). Both of these CPUs feature higher-base clock speeds so the Dell Precision 3650 should deliver better multi-threaded performance.

However, compared to their predecessors, the Dell Precision 3440 and 3640, while the new machines should deliver better performance in single threaded CAD applications, in multithreaded workflows like rendering they could be slower. This is because the Dell Precision 3440 and Dell Precision 3640 both offer 10th Generation Intel Core and Xeon processors with 10 cores, two more than the new Intel CPUs. ■ dell.com/precision

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News

Nvidia launches pro viz Nvidia RTX A4000 and Nvidia RTX A5000 GPUs

Nvidia RTX A4000

vidia has expanded its professional family of desktop workstation GPUs, with the launch of two new Nvidia RTX cards based on its ‘Ampere’ architecture.

The Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB) and the Nvidia RTX A5000 (24 GB) will join the flagship Nvidia RTX A6000 (48 GB), which we reviewed earlier this year.

These are mid-range ‘Quadro’ GPUs in everything but name, as Nvidia is in the process of retiring that long-serving workstation brand. They offer more memory than their consumer GeForce counterparts and come with pro drivers with certification for a wide range of CAD/BIM and other 3D applications.

As with all ‘Ampere’ Nvidia RTX GPUs, the new models feature new RT Cores, Tensor Cores and CUDA cores – all of which can be used concurrently for ray tracing, shading and denoising tasks in RTX-enabled software such as Unreal Engine, Enscape, Autodesk VRED, Chaos Vantage and Nvidia Omniverse. Nvidia RTX GPUs can also be used with non RTX software, such as 3D modelling, VR and AI. Both GPUs support PCIe Gen 4, which offers double the bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3, so data can move from CPU to GPU much quicker.

Nvidia is also addressing the mobile workstation market with four new ‘Ampere’ Nvidia RTX laptop GPUs (see later on).

In addition, Nvidia continues to cater to users of 3D CAD and BIM tools that don’t necessarily need RTX ray tracing capabilities. It has launched two new entry-level laptop GPUs, the Nvidia

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T1200 and Nvidia T600, which are based on Nvidia’s previous-generation Turing architecture. Expect to find these in ultra slim mobile workstations.

Ampere pro desktop GPUs This is an important launch for Nvidia as it gives architects, engineers and product designers – some of the key target users for these types of GPUs – a much more affordable entry into the significantly enhanced Nvidia RTX ‘Ampere’ family.

The estimated street price of the Nvidia RTX A4000 and RTX A5000 is $1,000 and $2,250 respectively.

On paper, the single slot Nvidia RTX A4000 looks to be a substantial upgrade to the Turing-based Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 it replaces, and which impressed us greatly when it launched in 2019.

With 16 GB of GDDR6 ECC memory, twice that of the Quadro RTX 4000, it should be able to handle most datasets used for real time visualisation or GPU rendering in product development and AEC. It also has more than double the number of CUDA cores, and a significant uplift in single precision performance and Tensor performance. And, as it’s a single slot GPU with a max power consumption of 140W, it will be available in a huge range of desktop workstation form factors, including the new HP Z2 Tower G8 and Dell Precision 3650.

Similar things can be said of the dual slot Nvidia RTX A5000, which Nvidia says offers the same levels of performance as a Turing-based Quadro RTX 6000 but is less than half the price.

With 24 GB of GDDR6 ECC memory it’s only a 50% uplift on the Quadro RTX 5000 it replaces but the RTX A5000 is expandable to 48 GB by connecting two GPUs together using Nvidia NVLink. The RTX A5000 also supports Nvidia RTX vWS (virtual workstation software) so the GPU can deliver multiple highperformance virtual workstation instances that enable remote users to share resources.

It’s interesting to note that Nvidia has not released a replacement for the CADfocused Quadro P2200 (5 GB), which was a small improvement over the Quadro P2000, which we reviewed way back in 2017. However, we expect there to be a second wave of Nvidia RTX GPUs released later this year that cater more to entry-level users.

Ampere pro laptop GPUs Nvidia has launched a wider spread of professional Nvidia RTX laptop GPUs, from the entry-level to the high-end, which should be available in Q2 this year in mobile workstations from all the usual suspects including HP (see page 13), Dell (see page 15), Lenovo and others. This includes the Nvidia RTX A2000 Laptop (4 GB), RTX A3000 Laptop (6 GB), RTX A4000 Laptop (8 GB), and RTX A5000 Laptop (16 GB).

It’s good to see Nvidia giving these new GPUs a Laptop suffix. In the past there has been some confusion as to whether or not these are the same GPUs found in desktop workstation. However, in addition to having a smaller power budget than their desktop counterparts, the new laptop GPUs also have fewer CUDA, Tensor and RT cores.

■ nvidia.com

The HP ZBook Studio G8 can support up to the Nvidia RTX A5000

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24/05/2021 08:42

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News

Nvidia gears up for release of Omniverse Enterprise collaboration platform vidia Omniverse is nearing a commercial release with Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise due to become available this summer.

The viz-focused platform, which can harness the power of Nvidia RTX real-time tracing technology and Nvidia PhysX realtime physics engine, enables global 3D design teams working across multiple CAD, BIM and viz tools to collaborate in real time in a shared virtual space. This can be with an RTX-accelerated desktop or mobile workstation, with a cloud workstation accessed via a PC, laptop or tablet, or through a VR headset streamed using Nvidia CloudXR. “Omniverse lets us create and simulate shared virtual 3D worlds that obey the laws of physics,” says Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia. “Once connected, designers doing modelling, layout, shading, animation, lighting, special effects or rendering can collaborate to create a scene.”

Rather than exchanging and iterating on massive files, designers, viz artists and reviewers can work simultaneously in their application of choice. Any changes made in one application instantly appear

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in others. This is made possible by Pixar’s USD (Universal Scene Description), an open framework for the interchange of 3D computer graphics data, specifically focused on collaboration.

“You can think of it as the HTML of 3D,” explains Richard Kerris, Industry GM for M&E at Nvidia. “It unifies how a scene is described from the models, the scene, the lighting, the shadows, the effects etc.”

Omniverse Nucleus server forms the

backbone to the collaborative platform. It manages the database and maintains the live sync between connected applications.

It can reside on a workstation, on a server or in the cloud.

“You can think of Nucleus as the data traffic cop,” explains Kerris. “It’s going to communicate only the deltas of things that are changing, because everyone else is on the common base platform.”

Omniverse Connectors, which are

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise USD alone is just another file format. It was originally intended for passing around viz scenes within Pixar.

Nvidia has taken that format and developed something quite spectacular, in an industry that wastes significant time and money wrangling data formats.

Omniverse doesn’t just share data; it allows real-time collaboration within a common environment. It doesn’t just share geometry, but holds textures and lighting and enables real-time visualisation. It takes data from old, slow and disparate design systems and delivers performance-levels that are

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hard to achieve with desktop CAD/BIM tools. Although it’s still not clear how Omniverse will work with BIM data, in some ways this technology enables the collaborative Single Building Model utopia of 3D architectural design. But it comes at a cost.

When Nvidia first announced pricing, it was nothing less than eye watering. At $1,800 per seat, per year (for 25 seats) and $25k minimum per Nucleus server, going up to $250,000 for 500 users and above, the price strictly placed accessibility in the realms of very well-heeled organisations, or used on projects with sizeable budgets.

This was equivalent to purchasing an additional yearly subscription of Revit per user, per year.

It wasn’t just us that thought it was expensive. We heard from several AEC firms who shared our concerns.

It would seem that Nvidia listened and subsequently reduced the price. Nucleus server now starts at $5,000 per year, and the $1,800 per user, per year cost is now for concurrent users, so licences can be shared. We can still see this costing firms hundreds of thousands of dollars to deploy across project teams or having to be very selective about who gets a collaborative seat.

So instead of democratising access to project geometry in real time, firms could end up with an elite group of users who participate in Omniverse collaboration. Of course, a more selective rollout may suit some firms. It will all depend on project workflows.

There is a level of free accessibility for those who already own an RTX GPU in their desktop or mobile workstation. This, however, loses the collaborative workflow element and much of the processing is local. So, it’s possible to assemble an environment from your own data sources but not interact in real time with other

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application plug-ins, are needed to sync to RTX laptops and desktops, and Nvidiadesign to visualisation capabilities’ to teams the Omniverse Nucleus server. In the certified systems on the Nvidia EGX spread across 14 countries.

AEC sector, Omniverse Connectors are platform. Asus, BOXX, Cisco, Dell, HP, “Omniverse is a revolutionary platform currently available for Revit, Rhino, Lenovo and Supermicro have all that has allowed our designers to SketchUp, Archicad, blender, 3ds max, announced support. collaborate and visualise multiple design CityEngine, and Unreal Engine. Bentley The Omniverse Enterprise solution changes to a scene simultaneously while Systems is integrating its iTwin platform starts at $14,000 per year for a workgroup working on their software of choice,” said with Nvidia Omniverse to provide a of five concurrent ‘3D Creators’ and an Martha Tsigkari, partner with the graphics pipeline for infrastructure unlimited number of ‘Viewers’. This Applied Research and Development digital twins and Omniverse can also breaks down to $5,000 per CPU socket per Group at Foster + Partners. support point clouds. year for Omniverse Enterprise Nucleus “As we can review design options in Nvidia Omniverse Enterprise also server and $1,800 per ‘3D Creator’ per parallel, we have much more time for includes two end-user applications: year. There is a minimum order quantity of creative design and visualisation.

Nvidia Omniverse Create, Integration of futuristic which is designed to technologies such as accelerate scene Omniverse doesn’t just share data; it allows real- machine learning will composition and allows more opportunities time collaboration within a common environment. bring users in real time to to assist the creative It doesn’t just share geometry, but holds textures process in the future.” interactively assemble, light, simulate, and The practice delivered and lighting and enables real-time viz render scenes; and Nvidia an Omniverse online Omniverse View, which workshop at Nvidia’s enables users to collaboratively build, five users. Nvidia Omniverse will also be GTC virtual conference in April entitled modify, and enhance a scene with available as a free tool for individuals, ‘Collaboration matters: An end-to-end physically accurate Nvidia MDL which will include the platform, and some workflow for the AEC industry’. A team materials. of the basic functionality. of designers, developers and artists from Nvidia RTX Virtual Workstation (vWS) Nvidia has several large AEC firms Foster + Partners showcased how Nvidia software, which is also part of the platform, already using the technology. This Omniverse Enterprise can help transform gives collaborators the freedom to run includes Kohn Pedersen Fox (read this a typical design to visualisation pipeline their graphics-intensive 3D applications AEC Magazine interview with Cobus into a real-time collaborative workflow. from anywhere and on low powered Bothma, director of applied research at The Foster + Partners workshop and devices, including standard office laptops KPF - tinyurl.com/KPF-Omniverse), Woods several other Nvidia GTC Omniverse that don’t have powerful GPUs. Bagot and Foster + Partners. presentations are available to view Of course, Omniverse Enterprise is Foster + Partners is implementing on-demand at tinyurl.com/AEC-GTC tested and optimised to run on Nvidia Omniverse to enable ‘seamless collaborative ■ nvidia.com/omniverse

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project participants.

