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Building Information Modelling (BIM) for Architecture, Engineering and Construction
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Bentley CONNECT The rise of BIM libraries Teradici: remote workstations November / December 2014 >> Vol.75 p01_AEC_NOVDEC14_Cover.indd 1
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February 25th & 26th 2015 Fort Mason, San Francisco www.real2015.com First Reality Computing Conference
Building Information Modelling (BIM) for Architecture, Engineering and Construction
editorial
Managing Editor Greg Corke greg@x3dmedia.com
Consulting Editor Martyn Day martyn@x3dmedia.com
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Nemetschek evolution 11 Nemetschek has signalled a renewed interest in growth and leveraging its significant assets.
Augmented and virtual reality 12
BIM and the long-term impact on sustainability in building design
Managing informaton 38 BIM has improved information sharing on constuction projects, but there are still many areas where information fails to flow at all, says Newforma
Augmented and Virtual Reality have enthralled future-gazers but are rarely deployed in the design market. There is scope for change
The black art of laser scanning 40
Bentley technology update 18
Building BIM-ready models from point clouds requires considerable manual construction, a skill level developed by working with and understanding the nature of the data, says Ploughman Craven
Bentley Systems’ new CONNECT technology is laying the ground for engineering data and apps to be more dynamic and pervasive
BIMobject LIVe 26 At BIMobject’s annual customer event there was little doubt of the momentum behind downloadable BIM content
NBS standard 30 Will NBS’ newly-launched BIM Object Standard document help provide the confidence in downloadable content the AEC industry so desperately needs?
Green HVAC 32 Jaga Heating Products on the benefits of product manufacturers embracing
Remote workstations 46 Do you use a desktop workstation but sometimes need to access it from the meeting room, site or home? Teradici might have something for you
Timing is everything 49 With new CPUs and GPUs and faster storage it is the perfect time to buy a workstation, writes Greg Corke. Also this month: 4, 6 and 9 News; 34 BIM training; 42 Autodesk Gallery; 44 Design Viz: Elephant Park, Citiscape Digital; 50 Structural design projects November / December 2014
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News analysis
Trimble enters new Dimension With a burgeoning suite of BIM brands for the construction and design space, Trimble is now a major force in the AEC market. At its recent user event in Las Vegas the company unveiled new technology, more acquisitions & partnerships by Martyn Day Trimble Connect, built on the GTeam platform, supports cloud-based collaboration
rimble’s management heritage and recent acquisitions demonstrate that it has a laserfocused plan to improve construction delivery times, costs and enhance collaborative workflows. Trimble is a field-centric firm, with deep roots in hard-hat engineering in design and construction industries with both hardware and software support for field professionals. Bryn Fosburgh, sector vicepresident for Trimble’s Construction Technology Divisions described the company as having “dirt on our boots”.
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Collaboration The over arching theme of Dimensions this year was collaboration. Mr Fosburgh went so far as to say, “Collaboration is our core tenet and key to success.” Dennis Shelden, co-founder of Trimble’s very recently acquired Gehry Technologies and GTeam, added, “Everything that breaks, fails at the connection. Structures fail not at the beam, but at the connection between the beam and the column… or between the architect and the engineer. That’s really what the promise of collaboration, communication and co-ordination are intended to fix by making data not just move from location to location, but from domain to domain in a much more fluid way.” The company recently launched Trimble Connect (connect.trimble.com), built on the GTeam platform, which it claims holds the potential to transform the construction industry and the way we think about BIM. The software supports the Constructible Model, BIM for the Design/Build/Operate Lifecycle, shared in an open and collaborative environment via the cloud. Trimble claims the service makes collaboration more democratic and allows teams to share project data from anywhere at any time. Mr Fosburgh said that interoperability should not be a competitive advantage and customers deserve better than that, which is a fundamental problem that the industry faces with so many proprietary formats. 4
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The company sees Trimble Connect as a way to break down these barriers and provide a holistic environment for design data. There are dozens of applications that are currently running through Connect and more are on the way.
Partnership Trimble and Bentley have a history of working together, driving collaboration through i-models, and this year the two companies have gone even further to ensure that architects’ and engineers’ construction modelling work is preserved and referenced for use throughout the building lifecycle. All too often the original design BIM model is thrown away for the creation of a construction BIM model. By developing a joint construction schema/ definition, the two firms can build in and maintain the fidelity of construction data within BIM models. Bentley has built-in direct platform support for Trimble’s Total Stations for surveying and site layout. This level of collaboration between companies in competition is truly ground breaking.
SketchUp and MEP Designer SketchUp 2015 is 64-bit, has faster modelling, explode and intersections with
a slicker interface. It works on Mac and Windows and has new support for IFCs. Trimble now offers cross-platform licensing along with cloud-based management. Perhaps the most exciting addition announced was MEPdesigner for SketchUp (tinyurl.com/sketchMEP). This 3D application will be hugely beneficial for electrical engineers and contractors for the design of routed systems, producing takeoffs and estimates as well as visualising the design. It is perhaps the first sign as to what Trimble has in store for SketchUp as it develops towards a fully featured BIM design tool.
Futures Trimble demonstrated drones designed in SketchUp, along with field solutions it is working on for Google Glass and Project Tango. The latter is a tablet-based solution from Google, which can capture 3D data in real time and could be used by an architect to capture an interior model for use in a BIM model. Neither application has been released yet but it seems Trimble is currently working with customers on refining these technologies. ■
buildings.trimble.com
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News
ROUND UP Energy simulation Project EnergyPlus Cloud is a free technology preview from Autodesk for running EnergyPlus simulations in the cloud. The software, which is said to run faster than on an average desktop computer, focuses on whole building energy simulation to model energy and water use in buildings ■ The full story @ tinyurl.com/auto-labs
Thermal simulation Graitec has acquired HPC-SA’s (High Performance Computing – Simulation Acceleration) thermal simulation software ArchiWIZARD, an energy simulation tool that uses RayBooster raytracing technology for solar gain (radiative intake, solar panels) and lighting calculations ■ Full story @ tinyurl.com/graitec-hpc-sa
ArchiCAD models ModelPort is a new plug in for ArchiCAD, which can translate 3D model formats such as Alias Wavefront OBJ and Autodesk FBX into ArchiCAD Library parts, and translate a detailed 2D symbol as well. There are three versions: ModelPort OBJ, ModelPort FBX, and a bundled version ■ The full story @ tinyurl.com/modelport
Rugged tablet Mobexx has launched a rugged slimline 10-inch MIL-STD-810G, IP-65 tested Windows 8.1 Professional tablet PC. The Xplore Bobcat has front and back facing cameras, an energy efficient 1.9 GHz quadcore processor (Intel Bay Trail E3845), backlit IPS LCD screens and a range of connectivity and data capture options ■ Full story @ tinyurl.com/mobexxbobcat
Concerto CDE The Concerto CDE (Common Data Environment) BIM tool allows users to validate, share and collaborate BIM documentation and 3D models in a browser with no need for a plug-in. It has centralised costing and performance information drawn from validated data ■ The full story @ tinyurl.com/concertocde
McLaren Fusion Live The Colas Group has selected McLaren’s FusionLive Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) for global engineering collaboration. It brings together document management from the BuildOnline solution with business processes of Citadon Collaboration Workspace ■ The full story @ tinyurl.com/colasgroup
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The new look Bentley Navigator Connect
Bentley gets connected with next gen entley Connect, the successor to Bentley’s V8i software generation, will feature a common project environment and offer cloud-based capabilities to deliver a new ‘connected user experience’. The new generation software, announced at the recent Year in Infrastructure event in London, will include MicroStation Connect and ProjectWise Connect with other Connect editions to follow. MicroStation Connect features a brand new user interface, a project-centric workflow, 64-bit support for larger models, plus a range of constraint tools for creating functional components. Other notable announcements at the event include a closer collaboration between Bentley and Trimble, whereby the
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two firms will work even closer together to extend the benefits of the BIM model from design into construction ProjectWise Essentials is a new cloudbased, industrial-strength collaboration application for smaller firms (up to 40 seats) that is leased by the quarter. Under the radar was Bentley ‘Graphite’ the codename for a brand new platform technology, which Bentley Systems is using to create new products for multiple operating systems. See page 18 for our full in-depth report on the new technologies.
Mobile devices linked to BIMcloud IMcloud, Graphisoft’s modelbased BIM collaboration environment, now features integrated team messaging for mobile devices including the iPhone/iPad. With this latest update external team members can become directly involved in the BIM workflow through the integrated
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Team Messaging that is now enabled for mobile devices as well. Graphisoft’s BIMx Docs app allows team members to send and receive instant messages with annotated model views. BIMcloud mobile integration for Android OS users will be available at a later date. ■
Read the full story @ tinyurl.com/bimcloud-ipad
Aconex focuses on BIM collaboration conex Connected BIM is a new extension of the Aconex cloud collaboration platform for managing BIM data and processes. It supports collaboration between design and construction teams and handover to the owner. Designers for specific disciplines can create and modify models in their native authoring tools and use software plug-ins to publish them in the Aconex BIM Cloud. All members of the project team —
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designers, engineers, consultants, contractors, subcontractors, and owners — can view, distribute, mark up, and contribute to model data at the object level. This co-ordinated process is said to support timely detection of clashes with a view to optimising constructability. As the project moves through design and into construction, team members can link objects with relevant project documents, communications and workflows. For example, a mechanical subcontractor
can tag a pump with an operating manual or a commissioning sheet. Project team members can issue an RFI or a design query regarding that pump for timely resolution with a complete audit trail. At completion, a comprehensive set of project information — including the model, all of the documentation associated with each of its objects, and an audit trail — can be handed over to the owner for operation. ■
Full story @ tinyurl.com/aconex
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14/11/14 08:12:50
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Our world looks a little different, but our focus is still on creating innovative software. CSC has always been about pioneering software and responding to the real world challenges of structural engineers. Joining forces with like minded people, like Tekla, is the next step in our evolution. Find out how we’ve evolved at www.tekla.com
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News Lumion 5’s new Mass Placement feature is designed to make it easy to put traffic on a road, create a forest, or place a crowd of people
ROUND UP Energy analysis A new plug-in from Sefaira allows architects to assess tradeoffs between energy and daylighting performance and make performance-based design decisions directly inside the Autodesk Revit design environment ■ sefaira.com
Mobile collaboration
Lumion 5.0 design viz tool gets performance boost umion 5 is the latest release of the architectural visualisation tool that, according to its developer, is used by 37 of the World’s Top 100 architect firms. Users can import models from a wide range of CAD / BIM tools, add materials, furniture, lighting, plants, trees, grass, water, sky, water, animals, people and vehicles, then structure the landscape, set the time of day and produce photorealistic renders and animations. Headline features of the new release include a faster rendering engine, which is
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said to be twice as fast as Lumion 4 for the same quality output, a new materials interface, which uses ‘PureGlass technology to simplify and streamline the process of selecting and optimising materials, and better lighting thanks to a new in-house developed technology called Hyperlight which incorporates the indirect effects of reflected light. There are also new tools to make it easier for users to place and animate multiple objects plus more content including trees, plants, flowers and animated characters. ■
Read the full story @ tinyurl.com/Lumion5
iOS app links BIM model to real world ontractors are being targeted with a new iOS app that connects BIM models to the construction layout process. The Autodesk BIM 360 Layout app uses the BIM 360 cloud service to connect digital designs with the
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physical world by controlling a robotic instrument from Topcon via WiFi and guiding users to physical locations on the site — based on points created in the 3D model that are represented in the BIM 360 Layout app. ■
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Sewer management InfoWorks ICM SE (Sewer Edition) v5.5, features all the analysis features and capabilities of InfoWorks ICM (Integrated Catchment Modelling) for sewer collection systems modelling, but without 2D simulation of surface flooding ■ innovyze.com
3D printing warchest Autodesk has announced that it intends to invest up to $100 million in 3D printing companies over the next few years, including entrepreneurs, startups and researchers who push the boundaries of 3D printing technology ■ spark.autodesk.com/fund
HP has finally unveiled Multi-Jet Fusion, a new 3D printing technology, which it claims to be ‘ten times faster than technology that’s already out there’, partly thanks to a giant, singlepass, ‘pagewide’ printhead technology ■ hp.com
Full story @ tinyurl.com/BIMcon
year, will now operate under the Tekla brand. Tekla’s structural engineering software now includes Tekla Structures for BIM, Fastrak and Orion
New Civil 3D tools CGS Civil 3D Tools 2015 is the latest release of the software designed to improve the functionality of AutoCAD Civil 3D. New features are designed to enhance the way the software deals with pipe depths and grading ■ 3dasystems.com
HP on 3D printing
CSC is now operating as Tekla ekla and CSC, both Trimble companies, have combined their operations. UK-based CSC, which was acquired by Trimble last
Newforma, the project information management (PIM) software specialist, has acquired SmartUse, a developer of the touch friendly mobile platform for viewing, marking up, auto-linking and sharing project plans ■ newforma.com ■ smartuse.com
for steel and concrete building design, Solve for finite element analysis and Tedds for structural calculations. ■
tekla.com
Reality capture Version 1.4 of Autodesk ReCap Pro, for integrating reality data directly into the design process, is said to make it much easier to check the quality of laser scans being fed into the ReCap engine when turning the scans into 3D data models ■ recap.autodesk.com
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News
Nemetschek strategic evolution erman software company Nemetschek has signalled a renewed interest in growth and leveraging its significant assets with the recent acquisition of US-based Bluebeam, developer of PDF-based collaboration solutions for the AEC industry. After a very long period of focusing on its internal brands and actively developing its overarching Nemetschek strategy, there is a renewed cohesive vision within the firm. Headquartered in Munich, Nemetschek has been strategically realigned as a holding company for its portfolio of eleven brands, including Allplan, Vectorworks and Graphisoft. The leaders of the most significant brands have been given oversight of the holding company, in order leverage the technology and broad skill sets that are within the firm. Chief financial and operations officer Patrik Heider is now responsible for the strategic holding and the overall brand strategy of the Nemetschek Group. He previously worked for PwC Consulting and IBM Global Services and also brings experience from the automotive industry to Nemetschek. Together with Viktor Várkonyi, CEO of Graphisoft, and Sean Flaherty, CEO of Vectorworks, the three now have direct input into the direction of the company. Their first move was seen in the last release of ArchiCAD, where Maxon technology finally found its way into a Graphisoft product, featuring a customised and powerful rendering engine. Collaboration in the construction market was identified by Mr Heider and his team as being a key growth area for Nemetschek, and one in which the company was lacking broad solutions.
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The Bluebeam acquisition is significant therefore, not just in the $100m price tag and size of the deal, but the intention it shows for Nemetschek to start plugging the gaps in its AEC offering and step into construction management and collaboration.
Top: Chief financial and operations officer Patrik Heider is now responsible for the strategic holding and the overall brand strategy of the Nemetschek Group Below: The Bluebeam acquisition shows Nemetschek’s intention to start plugging the gaps in its AEC offering
Bluebeam is a popular player in the US and is used by 74% of top US contractors and 64% of top US design firms, according to Engineering News-Record’s Top 50 firm rankings. Based on PDF technology, Bluebeam’s software would fit into most global markets, as Adobe’s 2D/3D format is the de facto standard pretty much everywhere. Bluebeam will continue operating with its current management team and as an independent brand company. In the past Nemetschek may have been content to buy up the competition to achieve growth. Nonetheless the products persisted and grew. And yet, in the eight or more years of owning Graphisoft and fourteen years of owning Vectorworks there was little technology crossover forged between acquisitions, with each brand being kept in isolation. Nemetschek did not offer any bundle offerings or suites, unlike industry behemoth Autodesk. This could now change. With currently 1.2 million users in 142 countries, according to company documents, Nemetschek has a broad base with which to grow a more integrated product portfolio. The company’s financials are already looking solid. It achieved revenues of €185.9 million in the full year 2013. For the first nine months of 2014 revenue rose 14.3 percent to €153.5 million, compared with the previous year, according to Reuters. Relying on brands and remaining in silos can become significant resource problems for software firms like Nemetschek that grow through acquisition. Perhaps this is something that the other veracious BIM provider, Trimble, should be concerned about. ■ nemetschek.com
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Feature
Reality extensions in AEC Many innovations start out labelled as gimmicks, only to wait for other technologies and culture to catch up with them. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have enthralled future-gazers but they are still rarely deployed in the design market. There is scope for change. by Martyn Day
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e are only just starting to realise the possibilities of what can be done with the designs that we create in 3D by moving to 3D workflows. Investing time in using Building Information Modelling (BIM) on a project is not just about being able to produce faster 2D drawings, or purely about better co-ordination, BIM models are an asset for all phases of building design and that includes collaboration, simulation, analysis, 3D printing, animation and revolutionary applications like Virtual Reality (VR) and live interaction with Augmented Reality (AR). Unlike classic VR, AR takes its main source imagery from the real world, i.e. what is displayed by a smartphone or tablet camera, and adds graphical and audio layers on top. Up to now the primary and most successful use for AR has been to deliver tourist information overlaid on histori-cal sights, or locations of nearby restau restau-rants. Some large brands have also adopted the technology for advertising and adding to the so-called ‘customer experience’.
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Swedish homeware retailer Ikea models all of its furniture products in 3D CAD, and has recently introduced AR applications, which enable customers to see catalogue items projected into their homes. There are many examples in different market segments where AR is seen to have a future role. In medical, for instance, a surgeon could get MRI or ultrasound 3D data displayed through glasses as they operate. Battlefield technology has also been driving AR development as well as hardware, with
Google Cardboard is a self-build cardboard headset that can mount an Android Phone in front of your eyes for a low cost VR experience
advanced Heads-Up Displays (HUD), technology which is now appearing in cars such as BMW, Mercedes and Audi. According to Tomi Ahonen in a recent TEDx presentation, current adoption of AR is estimated at around 60 million people using apps and features on a regular basis. By 2018, this is expected to grow to 200 million and there are estimates that this will exceed one billion users by 2020. While many of these will be gaming and lifestyle professional applications, AEC apps are starting to emerge out of the R&D labs of major players and start-ups. In the manufacturing space, companies such as Boeing, BMW, and Volkswagen already use AR on their assembly lines. Volkswagen has what it calls MARTA (Mobile Augmented Reality Technical Assistance) for servicing, which shows engineers how to perform the tasks of the spe specific job, step by step, with relevant supplemental information such as the tools to be used, assembly configu configurations and test specifications. Quality control and laser scanning firm Faro has enabled its engineer inspection www.AECmag.com
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A next generation residential building that will be built in Shanghai. Using a tag on a desk, users can walk around and see the 3D building model on a tablet
tools to support AR displays, projecting the CAD model to the engineer’s view, to test planned versus actual measurements.
AR in AEC The applications of AR appear to be very broad, from on-site display of buildings and pipework, to bringing models to life with 360 degree views at a scale which works on a tabletop from a patterned flat marker. By adopting and working in 3D, all this content is useful data downstream to AR and VR applications. If the time is taken at the start of a BIM project to ensure that it is both accurately modelled and appropriately geo-located, using distributed cloud infrastructure, and delivered to smart mobile devices that feature GPS and accelerometers (a device that measures proper acceleration or ‘g-force’), models can be viewed anywhere, or overlaid in real-time reflecting the viewer’s position. This could be a proposed building in-situ, an overlay of pipework in the ground, or an x-ray view through a facility wall displaying cabling and ductwork. It is one thing to be able to deliver up-todate 2D drawings on site but imagine if www.AECmag.com
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every construction worker had access to the model through all phases of the build, projected in the correct 3D space, in real time, through the camera of a smart phone or tablet. We have now reached a time when this technology is looking much more viable. Architects are starting to model in 3D, cloud management means data can be distributed anywhere, 4G data rates enable useable data streaming and smart phones have GPS, accelerometers and plenty of memory and computer power for AR applications.
AR issues The current limitations start with the quality of the applications that glue this together as a solution. They often require data to be translated into another format, exported to another application, or to be ‘thinned’ out. One of the key technical problems with AR is tracking. Ensuring that the viewpoint of the viewing device is accurate and the display of the projected model is smooth, is still very much a work in progress. With revisions to smart phones adding increasingly sensitive accelerometers and faster processors, this is improving
year on year. Onvsite, however, when GPS is the main source of positioning the user’s viewpoint, the accuracy of display can drop to within metres leading to mismatches in overlaying the digital model in reality. When inside a building GPS is less reliable and can be blocked. Here it is possible to improve accuracy through the use of markers. Hybrid tracking systems are in development to improve onsite registration. Bentley Systems’, for example, says AR accuracy has been addressed by its latest R&D projects.
Virtually real Following years of what has been frankly ridiculous hype, Virtual Reality has gone from being a sci-fi replacement for life itself, to be regularly used in a desktop form by engineers and architects. Graphisoft’s BIMx technology for instance, allows models and environments to be wrapped up and sent to collaborators and clients, where they can get a desktop virtual experience of the design. BIMx supports Zeiss Cinemizer Glasses, so it is also possible to run an immersive VR session on an ArchiCAD model. November / December 2014
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With Oculus Rift and other headsets on the way for gamers, and with huge demand and competition driving costs down, we believe VR is going to be rapidly adopted by design teams. Attendees at this year’s DEVELOP3D Live (develop3dlive.com) conference and exhibition had the chance to see Virtalis demonstrate the latest in collaborative stereoscopic 3D display systems and head tracking systems. Virtalis customers include Fluor Daniel, Taylor Woodrow, Mott MacDonald, Amersham and Balfour Beatty. Many automotive firms also use these massive projected 3D displays to immerse their engineers during design meetings, displaying cars as 1:1 or higher ratios. Process Plant firms reduce downtime by using use VR to rehearse retrofit and refurbishment processes with engineering teams. There is also a movement within design computing to capture the real world and bring that into VR within computers. This is the complete opposite mentality of AR. Using laser scanners, photographs, photogrammetry with lots of memory and processing, it is becoming easier to grab the real world in geometric form and model ‘in context’. In some respects this would negate the need for traditional Augmented Reality as the model’s context has been captured and displayed. However, this is a snapshot of the site and changes over time. The technologies do not really compete, as the edges of VR and AR are blurring and are complimentary display/interaction technologies. Reality Computing, as Autodesk is defining it, is about grabbing the physical world digitally, manipulating and analysing that information, and fabricating the result back into the physical world. The results of this approach could be visualised through VR or used to feed an on-site AR experience.
Hardware The first and most portable AR hardware devices are smartphones and tablets. While these have a major disadvantage that you have to physically hold them in front of you to see the display, millions of people own one and they are improving in resolution and power. Android and iOS are the most commonly supported platforms and we have seen all major vendors demonstrate R&D projects that support these devices. AR glasses are very much still in development and will not be coming to market any time soon but technical wizards are working on it. 14
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VR and AR roundup Autodesk Showcase, 3ds Max, InfraWorks 360, Maya, BIM 360 Layout Autodesk has loads of applications. It also has loads of developers. The chances are you can find a Virtual Reality (VR) or Augmented Reality (AR) plug in for most of its applications. Autodesk recently trialled its own plug-in for presentation tool Showcase. 3ds Max and Maya get plenty of support from the development community. The recently launched BIM 360 Layout is capable of interacting with laser scanners and GPS survey systems on construction sites to guide the construction team to the exact placement of key points. This accurately positions the view of the model in the tablet with the direction in which it is pointing. Autodesk has been developing its support for the Oculus Rift headset and while nothing has hit the streets yet, we are pretty sure that the company will be offering support where it sees fit. ■ autodesk.com Bentley Systems Augmented Reality Hypermodels Currently under R&D, Bentley Systems is evaluating AR for infrastructure for displaying hidden underground infrastructure models, displaying attributes related to visible elements, infrastructure operations and maintenance. The company is also looking at how this can be used for construction The research uses smartphones and tablets to displays sections of drawings at 1:1 scale at the exact position they represent in the real world. The project uses Bentley Systems Hypermodel technology, which combines 2D and 3D models for distribution. The benefit of having the 3D model in an AR context is a given, the interesting twist will be seeing 2D drawing sections while looking at a real building or construction site. ■ bentley.com WorldViz Vizard VR Toolkit with ARToolWorks AR extension. Vizard VR Toolkit is a platform to create applications that provide users with immersive experiences across VR technologies: head-mounted displays, multi-screen projection walls, consumer 3D monitors, trackers (head trackers, gloves, full body motion capture), and input devices (e.g., wands, steering wheels, gamepads). The latest version embraces Autodesk 3ds Max binding and controlling shader. The Scene Editor Inspector can transform content from SketchUp and Revit. The ARToolWorks extension takes advantage of Vizard features, such as the scene graph and 3D file importers, and provides a Python-based programming interface to develop AR applications. ■ worldviz.com IrisVR: Iris Viewer A relatively new start-up and one that appears to be dedicated to the AEC space. The base concept is to provide a platform to take architectural models and transform them into realistic 3D experiences. Drag and drop a model into
the IrisVR app, put on your headset and go. Iris Viewer supports SketchUp, 3ds Max, ArchiCAD, Revit and IFCs. Iris Viewer developers recently attended an AEC hackathon and demonstrated their viewer when hooked up to an Oculus Rift. The base software is free and the highest tier (paid for) will concentrate on Building Information Modelling (BIM) providing real-time collaborative tools. The software is currently in Beta. ■ irisvr.com Urbasee A relatively new French company that is dedicated to developing an AR solution for Android and Apple iOS devices. The system accepts models created in Autodesk 3ds Max format or KMZ files, which are geo-referenced Google SketchUp models for conversion on a tablet. Maximum model size is 50MB, up to 150,000 faces, with 450,000 vertices limit and 300 objects. Prices range from $100 a year per project up to $1,735 a year for unlimited projects. ■ urbasee.com Inition A VR hardware and software firm based in London that resells existing technology and develops its own turnkey solutions. The company has worked with Zaha Hadid, for which it developed a model that explored the effects of different lighting and airflows on one of its building projects. Using an iPad, the camera pointed towards a 3D model, while the AR layers showed the airflow around the building using animated arrows. ■ inition.co.uk ARki: Augmented Reality Architectural Visualisation. Darf Design is an interactive design studio in London, working predominantly with augmented reality and mobile application development. Arki is a service for real-time Augmented Reality visualisation of architectural models and can be deployed on any iOS / Android device. The software incorporates several interactive functions including real-time shadow analysis, and material selection. ARki also captures and records custom views of models in both movie and 2D still format. Users can save or share their recorded visualisations via email or social media directly from within ARki. ■ darfdesign.com/arki.html GravitySketch Started in London in October 2013 as a group project between four Innovation Design Engineering students of the Royal College of Art, GravitySketch aims to change the way we draw in 3D, and relies on the users’ spatial intelligence to draw in Augmented Reality 3D via a 2D sketch using a clear perspex board, a pen and a set of Laster Augmented Reality Glasses. We think it looks quite cool. The team are now actively raising investments. ■ gravitysketch.com
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Image courtesy of BENTLEY SYSTEMS
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Bentley’s Research and Development team has been working hard on creating a usable Augmented Reality experience. The company feels it is close to solving the accuracy issue and has even incorporated 2D sectional views in its displays as an added benefit of its i-model format.