This is not to be sniffed at, as creating a USD of a project still means it can be delivered in a single open file format. As Nvidia has said, it wants USD to be the open 3D PDF equivalent in the BIM world.

There’s also the issue of USD. Pixar is notoriously sniffy about adding additional features to the USD definition.

If features make sense to its use, then they may be added.

If they don’t, then USD is unlikely to expand into the minute detail that will serve the AEC market as a proper interchange format.

It is possible to expand around the USD wrapper and

extend the format to better serve our industry but that would need an open body to manage it. That has not been forthcoming, so there will be limits to the depth of ‘I’ from BIM that USD can portray.

The good news is that most 3D worlds seem to be colliding – AEC and manufacturing for instance, but also the world of films, games and AEC. The addition of the support of point clouds for instance, shows that scene capture is now an important part of movie making.

With innovations such as those being used in the shooting of The Mandalorian, actors perform with real-time

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rendered lighting accurate models, a type of Virtual Reality. The inclusion of support of point clouds and 3D engines like Unreal, benefits all industries. There is a synergy which means more data formats will be supported in the future but this looks to be broad, as opposed to deep.

In this initial salvo, Nvidia has certainly covered a lot of the basics and included support for most commonly used tools today. We have been very impressed with the demonstrations so far and it does scramble the brain a bit projecting forward as to what this will ultimately mean for design processes in the future.

Nvidia won’t be the only firm to have a take on this.

Design tools that have totally different origins and capabilities could feed a single environment where designers can build quickly and explore their ideas.

In the case of Bentley Systems, high resolution Digital Twins can be shared and analysis carried out.

City scale models can be shared irrespective of device and Nvidia is demonstrating that, through USD, interoperability can be improved in this industry and with GPUs can be turbo charged to deliver design at the speed of a game.

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Collaborative design with Arkio Arkio is a VR-centric collaborative design system for AEC professionals. Regulars at our NXT BLD conference will have seen it develop from a conceptual idea to an affordable real-life product which has just been released. We talked to the developers about the journey

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n 2017, while looking for interesting VR interview with Ernesto Pacheco, assotechnologies to show at our first ciate, director of visualisation at NXT BLD conference, we came CannonDesign (tinyurl.com/Arkio-NXT) across a young architect called It’s interesting that the launch of Arkio Johan Hanegraaf, who taught himself proper comes around the same time as how to program in Unity and pondered Nvidia Omniverse gets its first real pubwhat a VR design system for architects lic airing (see page 18). Collaboration is a would look like. problem in our industry because of a He gave a great demonstration (tinyurl. lack of openness, lack of standards and com/Hanegraaf), which captured all of our inability of companies to decide on comimaginations. The day mon tools. after the event, Foster + Nvidia’s impressive Partners invited him to solution costs tens of Over time we have a deeper dive. thousands of dollars and envision people In the years that folcan use cloud-based designing more lowed we kept in touch instances with powerful with Johan and saw the and more complex Nvidia RTX GPUs. By concept slowly turn into a contrast, Arkio costs from architecture real-life product at ‘free’ to just tens of dollars inside Arkio and a month per user and runs Icelandic company Arkio. we look forward on your desktop with a As VP of product Johan teamed up with CEO to making full use low-cost VR headset and, Hilmar Gunnarsson and Omniverse, you of the parametric unlike CTO Haraldur Darri can actually model inside nature of our Thorvaldsson (aka Harri), it. Arkio is collaboration modelling kernel for the masses and affordwho were industry veterans in collaboration, modable to have on every elling and 3D printing. It’s designer’s seat. been three years of development and We will have an in-depth review in the Arkio, the product, is now set to launch. next edition of AEC Magazine but with In October last year delegates of NXT the launch upon us, we asked the develBLD Virtual were treated to a demonstra- opment team - Johan, Hilmar and Harri tion of the beta version, together with a about the journey to get to this point.

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AEC Magazine: How did you all meet and set about developing Arkio?

Hilmar: Harri and I have been working together since 2013 when we created Modio, a 3D modelling tool that enabled anyone to design toys on a tablet or phone and 3D print them. We sold Modio to Autodesk in 2014 and spent two years at Autodesk following the acquisition.

After leaving Autodesk we asked ourselves what would be a fun and superambitious project to take on? Even though I’m not an architect I have always been fascinated by architecture and I wanted to somehow combine this with my passion for advanced technologies like Virtual Reality (VR) and create intuitive user experiences. And so it began, the first process of imaging how we could use the power of VR to make architectural design easier. www.AECmag.com

25/05/2021 16:05

Interview

Harri: I began working on VR back in the 90s, using Virtual Reality Modelling Language (VRML) to build shared virtual worlds. I confess to being obsessed with distributed systems architecture and how to create massively scalable virtual worlds, a difficult challenge perhaps, but we have come a long way since the 90s and we have made something pretty special in Arkio – a next generation immersive collaborative design tool for architecture.

Hilmar: Johan is a rare talent that deeply understands the design process and is our expert in architectural design tools and workflows. Arkio is a collaborative design tool that enables people to easily design and work together in a shared virtual space. Our goal is simply to give designers superpowers and we believe we can offer a much more intuitive experience than current flat-screen design tools that just aren’t built for rapid iteration, creative exploration or real-time collaboration.

Johan: I met Hilmar and Harri when I was at Mecanoo [an architecture firm based in Delft, Netherlands], where I worked on new design technologies and started to build a prototype VR design tool that was first shown at NXT BLD a few years ago. Hilmar saw some of the work I had been doing and asked if I would like to join forces – the rest is history!

AEC Magazine: You say Arkio gives designers superpowers. Exactly what design issues was Arkio built to address?

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Harri: Arkio was built from the groundup for use in VR and Augmented Reality (AR) where people can meet and be fully immersed in their designs. You can experience buildings at scale while shaping

them with your hands in a physical and intuitive way long before any construction takes place. VR technology has been around for some time but it’s taken huge leaps in quality and affordability in recent years. You can now buy a standalone Oculus Quest 2 headset for $300, no PC required, and Oculus is selling them as fast as they can make them.

Arkio was designed to run on standalone VR headsets as well as phones and tablets, since our aim is to allow everyone to participate in the design process.

Johan: During our beta we have seen a lot of different people use Arkio, including architects, interior designers and landscape designers. Some of them have also worked with their clients inside Arkio.

Arkio has been used by architecture teachers and students, engineers and even hobbyists remodelling their own kitchen.

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Interview

We have also worked with spatial designers from other fields like game, stage and theme park design. Existing design tools are not built with collaboration and easeof-use in mind and this leads to many inefficiencies and costly misunderstandings in the design and build process. If we can validate and make better design decisions earlier in the design stage, and connect this data back to other design tools, we can potentially save a lot of time and money.

Hilmar: Think of Arkio as a “3D tracing paper” where you can easily create new designs or import existing 3D models and add geometry and 2D sketches that get exported back to your design tools.

You can work alone, but Arkio really shines when used with other people. In VR you feel like you’re shaping physical reality together. You can view projects at model scales or jump to human scale and just walk around, adjust and explore

design options while immediately experiencing the results. The Arkio experience is about understanding space and massing, working together and making better and faster decisions in real-time.

AEC Magazine: Arkio offers some very interesting modelling capabilities - booleans and solids are featured. Are the models faceted or is there really a solid 24

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modelling engine in the system? When geometry is imported how much translation is required to thin out designs to hold in Arkio for editing? How many people can attend an Arkio session and what kind of hardware do they need?

Harri: While there are tools on the market that allow people to observe architectural models in VR, Arkio is the first design tool made specifically for architectural design work inside VR. To accomplish this, we built a bespoke solid modelling kernel, optimised for real-time physically-based modelling on mobile devices.

To ensure comfort in VR we run Arkio at a minimum of 72 frames per second on standalone headsets such as the Quest 2, while performing boolean modelling operations and collaborating with other users. Arkio’s solid modelling kernel is based on convex 3D cells, not polygons.

The system is designed to enable fast boolean operations and shape editing on mobile devices while synchronising geometry changes at high frame rates. Cells are positioned and attached in a parametric graph and they double as a dynamic bounding volume hierarchy with cells containing other cells.

Johan: Arkio runs on desktop PCs, tablets and phones so you can have collaborative design sessions with other people even if some of them don’t have VR headsets. To assist with this we have also made most of the design and communication capabilities available in a flat-screen version. For imported 3D models we provide plug-ins for Revit, Rhino and Sketchup so that users can easily send models to Arkio. We optimise the geometry so it can also be imported into Arkio on mobile devices.

As there are limits to the size of models that can be loaded on such devices we warn users about any potential issues so

they can always choose to export, for example, a subset of a model. As for the number of users that can attend an Arkio session, we’ve seen people host design meetings with more than 20 users. We can support even more, but this depends on the devices being used and how many people are modelling at the same time.

AEC Magazine: As we understand, one of the key benefits of Arkio is its integration and support for standard AEC tools such as Revit and Rhino, when geometry can be sent back and forth to Revit. How does this work?

Johan: With our plug-ins we support fully bi-directional workflows with both Revit and Rhino. If you export a model to Arkio, you can load and view that model with other people in Arkio, add geometry on top of it and send the resulting work back to Revit or Rhino. We also support auto-updating previously imported models, so if you save a new export, it automatically updates inside Arkio.

We support Revit both with our local plug-in and through our integration with Autodesk BIM 360. Since Arkio is a solid modeller we don’t export Arkio geometry to Revit as triangle meshes, but instead recreate the Arkio solids inside Revit as native Revit geometry and families. That means you can easily work with masses or generic model families with Excel program metadata to apply facades or floors and switch out family instances. We have even created Revit families for our entourage and mapped them to Enscape assets resulting in stunning renders of Arkio models in [real-time viz tool] Enscape.

AEC Magazine: The software has been in beta for quite a while now. What have you learnt from beta testers about the features they want and how they want to collaborate? Have the attitudes of the beta testers to VR changed in their exposure to Arkio? What about their workflows?

Harri: Our goal has always been to make Arkio easy to learn and use and we have seen people modelling some pretty spectacular things after only 30 minutes something that is unheard of when it comes to typical 3D modelling tools that often require days or weeks of training.

One of my favourite comments during the beta is from someone who had never done 3D modelling before but was able to model their house and kitchen within a day of downloading Arkio onto a VR headset. www.AECmag.com

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Johan: We received many requests for being able to use Arkio without VR as not everyone has a headset. Making Arkio available on desktops and mobile devices makes it straightforward for people to collaborate. It has been amazing to see all the different use cases and creative ways the beta testers have used Arkio, from students to professional designers to educators to hobbyists.

One of the more memorable uses of Arkio during the beta was when CannonDesign in the US used Arkio to win new projects during Covid by presenting their designs from inside Arkio to potential clients watching via Zoom.

areas: giving our users more advanced modelling capabilities, better tools for control and communication in design meetings, seamless integration with other 3D modelling tools and improving the capabilities of the Arkio flat-screen version. Over time, we envision people designing more and more complex architecture inside Arkio and we look forward to making full use of the parametric nature of our modelling kernel to enable some truly unique design workflows.