CastAR glasses by Technical Illusions, they are an in-view display and do not Oculus Rift headset. Sony, Samsung, Zeiss and Totem are all feature two 1,280 x 720 micro-projectors. project an image across the users’ whole These projectors cast a stereoscopic scene view. With smartphones and tablets, the building Oculus Rift competitors. The resolution, frame rate and Field of onto a retro-reflective surface, together subject looks at reality through the embedView (FOV) are all important for fooling with a tracking camera. Via a clip-on ded camera. device these can be turned into VR Google Cardboard on the other hand is a the brain into believing the immersion. In glasses too. self-build cardboard headset that can general, a 35-60 degree FOV is considered Epson’s imaginatively named Moverio mount an Android Phone in front of your good enough for most situations. However, a 100 degree-plus FOV is needed when an BT-20 are in development and are Android- eyes for a low cost VR experience. based, Bluetooth, binocular, transparent The ultimate solution is likely a head application requires a great deal of peripheral information, as with gamsmart glasses with each lens ing driving simulators for having its own display projectexample. ed at 960 x 540. Meta is in development and In a relatively short space of time, we Conclusion looks to be straight out of Tony expect Augmented Reality and Virtual Stark’s Ironman lab. Again it In a relatively short space of Reality to become exceptionally overlays 3D on the lenses but time, we expect Augmented has the ability to recognise Reality and Virtual Reality to commonplace in AEC and beyond gestures, manipulate projectbecome exceptionally comed 3D models in space and monplace in AEC and beyond. hopes to enable 3D modelling Combining existing and new anywhere. mounted display of some sort. Here the types of display interfaces, firms will build Atheer One from Atheer Labs are 3D biggest and most eagerly awaited VR entry this into the digital workflows. Augmented Reality glasses that are ges- is Oculus Rift, which provides a completeWe will see this technology shrink to ture driven and run off an Android phone ly immersive experience with head track- being less bulky and obtrusive and more and have the equivalent of 26” tablet dis- ing for Virtual Reality and, when com- predictably accurate using networks and plays per eye. The company envisages bined with a camera, could provide an improved tracking electronics. them being used in oil and gas, health- immersive Augmented Reality solution. In the future site visits or construction care or for field work. Target cost is Oculus Rift provides 100 degree FOV at workers could have this capability avail$500-$850. 960 x 1,080 resolution. The frame rate can able within their safety goggles and all vary depending on the software and pro- phones and tablets will be seen as winVR headsets cessing required. dows to access the digital layers which However, users would look very weird have been mapped over our common realProducts like Google Glass cannot provide a real Augmented Reality experience, as walking down the street wearing an ity and individual future designs.
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High Performance Project Delivery “With ProjectWise, we completed a complex project 50 percent faster – on time and under budget.” – Larry Ehlers, Project Manager AECOM
“ProjectWise securely managed 1.5 million documents, with 4.8 terabytes of data accessed by more than 2,000 users in 50 global locations – saving us 23,000 hours locating data, AUD 1 million controlling documents, 260 weeks updating drawings, and AUD 3.6 million in travel expenses.” – Mark Patis, Technical Executive, Design Parsons Brinckerhoff
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www.bentley.com/ProjectWise © 2014 Bentley Systems, Incorporated. Bentley, the “B” Bentley logo, and ProjectWise are either registered or unregistered trademarks or service marks of Bentley Systems, Incorporated or one of its direct or indirect wholly owned subsidiaries. Other brands and product names are trademarks of their respective owners.
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Bentley Systems technology update Bentley Systems launched its new CONNECT technology at its annual Year In Infrastructure conference in London, laying the ground for engineering data and applications to be much more dynamic and pervasive. by Martyn Day and Greg Corke
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he recent Bentley 2014 Year In Infrastructure (YII) event in London provided the platform for the company to launch its next generation MicroStation, CONNECT Edition, together with updates to its comprehensive range of engineering products and services. The last generation, MicroStation V8, was launched in 2001 with subsequent editions V8.5 and V8i. Even though Bentley hasn’t changed its file format since 2001, the DGN format stays the same with this new generation, which is an impressive feat. That said, in the company’s pitch for the new release you would be hard pressed to hear much about all the work that has gone into the new geometry engine. Bentley’s portfolio of solutions is now more about project management, data mobility, connecting teams and information modelling. After 30 years in operation, Bentley Systems has pretty much nailed CAD drawing and modelling so is now aiming to tackle both higher and deeper problems, such as information longevity from concept to a facilities operation as well as to provide compute-intensive ‘optioneering’ analysis to find the best performing or more cost-efficient design solution. With this change in focus, Bentley’s vision and messaging shifts to centre on ProjectWise. This is the company’s project integration environment, either hosted in the cloud or behind a firewall. ProjectWise manages and distributes information on demand to all project participants, in a controlled manner.
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In large, multi-billion pound engineering projects, such as London’sCrossrail,ProjectWise has been used as a data backbone throughout all phases, and was attributed to saving more than 5,000 man-hours in just 12 months on the tunnel project alone. Bentley CONNECT Edition is project centric, rather than file centric, so every model or piece of content that is created has to be part of a project.
CONNECT Editions With this new generation of products Bentley moves a step closer to providing a more seamless, integrated end-to-end environment, where data is created in projects, managed and distributed to wherever it needs to be viewed, edited, interacted with and marked-up. Similarly the data can be searched and filtered from any point of access with a choice of architectures, behind the firewall, private cloud or public cloud. While much of the finesse appears to be in the new modern interfaces, a lot of the development work is in the background, connecting up the applications, hiding
Technology highlights ■ Bentley CONNECT The successor to Bentley’s V8i software generation will feature a common project environment and offer cloudbased capabilities to deliver a new ‘connected user experience’ ■ Bentley and Trimble Two firms now working even closer together to extend the benefits of the BIM model from design into construction ■ ProjectWise Essentials
Cloud-based, industrialstrength collaboration application for smaller firms (up to 40 seats) that is leased by the quarter ■ MicroStation CONNECT A brand new user interface, a project-centric workflow, 64-bit support for larger models, plus a range of constraint tools for creating functional components ■ Codename Graphite
A brand new platform technology which Bentley Systems is using to create new products for multiple operating systems ■ Scenario Services Using the power of the cloud to test out hundreds of different designs in the quest for a truly optimal solution
product silos and making a hybrid cloud/server project backbone. Bentley calls the products ‘software at your service’. The company’s flexible licensing provides access to its entire product suite through configurable application ‘playlists’, flexible licensing and hourly usage billing. For mobile, Bentley has built up a pretty extensive portfolio of apps over the last few years with a view to putting data into the hands of the site worker. Greg Bentley’s ‘data mobility’ mantra, the theme of YII 2011, has become a reality. Two of the mobile applications demonstrated at the launch were of special interest. ProjectWise WorkSite CONNECT Edition provides comprehensive remote access to data stored in ProjectWise and supports file viewing, mark-up, forms, and complex searches. Users can access latest project documentation with review and redlining capabilities. And they don’t need to worry about where data is stored as every user is given a single task-based view to all of their project data. Bentley Navigator, for viewwww.AECmag.com
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All Images courtesy of BENTLEY SYSTEMS
Bentley Navigator, for viewing, analysing and augmenting, has been completely rewritten for CONNECT Edition. It has a very slick, minimal touch-enabled interface
ing, analysing and augmenting, has been completely rewritten for CONNECT Edition. It has a very slick, minimal touchenabled interface, which is virtually the same on all platforms — iOS, Android and Windows. This lends itself to handheld tablets as well as large touchscreens for collaborative design / review Both applications use Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform and are the first instalments of a brand new underlying architecture for the company’s product development teams; but more on that later. The new generation of connected applications will be made available in the coming 18 months, starting at the end of the year. The first to reach customers will be MicroStation CONNECT Edition (the successor to MicroStation V8i), ProjectWise CONNECT Edition, the
completely revamped Bentley Navigator CONNECT Edition and ProjectWise WorkSite CONNECT Edition.
Trimble and Siemens Bentley’s partnerships, even with direct competitors, is continuing to blossom, especially so with Trimble and Siemens. With Trimble the alliance focuses on construction with i-model and laser-enabled site layout. With Siemens it’s all about bringing Pointools point cloud technology into factory and process design. The Bentley/Trimble announcement implies a much deeper coalition between the two firms to work together to extend the benefits of the design BIM model into construction. Areas include temporary works, intelligent positioning, detail for fabrication, workface planning, construc-
tion work packaging and providing support for distributed construction. Both firms feel that, to date, BIM tools do not deliver for construction firms, who usually have to rebuild the BIM model, and often just for construction visualisation. This results in the loss of valuable engineering information that is actually useful to the construction firm and for operation post completion. Bentley and Trimble have announced that they will work together to develop a ‘construction modelling’ schema to preserve and reference architecture and engineering data with a construction overlay together with as-built changes. The two firms have said they will pool resources for product development and sharing schemas across design and construction applications. When necessary
Bentley Systems 30th anniversary This year is the 30th anniversary of the founding of Bentley Systems by brothers Keith and Barry Bentley in Pennsylvania. In 1985, they introduced the commercial version of PseudoStation, which allowed users of VAX mainframe systems to use low-cost graphics terminals to view and modify the designs on their Intergraph IGDS (Interactive Graphics Design System). In 1986, with the advent of the IBM PC, Bentley developed MicroStation Version 1, which allowed users to view
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and plot the files generated on the mainframe and introduced the DGN file format. This eventually became a full 2D/3D CAD package, which to this day is the foundation platform for the comprehensive design ecosystem that Bentley Systems has created. Today, Bentley Systems is headed up by CEO and brother Greg Bentley and has an annual revenue of $593 million, and over 1 million commercial users in 165 countries. Typical Bentley customers tend to deliver large infrastructure projects, includ-
ing Plant, Civil, Architecture, Roads, Rail, Army and Power. An early proponent of the subscription ownership, Bentley has a 97% subscriber retention rate, which provides around 70% of total revenue. Spending 25% of income on R&D, the firm continues to focus on solving technically complex engineering problems such as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and has been at the forefront of connecting project teams with industrial strength collaboration tools under the ProjectWise brand.
CEO, Greg Bentley
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Structural: consolidation and the power of the cloud With a huge number of acquisitions over the past decade or so Bentley has established itself as a powerhouse in structural design and analysis. But with close to twenty products in its portfolio it continues to have a major challenge of how to best handle data interoperability and future software development. Its Structural Synchronizer software has done a great job of matching Bentley model data with third party applications, but the longer-term goal is to get more of its products working together. Consolidation is an essential part of this process but that does not mean Bentley is about to merge its products into a single design or analysis tool. Instead, its aim is to harness its technology better and to make a consistent experience for its users. At the heart of this transition is the ‘structural modelling component’, which creates functional modelling tools that can be shared between Bentley’s structural products. This not only gives users a consistent way to model structural components, but a consistent data schema between tools that is a massive benefit for interoperability. Raoul Karp VP, structural and BIM products, explains that by going down to the data level you will be able to ensure that a beam created in OpenPlant, AECOsim or Bulk Material Handling is the exact same beam and, users will not lose data as they move back and forth. This could have big benefits for workflow: a detailer, for example, could open an AECOsim model directly inside ProStructures and start work immediately. Bentley has also done some technology sharing between its concrete tools and has migrated some 2D labelling and symbol tools from Bentley Rebar, which is big in bridges, into the advanced 3D modelling features of ProConcrete. By next year Mr Karp hopes he can talk about how ProConcrete is not just a general purpose detailer but a special purpose tool for bridges as well. Consistency of results is also a big priority. Any design code that has been introduced in the last two or three years has been shared, explained Mr Karp. For example, Bentley has just brought out the Canadian codes and the results will be the same across all of its products.
Moving forward, this will extend to a common analysis engine so analytical results will also be consistent in all products. The new engine will be able to adapt to different workflows including the higher non-linear demands of an offshore product like SACS and the different loading requirements of Bentley’s bridge design and analysis tools. Of course, in line with its overall CONNECT strategy, the cloud is playing an increasingly important role in Bentley’s structural plans. Analysis will continue to be carried out locally, but the cloud will allow solve times for very large models to be significantly reduced. More importantly, it will allow engineers to test out many different options in the quest for a more optimal design. Bentley calls this ‘optioneering’ and the enabling technology is a cloud service called Bentley ProjectWise Scenario Services, which can be used in conjunction with Generative Components to automatically generate hundreds of different options. Genetic algorithms are then applied to pick the best ones. Armed with the virtually unlimited power of the cloud, Mr Karp envisages two big growth areas for analysis moving forward. The first is to use analysis much earlier on in the design process, where it could give real time structural performance feedback when modelling in a product like AECOsim. The second is in operations and maintenance. Here, sensors placed on the as-built asset can be used to feed back data into the analytical model for health monitoring and to assess on-going performance. This is already being done in bridge maintenance, where vibration data can be collected periodically to find out where strength might be degrading. However, in industries such as plant it could also be used to monitor structural strength and fluid flow, which may have been impacted by corrosion, all in real time. For a technology that has traditionally been used in design validation workflows on a handful of proposals it is a compelling vision for analysis in the future.
STAAD.Pro analysis using the power of the cloud
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they will use common modelling software for virtual and physical alignment and construction deliverables will utilise Bentley’s i-model portable document format. Bentley has included support for Trimble Total Stations at platform level and, by combining Bentley Navigator and ProjectWise with Trimble Field Solutions via Trimble Field Link, it is possible to position points from the construction model in the design office and positioning devices in the field. Greg Bentley explained that this partnership would enable engineers to work “from BIM to bulldozer”. Bentley has been working with Siemens to provide a solution for factory design and facility management for quite some time. Siemens is now embedding Bentley’s Pointools point cloud technology within its popular process simulation tool Tecnomatix, which will allow the import and display of factory laser-scans in its ‘asoperated’ configuration. This can be used to model product process lifecycle or test new production designs in a ‘reality modelling’ context. Siemens also has the potential to use the Pointools Vortex point cloud engine in other Siemens products such as NX for product development or Teamcenter for product lifecycle management (PLM). This would be a big coup for Bentley if this happens as Siemens has millions of users.
Road, rail and underground In June Bentley released Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE), specifically designed to build and manage intelligent 3D featurebased models of underground utilities. Built on OpenRoads technology, the foundation for Bentley’s road, rail, drainage and bridge modelling tools, the software is designed to create models that are spatially accurate so hard and soft clashes can be ironed out underground, helping saving construction costs downstream. While it is still early days for this technology senior product manager Ian Rosam highlighted how Michigan Department of Transportation has implemented SUE to help standardise the way utilities are captured, presented and analysed. The Geospatial Utility Infrastructure Data Exchange (GUIDE) will be used to manage the assets throughout their lifecycle as well as reduce risk and construction delays. Bentley has big plans for SUE and is already extending the reach of the product. The new Subsurface Utility Design and Analysis (SUDA) software gives the SUE model more intelligence by including hydraulic design and analysis capabilities for drainage networks. www.AECmag.com
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Civil Cells, one of the key features of OpenRoads, is a set of graphical macros that capture design intent through the use of constraints and relationships. The result is a functional component that can be used again and again, automatically adapting to changing environments. Civil Cells are typically stored in DGN libraries that can be shared between projects. This lends them perfectly to the new CONNECT Edition products and its shared project environment where users can get easy access for current and future projects. Ron Gant, industry marketing director, road, told us that the Bentley Civil CONNECT releases would be rolled out over the next 18 months. Mr Gant also touched on the growing relationship with Trimble and how ProjectWise is helping to manage the flow of project information from engineering (OpenRoads) to construction (Trimble Business Centre) through the use of i-models. Here the major focus is on producing constructible models, which harness valuable engineering design and analysis data for use downstream in construction. The end goal is to produce a complete model that can then be handed over to the operations team. Data is also flowing from the conceptual to detailed design phases thanks to a new link between the Trimble Quantm Alignment Planning System and OpenRoads. Mr Gant explained how Quantm, which specialises in corridor planning and routing analysis, can now publish preliminary design information in an i-model that can be used in OpenRoads.
MicroStation CON N ECT MicroStation CONNECT features a brand new user interface. There are specific ribbons for different workflows, such as drawings, modelling, and visualisation and context-sensitive menus where a related stack of tools pop up at the cursor.
When the new MicroStation CONNECT is launched the user is taken to a welcome screen where they are asked to sign into the CONNECT server. Each profile stores information about the kinds of projects or discipline the user is involved in and this will allow Bentley to make recommendations of which products to use, what learning content to watch or what features the user may be missing out on based on what their peers are using. MicroStation CONNECT is project centric, rather than file centric, so every piece of content or model or piece of content that is created has to be part of
a project. This will be the case for all of the new Bentley CONNECT products, MicroStation or otherwise. The system will warn the user if he or she attempts to use content that is not officially part of that project — the idea being that it should aid conformance to project standards. Data can still be stored locally; it is only the information about the project that is held on a central server. For example, i-model representations of models can be shared so participants can view models or shared content. It is also possible to see who else is working on the same project, helping connect often dispersed teams.
MicroStation CONNECT features a range of powerful new constraint tools that allow users to capture design intent and create functional components. Whereas in the past you may have needed dozens of different variations of a particular cell type, each with different heights, widths, etc, these can now be represented with one parametrically variable functional component that can adjust to changing geometrical conditions. Functional components can also be managed and made available to project
participants in the new ProjectWise Catalog Service, a cloud service. According to David Huie, Product Marketing Manager at Bentley Systems, in theory this will allow components to live and persist through the lifecycle of a project. For example, as-built information or installation details could be added to components as the project moves from construction and into operations. Of course, catalogue content does not have to parametric. It can also be from standards bodies, manufacturers or indeed from Bentley.
ProjectWise Essentials Launched just before YII 14, Bentley ProjectWise Essentials is a pretty exciting product for those that have wanted to have the industrial-strength collaboration application but were put off by the scope or price. ProjectWise Essentials is a cloud-based design integration service that is leased by the quarter for smaller firms (up to 40 seats) with lower budgets. As it is based in the cloud, access is immediate and users get to choose from a number of best practice templates, following standards, to streamline workflows and connect team members. ProjectWise Essentials is CAD and BIM agnostic and works just as well with Revit files, as it does with AutoCAD, Civil3D and MicroStation. The system provides version control, change management, document relationship creation, search and fast distribution. It comes with free Bentley CONNECTIONS Passport access to the Bentley range of mobile solutions including Bentley Map Mobile, Field Supervisor, www.AECmag.com
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InspectTech Collector Mobile, Navigator Mobile, ProjectWise Explorer Mobile, and the Bentley LEARN App. Mobile access is secure and data can be made available to those onsite, either on or offline.
Optioneering: design optimisation
MicroStation under the bonnet With any significant upgrades comes the opportunity to change the user interface — which will probably be the biggest challenge for experienced users, as there has been quite a radical reworking of how MicroStation looks, feels and responds to element selection. The first thing you will see is that all sessions are started by selecting a project, either existing or new. Model management and keeping related documents together is now built in from the get go. Once loaded, the new ribbon toolbar is clean with multiple tabs for different tool palette selection. The menu is context sensitive and so will change depending on what items are selected. Under the hood, MicroStation has become fully 64-bit throughout which will allow users to work with much bigger models and should offer better performance. Parametric content is also big in this release. Bentley has included the capability to download cloud-provisioned content with catalogues of ‘functional components’ which include managed specifications, for reference throughout comprehensive project delivery and handover. These go way beyond 2D cells/blocks and have the potential to rapidly improve design productivity with users producing highly intelligent downloadable content that can be widely distributed through a managed system.
Codename Graphite Not content with showing off the next generation of MicroStation, Bentley presented products that were developed on a new platform, codenamed ‘Graphite’. Keith Bentley, CTO, told AEC magazine that Graphite is an environment with which Bentley Systems can create new products and easily compile code for multiple operating systems. Once upon a time, Bentley supported 14 operating systems, but quickly dropped to just Microsoft Windows, and the company has been deeply tied into Microsoft’s .Net and programming tools ever since. However, the industry is changing and Keith Bentley stated that Apple and Google had won the mobile space, meaning the company had to consider that, once more, it needed to develop for different target platforms. In its first incarnation, Graphite was used to create the new Bentley Navigator CONNECT application. The platform has a www.AECmag.com
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Bentley ProjectWise Scenario Services is a cloud service for early stage design optimisation — or as Bentley likes to call it, ‘optioneering’. The idea is designers can use the power of the cloud to test out hundreds of designs, instead of the usual two or three, in the quest for an optimal solution. The cost benefits can be huge, as Santanu Das, senior vice-president, design and modelling, explained. He told AEC Magazine that one customer who has been trialling the technology managed to save $450,000-$500,000 in material costs on a 14-storey residential building project. Using RAM Concept and Scenario Services it took just four hours to get feedback on 1,200 different designs that featured various combinations of post tension and rebar. The optimisation also allowed the designer to extend the building to 15 storeys, which was of huge benefit to the client. Savings can also be made in labour costs, said Mr Das, citing an example of an offshore structure where a design with smaller welds makes it much easier (and therefore cheaper) for workers to prepare in situ. To date, Scenario Services has only been rolled out to a limited number of Bentley customers. This soft launch is partly because Bentley has been negotiating pricing with Microsoft for use of its Azure cloud platform, which has proved tricky due to unpredictable demands of analysis. The big launch will come in the first quarter 2015 when the service will be accessible from most of Bentley’s simulation products, including SACS, Moses, STAAD, AutoPIPE, RAM and RM Bridge. There is still work to do on automation. With the exception of STAAD, which has a pretty unique input mechanism in that it allows users to set up different scenarios, each and every design option from the other analysis tools will need to be created individually. This will change over time though and long-term it is likely that Generative Components technology will be made available in the cloud so hundreds of design options can be automatically produced based on input ranges. At present, the only way to automatically generate such a variety of design options is on the desktop through Generative Components or AECOsim Building Designer, prior to uploading to the cloud. However, as these applications are primarily focused on design, users will need to add additional attribute information to fully pre-
pare the model for structural analysis. In the first quarter 2015 Bentley will also launch beta releases of Scenario Services for Autodesk Revit and Rhino, where data from these third-party products will be able to be fed into Bentley’s cloud-based analysis engines. Mr Das said support for SketchUp was proving more problematic due to its data structure and the way it stores geometry, which does not really have a hierarchy. The holy grail for ProjectWise Scenario Services is to optimise using multiple engines. For example, to move a building by a few degrees and see what impact it has on site, energy and structural. This capability should be available in the first half 2015, but Bentley needs to fine-tune the way the different options are presented. In 2013 the focus was on pareto charts, but according to Mr Das, Bentley has now realised these are not necessarily the clearest way to convey this information to non-experts. As the service matures other engines will be added, including heating and cooling and airflow. Bentley has also developed an API and is working with partners on acoustics, fire and smoke propagation and others. The other obvious technology to be integrated into Scenario Services is SITEOPS, the software that Bentley acquired in its purchase of Blueridge Analytics in late September 2014. The software works on the same ‘optioneering’ principle of Scenario Services insofar as it uses the power of the cloud to enable designers to explore different engineering alternatives and their costs. With SITEOPS you can trace out a building footprint onto a proposed site (or import an AECOsim Building Designer i-model), orient it and it will give real time design and cost feedback on parking, grading and drainage. Saved site designs can be ‘drag and dropped’ to another site for comparison. SITEOPS is used by retail and restaurant chains such as Target, Walmart and McDonalds. While the long-term plan is to bring the SITEOPS engine into Scenario Services, this would be done slowly. The software would run on both the SITEOPS and the ProjectWise Scenario Services cloud frameworks for some time, Mr Das said. The SITEOPS technology will also be integrated into OpenRoads, the umbrella technology that forms the backbone to Bentley’s civil design tools — InRoads, Geopak and MX — which sounds like a very exciting proposition.
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Feature
Above: Siemens is now embedding Bentley’s Pointools point cloud technology within its process simulation tool Tecnomatix Left: Bentley Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) is designed to build and manage intelligent 3D featurebased models of underground utilities
new SQLite-based file format that enables application is streamed and still uses the point model data collected on a motorway was combined with Google Streetview file streaming and is more suited to distrib- CPU and graphics of the local machine. images to identify objects in the scene. uted server-based access. The SQLite forOptical Character Recognition (OCR) was mat makes design information more gran- Bentley Research ular and provides relational links, enabling The Bentley Research presentations at also used to add on street signs for inclumultiple data schemas (e.g. COBie) to be YII are becoming a highlight for those sion in the models. included. It also provides powerful and that love seeing the cutting edge of develfast search/filter capabilities. opment. This year we had presentations Conclusion For now it is being used to create a file on augmented reality, on-site positioning, Bentley used YII to unleash Azure applicaviewing and annotation application, not laser scanning, converting photos to 3D tions being developed for the next release, unlike the very first version of MicroStation models, real-world object recognition, showing that its development strategy is written in 1985. This will probably expand rapid bridge structural analysis and defining products many years in advance. to replace DGN in the future as the transac- thoughts on construction efficiency, as to For this release it is all about the ‘comtion conduit of project information. how it was different from typical manu- monness’ of its converging technology We asked if we would see a version of facturing. stack and extending mobile by creating and MicroStation for the Apple OSX and As highlighted in our Augmented integrating apps seamlessly into its estabKeith Bentley replied “No, it wouldn’t Reality cover story on page 12, the key lished server-based solution. look or feel like MicroStation if we did a problem is in accuracy of locating and Bentley has been teasing us with its port to OSX but we won’t rule out other tracking the viewer both outside and inside cloud-based analysis plans for a few years future products coming out for the Mac.” buildings. Bentley has been experimenting now and next year this will become realiReading between the ty. Optioneering is being lines, Bentley has a new built into the company’s development platform, a products and Bentley has Reading between the lines, Bentley has a new new ‘format’ and has done a harnessed the power of the lot of work to prepare the cloud to offer subscribers development platform, a new ‘format’ and has way for a multi-operating easy access to its ‘solvers’ system future for both desk- done a lot of work to prepare the way for a multiwith near unlimited power. top and mobile. For cloud, The promise that next OS future for both desktop and mobile Bentley is completely comyear we will see complete mitted and optimised for building analysis with mulMicrosoft’s Azure infratiple simulation and analystructure. with a wide variety of technologies to sis solvers running simultaneously via the Keith Bentley is confident that distrib- improve this, from Bluetooth tracking tri- cloud will mean every design should be uted computing — powerful servers with angulation via iBeacons and signal proven to work and the best solution poslocal workstations — is still the way to go. strength, to registering external views with sible. This is incredibly exciting. This compares with competitors, such Google Streetview. With ProjectWise Essentials, cloud as Autodesk, who are looking to deliver Experiments with projecting delivery, term licensing and the possibility ‘virtualised’ access to their software via Augmented Reality images on construc- to download design applications via remote hosted applications through pixel tion sites quickly established that block- Numescent technology, the barriers to streaming technologies provided by the ing the visibility of workers could have entry will become much lower for new cuslikes of OTOY, Citrix and Mainframe2. an impact on safety for those near by, tomers with smaller projects. Bentley is currently experimenting with particularly if driving an excavator. With the CONNECT Edition Bentley has a technology from Numescent, which Bentley is working on a way to project laid the ground for engineering data and allows fast download/distribution of transparent ‘painted’ 3D model data applications to be much more dynamic and Windows-based applications that run in instead, ensuring clarity of view. pervasive. an application ‘player’, but the actual In another experiment, laser-scanned ■ bentley.com
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BIMobject Live In late September BIMobject hosted its annual event for customers and users in Malmö, Sweden, and broadcast live over the web. With presentations from manufacturers, consumers and the company’s CEO and CTO there was little doubt of the momentum behind downloadable BIM content. by Martyn Day
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IMobject’s project portal was opened in 2012, providing manufacturers’ BIM objects, in Revit, ArchiCAD, SketchUp and AutoCAD formats for free download to the BIM community. Bentley Systems’ AECOsim Building gets support through the Revit RVT format. By October 2014, BIMobject had 3,750 products for download from over 280 companies. In just two years it has amassed over 1,183,000 downloads by a registered user-base of nearly 60,000 customers world-wide. In that time the company has been floated on the Swedish stock exchange, established six subsidiaries across Europe and received a considerable investment from Hexagon Geosystems, owners of brands such as Intergraph and Leica. It seems BIMobject has velocity.