Hilmar: Our approach is to be open and transparent about our plans and to ask for feedback on new features and capabilities as soon as possible. We actually showed the first alpha version of Arkio at Autodesk University in late 2017 and since then we’ve been in constant communication with our beta users all over the world.

We have also seen our Johan: Version 1.0 defibeta users start to re-think nitely has a lot of capabiliArkio runs on how to collaborate in ties, but the magic of desktop PCs, design teams now that Arkio happens at the tablets and they can easily get togethintersection of real-time er inside Arkio, carry out phones so you can modelling, collaboration, actual design work and integration and have collaborative workflow explore spaces together. being fully cross-platdesign sessions Designing architecture form. The time feels right together inside an immerwith other people to bring Arkio to market sive space simply hasn’t now, especially with higheven if some of been possible in this way standalone them don’t have performing before. It is eye-opening VR headsets being availVR headsets for designers to be able to able at such low cost. design inside VR instead of merely using it as a Hilmar: Today we are medium for viewing. VR/AR has the just scratching the surface of what the potential to be the ultimate creative system will ultimately support in terms medium for architecture. of creating advanced geometry and scaling to larger and more complex models AEC Magazine: For a first release there while handling levels of details and visiseems to be an enormous amount of bility culling. capabilities. Are there any additional It has been demanding but we felt features that aren’t quite ready for this strongly that we had to get the user experelease and what can we expect to see as rience right and bring Arkio to as many the platform develops? devices as possible before releasing.

Creating our own modelling kernel was Harri: Development is never ending and an important decision as we don’t think we will always find ways to improve as there’s any other way to create a realtechnology continues to grow. We plan to time, immersive and collaborative design develop Arkio further across four key tool like Arkio.

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AEC Magazine: Could you explain the cost structure and capabilities of the various Arkio usage options?

Johan: Arkio will be completely free until September 1, 2021. After that we will offer three plans. There will always be a Free version of Arkio to try out the basics and participate in design meetings as a viewer. Arkio Pro will enable users to host large design meetings and use our integrations with design tools like Revit and Rhino and Arkio Enterprise will offer additional capabilities such as integration with Autodesk BIM 360, guest editors in meetings, additional support, training and professional services.

Hilmar: We wish for Arkio to be affordable so everyone can experience the full power of immersive, collaborative design. Arkio Pro will be priced at $55 per month per floating licence when billed annually, or $70 when billed monthly. Arkio Enterprise will be priced at $85 per month per floating licence, and will be billed annually. Arkio is available for download now for all major VR headsets, for iOS and Android phones and tablets, and we also have a PC installer available for download.

■ arkio.is

Arkio at NXT BLD Arkio’s Johan Hanegraaf and Hilmar Gunnarsson will be hosting a live collaborative VR presentation at NXT BLD 2021 at the QEII Centre, London on 14 September 2021.

Hopefully we will also get an update on what features we can expect next and use cases of early adopters. Early bird tickets are available for £49. Book your seat now nxtbld.com

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Revit 2022 and beyond From the number of features and enhancements in the new release of Revit, it’s clear that Autodesk is attempting to placate customers who complained so publicly at the BIM tool’s lack of development, writes Martyn Day

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n July 2020 Autodesk had a some- Navisworks, Revit and 3ds Max. None of pened to answer one of the points raised what rude awakening, coming in these products can really be described as by the group and was championed by the the form of an open letter from a having high development velocity. company to show they were listening, collection of over 25 architectural Autodesk’s executive team reacted with Autodesk had been negotiating this before practices based in the UK and Australia some explanatory blog posts and obser- the Open Letter came out. (tinyurl.com/adesk-letter). The letter raised vations on the issues. They accepted some Post Open Letter, those watching many issues around Revit, the company’s of the points raised and rejected others Autodesk closely noticed an increase in flagship BIM tool, including years of woe- but reached out to set up a series of listen- the number of jobs advertised for Revit ful lack of development and increasing ing engagements with the customers and development and much higher visibility costs. The letter also raised licensing Autodesk execs and AEC strategy team. of the Revit development team on social issues, pernicious customer audits over A core part of this process was an media platforms, as well as its own non-compliance, and lack of good interop- exchange between the Revit development forums. Revit’s future roadmap became erability. It really was quite the broadside. team and the firms in the Open Letter an open-source discussion for input and A few months prior to this, Autodesk Group, giving them an opportunity to engagement and at Autodesk University, had announced the end of perpetual discuss what features Revit desperately CEO Andrew Anagnost explained how licensing and the removal of proud he was of the Revit network licences with the team in reaching out to firms introduction of named user of all sizes, not just listening The fundamental question of ‘what is the licences, which meant every to the loud mid to large ones, future of Revit?’ has not gone away. Autodesk to collect and prioritise feauser had to have their own licence even if they only ture requests. has ruled out a next generation and the used the software on occaWith the launch of Revit company is ‘betting the farm’ on the cloud sion. This was the straw 2022 this April, we had our that broke the camel’s backfirst insight into the renewed yet more licence models, yet development focus of the more cost. The Open Letter went global needed for them to get the jobs done. post-open letter period and on the face of and over 200 firms eventually signed it.

Following the exchange between the it there has been a whole lot of enhanceRevit is 20 years old. While in its various groups, Autodesk announced ments and additions and it reads as ceryouth, significant upgrades were neces- that it had expanded access to Revit tainly the kind of eclectic release that sary to flesh out the product’s capabili- licences five versions back and pushed would indicate that it had indeed been ties, as it entered maturity, it’s fair to say back the removal of network licences for driven from broad customer input. the development velocity tapered off. another year, before named user became However, the cost of ownership did any- mandatory. While Autodesk did not cred- Revit 2022 thing but. The Open Letter stated that it the Open Letter Group for these chang- The new release of Revit contains anythey had seen, on average, increases of es of policy, I doubt they would have where between 35 to 60 enhancements, 70% in the cost of ownership over five come about had the group not raised depending on how you want to count years. Within that period, firms were also them so vehemently. them - which is probably more than was running up to five different types of Subsequently, Autodesk also delivered in the last three releases comlicence models at any one time and, on announced it had licensed the ODA’s IFC bined. Customer reactions have varied analysis, out of the 39 products in their library, which is an industry standard and from ‘oh my God it feels like Christmas’ suites, they typically used only four should help improve most of Autodesk’s to ‘about bloody time’, to ‘this is like rearapplications regularly - AutoCAD, IFC exchange capabilities. While this hap- ranging deck chairs on the Titanic’. It

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Is Revit development coming out of the cold?

really depends on if the updates have positively impacted features you use regularly, or perhaps didn’t already have workarounds for.

There is definitely something in there for every user but then there were those who were always hoping for a deeper more meaningful rewrite. It’s going to take a number of releases to convince customers that Autodesk is serious about maintaining the development velocity they have been expecting. I www.AECmag.com

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think it’s only fair as well to consider that while Autodesk had a roadmap for Revit development, it has devoted additional time and energy to engage/listen to users over last summer and autumn and then accommodate additional features at relatively short notice, in development-cycle terms.

At the moment in the industry there is a lot of concentration on the conceptual design phase. Autodesk has picked up on this and now Revit supports the link-

ing of McNeel Rhinoceros 3DM files.

There is also a new round-trip capability between FormIT Pro and Revit.

Autodesk’s manufacturing tool, Inventor has also been upgraded to export assemblies as RVT files, better linking architectural design with digital fabrication, another long-term aim for the AEC division.

A built-in PDF exporter for 2D views and sheets is now included, it even does batch export. Prior to Autodesk buying May / June 2021

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1 Revit 2022 includes a built-in PDF exporter for 2D views and sheets 2 Sloped and tapered walls can now be created ‘quickly and easily’ 3 Revit 2022 offers better interoperability with Rhino and FormIt Pro

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Revit, it could export PDFs but this was removed as a feature. I seem to remember that this was about Autodesk promotion of DWF as an alternative. 20 years later and it’s reappeared!

Generative Design tools get a raft of enhancements, such as new study types to enable the distribution of objects in space such as grid object placement or random object placement. There are new dynamo tools.

Last year Revit got slanted walls; now it can model tapered walls. Non-core layers can be switched off, making walls easier to document. There have been number of visual additions, such as support for better quality RPC (Rich Photorealistic Content) when rendering in realistic views. It’s also now possible to control the visibility of Grids as 3D planes in 3D views.

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Other notable enhancements: • Support for multileader tags • IFC4 architectural and structural export • Custom revision numbering for PAS1192/ ISO-19650 • Enhanced tag rotation • Phase parameters in view filters • Revit schedules support CSV Export • Curtain wall mullions can be tagged • Improved colour palette as the default colour scheme • Enhanced Dynamo nodes • Support for spot slopes on ramps • People content and People Flow Toolkit included for egress analysis • 2D performance of Rebar improved in zoom and pan • MEP supports ASHRAE 90.1 Code Compliance • API enhancements • There are also lots of subtle changes to the UI and dialogues across the application 28

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This isn’t what I’d call a meat and two veg update, it’s a tapas tsunami with lots of mainly small enhancements that add up to something potentially filling.

It’s interesting that after 20 years Autodesk decides to add a PDF export tool. It’s been so long that customers have developed workarounds for this glaring omission. While customers may be asking for this feature from Autodesk, one has to wonder if Autodesk’s time could have

been better spent creating features which no other developer could do for Revit?

For a full list of individual Revit 2022 features Niall Kelly’s 8020 BIM has a comprehensive list at tinyurl.com/8020BIM.

Conclusion It’s clear from Autodesk’s reaction that it knows it dropped the ball on Revit development, introduced too many dramatic licensing changes and didn’t provide www.AECmag.com

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Technology

value for money in the eyes of its larger ling and asking for more funda- Revit now works with Autodesk to stray too far away grids in 3D views to customers, who are seeing their historic mental changes. It’s almost as if from the existing roadmap, reduce the need for discounts shrink.

Autodesk chose to drown out leaving a number pondering if additional views Anagnost admitted to Wall Street ana- those who were complaining, they should migrate to somelysts that they had put many customers with those who were not complaining, thing else and stop investing in what in ‘licensing hell’, managing multiple biasing development towards those who was clearly a legacy system. I don’t think licence types. In this context, the expan- aligned with the existing product road- the contents of Revit 2022 have changed sion of access to five versions back and map and who would have lower expecta- that mindset. renewed emphasis on Revit software tions of depth of new functionality.

The fundamental question of ‘what is development are welcome but customers It’s not widely known, but the Open the future of Revit?’, has not gone away. are also looking for price stability and Letter Group were not the only ones com- Autodesk has ruled out a next generation consistent licensing policies. It also plaining. A few weeks after the Open and the company is ‘betting the farm’ on seems moving to named user licensing Letter went public, a number of signature the cloud. We have heard about trials is no guarantee that you won’t get audit- architects approached Autodesk private- which involve streaming Autodesk’s ed, or transgress and become desktop applications, such as non-compliant.

Revit, direct to desktop and The fundamental issue will mobile machines, which The fundamental issue will be how deep, requires running Revit as a be how deep, beyond the outer layers of Revit’s ‘onion skins’ of non-optimised application in a beyond the outer layers of Revit’s ‘onion functionality, will the developvirtual machine on a server. skins’ of functionality, will the ment team be willing to go. The This is one possible future for development team be willing to go deeper the functions to the nearly all Autodesk’s desktop core, the greater the chance of applications and solves a temcausing serious regressions porary problem, to get legacy and bugs in any reworking. So, it’s ly, backing-up the complaints on the lack applications quickly on the cloud, on unlikely that a big rewrite is on the cards, of Revit development and to express aspi- demand, ideally co-located where cusbut portion sizes of features in new rations for a next-generation design sys- tomers design data is stored. releases are more likely to resemble Revit tem. From what I can tell, they too were Over the longer term, these flagship 2022 than Revit 2018. put in the same engagement loop to col- desktop applications could be broken It’s also handy to have so many custom- late feature requests, with regard to feed- down and rewritten using Forge to ers who want small enhancements. ing into the existing roadmap. enable thin client variants to be served While Autodesk made a big effort to As both groups were asking for more up anywhere on the planet but this is so engage with its smaller customers, it was comprehensive and fundamental rede- far from what’s available now, it could be a bit odd, considering it was the serious, velopment, I sense there was disappoint- many years away. mature Revit customers who were rebel- ment at the lack of commitment from ■ autodesk.com/revit

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The Revit graphics boost Autodesk’s new One Graphics System (OGS) for Revit, 3ds max and other Autodesk applications will improve viewport performance and visual quality through GPU ray tracing

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utodesk is working on a new graphics engine that promises to ‘radically improve’ 3D performance in its core applications, including Revit, 3ds max and others.

The ‘next-generation’ system will also improve visual quality by delivering ray tracing directly inside the viewport. The aim is to enable users to switch between a simple shaded view and a photorealistic representation very quickly – though the speed at which this can happen will depend on the graphics hardware and the complexity of the model.

The new viewport system is a complete re-architecting of the current One Graphics System (OGS), which relies solely on rasterisation, a rendering method for 3D software that takes vector data and turns it into pixels (a raster image).

OGS is shared by nearly all Autodesk products, including Revit, 3ds max, AutoCAD, Inventor, Maya, Fusion, Infraworks, Navisworks and Recap. It dates back to 2007 and uses older graphics APIs including OpenGL and DirectX 9/10/11.

Revit, in particular, is notoriously poor at harnessing the plentiful power of modern Graphics Processing Units (GPUs).

The graphics engine has only had small improvements over the years including the introduction of the ‘draw visible elements only’ feature in 2015. Co-developed

by AMD, it was designed to improve viewport performance through ‘occlusion culling’, by not drawing elements in the current view that are obscured by others.

However, like many other CAD and BIM tools that use older graphics APIs, 3D performance in Revit has remained largely bottlenecked by the frequency of the CPU. In fact, in AEC Magazine’s workstation tests we have seen as little as single digit percentage utilisation of GPU resources, which can result in poor 3D 32

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performance, especially when working with large models.

Autodesk’s ‘next generation’ viewport system should fix this, and users should get a much smoother viewport experience without having to rely on the software to simplify the model or turn off effects during view navigation.

By fully utilising modern graphics APIs including DirectX 12 and Vulkan, Autodesk’s applications will be able to talk straight to the GPU hardware (rather than having to route everything through the graphics driver) and take better advantage of multi-core CPUs. The modernised OGS will also be able to use hardware-based ray tracing, which is built into modern graphics cards such as the new ‘Ampere’ Nvidia RTX, and forthcoming GPUs from AMD and Intel. It will utilise open standards, such as MaterialX and Pixar’s Hydra, part of USD.

Nvidia GTC showtime Autodesk’s Henrik Edstrom, senior software architect, graphics technology, and Mauricio Vives, senior principal engineer,

gave a sneak peek of the ‘next-generation’ viewport system in a presentation at Nvidia’s GTC conference earlier this year.

Rather than looking at performance in simple shaded views, the focus was on the eye-catching stuff – real-time ray tracing.

The idea is that when working on a model in the viewport, an architect, engineer or designer can quickly switch to full ray traced quality at the click of a button. Revit currently relies on CPU rendering which takes a long time and the results can be mixed.

For the new engine, Vives explains that the emphasis is to provide a good real time experience, like you get with a game engine. “Photorealism is important, but we prioritise performance over quality,” he says.

According to Edstrom, it will be very easy to use for non-rendering experts.

“They just need a very simple solution with literally no settings,” he says.

In Revit, for example, we imagine it will be just another visual style, to sit alongside the current wireframe, shaded, and realistic modes. www.AECmag.com

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Technology

Lights, camera, action

hand how applications like Revit and GPUs in the future.

In a demonstration of a path traced refer- Inventor are very CPU limited when it So when can we expect to see this new ence application, Vives showed a welding comes to 3D graphics and unable to take engine inside shipping Autodesk prodrobot model that originated in Autodesk advantage of the huge processing poten- ucts? In short, it’s too early to tell. In the Inventor. Render quality was photorealistic tial of modern GPUs. presentation it was described as a ‘very and looked impressive, much better than But, at Autodesk University 2019, when early work in progress’ and there were the rasterisation engine currently used in we asked what Autodesk was doing to no promises as to what will or will not be Autodesk Inventor 2022. improve 3D performance we got a rather supported in Autodesk’s products. But The scene was lit by a single directional prickly response from CEO Andrew this is a standard line for a publicly tradlight and a low frequency environment Anagnost. There wasn’t an issue. ed company. The fact that Autodesk is light. Vives showed off the render quality While Autodesk would not publicly showing this in public now perhaps by highlighting several aspects within admit the current engine needed improv- shows promise for its 2023 or 2024 series the scene, including contact hardening ing, we expect work on the new OGS had of products. soft shadows, real ambient occlusion and already started back then. Swapping out Of course, a fast and eye-catching glossy reflections, focusing in on the sub- a graphics engine is a huge undertaking, viewport is not everything. In Revit, for tle reflection of a black socket on a red especially one that covers so many example, as highlighted by the Letters To paint finish. diverse applications as OGS does.

Autodesk group in July 2020 In order to achieve a smooth viewport The fact is, there are many Autodesk (tinyurl.com/adesk-letter), there are many experience, the frame budget was set to 30 customers that struggle with large model other aspects of the BIM software that frames per second. This resulted in some performance, from load times to model need improving. Requests for large ‘noise’ when moving the camera, but the display and manipulation, relying on their model performance in general ranks high image resolved very quickly on the Autodesk Revit roadwhen idle by casting more map (tinyurl.com/revitroadmap). rays and using denoising.

While it’s good to see Revit is notoriously poor at harnessing the The presentation then Autodesk actively looking to plentiful power of modern GPUs. In fact, we improve the 3D graphics went on to show the path have seen as little as single digit percentage tracing mode of the new experience across the board, utilisation of GPU resources engine working inside in it’s long overdue and, with Autodesk 3ds Max, Maya rise of powerful real-time and Inventor. You can watch engines like Unreal Engine the full presentation at tinyurl.com/ software to automatically simplify geome- in AEC, architects and designers now AutodeskOGS (registration required). try or turn off effects during view naviga- expect a fast and visually rich viewport tion in order to maintain frame rates. in CAD/BIM tools like Inventor and Flexible architecture Everyone wants more 3D performance, Revit. We’re excited to see how this develTo provide more flexibility for future and we expect many will be excited by ops, although that enthusiasm might not software and hardware developments, this news. Even more so, if they can get be shared by firms that have already the new viewport system is based on a this without having to upgrade GPU invested in real-time viz tools like decoupled architecture, where the appli- hardware. According to Vives, basically Enscape, Twinmotion and Lumion. cations and the graphic system are not as any GPU, up to five years old from any ■ tinyurl.com/AutodeskOGS intertwined as they are in the current vendor, will support the modernised OGS. OGS. This is being done through Hydra, The addition of real-time ray tracing in part of Pixar’s USD. the viewport is also a very exciting devel“That will allow us to make changes and opment. Rather than relying on slow improve OGS and add support for new CPU ray tracing, it will help bring visualfeatures and new APIs and new hardware isation more upfront in the design proand so on, without really involving the cess – not just for presentations but to application teams too much,” explains better understand complex forms Edstrom. “It also gives us the flexibility to through more realistic shading or to plug in other renderers, like Arnold, for explore materials and the impact of light.

Autodesk’s new One Graphics System instance, that already supports the Hydra Those looking to take (OGS) will be able to take advantage of new generation GPUs like the render delegate API, or something like the advantage of real-time ray Nvidia RTX A5000 which include Nvidia Omniverse RTX renderer which tracing, however, will need hardware-based ray tracing also supports this API… and there are to invest in a GPU with numerous others as well.” built in hardware ray The system currently uses DirectX tracing. Currently, this Raytracing (DXR), but Autodesk is also would be an Nvidia planning to use the recently released RTX GPU but with Vulkan Ray tracing extensions.

Autodesk taking an open approach Conclusion it will almost cerIn AEC Magazine’s workstation tests tainly extend to over the years we’ve experienced first- AMD and Intel

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Beyond BIM with Dassault Systèmes The developer of Catia, a design tool in aerospace and automotive, has long held aspirations for the AEC sector. The move to offsite digital construction presents its best market opportunity, with Lendlease, Vinci and Bouygues now customers

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f you have ridden in a car or flown in stagnated and the original aims of mov- road is not that different, and the increasa plane, the chances are it was ing to a model-centric process are still ing use of digital fabrication in AEC designed in Catia, the flagship CAD stuck in the ancient constraint of draw- means products like Catia and SolidWorks system of French software firm ings-based contracts and deliverables. are being used with the industry.

Dassault Systèmes (DS). Many of the conThe vast majority of architects are still Vinci and Lendlease have been worksumer goods you also buy are designed in modelling with the sole purpose of creat- ing with DS for a few years to create another market dominating CAD brand of ing drawings. The future of the industry is expert systems to create highly detailed, DS, Solidworks. to model to fabricate and save an incredi- construction-ready models and codify DS is an undisputed giant in engineer- ble amount of wasted time and effort in their internal processes. The latest firm ing and manufacturing, but when it generating resource hogging 2D drawings. to join the group is Bouygues comes to buildings and infrastructure, its BIM is also responsible for negatively Construction which has just signed a tools have really only been used in niche impacting design time, as buildings do new three-year deal to accelerate the projects, probably most famously cham- not require the level of detail or certainty research and development of new cloudpioned by Zaha Hadid Architects (ZHA). that the ‘Lego-based’ systems of BIM based, mobile enabled approaches to In these processes, Catia was selected impose. Here Rhino is king and it’s all building construction ‘virtual twins’. because of its ability to model at 1:1 scale, about the geometry.