BIMobject BIMobject creates new, and optimised, 3D models for building component manufacturers (Velux, Crawford, Assa Abloy, and Hilti, among others). The BIM components can be simple models or complete assemblies, from a door to a lift, a brick to a curtain wall. These objects are placed within the BIMobject portal for free download by AEC designers. Each CAD system has its own BIMobject app to enable direct access to BIMobjects from within that system. Users can request more information via BIMail and the system can warn users 26
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recently achieved 1,000,000 downloads. After explaining its evolving product offering over the last two years, he introduced a new online tool called Mosquito, which will potentially capture and distribute BIM objects faster than ever before.
Mosquito
Stefan Larsson (left) BIMobject founder and CEO, and CTO Ben O’Donnell at BIMobject LIVe
when products have been superseded. The use of objects is tracked through the BIManalytics service, so it is possible for manufacturers to measure the return on investment. A message centre enables several people to work in the same system and share information. BIMail also enables contact with consumers and there is a hook up to Salesforce. com. Manufacturers can have a private cloud for their own components. BIMobject’s flexible back-end system appears to be its key differentiator. Looking beyond the download, the system can identify sales pipelines and projects where products are currently specified. BIMobject CEO Stefan Larsson kicked off September’s BIMobject LIVe event in Malmö, Sweden, with the news that Hexagon had bought 31 million Swedish Krona worth of stock, equating to 13% of the company, and that the company had
BIMobject Mosquito is a radical new web technology that allows developers, partners and manufacturers to create BIM objects directly on a cloud server without any CAD or BIM knowledge. Using Google X (WebGL), the user is presented with a live 3D representation of a rectilinear object, onto which a bitmap can be added and scaled, with height, width and depth input. This can be done one at a time or through a bulk load option, which also supports Excel / spreadsheet data, enabling mass creation. The Mosquito technology will then automatically create native files for ArchiCAD, Revit, SketchUp and IFC. BIMobject sees this technology enabling manufacturers of ceramics, white goods, appliances and HVAC equipment, as well as flooring and mosaics, to provide BIM objects. BIMobject CTO Ben O’Donnell introduced several new technologies for the first time at BIMobject LIVe, including a radical properties extension for its customers called BIMobject Open Property Cloud technology and a slick new standard HTML5 interface for all its embedded BIM apps. www.AECmag.com
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Top: The new BIMobject HTML5 interface is common in all of the major BIM systems, including Trimble SketchUp Middle: Mosquito is limited to rectilinear object creation. Here a shipping container is being created with the webbased application, applying images to each face Below: An Ikea cabinet system is rapidly modelled, detailed and placed in an office setting
BIMobject Open Property Cloud technology, or BOPC (pronounced bops), was also released at the event, providing a way to add extended properties to objects, such as parameters, metadata or attributes, via the cloud. BIMobject sees this technology as a way of future-proofing objects to adapt to future standards by enabling the addition of properties post-creation. BOPC also enables manufacturers to add additional properties to their objects, or add hidden properties to objects to drive logistics and purchasing at a later stage in the process. An owner of a BOPC can create unique user groups to limit access to the information; to a design team for instance. Another use could be adding properties to a component, which applications like Solibri could use to check compliance with installation limitations of items like doors (clearance) or air conditioning (clear space requirements). It is possible to create several property sets within one cloud, which means that part of the product information can be added to the object at the development stage and used in design. Later more information can be loaded into the objects, like Operation and Maintenance properties for COBie. BIMobject provides Apps for designers to access the BIMobject portal from within a number of CAD systems. Due to huge variety in capabilities between the vendors, the firm moved to an independent method of presenting this access, with a www.AECmag.com
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Feature
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One BIMobject customer said that the key issue was to ensure that its products stayed in the design through to order, as all too often they now see that they were the preference of the architect but were replaced for a cheaper solution late into the design
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consistent look and feel. The new HTML5 tool palette is very clean looking and is the same throughout Revit, SketchUp and ArchiCAD.
Manufacturers Talking with manufacturing-based customers, it is clear that many firms initially created BIM content for marketing purposes, but when it comes to the postdownload phase, the majority were still getting to grips with bringing the rest of the company up to speed. To have 10,000 downloads is impressive but it is only the start of joining up the dots. Not enough manufacturers understand BIM, its implications or the benefits to having virtual product catalogues online. After knowing that your company’s products have been specified in a design, the key issue is to ensure that they stay in the design through to order, according to one manufacturing client. The company has found that, all too often, its products were the preference of the architect, but were replaced for a cheaper solution late into the design. Before the BIMobject system, the firm did not even know it had missed out on the opportunity.
Bigger picture BIMobject supports SketchUp, which is amazingly popular but not what we would define as a professional BIM system. However, SketchUp is increasingly used by BIMobject’s customers, and it plays an important role in the conceptual stages of many projects. The word is that Trimble, which www.AECmag.com
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acquired SketchUp from Google, will be redeveloping SketchUp to have more BIM characteristics, although details of this are ‘sketchy’. It was at this point that it struck me that it would be possible for a Revit user, a MicroStation user, an ArchiCAD user and a SketchUp user to work together in ways that IFC could only dream of. IFC is a lowest common denominator format, but it handles basic components like walls, slabs and columns. If the lead designer of my Frankenstein BIM design team was connected to the other proprietary systems, IFC could share these basic generic components, but each time a BIMobject component was inserted in Revit the corresponding component would be downloaded by ArchiCAD, AECOsim and SketchUp. It would also mean that an IFC-only BIM system is probably all that is missing here. The major CAD vendors spent years, if not a decade, defining all the standard objects that could be used in today’s BIM systems. Meanwhile, the BIM component industry has been going for a lot less time, but is now doing a great job of getting real-world manufactured parts in the common BIM formats. At some point in the process, designers will want to use the manufacturer’s parts instead of having to fill out data for generic components. It is possible that the next generation BIM systems will require a lot less development time, as the manufacturers’ models and systems have already been converted to intelligent BIM objects and just await insertion.
Conclusion There remain hurdles to adoption for many potential BIMobject users. For manufacturers there are the internal hurdles of educating employees and getting the sales teams onboard. Another issue is the sheer size of the product portfolios to be turned into BIM objects. Many companies are trying their first few, some I talked to had as many as 400, which doubled to 800 as many had opted to supply these in two popular BIM formats. There is still many tens of thousands of manufactured objects that have yet to be digitised. BOPC extends the data and richness that can be contained within objects and the cloud enables this to be done dynamically. I suspect we will see this technology leveraged more obviously in the future as people realise how best to use it. Meanwhile, Mosquito is a demonstration of what is to come. When you combine this technology with real-world capture solutions like Autodesk’s 123D Catch, which can create a textured 3D model from a handful of photographs of an object, you soon realise that it may soon be possible to photograph the real world to produce a 3D model and supercharge the process of creating non-rectilinear BIM components on the web. BIMobject continues to grow at pace and now, with even more cash injected by Hexagon, one wonders where the company’s technology will go next? Will the intelligence lie in BIM design tools or the downloadable real-world content? ■
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Comment
NBS sets the standard Will NBS’ newly-launched BIM Object Standard document help provide the confidence in downloadable content the AEC industry so desperately needs? by Martyn Day
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ownloadable Building Information Modelling (BIM) content is very welcome, especially when it reduces modelling time and comes loaded with useful information for downstream building and facilities management processes and supports industry standard formats like COBie. However, with so many people creating content, either for manufacturers or for in-house purposes, the quality and consistency of these objects varies hugely, making many experienced BIM users highly cautious of introducing externally created BIM content into managed models. While there are many working groups developing standards to drive the UK Government’s BIM aims, the commercial BIM content market has to date escaped any policing. But the deliverables must ultimately comply with a number of industry standards including BS1192, PAS1192-2/3, RIBA’s Plan of Work, COBieUK and BS 8541. It is high time that commercial developers started to ensure their BIM content assists users, instead of very possibly creating geometry and information formatting problems up and downstream. NBS has created a documented ‘standard’ for its object library, which it hopes other firms will adopt. NBS BIM Object Standard is a free downloadable PDF from its website. The standard is not a format, like IFC or DWG, but a written list of definitions and criteria that NBS has identified as being a baseline for consistency, efficiency and interoperability. The 44 page document breaks down the five key areas that the standard addresses: General, Information, Geometry, Functional and Metadata. Properties are defined as ‘Shall’ (essential), ‘Shall not’ or ‘May’ (supplemental) this provides a baseline of essential information with some flexibility to include additional useful user defined data. The General requirements cover categorisation, IFC object type and level of detail
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(LoD). For instance, BIM objects must be presented as ‘generic’ or manufacturer object, ‘component’ or ‘layered’ and assemblies of components must conform to BS 8541-3. The minimum will have a schematic LoD that must conform to BS 8541-3. For object type identifiers, the standard invokes IFCtypeObject and IFC predefined type from buildingSmart IFC2x3. If objects do not have an appropriate IFC definition then user defined name convention guidelines are provided. Information requirements cover general conventions, values, property groups and usages, data formatting, property naming, IFC property sets and COBie type and component properties, as well as some supplementary ‘when applicable’ but not essential information. This section seeks to drive compliance with COBie version 2 Release 4 and IFC2x3 and PAS 16739 2005. It also shows how Revit has a property grouping convention outside of IFC, ArchiCAD, Vectorworks and AECOsim. Geometry seeks to identify the minimum requirement to define the BIM component in shape, symbol, space, surface, material and connection, including dimensional and measurement basics. The first being: ‘The BIM object geometry and graphical detail shall not compromise the performance of the project model in which it is placed’. This is great common sense, but how big is too big? Scales of 1:20. 1:50 and 1:100 are covered. The Functional section is short and deals with a number of statements on embedded relationships, behaviours, constraints and connections. Metadata addresses naming conventions for files, objects, properties, layers, materials and images within objects. Some obvious stuff here on no duplicate names, alphanumeric characters, spaces or punctuation. The document is driven by common sense
and is a good, broad guideline linking typical BIM Object structures to their relevant UK and International BIM standards. Some standard definitions areas are a bit vague, and act more as a guide and others, such as measurement units are only implied by the numbers (mm, cm, inches or mars bars!). For a first attempt this is more comprehensive than I expected.
Conclusion Defining BIM standards is tricky as it is the final deliverables that must conform. Here, NBS has worked with its major customers of downloadable BIM content, and launched with endorsements from an array of industry folk such as Autodesk, Bentley, buildingSMART, Graphisoft and Nemetschek. The standard applies to its own NBS BIM library content but the competition, i.e. BIMobject, has not pledged to conform. With NBS being part of RIBA and having a strong presence in the market, it perhaps could plausibly implement a de facto standard in the UK, but it would not be enforceable. One should not forget that the BIM object market is competitive and a ‘for profit’ business. Owning ‘the standard’ would undoubtedly be of commercial benefit. That said, NBS has done a positive thing; it has taken action on a serious industry problem and has produced a BIM standard as a quality statement that means its BIM content will, in future, comply with key enforced industry deliverable standards. It is all about confidence in downloadable content. We will have to wait and see how far outside NBS’s circle of influence the standard is adopted. While the UK, Netherlands, Denmark, Finland and Norway already require the use of BIM for publicly funded building projects, the EU will now adopt BIM by 2016. Suddenly, BIM software developers and building component manufacturers will have to contemplate supporting 27 more European BIM standards than just those that are developed in the UK. ■ nationalbimlibrary.com/nbs-bim-object-standard
www.AECmag.com
13/11/14 14:31:45
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Comment
Sustainable building design and H VAC Phil Marris, managing director of Jaga Heating Products UK, discusses the benefits of product manufacturers embracing BIM and the long-term impact on sustainability in building design.
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he accelerating take-up of Building Information Modelling (BIM) software as a means to improve construction efficiency and design quality is, without doubt, of enormous benefit to the industry’s future. This increasingly indispensable tool, however, is also creating an opportunity for sustainable product manufacturers to guide architects, contractors and building operators towards environmentallyfriendly building services solutions. The potential of BIM is not lost on us here at Jaga — in fact we see it as a natural progression in promoting our values in sustainable HVAC solutions. The better we can demonstrate our products as viable alternatives to energy-thirsty solutions, the more likely it becomes that we can have a lasting impact on the contribution of the built environment to national energy targets. The BIM Task Group has estimated that the successful implementation of BIM can help to strip out as much as 30% of project resources that are wasted, making it an increasingly attractive prospect to those planning new construction projects. From its time-saving potential to its sophisticated technical accuracy, BIM allows the building to be designed virtually as many times as necessary to ensure it can be built flawlessly just once when physical construction begins. Looking beyond its use in combating construction concerns and avoiding double working, BIM can help provide detailed insights into the best ways of maintaining a building’s efficiency throughout its longterm operation — and this is where the initiative becomes particularly relevant to sustainable product manufacturers. Heating and ventilation systems are an excellent example of how this can be put into practice. 32
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About the author Phil Marris, managing director of Jaga Heating Products, is a passionate advocate of energy efficiency, carbon cutting measures and green building techniques.