It’s worth mentioning at this point that connect geometry to downstream fabricaThe bad news for architects is that the Digital Twins, which is currently all the tion, and provide a common tool that malaise of development in their toolsets rage in our industry, is woefully behind allows architect and manufacturer to talk comes with the fact that these products, the use of Digital Twins in manufacturing. the same language.

In short, DS is developing a DS has long been watching tailored construction system the emergence of BIM. It was DS is fortunate that the AEC market is falling for Bouygues to increase its actually one of the investors ensure compliinto its way of thinking - the workflows it has productivity, in Revit before it was sold to ance of designs and produce perfected in the engineering space are Autodesk. At the time, 2002, predictable output. By using it was one of the reasons DS’ cloud-based design prodbecoming increasingly relevant Autodesk paid so much for ucts, the aim is to connect Revit ($133 million), which developers, architects, subhad no user-base, as it didn’t want DS to such as Revit, are mature and from a contractors, suppliers and operating comown a potential threat in the AEC space - sales perspective are highly penetrated panies within the same ecosystem, which having already lost out to acquiring and quite saturated. The software indus- DS terms its ‘3D Experience Platform’.

Solidworks, which DS bought in 1997 and try is now looking for new gold seams to While construction is a horribly federatthen went on to dominate the mid-range mine, where they can add value and gen- ed process, Bouygues aims to use a single mechanical CAD (MCAD) market. erate additional revenue. environment to streamline the flow of In the mid 2000s, DS CEO Bernard Construction is where the action is at, data within projects.

Charlès certainly had aspirations to com- whether that be connecting up supply This is the typical DS ‘playbook’ in pete in the volume modelling market chains, managing data or having models aerospace and automotive, to get all the within AEC but little transpired from this which are more aligned to fabrication players to work in the same system. This initiative. In the last five years, DS’s inter- than showing design intent. It’s here that is far easier to pull off in something like est and activity in the space has slowly DS appears to be focusing, because it has aerospace where the owner is Boeing and and steadily increased, although it has a manufacturing-ready ecosystem of can drive this level of software consistenfailed to gain any significant penetration products that could be shaped to better fit cy through its suppliers. In the AEC into the volume market with the portfolio the needs of large construction firms. space, finding a significant owner that of Catia-based tools it has developed.

Aeroplanes, ships and cars are just large can drive that through disparate supply It’s pretty clear to anyone in architec- assemblies of geometry and manufactur- chains is frequently less straightforward. ture that the development of BIM has ing information. A building, a bridge or a As the industry moves to more design-

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Working in Catia on a model imported from Revit

build projects, the owners of projects become clearer and have much more say in the discrete processes of suppliers. While DS can be proud of getting Catia into ZHA and even Foster + Partners, the attraction is primarily on the geometry capabilities of the modelling kernel. By working with Lendlease, Vinci and Bouygues, the whole DS ecosystem of products - modelling, simulation, PLM (Product Lifecycle Management), collaboration, model management, production management, CNC etc. - can all be exploited.

Centred around the virtual twin (Digital Twin) Bouygues will use Catia from design to operation by ‘industrialising’ its project management, anticipating the various phases of a project and planning their on-site implementation in fine detail. Bouygues expects to see energy savings, reduction in errors, greater predictability, materials tracing and better waste management.

The knowledge that DS gains from its interaction with Bouygues and others feeds into the development of three configurations of its Catia-based 3DExperience platform, these will be “Integrated Built Environment,” “Inclusive Urban Future” and “Building Design for Fabrication.”

As DS continues with these high-level interactions with construction firms, it’s building up a knowledge-base and best practice approach which it can then productise. This will make subsequent engagements with construction firms successively easier and quicker. All this fits in with DS’ approach to other markets: sell to the top players and drive sales through the supply channel ecosystem. And, by avoiding the architecture part of the puzzle, it avoids the necessity to try and take on Revit, the 800lb gorilla in the volume architectural design market.

One cannot ignore that its main construction clients are also French. Vinci, www.AECmag.com

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Bouygues and DS are perhaps more inclined to work together due to proximity, language and culture. However, construction is global and these firms are global players which adapt to the language, culture and codes of where they’re needed. Should the deployment of the 3D Experience platform bear fruit, it may not be too long before established AEC software players find themselves competing against an extremely capable modelling solution, with a proven track record in industry digital transformation.

Beyond BIM While DS may not be particularly vocal about what it is doing in the AEC space, UK VAR Desktop Engineering (DTE), has taken the initiative to promote and engage with the design and construction market, running an annual event showcasing, called ‘Beyond BIM’ (dte.co.uk/tag/ beyond-bim), which highlights customers and signature architects who have gone beyond the capabilities of today’s BIM systems and are typically looking to go straight to digital fabrication.

Now in its third year, the range of speakers has broadened, demonstrating that the industry is looking at alternatives when seeking to innovate the current workflows. This year’s speakers included a keynote from Dale Sinclair, director of innovation, EMEA at AECOM. Dale’s talk succinctly highlighted future trends and problems the AEC industry needed to address. While we have been obsessed with BIM, the process of design to operation is not all about one aspect, one technology because, Dale blatantly said, the thing many in the industry have been thinking, but not saying out loud is ‘the industry really needs to stop this notion of using drawings.’

Looking at the challenges, he identified Net Zero goals as being a key driver, with

additive manufacturing, Digital Twins, the rise of volumetric fabrication and how all these things will mean the industry’s workflow has to change.

Dale sees the rise of robots in construction, and for that we need to reinvent brick and plasterboard to better suit robots, as most of the sizes and shapes are defined by human limitations, not what our robots could do.

The industry needs to start looking at ‘whole life outcomes, IoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twin and better asset management to drive down energy costs’. Dale identified it’s possible to save up to 24% of the cost of building in operating throughout the whole lifecycle – which he described as ’like getting the building phase for free’.

AECOM is internally researching design automation, exploring intuition and iteration using AI and machine learning. It is working smarter with data and working with connected data but he could not go into great detail. He concluded, “We have to control the whole process, almost become like a car manufacturer, with end-to-end processes, design, manufacture, even the sales process.”

Other speakers this year included: • James Brown, Digital Manufacturing Engineer at Prodtex • Ben Haldin, MD of Fulcro • Hector Camps, Phi Cubed • Mattia Santi, Co-founder and director of Sasi Studio • Abdulmajid Karanouh, International director of Interdisciplinary Design & Innovation, Drees and Sommer • Chun Qing Li, MD, founder and principal of Kreod.

Registration is required to watch the talks but it’s all free and well worth it (dtehub.uk/register) These industry talks were supplementMay / June 2021

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Technology ed by presentations from Dassault Systèmes executives - Jonathan Asher, Catia construction portfolio director, Patrick Mays, vice president strategy and Marty Rozmanith, construction cities & territories industry sales director.

In the confines of this article I will concentrate on what Rozmanith had to say as it ties in to what Dale Sinclair talked about at length and to the previously mentioned agreement between Bouygues Construction and DS. Rozmanith was an early employee at Revit, prior to the Autodesk acquisition and has spent a number of years at DS driving development and engagement with the industry. His presentation was on the ‘Productisation of Buildings’, applying a systematic industrial Catia hospital design so it drastically reduces its from a collection process to standardise large design and documentation of generative chunks of buildings in advance phase and has fewer compoassemblies of them arriving on site, more nents shipped to site, requiring commonly called Design for less on-site assembly. The main downside Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA). of this is larger and heavier assemblies Rozmanith first identified the core pain will arrive on site, requiring more cranes points in construction – the unpredictabil- and more work preparing the site for liftity, timeline problems, diversity, lack of ing and placement. skilled labour, geography and the huge An example given was how Bouygues variation in construction partners and use DS tools to conceptualise hospital contracts. These were compared to typical rooms, although this could be done and manufacturing processes, such as engi- brought in from Revit. The results of that neer to order and configure to order, to conceptual general arrangement are fed show where improvements in efficiency into DS’ generative platform leveraging and margin can be identified. The ironic Catia, which then generates the 100% thing is this is already happening in com- configured 3D model automatically. ponents of buildings that are engineered, Where components interface with such a Schindler lifts, which has a rules- structure, these are all generated automatbased design system, using modules and ically as they are predefined / automated. variants, saving time because These modules can be bespoke lifts can be configstacked and Catia has modured and automated. elled, defined and created Change is Bouygues Construction is drawings for 80% of the fincertainly one of the key clients that ished design. These are coming and Rozmanith highlighted as structural steel, panels, fire, looking at this approach to there’s much to hot and cold MEP, ductwork, deploy in its productisation to electrical routing. learn from get the benefits of configure to This model is the ‘virtual order. Taking the General manufacturing twin’, which drives the field Arrangement as the geomet- for some areas execution, producing the ric inputs, using in-house preinstructions for how they are of AEC defined assemblies and subassembled in the field, using assemblies as custom IP, to DS’ 3D Lean platform. The automatically generate the LOD 400 mod- example also included panelised systems, els and documents, what Rozmanith terms which lend themselves to digital fabrica‘150%’ Bill of Materials = highly detailed tion, where all the individual panel drawoutput for fabrication and assembly. The ings were automated, untouched by hand. more projects Bouygues does in this way, Rozmanith defined this as ‘Generative the more information it can put into its Configure to Order’ and the productisaproductised assemblies, enabling the auto- tion of buildings. Obviously in a presentamation of highly detailed configurations. tion it all looks like a miracle but the hard Bouygues wants to move from being a work has been put in in defining the procompany that is drowning in documents ductised elements and building the conto having a data-led process, driven by figurator. It’s interesting that the system these ‘engineering master’ configurators, allows adaptability to custom designs and

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also operates in the constraint of what can be manufactured. Bouygues’ aspirations are pretty impressive and it will get a tailor-made system at the end of this.

Conclusion DS is undoubtedly gaining some traction in the AEC space and, in doing that, is getting knowledge to provide more turn-key Catia packages for its next customers in construction. But this isn’t really a case of DS chasing new customers. There is a general recognition that today’s tools and construction and architectural design are the evolutionary products of workflows which need to change because they are not connected. And the change that is coming is to become more like product design workflows in aerospace and automotive.

DS is fortunate in that the AEC market is falling into its way of thinking; the workflows it has perfected in the engineering space are becoming increasingly relevant.

In Rozmanith’s presentation, he simply took Schindler’s Lifts engineering / configure to order process and mapped that to Bouygues. It was a clear example of how productisation is going to become a key concept for many firms in the AEC space.

However, this is not a homogeneous market and different building types have different workflows. Building a server centre is not the same as building a hotel or one-off villa. DS is a long way from impacting the current status quo but it has been quietly establishing a beachhead. Also, the AEC industry has some very big silos that will take a long time to knock down.

We will have to wait and see where Bouygues and DS push their co-development and also what direction the general construction industry takes, given its move to off-site fabrication. Change is certainly coming and there’s much to learn from manufacturing for some areas of AEC. ■ dte.co.uk

■ 3ds.com

www.AECmag.com

25/05/2021 20:49

Makeyour next project more sustainable.