If a manufacturer’s BIM content for a radiator is accurate and the value of its specifications, output, cost and energy efficiency is proven, the chances of it being selected over more energy-thirsty solutions across numerous BIM-enhanced construction projects increase. The challenge of achieving optimal sustainability in construction is often related to specifiers’ perception of cost — that is why precise product data is so important in influencing the change. As more BIM content becomes available, there will be greater opportunity to provide comparative analysis with other buildings. As manufacturers, we would be able to show exactly how and why one building’s heating and ventilation is more efficient than another’s, and present the product that is best equipped to replicate this success. The precise functionality of the files allows for specific fine-tuning too, for example by automatically calculating system flow rates and pressure drops to help the engineer design the most optimised system. Within the software, specifiers can switch various different product combinations in-and-out within seconds and see their suitability in-line with project targets. Different radiator sizes can be selected to see which best fits, and various fixing
approaches — such as wall-mounted, freestanding or trench heating — can be experimented with to determine the ideal solution in terms of design, ergonomics, heat output and energy consumption. On a business level, industry-standard BIM product content helps to promote a manufacturer and its products throughout the sector, with a view to showing their compatibility with modern, high-value construction projects. Considering the UK government’s ambition to have all centrally procured construction contracts achieve Level 2 BIM status by 2016, as well as BIM’s increasing use in the private sector, it means manufacturers should start embracing the technology sooner rather than later. With the increasing international focus on ‘future-proofing’ buildings against draining the planet’s natural resources, we can help guide architects and contractors to make the correct decisions in the building services products and systems they select by saving time, saving money, and hitting targets. The better we can demonstrate sustainable products as viable alternatives to energy-thirsty solutions, the more likely it becomes that we can have a lasting impact on buildings’ contribution to energy targets in the future. Failure to embrace BIM’s potential will eventually become counter-productive for manufacturers of building services products. At the end of the day, when the highest value projects are begun to be planned and schematics produced, decision-makers will look beyond those who cannot provide them with the convenience and technical accuracy of detailed BIMcompatible product data. ■ jaga.net
www.AECmag.com
13/11/14 14:32:30
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Fully integrated: BIM encourages cradle to grave thinking and information management.
Collaborative 3D information model helps identify and solve constructability issues early.
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Case study
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We first want to ensure that our BIM adoption is strong and the best way to raise the bar is to make sure our architects can achieve everything they need to achieve inside the BIM software environment
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Investing in people at David Miller A strong focus on staff training and skills development keeps David Miller architects achead of the curve in BIM readiness.
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n 2006 architect David Miller committed to grow his practice to service larger clients and to take on more challenging projects. With a long-term vision for growth and a well-developed ‘emotional intelligence’ (EQ), Mr Miller embarked upon his search to recruit likeminded architects. “Right from the start I looked for people with a certain temperament,” he explained. “The best practices hire great thinkers, great communicators, and team-players, but I wanted more.” Mr Miller searched specifically for individuals with minds open for learning and an abundance of creative energy for problem solving in response to project requirements. “These people are the real transformers of projects because they build enduring and trusted client relationships,” he said. 34
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According to author Daniel Goleman, this rare combination of abilities is common in architects with high EQ. Mr Miller believes it is the primary reason for the unusually high volume of repeat business enjoyed by his practice. Today the DMA team is 19-strong, having grown steadily to service its expanding portfolio of commercial, education and residential projects. Throughout this growth period staff turnover has remained low. “I consider it my job to make everyone on our team feel supported by investing in technology and processes to enable them,” Mr Miller said. DMA applied for ISO 9001 accreditation when there were only four people on the team. It quickly became apparent to Mr Miller that when supported by good processes his team would be free to make deci-
sions without deferring to him for approval. This approach nurtured and insulated new recruits in a way that quickly enabled their self-confidence to grow; giving them a greater sense of autonomy and achievement. “The whole practice found ISO 9001 to be very liberating and for the first time we were able to pitch for public sector projects that require ISO 9001 compliance from all consultants,” practice director Fiona Clark said. There was also a human benefit. “Younger people found it easier to increase their contributions to the team leading to increased efficiency and more predictable operations across all projects,” Ms Clark said. Such positive outcomes quickly led to DMA applying for and securing ‘Investors in People’ recognition; placing it among the top 0.5% of architectural practices in the UK. www.AECmag.com
13/11/14 14:34:02
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Case study
Perhaps unsurprisingly then, with an office filled with emotionally intelligent architects and designers with minds open to learning, the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) processes, technologies and collaborative behaviour has also been successful. The result; DMA is now years ahead of the curve for complying with the UK government’s BIM initiative for all centrally procured projects to achieve Level 2 BIM status by 2016. As with other parts of the business, DMA approached the transition to BIM with an appetite for learning and a hunger to understand all aspects of the new collaborative workflows. “Ordinarily across the practice we measure everything so we can continue to improve,” said Clark. “We therefore committed to measure the cost of our BIM investment and compare it to the value we realised at the practice and project level.” As with ISO 9001 and Investors in People, DMA engaged external consultants to help measure its BIM performance. First it looked at DMA’s BIM adoption on a macro level using the American ‘National Institute of Building Sciences — Facilities Information Council National BIM Standards’ (at the time, UK standards were still under development). Next the consultants looked at DMA‘s capabilities on a micro-level by assessing staff skills when using Revit, Autodesk’s BIM software. To assess staff skills, DMA engaged the KnowledgeSmart team to identify individu-
al Revit skills gaps and to plug those gaps using customised training programs. Modular training was provided by White Frog, and prescribed in response to KnowledgeSmart skills-gap assessments. “We hope to measure significant productivity and efficiency improvements…” explained Mr Miller, “…but that isn’t our primary goal. We first want to ensure that our BIM adoption is strong and the best way to raise the bar is to make sure our architects can achieve everything they need to achieve inside the BIM software environment.” Indeed when each software license costs around £4,000 it makes little sense to use only a tiny fraction of the software. Not all practice leaders believe in the value of training staff. Some even reject the notion of training on the grounds that the newly skilled employee will just up-sticks and leave for more money elsewhere. Of course, people do not always change jobs for more money, many move in search of greater job satisfaction. But as American author, salesman, and motivational speaker Zig Ziglar once said “What’s worse than training your workers and losing them? Not training them and keeping them.” It is common for employees to feel underappreciated and unsupported by employers when they are passed over for training or promotions. As new talent joins a firm, with new skills in hand, the current staff can start to feel a little overshadowed, causing them to seek out pastures new; this is highly disruptive to active projects as project-specific knowledge leaves the project along with the staff.
The longer the construction project the greater the chance of team members leaving. As many construction projects take a long time to complete, and as starting and finishing with the same team in place is a good way to provide the best client service levels, retaining staff that are well trained and highly knowledgeable is likely to contribute more than anything else towards improved client service levels and project quality. DMA constantly reinvests for growth. For example, R&D Tax Credits realised from their investment in BIM have been reinvested in its staff to assess and improve their individual knowledge and productivity. And this investment in practice performance is amplified at the project level where DMA clients are also able to measure improved performance. Mr Miller explained why this matters to DMA: “Our clients make no secret of their project and consultant performance measurement processes and we know that we score very well because they continue to give us larger projects.” As UK projects move towards more process-driven workflows DMA is ideally suited to further expand its portfolio of projects. Mr Miller concluded: “Our continued investment in the practice, our people, and our processes is paying off. Clients have come to know that they will always enjoy a consistent level of output from DMA, which greatly reduces their project risk. And I know that our achievement in that regard is a team achievement of which I am very proud.” ■ david-miller.co.uk
David Miller pre-empts email overload with Mail Manager David Miller Architects has preempted the threat of email overload by installing Outlook plug-in Oasys Mail Manager. The software tool complements the collaborative work processes that have underpinned the practice’s creative and commercial success. Email has always been seen as an integral part of the BIM collaborative process, and was shared within the practice using drag and drop Outlook project folders. However, as the num-
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ber of concurrent live projects grew, the time taken to file and retrieve emails came onto the radar as a potential future problem. At that time, a new member of the team who had used Oasys Mail Manager before and missed it sorely introduced the concept. Practice director Fiona Clark said: “It was a perfect fit, but seemed almost too good to be true. However, as it had been developed for Arup, a firm we know and trust, we had com-
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plete confidence in it.” Mail Manager automates email filing into system file folders and, because it learns user behaviour, filing emails and their attachments quickly becomes a prompted oneclick operation. Emails are filed instantly in a place where they can be securely shared. “There is no time lag while people might get distracted by a phone call, meeting, or even wait until the end of the day,” said Ms Clark.
Filing errors are virtually eliminated, and will only occur if the user makes an error. However, even then, the faceted search capabilities will enable team members to find messages in seconds. “Good storage and retrieval is the platform on which automation and collaboration is based,” said Ms Clark. “We have complete confidence in our mail storage and our ability to retrieve it.” ■oasys-software.com
www.AECmag.com
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18
ArchiCAD 18 offers a streamlined workflow solution, keeping architects in the creative design flow with as little disruption as possible. The integration of CineRender, MAXON’s world-class CINEMA 4D rendering engine into ArchiCAD 18, brings high quality, photo-realistic renderings to a much wider range of designers. ArchiCAD 18’s brand new Revision Management solution is integrated into the entire BIM workflow, providing solutions for 2D, 3D or any kind of hybrid workflows. Is also offers a smooth, PDF-based workflow and improved PDF-based data exchange by introducing BIM-related intelligence and data hierarchy into PDF files.
For further information on ArchiCAD 18 contact Graphisoft at
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Comment
Managing project Information The use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) has improved information sharing on constuction projects, but, as Newforma’s Tim Bates argues, there are still many areas where information fails to flow at all, let alone seamlessly.
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s technology advances it has become evident that our ability to generate more and more electronic data increases at a staggering rate year on year. ‘Big data’ has become a common phrase in our modern vocabulary. The Wikipedia definition of big data is “an all-encompassing term for any collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using traditional data processing applications”. The challenges of dealing with an excessive amount of data are very apparent in modern construction projects. What started with the ability to generate large numbers of drawings easily using 2D CAD systems has now accelerated with the introduction of Building Information Modelling (BIM). This, together with the internet, cloud-based technologies, email and the proliferation of smart mobile devices has only served to add to these challenges. There is a real danger around treating all data as valuable and therefore, by inference, the expectation that the more data we can generate the better. However, note that data is not necessarily the same as information. One of the early advocates of the adoption of BIM, Jim Bedrick AIA, director of systems integration at Webcor Builders, wrote in 2004 that “the advance from CAD to BIM is the jump from data to information. Information occurs when data is given relevance and meaning”. Information has taken on a new relevance as this technology becomes the norm in our industry. Mr Bedrick went further and talked 38
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About the author Tim Bates, Newforma’s operations director for EMEA, has responsibility for all sales and service-related activities, including reseller partnership with Océ (UK).
about knowledge as “information coupled with experience and know-how” — for example when information is in the hands of an experienced engineer. The ability for professionals to have access to relevant and appropriate information in a timely manner, and to be able to act on it based on their experience, is key to successful project delivery.
Common data environment BS1192:2007 is a British standard that has provided the foundation for establishing “the methodology for managing the production, distribution and quality of construction information”. Based on the real life experiences of collaborative projects such as BAA Heathrow Terminal 5, the authors detail how a Common Data Environment (CDE) approach can be adopted to allow information to be shared between all members of a project team. It is interesting to note that the Terminal 5 project started out with the concept of a Single Model Environment (SME), but this
description was relinquished in favour of the Common Data Environment tag since it more appropriately described the dispersed and federated nature of the information being managed. Just as there has been a danger that efficient marketing by vendors has led to a belief in some quarters that purchasing a software product will provide your organisation with the ability to ‘do BIM’, I have been concerned at some recent comments that imply that a Common Data Environment can similarly be purchased as an ‘out of the box’ solution. The Common Data Environment of BS1192 is unlikely to be achieved by a single software solution; it is a collaborative approach and covers four main areas from work in progress (WIP), through Shared and Published to Archive. It aims to define processes by which information should flow, accuracy and relevance should be checked, and ownership and responsibility should be attributed. Although the software component is an important part of delivering this strategy, it will only be successful if all stakeholders agree on a common way of working and sharing information and knowledge.