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nxtbld.com

NXT BLD 2021 preview After 15 months of communicating virtually via webcams, it will soon be possible to safely meet up for industry events! So grab your ticket now as our very own NXT BLD returns to London in physical form on 14 September 2021

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XT BLD (Next Build) is AEC Magazine’s annual one day conference where we examine the disruptive technologies coming to the architecture and construction space. We look beyond today’s BIM adoption challenges to smarter, intelligent digital workflows, from concept through fabrication to operation.

Last year, the pandemic forced us to go online in October but the incredible vaccine roll-out promises to bring back a sense of normality by the summer, with social distancing measures abating. Our annual regular date in June is just a little too early to benefit from all of this, so NXT BLD 2021 will take place at the prestigious QEII Centre in London on 14 Sept 2021 and we can’t wait to see you all in person.

As the UK continues to open up, the last fifteen months is already starting to feel like a dystopian VR dream, being confined to our homes for so long and only able to connect through digital media. It was certainly the year in which the Internet rescued the AEC industry, with various cloud platforms enabling projects to keep going despite working together, apart. How this experience will change attitudes to where we work, collaborate and how we change our IT backbones to be more resilient, will be an important trend to monitor. We will be addressing this subject within the conference with our partner, Lenovo, and others.

In terms of core AEC technologies, we

are already building a roster of speakers for our two conference tracks, covering a wide range of hot topics — off-site construction, computational design, collaboration tools, robots and construction, VR/ AR, digital twins, extremely high-resolution reality capture (photogrammetry) and the latest in powerful workstations. Each talk will have time for an audience Q&A.

house development of applications such as generative design platform SiteSolve, for site optimisation, financial appraisal and engineering insight.

Alex Coulombe, co-founder of Agile Lens rejoins us this year to look at developments in VR/AR. His talk at 2020’s virtual event was superb, on how VR tools have progressed so dramatically in capability Amy Marks, Autodesk VP of, throughout the lifecycle of his projects Industrialised Construction Strategy and nxtbld.com/videos/alex-coulombe Evangelism, will be talking about integrating with off-site construction and prefabri- Regular NXT BLD visitors will be familcation, together with sharing her industry iar with Johan Hanegraaf, the Dutch experience at XSite Modular. architect who presented a concept of what an architectural VR design system would Greg Schleusner, director of design tech- look like, at the first NXT BLD. This year, nology and innovation at HOK will explore his prototype becomes a product. Arkio the challenges that the current generation has become so much more and we will design tools present and how collaboration have Johan and Hilmar Gunnarsson on within the industry could help firms hand to hold live collaborative VR demos regain control of the design process, giving and answer your questions. more time for designing.

More speakers will be announced in the coming Greg Demchak, director of Bentley weeks. Full details at ■ nxtbld.com Systems’ Digital Innovation Lab, will speak about research being done on We are really looking forward to breaking extremely high-resolution, high accuracy, out of our ‘bubbles’ and seeing you all on photogrammetry for digital twins and AI/ 14 September 2021 at the QEII Centre, ML (Artificial Intelligence / Machine London. While we are not discounting Learning) analysis, as well as using digital that there may be further bumps in our twin data in augmented reality. journey out of lockdown, we will keep a close eye on the situation and, of course, Paul Jefferies director, computational will take any steps necessary to ensure design lead at Ramboll will talk on the in- everyone’s safety.

Get a taste of NXT BLD

Early bird tickets

All 18 presentations and Q&As from our 2020 virtual event are available to view on-demand at nxtbld.com/videos These include the Autodesk Open Letter Group, Elif Erdine (the Architectural Association (AA)), Elena Cassini + Ferdinand Garcia Blanco (Roboticore), Nate Miller (Proving Ground), Alexander Türk (Aeditive), Julie Dorsay (Mental Canvas), Bruce Bell (Facit Homes), Mark Taylor (BAM), Tal Friedman (Foldstruct), Mollie Claypool (The Bartlett), Mike Katz (AMD), Johan Hanegraaf + Hilmar Gunnarsson (Arkio), Chris Ruffo (Lenovo), Mike Leach (Lenovo), Rob Jamieson (AMD), Andrew Rink (Nvidia), Scott Ruppert (Lenovo), Ken Pimental (Epic Games) and Alex Coulombe (Agile Lens).

We are currently offering a limited number of early bird tickets for £49.

The price includes full access to the conference and exhibition, refreshments, lunch and drinks at the networking reception.

Early bird tickets will be available until 19 July. After this date full price tickets will be available for £69. nxtbld.com

In fact, all presentations from NXT BLD 2017-2020 can be viewed on-demand nxtbld.com/videos

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London - 14 September 2021

Amy Marks, Autodesk’s VP, Industrialised Construction Strategy and Evangelism will be talking about integrating with off-site construction and prefabrication, together with sharing her industry experience at XSite Modular.

Image courtesy of FactoryOS

www.AECmag.com

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Paul Jefferies, director, computational design lead at Ramboll will talk on the in-house development of applications such as the creation of its generative design platform SiteSolve, for site optimisation, financial appraisal and engineering insight.

Sitesolve image courtesy of Ramboll

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Software

SCIA Engineer 21 AEC Magazine caught up with SCIA to find out more about SCIA Engineer 21 and the future of the Nemetschek-owned structural design and analysis software

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ntil recently, SCIA Engineer had an image problem. Having sported the same user interface (UI) since 2006 it was starting to look dated and un-appealing to the next generation of structural engineers – university graduates who all grew up using modern software.

“It’s hard to compete if your software looks 20 years old,” admits SCIA’s product marketing manager, Pavel Roun.

But this is set to change. With the release of SCIA Engineer 21, the multi material structural design and analysis tool now has a completely new UI. “The key aim of the project is to simplify learning,” says Roun.

The new UI, which was three years in the making, is much more than just a cosmetic update. It takes a completely fresh look at how engineers interact with the program. “It’s about efficiency, ergonomics and customisation,” says Nele Deckers, director of product and design at SCIA. In a new move for the Belgian software

developer, SCIA hired dedicated UX and UI designers to form a new team to specialise in creating new workflows and user experience. More than 70 customers were consulted along the way, including big firms like AECOM in London.

The new UI SCIA Engineer 21 centres on a new viewport that provides a nearly 100% increase in the modelling window.

“Almost the full screen is your working space,” says Roun. “You can have really small toolbars and the rest of the screen is your working model.”

Space has been reclaimed by completely stripping back the menus, panels, toolbars and tables and making it much easier to customise.

“You can customise almost anything on the screen, and you don’t need to open the ‘customise dialogue’ and define the changes there,” says Roun. “If you want some function in the menu, you simply drag it to the toolbar.” Keyboard short-

cuts are similarly easy to define, he adds.

Once the user is happy with the configuration, the setup can be shared with the team, so it’s possible for a company to define a unified layout, or tailor the UI for specific workflows.

SCIA has also made it easier to find less frequently used functions through SCIA Spotlight, a new search bar that sits at the top of the UI. According to Deckers, research done by the firm has shown that it’s now eight times faster for an experienced user to find something, compared with the old interface.

To help get users up to speed quickly with the new version, SCIA drew inspiration from the games industry with an interactive ‘onboarding’ tutorial that launches when you open the software for the first time.

“If you install a new game, the first task that you are given is very simple, but it will show you how to, let’s say, swing your sword,” says Vladimir Príbramský, product manager at SCIA. “So we just basically

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1 By stripping back the menus, panels, toolbars and tables SCIA says the SCIA Engineer 21 modelling window has increased by nearly 100% 2 The software is primarily intended for the analysis and design of multi-storey buildings (office blocks, residential buildings and shopping malls)

took that idea, and on a very simple example, the user can get familiar with the system. It’s not a recorded video or a PDF. It’s an in-built system that allows that.”

“You can really ‘live click’ through the onboarding program and it leads you through all the menus, and it only takes you six minutes to do that,” adds Deckers. “It’s not like you have to learn the software for five hours, something that nobody will do.”

SCIA is sensitive to the needs of existing customers, many of which have used the software for years. So, for SCIA Engineer 21, users will be given the option to launch the software with the new UI or in classic mode. “They might need to finish an important project and they don’t have time to [immediately] spend on the new UI,” explains Deckers.

Workflow enhancements For SCIA Engineer 21, SCIA paid close attention to how its users worked with previous versions and how that could be improved. “We spent a lot of time with existing customers, interviewing them and watching them how they work,” says Roun.

“We did some thorough investigation of the user workflows, and then the findings were included in enhancing the workflows in the new environment,” adds Deckers.

In previous releases of SCIA Engineer, for example, the software more or less assumed a linear workflow, as Roun explains, “You created the geometrical model, you input your loads, the boundary conditions, supports and how the elements connected together. Then you ran the calculation, looked at the results and performed checks according to specific goals.

“In reality, you often must iterate between these phases. You define the geometry, start inputting supports, then www.AECmag.com

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or Allplan – and ‘automatically’ convert it into an accurate analysis model. The aim is to save engineers time as they don’t have to remodel everything from scratch.

The time savings can be huge.

According to Deckers, as much as 150 2 times faster. “People that use it can really save days, or maybe if it’s a smaller projyou realise something must be changed. ect maybe just one day,” she says.

Then you go to analysis, you see the Of course, in an industry where sharresults, something is not good, you go ing data is still not common, some cusback to the geometry, and so on. tomers find it hard to build trust in a sys“And the current software – not only tem that not only reuses third party data, ours but others’, our competitors’ – is not, but automates the process. let’s say, designed for this [type of iterative Some people are sceptical in the beginprocess]. So for example, when you per- ning, admits Deckers. “We have customform the code check you must first close ers that say, ‘this is not feasible, this is one part of the environment, swap to just a [demo] project that you made, a another one, get another menu with other perfect example.’” functions, make the action, close that part Deckers recalls a recent interaction of the UI, then open another one. with one such customer. “My colleague “With this new user interface we are Herman [Oogink] told them, ‘send me trying to overcome this problem by intro- your model, and I will transfer it, and I ducing two toolbars. And you can even will send it back to you.’ choose two parts of this process, and have “And he was waiting for that email, and both at the same time on the screen. So when it came in, within ten minutes he it’s very, very fast to had sent the project select functions on back. So it’s really these two different What is SCIA Engineer? working on general parts of the software.” projects.

SCIA Engineer is an integrated, multiTo assess how suc“It could be that material design and analysis software for cessful the new UI is someone finds an all kinds of structures, including concrete, likely to prove, SCIA edge case that steel, wood and plastic. The software is primarily intended for the analysis and has already carried out doesn’t work 100% design of multi-storey buildings (office extensive usability and you may still blocks, residential buildings and shopping testing with customers need to change one malls), but is also used for other types of during the beta testing or two things manustructures such as industrial plants, wareprogramme. ally, but also that is houses, bridges, and power plants.