Information silos Unfortunately it seems to be an inevitable result of the way that design and construction projects happen that we end up with disconnected silos of information that increase the risk of errors and omissions in the final project delivery. www.AECmag.com
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In practice there are still walls, or disconnects, between different disciplines working in parallel on projects that are simply down to a lack of a collaborative mindset between the stakeholders
Those of us who have been in the industry for any length of time will undoubtedly have our own favourite anecdotes of where poor information management has resulted in significant risk and additional cost to a project in both time and money. Whilst the advent of BIM should have improved the situation, I believe that it has sometimes exacerbated things since there is a temptation to put as much information as possible locked into the BIM model. This not only challenges the requirements of the hardware that is running the modelling solution but it creates its own silo of information that is, in effect, under the restricted ownership and management of those who are trained and experienced in driving such solutions. In the early days of BIM, if not even earlier, I can remember that many of us had a slide that showed a series of brick walls where information was chucked over to the next stakeholder in the project. BIM was highlighted as part of the solution, and things have definitely improved, but I believe that we still have a long way to go in this respect. Even in the best managed projects there are still areas where information fails to flow at all, let alone seamlessly. Sometimes this is made worse by incompatible data formats between solutions. Something which the IAI, COBie, BuildingSmart and Open BIM initiatives have gone some way to address, but the commercial realities of many of the software vendors and the quest for even www.AECmag.com
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greater intelligence built into their solutions, and therefore the complexities of their data formats, continue to challenge these initiatives. In practice there are still walls, or disconnects, between different disciplines working in parallel on projects that are simply down to a lack of a collaborative mindset between the stakeholders rather than any fundamental data incompatibility. Even more fundamental disconnects are still occurring between stages in a project lifecycle. I have also had recent feedback relating to some very high profile projects where the design information passed across to the construction stage is so untrustworthy that a new virtual design and construction (VDC) model has to be developed, almost from scratch. (I much prefer the acronym VDC to that of BIM since I believe it is better at describing the process that we should be aiming for with modern software.)
Back to the future So where should we go from here? The disconnected nature of the information described earlier could be addressed by two basic approaches. One solution would be to put an increasing amount of the information relating to a project in a single database or repository that all users can have access to. This route is the one that has led to the project extranet solutions that have often been adopted by contractors, particularly in the UK.
However, one of the biggest complaints I hear from our consultant customers is that this strategy results in a significant disconnect from the management of their on-premise project information, as well as providing an additional workload to their document control processes. Whilst this approach can be seen to work well as a record of the published information on a project, I believe that it often falls short when trying to address the WIP and shared information areas. This is particularly true when it comes to the often unstructured work in progress information during the early design stages, including emails and their attachments. This can be where critical information falls through the cracks and the reasons behind a particular design decision is lost; the project record only ends up with the ‘what’. Add to this the challenges of a global context where projects are often worked on across different offices and geographies, internet access is not always reliable and cloud storage has technical and political implications. I believe that we have to continue to address the current inevitability that project information is held in disconnected silos, work towards solutions that acknowledge this and develop more intelligent and connected federated systems for collaborating across all of the information on a project. ■newforma.co.uk
November / December 2014
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Comment
The black art of laser scanning Building BIM-ready models from point cloud requires considerable manual construction, a skill level developed by working with and understanding fully the nature of the data. Ploughman Craven’s Peter Folwell explains.
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he profile, awareness and capabilities of 3D laser scanning have grown exponentially over the last couple of years. With the UK government mandate to deliver level 2 Building Information Modelling (BIM) by 2016 for publicly funded work, and an increased market trend towards refurbishment and retrofit, there has been a greater emphasis on the use of 3D laser scanning technology and the ability to deliver BIM-ready models of the existing environment. There has been an increased awareness of the benefits that this powerful technology can bring through the whole project lifecycle — from the ability to collect a lot of up-front accurate information for feasibility studies and planning, through to wall alignment checks at demolition, clash detection, design comparisons and monitoring during construction. Other advantages include an accurate solution for offsite manufacture, pre-fit out surveys and asset recording for facility management. One result is an increase in the visibility of scanning manufacturers extolling the virtues of their products and ease of use for all, plus a surge in development of software abilities to handle large volumes of point cloud data. This, coupled with a decrease in costs and barriers to entry, is starting a possible trend away from the traditional surveying expertise route for delivery. The emergence of 3D laser scanning opens up other professional’s minds to the benefits on offer but without a full understanding of the complications, limitations
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About the author Peter Folwell is a director at Plowman Craven with responsibility for survey deliverables within the BIM environment. He is involved in Survey4BIM and a founder of BIMnet.
and considerations that need to be taken fully into account, success can be limited. There is an increasing number of users in the market, but many have limited experience and understanding of the full range of operational issues and what needs to be considered and addressed in order to achieve accurate and useable information. Plowman Craven has been associated with 3D laser scanning technology for over 14 years now, both utilising it and helping to develop it. In recent years, we have completed numerous high profile BIM associated projects within different market arenas, delivering both laser scan data and BIMready models. We are now in a position where we have a highly experienced understanding of the full technical applications, workflows required, issues and a comprehensive catalogue of lessons learned. 3D laser scanning technology provides a number of considerable advantages and benefits when collecting data in an existing environment, particularly in complex, architecturally challenging and safety restricted situations. Collecting data rapid-
ly, in 360 degrees, with speeds of up to 1,000,000 points a second provides an instant record and a complete data set in order to extract 2D information or build BIM-ready models. However, it is a line of sight technology and, contrary to popular belief, it does not go through walls or ceilings. It sounds a great solution but what needs to be considered in order to achieve the desired outcome?
Right tools for the job There are many scanners on the market at different cost prices and capabilities. These could be static, airborne, vehicle mounted and even handheld. It is critical to understand what each can deliver and the most appropriate use. The right choice of tool can have a profound effect on the project cost and also accuracy of the data.
Quality control The real black art of 3D laser scanning is knowing what is likely to be going on ‘under the bonnet’ and understanding how to achieve optimum performance and the required results. Angles of incidence: Geometric considerations and location to reduce glancing Surface reflectivity: Different surfaces and conditions produce a varied quality Scanning speeds: Gauges the intensity and volume size of the point cloud Quality settings: Filter settings that influence the level of noise in the data Target ranges: Consideration of distance www.AECmag.com
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The emergence of 3D laser scanning opens up other professional’s minds to the benefits on offer but without a full understanding of the complications, limitations and considerations that need to be taken fully into account, success can be limited
to target features related to instrument capability and geometrical baseline/control Calibration: Continuous monitoring of instruments set up and operational state Operational procedures: Workflows/ continuous training to ensure efficiencies and accurate/usable data. The above are all quality considerations but data control is key. ‘Cloud to cloud’ registration of a number of data sets is appropriate for certain scenarios but for complete integrity, target control and relation to a control network is essential for overall accuracy and data confidence. The importance of this methodology is not always recognised outside of particular professions.
Capabilities, capacity and liability Data collection utilising laser scanning technology is a measurement surveyor’s core activity and skill set. Workflows and training are aligned to continually provide information in many varied formats to ensure the understanding on how best to represent ‘real’ geospatial scenarios within a design environment. Ultimately, there has to be considerable responsibility, reliance and trust to deliver accurate information that will provide the platform for designs, construction and manufacture processes. Surveyors are becoming more ingrained into the BIM process and are beginning to play a larger role, in collaboration with other stakeholders, outlining and assisting employer’s information requirements and BIM execution plans. Data collection expertise, and having a real understandwww.AECmag.com
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ing of capabilities, can bring additional valued knowledge to the table, reducing risk on the projects.
Data management We are all aware that software and hardware capabilities are developing at a rapid rate and the ability to handle large data sets is improving exponentially, especially on the cloud, but it is hard to keep pace, and with cross-business IT demands, it is difficult to justify having the most appropriate or latest software or hardware. Raw point cloud data can produce enormous file sizes which need to be manipulated and managed. Giga-bytes of point cloud data from a single setup will contain erroneous and unwanted data that needs to be cleaned and registered. This is not an automatic process! The use of these very large datasets can often be a real burden to the design team and on more than a couple of occasions we have heard horror stories of abandonment of the data altogether. In order to avoid this scenario CAD software capabilities are important, but key will be how the data is broken down into manageable portions for efficient handling. Building BIM-ready models from point cloud is not yet an automated process and requires considerable manual construction — a skill level developed by continually working with and understanding fully the nature of this data. Effectively, the dataset is a powerful archive of information that can be accessed and enhanced continuously
throughout the lifecycle of a project. Understanding its history and make-up provides the ability to manage the information more effectively and be of greater use to all stakeholders. It allows for more cost effective solutions. For example, it may be more efficient to build a less detailed model at the start of the process, but have the capacity to return to the data to model in greater detail in critical areas at a later stage. Having managed and gained a full understanding of the true nature of the point cloud, real value can be gained in utilising the data for other purposes, such as heritage recording or obtaining asset information, particularly when the detail can be enhanced with digital photography. 3D laser scanning and delivery of BIMready models can provide a data solution for many aspects of the BIM process. As the awareness of 3D laser scanning continues to grow so does the misinformation about its capabilities and where its applications lie. It can be a powerful tool in the right hands and answers a multitude of scenarios but you have to be sure you know what you have, and what you are doing. Just because the data may look right, it does not mean it is right. In order for 3D laser scanning technology to have a major influence in BIM development and deliver what can realistically be achieved, it is necessary to have a comprehensive understanding, not just in relation to the real benefits of the technology itself, but also to the ‘black art’ of using it. ■ ploughmancraven.co.uk
November / December 2014
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Feature
Autodesk Gallery Paris
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utodesk’s One Market headquarters in downtown San Francisco is charged with inspiring innovation. It is used for monthly, themed ‘Design Night’ events and engagement with start-ups and the local community. It also acts as a design gallery for the display of customers’ work. Outside the Bay City area, and in Europe in particular, however, ‘Autodeskers’ have long complained of a lack of similar outreach facilities. But in October Autodesk capitulated in style, opening a pop-up gallery in the heart of Paris. The free threeweek event was held at the Galerie Nikki Diana Marquardt on the edge of Marais. Autodesk branding was kept to a minimum, alongside a combination of interactive and static displays. The space had a 3D print zone and Fablab, an artist in residence and evening events. It showcased customers’ work in architecture, product design, fashion, automotive, aerospace, 3D printing and laser scanning. Autodesk’s top brass flew in for customer meetings and evening events with talks on a wide variety of design topics. With over 1,500 visitors in the first four days, Autodesk is considering other pop-up galleries in Germany, Italy and the UK. Local projects were prominently displayed alongside attractions from Pier 9, which is likely to be replicated at future events.
Welcome, Spark Visitors were given a chance to try out Autodesk’s new 3D printer, Spark, which was designed in the UK and made at Pier 9. Autodesk is using Spark as a testbed for its own 3D printer software development and to promote its brand. It is expected that at some point, fabrication will be moved to a provider with great capacity.
Pop into 3D printing Autodesk gallery showcased a snapshot of innovations currently shaping design from small-scale jewelry to giant infrastructure projects. It was inspiring and educational and, above all, there was no hard sell, which made it a relaxing entry point for industry folk and the public alike. It is a shame the pop-up element means that it will never be in town for long. One wanders what ever next for Autodesk? From this successful gallery outing, I would expect another to pop-up sometime soon. 42
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Pop-up Pop Art HyperGreen Tower The first thing attendees saw on entry to the gallery was a highly detailed 3D printed model of the HyperGreen Tower, by Jacques Ferrier Architectures. Standing 246 metres tall, the tower design has a curved, concrete, exterior lattice facade that acts as the building’s primary structural system. The design featured solar cells, wind turbines, a geothermal heating system and a rain water harvesting system. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The highly impressive San Francisco Museum of Modern Art expansion building took up a whole wall with a façade relief specially created to show the design’s styling and innovative fabrication techniques. The complex design by Norwegian/US practice Snøhetta was created by cutting huge panels in foam by computer controlled wire. Using these foam patterns as moulds, fibreglass castings were made for façade construction. These were treated with a special coating and were shipped to site using the foam moulds as protection, resulting in a very light and expressive cladding system. Smoke Dress — Anouk Wipprecht Ms Wipprecht’s 3D printed dress has builtin LED lighting. Should you stand too close to the wearer, the built in sensors trigger the lights to flash, warning the interloper to move away. Should this fail to get a reaction, the dress emits a cloud of dry ice smoke from a necklace/tube. This is either for the wearer to escape into the fog or to irritate the ‘close talker’. Airbus concept plane Airbus set out to revolutionise the structural design of aircraft. The concept plane, beautifully 3D printed and flying over the gallery, has ultra-long slim wings, semi-embedded engines, a U-shaped tail, and lightweight body to improve environmental performance. The bionic structural lattice was optimised by computer to provide the maximum strength for the greatest amount of natural light through a biopolymer membrane, eliminating the need for windows. Not a design for those who suffer vertigo. Nike analysis and 3D printed trainers Nike is leading the charge in 3D printing. It has convinced superstar athletes to undergo motion capture in their
typical sports. The movement is computerised and simulation and analysis done on the pressure and stresses in their footing. This information is then used to create custom shoes, tuned to the way athletes move. Nike has also started 3D printing shoes and cleats into the soles of football shoes to get optimum traction on the turf. Using Selective Laser Sintering (SLS) with a proprietary material, Nike has created a fully functional plate and traction system in a fraction of the traditional timeframe and at a fraction of the weight. Hacked 3D printer and tattoo machine One of the more unusual items on display at the gallery was a hacked Makerbot 3D printer that has been reappropriated as a tattoo device. Replacing the extruder head with a needle, the device uses a dismembered fake arm attached with some doodles on it. Apparently the device and concept took just eight hours for students to make and a volunteer has already got ‘inked’ by the machine. Renault Twizy For all who remember Sir Clive Sinclair’s C5, this is probably what it should have been. An electric urban two-seater built for lightness and distance, although I am not sure about the lack of windows in the doors and what that would mean in British weather. We have actually seen one on the road, so there is a market of sorts. Makers ‘Makers’ Bertier Buyt of leFabShop, and Gary Cige of Usine.io offered advice on 3D printing, fabrication and finding work spaces. While the noise on the Internet seems to identify the Maker movement as mainly American, it was clear from my visit to Paris that there are many people around the word with the same ambition. The gallery featured a wall of eight MakerBot Replicator 2, 3D Printers, an Mcor 3D printer and a Roland VersaStudio printer/cutter. There was a display area for printed parts and some kits for visiting children to assemble. Robot programming An interactive robot with pen attachment. Through a visual interface users can ‘program the robot’ to draw on wooden squares. Over time these build up to be complex art patterns. It aims to show that in the future Robots will not always need to be programmed prior to performing tasks.
www.AECmag.com
13/11/14 14:37:05
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Designviz
Elephant Park Citiscape Digital Footage of real-life actors merged with 3D architectural models to create slick a visualisation reminiscent of a short film. 44
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Elephant Park is a new residential site south of the river Thames in London’s borough of Elephant and Castle. Designed by MaccreanorLavington Architects, the residential project features a collection of modern buildings that range from three to 16 storeys in height, surrounded by communal green space. Cityscape Digital produced 15 stills and a four-minute film for the project. It worked with a film crew and green-screen technology to add in real actors to the virtual building. MaccreanorLavington Architects providwww.AECmag.com
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Gallery
ed 3D SketchUp models for the main structures, and 2D landscaping drawings, plus further details in 2D CAD. Once the 3D models were built, with details, textures and colours, the green-screen footage could be dropped into its virtual surroundings. A motion capture system was used to track the cameras that recorded the live footage. This data was fed into the 3D model, which could accurately reproduce the camera paths using the render camera angles, giving natural movement and scaling to the finished video. By using real people the video was made www.AECmag.com
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less clunky than traditional fly-throughs with mannequins, and the resulting effect is more like a short film, something increasingly demanded by Cityscape’s clients. Cityscape used 3ds Max and The Foundry’s Modo for modelling in 3D, and rendering, and composing animations in Nuke. Modo is most commonly used for animation and product design visuals. Cityscape designers reported a “simplistic, artistic feel” it brings to workflow. Cityscape found that it can be faster for models to be built straight in Modo working from 2D plans, rather than trying to import
and edit sketched 3D files from architects that may have walls or parts missing. One of the drawbacks to working in Modo is that there is no model history to make detailed changes with. However, Cityscape is adamant this is a ‘quirk’ that the team has become used to within its workflow. As a trade-off, Modo is popular with designers due to its ability to progressively preview light and textures in the rendering, being able to see what the designer is doing on the fly greatly speeding up the workflow. ■ cityscapedigital.co.uk
November / December 2014
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Preview Teradidi is looking to provide an easy way to access your desktop workstation remotely, so you can run BIM software such as Tekla Structures from anywhere
Teradici Workstation Access software Do you use a desktop workstation but sometimes need to access it from the site office or home? Teradici might have a solution for you, writes Greg Corke.
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ccessing a workstation remotely is a hugely powerful capability. You can use your 3D CAD workstation wherever you go — think shop floor, client office, or at home. With pixel streaming technology there is no need to check data out of the vault or lug your powerful workstation from design office to meeting room. Providing you have an adequate network connection you can use your 3D CAD software wherever you like, on any device, including tablets and thin clients. The downside is that remote workstations can be incredibly complex to set up. Talk to your average architect about datacentres, racks, hypervisors and virtual machines and the eyes soon glaze over. But remote workstations do not have to be complex. If you want to try it out but need something more powerful than GoToMyPc or Remote Desktop Connection, which are optimised for office applications rather than 3D CAD, then a new software tool from Teradici might pique your interest. 46
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Teradici’s reliably named Workstation Access Software is a purpose-built tool that uses the established PCoIP protocol to add remote access capability to your 3D CAD desktop workstation, on demand. Unlike the company’s PCIe host cards, which provide dedicated hardware for compressing, encrypting and sending IP packets over a network, the new Workstation Access Software does everything in software. It is a big change for a company that has been extolling the virtues of hardware-based compression since 2007, but Teradici is looking to expand its reach and introduce a whole new set of users to remote workstations. The big target is the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) — design, engineering, and architecture firms with less than 100 desktop workstations that do not want to jump head first into a data centre solution. Everything about the Workstation Access Software is designed for ease of deployment. Teradici reckons it takes just
five minutes to get up and running and that includes installing software on both host and client. No special network settings are required to run it over LAN, it claims. Things get a bit more complicated when you want to access the workstation over the Internet. You will first need to ‘VPN in’, so your network will need that capability. However, next year Teradici’s software will include its own VPN of sorts, just for PCoIP data, which should further break down the barriers for more technically challenged firms. The host software runs as a background service in Windows — and as far as the average user is concerned, that is about it. Next, punch the IP address of the host workstation into the PCoIP software client, click connect and — hey presto — you can access your 3D CAD software on any Windows or Apple OS X machine. Android and iOS clients will come next year. The software can support up to two monitors (for a maximum of 2,560 x 1,600 www.AECmag.com
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resolution) at a frame rate of up to 30 frames per second (FPS), half that of Teradici’s hardware-based solution. CAD model rotation should still be relatively smooth at this speed but it is unlikely to give users as good an experience as they would get with a hardware solution. A low latency, high bandwidth connection is a given, but there are some other considerations for maximising performance. As everything is done in software, on a single CPU core, a higher GHz processor at both ends should lead to a better user experience. Performance can be improved by adding a Zero client at the end point, perhaps a permanent fixture in the boardroom. The software will work best with Nvidia GPUs in the host workstation, those with driver version 332.76 or later. This enables it to grab the pixels direct from the GPU frame buffer, rather than the graphics driver, which effectively removes one step in the process. In theory, this reduces the CPU overhead and increases performance. Teradici recommends the Quadro K4000 or higher, although it works with other Nvidia GPUs. AMD FirePro GPUs are compatible but users will need to wait until next year before the software can grab pixels from the frame buffer in a similar way. With Teradici’s hardware-based solution users are given control over perfor-
mance settings — prioritising frame rate or quality. This capability has not yet been fully exposed in the Workstation Access Software, though experienced IT administrators are able to dive in and change settings in an ADM file. Next year, Teradici will make it easier to tweak performance / quality settings by adding a user friendly PCoIP control panel.
Availability Teradici does not have the channels to push this product out to market so is partnering with workstation manufacturers. Dell is currently the only one, and offers the software as a cost option on its Precision workstations, but Teradici is talking to other partners as well. These could be smaller, boutique workstation manufacturers as well as the bigger players, though HP is unlikely to be among them as it already has its Remote Graphics Software (RGS) that ships free with all HP Z Workstations. The software is currently only available in the US for $199, plus a mandatory $40, for one-year support and software upgrades. It will be rolled out to Europe in December and the rest of the world next year.
Conclusion This is an interesting development from Teradici which has always championed the
use of dedicated hardware for compressing and uncompressing pixels. Teradici sees its Workstation Access Software as a gentle introduction to remote workstations — for users that have a fondness for their desktop workstation, but want to access them remotely on occasion. Once the software has been proved out and embedded in workflows, Teradici hopes customers will look at some of its more powerful remote workstation solutions. An obvious upgrade would be to invest in a Teradici PCIe card and Zero client, which should deliver a better user experience on low latency connections. However, Teradici also has a big focus on data centres, and already has plans to extend the reach of the Workstation Access Software to support multiple users on virtualised workstations. As far as this initial software release is concerned it is clear it is a work in progress. However, with the promise of built-in PCoIP VPN, high-level support for AMD FirePro and Nvidia Quadro GPUs and userfriendly controls for tweaking settings, it looks like things will progress quickly. The software may be new, but the PCoIP protocol it relies on is mature. Teradici says it is a tried and tested technology for a workstation-class remote access experience. We look forward to testing its performance. ■ teradici.com
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Feature
Timing is everything With new CPUs and GPUs, faster storage and new I/O technologies, it is the perfect time to buy a workstation, writes Greg Corke.
T
he launch of a new generation of Intel Xeon processors is a big event in the workstation calendar. Indeed, when Intel bangs the drum all the workstation manufacturers dance and suddenly there is a whole range of new machines. Like dads at the disco though, not everyone stays in rhythm. GPU manufacturers, for example, have their own development cycles and it is not often these critical 3D workstation components get updated at the same time. With the introduction of the Intel Haswell-based Xeon E5 v3 series CPUs this Autumn, however, things are a little different. To coincide with this major launch there are a whole load of AMD and Nvidia professional GPUs rolling off the production line. And with other workstation technologies, such as Solid State Drives (SSDs), coming down in price and high-speed I/O technologies becoming mainstream, it is a very good time to be thinking about upgrading your workstation. So let us have a look at each of the technologies in turn and what they mean for CAD / BIM and design visualisation software.
Xeon E5 v2 Series) performance in ray trace rendering has the potential to go off the scale. Applications like V-Ray and 3ds Max (mental ray) should feast on dual CPU workstations with a whopping 36 cores and 72 threads. Having this many cores in a single CPU does reduce clock speed though with the 18 core Intel Xeon E5-2699 v3 only running at 2.3 GHz. For a better balance of performance in single threaded and multithreaded applications, the eight core 3.2GHz Xeon E5-2667 v3 and ten core 3.1GHz Xeon E5-2687W v3 both look interesting. For single CPU workstations, the quad core Xeon E5-1630 v3 pushes the clock speed up to 3.7GHz.
Processors Intel’s new Haswell-based Xeon E5 v3 series chip family promises a jump in performance, support for DDR4 memory, and more cores — up to 18 cores in a single CPU. First off, it is important to note that, clock for clock, Intel Haswell delivers more performance than Intel Ivy Bridge, which it replaces — so do not go comparing GHz to GHz directly. For example, a Haswell-based Xeon E5-1620v3 (3.5GHz up to 3.6GHz Turbo) should comfortably beat an Ivy Bridgebased Xeon E5-1620v2 (3.7GHz up to 3.9GHz Turbo) in a CAD race. This speed boost in single threaded applications is also down to new DDR4 memory, which runs at a speed of 2,133MHz, 14 per cent faster than Ivy Bridge’s 1,866MHz DDR3 memory. Secondly, with up to 18 cores per CPU (50 per cent more cores than the Ivy Bridge www.AECmag.com
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Haswell-based Core i7 chips. The top-ofthe-line Intel Core i7-5960X boasts eight cores and runs at a base clock frequency of 3.0GHz (up to 3.5GHz in turbo), while the Core i7-5930K is a six core CPU that runs at 3.5GHz (up to 3.7GHz in turbo). Expect these chips to appear more in niche machines from the likes of Scan and Workstation Specialists, and expect them to be overclocked so they run at faster speeds. This is something that the Tier One manufacturers cannot offer.
GPUs Both AMD and Nvidia have brand new families of professional GPUs out now. The big news is more on-board memory, with even entry-level cards from both manufacturers having plenty for most CAD/BIM-centric workflows. There is also wider support for multiple 4K displays. Nvidia has the biggest share of this market with all the major workstation manufacturers offering its entire new range of Quadro KX20 and KX200 GPUs. AMD has less penetration with the tier-one workstation manufacturers with Dell and Fujitsu offering the biggest choice of FirePro WX100 GPUs.
Storage and I/O
The other interesting development comes from the workstation manufacturers, who are offering a much broader range of CPUs in their machines. This is particularly noticeable in some single CPU workstations where the core count has risen dramatically. While most manufacturers used to limit to eight cores, it is now possible to get 14 or even 18 cores in a single processor machine. Users of ray-trace rendering software will now be able to significantly boost performance without having to invest in a more expensive dual CPU workstation. Intel has also launched some new
Storage has also taken a big step forward — not purely from a performance perspective — but in terms of prices dropping and being able to pack more drives into a single workstation. Of course, all the action is around Solid State Drives (SSDs), and HP in particular is making a lot of noise about the HP Z Turbo Drive, a mainstream SSD which uses the PCIe interface to deliver much faster sustained read/write speeds than SSDs based on the bandwidth-limited SATA interface. However, not everyone can get the most out these fast drives. Meanwhile, I/O technologies such as Thunderbolt 2.0 are starting to become more standard and expect to see USB 3.0 ports everywhere, rather than just a limited few, thanks to the latest Intel chipsets. November / December 2014
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Feature
Structural showcase: Oasys project of the year awards The Oasys Project of the year competition aims to showcase some of the best schemes delivered using Oasys software. Below are the commercial and academic winners of the structural category who used Oasys GSA analysis software in the development of their projects. Full details of the competition can be found oasys-software.com/competition
Academic category Winner Large Spans — The Existing ‘Kuip’ in Rotterdam (Oasys GSA) Ruud van Knippenberg & Simon Cox This research project into a new roof design for the ‘Kuip’ stadium in Rotterdam was part of the Masters in structural design course at the Eindhoven University of Technology. The primary criteria was to design an elegant retractable roof that covers the extended stadium with 63.000 spectators. The winning entry from Mr Van Kinoppenberg and Mr Cox featured a lightweight cable structure roof. Instead of a most stadium roofs, which feature a superstructure with large rigid elements, the roof closes by sliding a membrane from the outside (permanent roof structure) to the inside. With six segments it gives the appearance of an iris when closed. The final roof structure was designed and analysed in GSA Oasys in five consecutive studies. Within an iterative process the form finding, pre-stressing, internal loadings and deformations were analysed.
Commercial category Winner Parametric Tower Design (Oasys GSA) — Chris van der Ploeg, Structural Engineer, ABT Consulting Engineers, Delft, The Netherlands This spectacular 30m tower structure at the Chemelot campus in the south of The Netherlands was designed as a focal point for a community of chemical industry related companies. Two large LED screens located at the top of the tower are used to communicate events. The main load bearing structure, designed by ABT Consulting Engineers, is a three-dimensional steel truss structure built of circular hollow sections. Fabric covers the exterior of the structure, while integrated lighting provides a spectacular night appearance. A parametric model of the structure helped evaluate different shape variations. The ability to automatically perform large numbers of repetitive calculations improved the economical feasibility of the design. 50
November / December 2014
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www.AECmag.com
13/11/14 14:41:10
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