“What we observe is being solved at the It features ‘CAD-like modelling’, a finite element engine, advanced calculathat a proficient user, moment,” adds tions and code-compliant multi-material also when getting Deckers. design. It supports Eurocodes, US codes, familiar with the new Brazilian codes and Swiss codes for conScaling Everest interface, can be crete and steel. approximately 15% Sharing structural faster overall,” says data is one thing, but Príbramský. “It doesn’t seem like much, bringing architectural models into SCIA but it’s still like one hour every day.”

Engineer presents a whole new set of challenges.

SCIA AutoConverter Last year Graphisoft introduced Last year, SCIA launched SCIA Integrated Design [codenamed Everest] a AutoConverter, an application that can new technology designed to make it easitake a structural model from ‘any CAD er for architects to work with engineers system’ – such as Tekla Structures, Revit by putting an integrated structural anaMay / June 2021

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Software

For future releases of the software, one of the major plans is to better harness the power of modern hardware including multicore CPUs like Threadripper Pro

lytical model directly within Archicad’s BIM model. As Nemetschek owns both Graphisoft and SCIA, this naturally led to closer integration between Archicad and SCIA Engineer.

It’s still very early days for the technology and uptake has been slow. We asked Deckers why she though this might be.

“With the Integrated Design project you need to combine the workflow of the architect with one of the engineer,” she says. “Graphisoft is very strong in countries where we are not so strong, which means that often that architect is working together with an engineer, who is not using SCIA Engineer, and the other way around. But we also see in general, the biggest part of the market is not really sharing models between architects and engineers yet.”

yet will become multi-threaded as well, and you will get a big speed gain.”

But when can customers expect to see this? “Implementing a new Solver Manager is a huge work, since this is connected with everything inside the software. We are creating proof of concepts for it in the next weeks, and afterwards we can give an estimation when it will be Harnessing compute power possible to release it,” says Deckers A new UI is only the first With modern workstastage in a broader redeveloptions typically featuring ment of SCIA Engineer. For eight or more CPU cores, future releases of the softthis should bring immediware, one of the major plans ate benefits to desktop is to better harness the power users, but SCIA is also of modern hardware includlooking to harness the ing multicore CPUs, GPUs power of the cloud. “We and the cloud. already have a prototype, so SCIA Engineer 21 is curwe have SCIA Engineer rently multi-threaded in a running in the cloud which few areas. Concrete checks, will send the results back,” for example can make use of says Príbramský. multiple cores, as SCIA is also exploring the Príbramský explains. “We potential of moving calculaIt’s about are actually utilising fully all tions to the GPU, as the power the CPU has to Príbramský explains. “Last efficiency, offer,” he says. “So if you ergonomics and year we had a prototype have 16 cores, it will utilise finite element analcustomisation running 16 cores and the engine ysis on GPU. So we see a Nele Deckers, great promise there, yet if leaves something for you to work on, on your computer we are talking about the director of while the processing of the development required for product and results takes place.” that, that’s even heavier design at SCIA because it changes the archiFor its finite element solver, SCIA Engineer relies on a tecture on a very basic level. third-party solution from “There are tasks that are FemCo, which has been rewritten to more suitable, like the processing or post make much better use of CPU resources. processing of the results, rather than the “FemCo has a newer version of the solv- finite element analysis itself. er, and that’s a completely multi-thread“Some checks or working with results, ed,” explains Deckers. “We are going to are usually very time-consuming tasks link that new solver with SCIA Engineer, for the CPU,” he adds. “I believe we can and that’s our future plan. And then a lot also create a real-life prototype within of calculations that are not multi-threaded the software in the coming years to actu-

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ally utilise the power of CUDA with the GeForce GPUs.” With dramatic increases in GPU processing power, we asked Príbramský if real time analysis could become a reality in the future, or if he just sees it as a way of getting better performance across the board and freeing up the CPU for other tasks.

“It depends, I think that the real time results are not unachievable, especially if we take into account the exponential growth of the GPU power. I can see in five years that could be the case,” he says.

“But we also have to take into account that with the exponential rise of the power of the hardware there is also an exponential rise in size and complexity of the project that the users are actually creating.”

Conclusion In a mature technology sector, SCIA is not alone in that its core application was starting to look more than a little dated.

While this probably didn’t matter too much to its faithful community of users who could probably use the application in their sleep, this is almost certainly not true of the new generation of engineers that have been brought up on modern applications.

SCIA is not only looking to innovate in UI and workflow. It’s great to see it addressing the perennial issue of interoperability with SCIA AutoConverter as well as looking to get more out of modern workstation hardware and the power of the cloud. All of this should put in it good stead as it looks to attract engineers old and new and expand the reach of the software out of its core region of Central and Western Europe, in particular Benelux, Czech and Slovak Republic, where it enjoys most success.

■ scia.net

www.AECmag.com

20/05/2021 11:48

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Getting more from on-site plant equipment By combining BIM with 4D scheduling and machine learning, Aquila is looking to improve construction site equipment utilisation in real time, as Andrew Johnson, Project Manager at BIM Academy, explains

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n 2019 BIM Academy, in collabora- the construction phase – our research The need to deliver cost savings is tion with Buildstream, Costain and has proven this is achievable. a prominent feature in the development Northumbria University, conducted In addition, with the announcement ear- of Aquila, with the desire to remove addia feasibility study – code named lier this year that the UK has brought for- tional unnecessary project costs. Which SiteView – to research how combining ward laws to end its contribution to global is why it was essential to develop a BIM and 4D scheduling could improve warming by 2050, with the new target commercially, as well as technically, viathe sequencing, timing and operational now set at achieving a 78% reduction of ble solution. management of plant equipment on site. carbon emissions by 2035 – the pressure is The results were phenomenal, and subse- on to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to Plug and play quently BIM Academy was awarded net zero as quickly as possible.

Aquila utilises simple, yet smart, plug Innovate UK funding in 2020 and the This means good practice of energy and play mobile technologies, rather than making of “Aquila” began. management on site, in addition to budget intrusive Internet of Things (IoT) instalTo find the solution, first we needed to savings, is needed now more than ever. lation to sense equipment operation. address the problem. And the problem IoT refers to a system of interrelated, was poor utilisation of plant equipment Plant optimisation internet-connected objects that can colmeant unnecessary spending (it is esti- Aquila has been developed to optimise lect and transfer data over a wireless netmated poor utilisation of plant equip- plant equipment operations using real- work without human intervention. IoT ment is wasting up to £100bn globally time data. It will eliminate earthwork hardware is typically expensive and per year) and perhaps installation is disruptive more importantly, this on operational plant machinery spits out Aquila will eliminate earthwork estimations and activity. exceptionally high levels automatically determine the plant and Real time feedback of emissions, having a negative impact on the equipment’s productivity output through machine Most 4D tools currently environment (the conavailable aim to be planlearning algorithms in the platform struction sector is responning simulation tools, sible for around a fifth of competing with more all global emissions). Improved and estimations and automatically determine established Gannt tool/chart derived syssmarter analysis of plant equipment will the plant and equipment’s productivity tems which provide a visual view of tasks produce efficiency savings in both of output through machine learning algo- displayed against time. these areas, and more. rithms in the platform. This means no However, Aquila provides a real-time, Plant equipment, particularly heavy more performance predictions, we can decision-enhancing platform where projearthmoving equipment such as excava- accurately set project schedules for plant ect teams can review what is happening tors, bulldozers and dump trucks repre- equipment, monitor and measure in-use, on site through a 4D model, predicting sent a major cost element in construction down-time and emissions output. Plus and controlling the impact of future projects ranging from 10% in a commer- take lessons learned from one project to schedules and generating new benchcial project, and up to 50% in major the next to maximise these efficiencies. mark datasets for future projects. infrastructure projects such as highways, The consequences of equipment downA 4D model allows designers and projrailways and energy projects. time can be severe, ranging from delays in ect teams to visualise the project The feasibility study investigated the a project caused by an unexpected break- sequencing, identify errors in the plan opportunity of improving productivity down to the inconvenience of idle equip- and optimise the best path of construcon site by 15% or more, by increasing ment taking up valuable space — all con- tion. It is also a better way of communiplant equipment utilisation throughout tributing to an overspend in project budget. cating the plan to the entire team.

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20/05/2021 11:30

Technology

Aquila’s further advancement in technology allows for each piece of equipment to be directly linked to the model, mapping its location. Data extracted from a vehicle tracker is then visualised within the model viewer, bringing all important information in one place.

Each vehicle will have a personalised Aquila tracker device that is given a unique reference. This will capture location, speed, idling time, harsh acceleration or braking, fuel consumption, vehicle faults, emissions output and more.

Aquila can also link to third party telematic data.

At its core, this comprehensive telematic system will include a vehicle tracking device installed in each vehicle that allows the sending, receiving and storing of vehicle data. It connects via a mobile device installed in the vehicle, enabling communication through a wireless network.

The Aquila device collects GPS data as well as an array of other vehicle-specific data and transmits it via a satellite communication system to a centralised server in the Aquila platform. Aquila interprets the data and enables it to be displayed for project teams – all of which can be viewed on smartphones and tablets onsite. www.AECmag.com

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Data insight When analysed, the mobile and third party telematics data can provide in-depth insights across an entire project fleet. This has resulted in the development of an intelligent, reactive web-based programme.

Using Vue.Js alongside the Autodesk Forge viewer, has given us the ability to have a reactive environment where a change on one part of the application shares its information with all other parts of the application, in real time.

If new data comes in via the trackers, the Aquila application can update itself, and re-process anything that needs to be changed visually as soon as that information is available.

One of the key aspects of any construction project is the programme of works, which decides where a given resource should be at any time and how long a task should take. Something that hasn’t been done before is linking a resource to a task and providing live and accurate data, which can be compared against the expected metrics of the programme of works.

The programme may expect that an excavator, for example, is working in a specific zone for, say five days, but the ultimate goal with Aquila is that you can see if

that excavator is actually in that zone, for how long and is it doing the correct task.

We very quickly realised that the data requirements for the project were going to be highly complicated to manage, the potential for the amount of data to track and store could be huge. Therefore we needed to create a sophisticated, powerful backend system, to deal with all project data needs.

It was important for us to use mature standards for maximum reusability and flexibility. We use OpenAPI for our data endpoints, and GeoJSON and PostGIS for storing and managing locational data.

These standards take real locations and tie the information to the project model, giving us the ability to accurately place the vehicle into the model.

It is clear Aquila is revolutionising the way we not only view, track and monitor plant equipment, but it offers a new digital process for saving time and cost on a project as well as contributing to sustainability goals.

Plant equipment is an essential part in any infrastructure or construction project and this new platform will change how we use these vehicles, optimising their performance for a smarter, greener future.

■ bimacademy.global

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24/03/2021 09:50

Case study

Station to station

delivering the Luton DART How structural BIM software helped streamline the modelling of the permanent and temporary works for the new stations for Luton Airport’s fully-automated light rail link

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esigned to provide travellers with a speedier, greener and more efficient journey to the UK’s fifth busiest airport, the Luton DART marks a significant investment in the town’s civil infrastructure by Luton Council’s airport company London Luton Airport Ltd (LLAL).

The £243 million Luton DART is a new fully-automated light rail link, designed to transport travellers from the Luton Airport Parkway railway station to the terminal of London Luton Airport in well under four minutes. Currently, passengers making the journey use a shuttle bus service, which can be unreliable, especially in heavy traffic.

This project, being constructed by main contractors VolkerFitzpatrick-Kier joint venture and Doppelmayr, will solve that problem. The DART supports sustainable growth of the airport and employs an energy-efficient cable-pulled system.

As part of the project, two new stations are being constructed. Parkway Station – designed to provide connectivity between www.AECmag.com

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the DART and mainline rail services, including a direct link to the existing railway station at high level – and the Central Terminal Station, located underground within the airport terminal.

Hewson Consulting Engineers was appointed as structural designers for the two new stations, tasked with modelling both permanent structures, including all concrete, reinforcement and steelwork, and some temporary works elements.

Hewson worked closely with RPS, who were architects for both stations, and with Tony Gee and Partners who were the overarching scheme-wide design lead. Prior to the detailed design phase, concept designs were developed for the client by Arup and Knight Architects.

Richard Scantlebury, director of major projects at Hewson Consulting Engineers, said, “As specialists in civil, structural and geotechnical, we’re perhaps best known in the industry for our bridge work, which, in turn, has recently translated into largescale metro and station projects, such as Luton DART. We’re a technologically

advanced company, enabling us to offer extra services to our contractor customers and deliver added value.

“Initially, we had searched for a long time to find the right BIM tools for the business, looking for a software that would bring value, as opposed to just ticking a ‘BIM box’. When we discovered Tekla Structures, it was just what we needed. The majority of our workload is design and build projects for contractors and Tekla Structures is ideal for this, able to be used for both permanent and temporary works. Luton DART is definitely one of the biggest projects we’ve worked on with BIM, with approximately 42,000 tonnes of structural concrete, 1,660 tonnes of structural steel and 2,400 tonnes of reinforcement to be modelled.”

Overcoming site constraints Unsurprisingly, a construction project of this size was not without its challenges, with Hewson Consulting Engineers presented with numerous site and space restrictions. Perhaps the biggest challenge May / June 2021

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Case study

in terms of corresponding the new with the existing was at the new Central Terminal Station. Directly above the footprint of the new station was an existing airport footbridge, connecting the terminal building to a multi-storey car park.

With the bridge’s piled foundations passing through the proposed new rail tunnels, a complex series of temporary and permanent works were required. The bridge’s intermediate piers were to be underpinned, piled foundations removed and a new load path constructed, before excavating the tunnel underneath.

Scantlebury explained: “Through the use of Tekla Structures and BIM, we were able to incorporate the existing footbridge structure within our 3D model.

This meant that we were able to then better visualise both the temporary and the permanent works in the context of the existing footbridge and its foundations, understanding how it would all work and interact together. When each element is so intertwined and dependent on the other, as was the case here, being able to detail and view it all within one single model was a huge help, aiding effective coordination and minimising the likelihood of clashes.

“Not only that but we were also able to use the 3D model to better plan and communicate the construction sequence, providing an assurance of design. This is one of the areas where BIM really stands to benefit complex projects such as this, providing us with a digital rehearsal and enabling us to plan out the works in a digital environment, before getting to site.”

Easing congestion Another challenge that faced Hewson, again as a result of the size and complexity of the project, related to the complex concrete reinforcement required at the Central Terminal Station site.

Scantlebury explained: “Congested areas of reinforcement can be a common problem, especially on large underground structures due to the increased loads and forces at work. Fortunately, through the use of BIM and reinforcement detailing within the Tekla model, 48

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Hewson on the Luton DART project.

“The use of both Tekla Model Sharing we were able to and Tekla BIMsight on this project was a easily and swiftly spot real game changer for us,” said potentially congested areas of rein- Scantlebury. “Through the 3D viewer, we forcement early on in the project, as well were able to pull in all of the different as look at alternative design solutions models in the various formats and have it where needed. If congested areas of rebar all available in one place, opening up are not detected at the design office, the communication between the different next time you would notice it or have the teams. By the end of the project, we had opportunity to rectify it would be on site, lots of people using the open collaborawhere, not only are you more limited in tion tool on site, proving especially useterms of alternative options, but costs ful with regards rebar placement. can also rise exponentially.

“However, it was perhaps Tekla Model “The use of BIM enables you to assess Sharing that truly transformed the modconcrete reinforcement in a more visual elling process for us. At the start of the way – can this be built? Is that rebar Luton DART project, we relied on dropplacement possible? Is it constructible? box to transfer and share zipped model In many ways, it forces you to confront files. However, not only was this an potential design issues head on, as you unnecessarily long process, it was also can physically see the structure in front limiting in terms of who could work on of you in 3D. the model. In effect, it ham“Interestingly, the contracpered us – one person tors also noted that not a sincouldn’t go on and edit a The use of gle bar bending schedule drawing if, for example BIM enables someone else was already error occurred on the project – a direct result of the autoyou to assess working on the model. That’s mation within BIM and servwhy, a few months in to the concrete ing to showcase the benefits project, we chose to introduce of modelling rebar in a 3D reinforcement Tekla Model Sharing. in a more digital environment. All “We found it a really powerdimensions are automaticalvisual way – ful addition, helping to facilily generated from the Tekla tate a more collaborative and can this be model, as opposed to being coordinated way of working – built? Is that not only within our own team manually calculated and listrebar ed, meaning less likelihood of engineers but also the of human error.” wider project. At one point, placement On UK projects using BIM, had six people working on possible? Is it we 3D reinforcement detailing is the same model from three usually not a client require- constructible? different companies, all seamment. However, given this lessly. Since introducing consistent feedback across Tekla Model Sharing to the multiple successful projects, Hewson now business, we’ve used it on a lot of other propose it as standard since the benefits projects, all to the same degree of success. on site are so clear.

More recently, it’s also been a big help with remote working, offering us a far Clear communication faster and efficient way of working, comIn addition to the high levels of detail, pared to accessing a model file via our enhanced visibility and automation remote servers. within Tekla Structures, another signifi“In terms of the Luton DART stations, cant benefit of BIM is better communica- it’s safe to say that the project would been tion. Especially beneficial on large con- far more challenging to deliver without struction projects, where there can be Tekla Model Sharing, with the collaboraany number of contractors and sub-con- tion tool proving extremely helpful in tractors employed, effective communica- our meeting the design deadlines.” tion and collaboration are key to a successful project delivery.

The Luton DART is scheduled to open to As well as Tekla Structures, Tekla passengers in 2022.

BIMsight (now Trimble Connect) and Tekla Model Sharing were also used by ■ tekla.com/uk ■ hewson-consulting.com

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25/05/2021 15:53

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12.03.21 14:58

Opinion

Is the office obsolete for the AEC community?

Inevitech’s Mark Adams explores the new and evolving relationship between home and office working

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or so many of us that are usually office-based, the last year of our lives has been spent using our homes as our places of work.

Whether you’ve set up shop in a spare room, kitchen counter or living room, your working environment is likely very different to the one you were previously used to – in the office or at a client’s site etc. And perhaps to the surprise of directors, businesses haven’t suffered too badly considering the circumstances (a pandemic, a recession and Brexit!) – more than half of workers have reported that they’ve been more productive while working from home. So, it begs the question – is the office obsolete?

Technology may make you think so Answering the question has become quite difficult; not only because we’ve proven able to work away from the office full-time – something the majority of those in the architecture, engineering and construction sectors I’ve spoken to would have never previously considered. But, also because the number of technologies that enable remote working have increased, or at least become more visible.

There are many high-end technologies that enabled the industry to navigate the hurdles remote working has posed to the performance of both CAD and BIM tools.

Let’s take the example of supporting the sharing of large data files between the office and home, all the while ensuring security across a cloud framework.

Practices had two basic options: (1) sync design files to local devices using services like BIM 360 or Projectwise (which required powerful workstations at their home location), or (2) remotely access a workstation on the same local network as the fileserver – the latter being mode widely used as it enabled most companies to carry on using existing hardware at little additional cost.

A third way would be use of virtual desktop infrastructure; not too many companies have adopted this technology as yet, though that is likely to change in the near future as post-pandemic strategies are implemented with lessons 50

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learned from the past year and more innovative solutions are sought.

With the right tools and strategy, remote working can be both productive and generate significant cost savings from downsizing the office and saving on energy bills, for example, alongside offering benefits for staff welfare and the environment.

Take Flanagan Lawrence Architects, for example. The company integrated virtual desktops into its infrastructure during the pandemic and now the practice is planning to migrate its entire infrastructure to the cloud through the introduction of more virtual desks.

Whilst it had been considering this move for some time – even before the pandemic – the past 12 months proved to be a catalyst for change. But this evolution is not intended to replace the office, rather it’s to enhance it: generating new flexibility around the concept of office space and its usage and creating much greater business efficiencies.

But it’s not the answer to everything It’s important to note that getting rid of the office is not the answer for the majority of firms. The AEC industry is collaborative and creative by nature, and there are unarguable benefits of face-to-face interaction that simply can’t be replicated virtually. We’re all capable of working productively at home, but there are certainly points in the design process – particularly the early conceptual stages – where architects will want to bounce ideas off the person they’re physically near to – which we currently find ourselves doing via the likes of Microsoft Teams. Whilst useful, technology is yet to offer an alternative to unplanned interactions that spark an idea, or the simplicity of congregating in breakout areas to ideate together. Office spaces are still very necessary, but how they are used may change quite significantly.

Taking on a hybrid approach The strongest likelihood for many AEC working practices following the pandemic is a blended approach – incorporating the benefits workers have enjoyed from work-

ing remotely, and marrying them with the need to be within the four walls of an office to spark further collaboration and creativity. It would be an error to think that action can’t be taken now to prepare.

Directors and executives should begin considering and implementing appropriate solutions to help support a hybrid approach in the future, if they haven’t started already (and most I speak with are some way along with this process already).

How those solutions take form will vary depending on specific business needs, but creating a strategic plan should be high on the agenda. Whilst balancing the immediate, tactical management of the months ahead as we exit lockdown, directors should begin implementing a strategic evolution that can be reviewed and refined in line with constantly changing macro factors. The critical element underlying any strategic move needs to be agility. There is no need to commit to a particular way of working, only a need to open up possibilities and the ability to adjust and react in good time.

Final thoughts We’ll soon be able to say, hopefully, goodbye to the majority of the restrictions of the pandemic. However, the impact of Covid19 will be felt long into the future for AEC organisations. Both employees and employers are now clear on how they can continue to perform away from a centralised office – but this hasn’t rendered offices obsolete; on the contrary it has demonstrated just where the value lies in having a physical collaborative environment.

The key now is to develop an infrastructure that can deliver the flexibility to find a new and evolving relationship between home and office working, as well as navigate more readily any unexpected challenges ahead. So the office, I think, will remain, but changed – more effective, more pleasurable hopefully – and in tandem with an increase in home working and satellite offices. We can look forward to a better balance, supported by progressive tech, informed by our needs and experience.

■ inevidesk.uk

www.AECmag.com

25/05/2021 15:59

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