13 minute read
gen BIM tool
Having heard from several reliable sources that development work for a next generation cloud-based BIM tool is underway Martyn Day looks to Autodesk’s manufacturing division for some clues as to how it might work.
Autodesk has a vision. In the future it believes that applications will be available on any device, anywhere, irrespective of operating system. People will be able to collaborate with many others in real time through a managed environment and utilise the power of large servers to optimise, enhance, compute and suggest design solutions that we could never envisage. Our tools, capable of deriving complex geometry, will be able to directly drive fabrication ‘machines’, which will recreate these forms quickly with high precision. It is a big and compelling vision for anyone with an imagination.
But what we have now is quite far from that. The rapid proliferation of Autodesk point solutions and services is going through a messy patch, with the mitosis of desktop products with cloud equivalents. For instance AutoCAD has a cloudbased version called AutoCAD 360. The cloud version of AutoCAD is a ground-up redevelopment and does not really compare in feature set to the desktop version, which is what Autodesk eventually intends for all its products.
There is also a Mac version of AutoCAD that has a slightly different feature set again, mainly due to the OS differences. Convergence of even one product line is not so simple and will take many more years of development. Revit in the cloud BBefore we dive into the latest news and scuttlebutt on Revit and the cloud, I need to first highlight what is happening in the manufacturing division of Autodesk — as developments there will likely eventually impact the word of Revit and Building Information Modelling (BIM).
While AEC magazine concentrates on covering technologies impacting Architecture, Engineering & Construction, we also have a sister publication DEVELOP3D, which monitors the manufacturing world. The cloud is having a more immediate impact on the next generation tools in manufacturing, with a number of brand new cloud-based applications looking to unseat the status quo of popular desktop modelling tools.
As the AEC industry moves at a much slower pace, developers of manufacturing CAD software are testing out their new modelling tools that are delivered via cloud technology. Here Autodesk has Fusion360, which is its next generation 3D modelling tool for engineers. Ultimately Fusion360 will replace Autodesk’s previous generation manufacturing application, Inventor, at some point in the future.
Inventor is a Windows-only 3D modelling application that only works on a desktop PC. Fusion360 is a cloud-based application that resides on a server and is accessed from a 200MB desktop thin-client on Mac OS or Windows. It will also be available via a web browser from any machine or operating system soon.
A Fusion360 subscription is just $25 a month. As Inventor is a mature product (released 1999) and Fusion360 is new (released 2013), written from the ground up, Inventor still does a whole lot more than Fusion does. But what Fusion does, it does better and faster.
Given Revit’s age (released 2000), huge models and performance ‘issues’ and Autodesk’s future cloud vision, we have been eagerly waiting for something similar to happen in Autodesk’s AEC development.
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1 Fusion360 is a cloud-based application that resides on a server and is accessed from a 200Mb desktop thin-client on Mac OS or Windows 2 Project Alexandria will manage both 2D and 3D data, from multiple applications 3 BIM360 Glue is like an online Navisworks for model viewing, analysis and markup 4 BIM360 Field links on-site workers to the latest design information for collaboration and reporting
Watching Fusion360 make leaps and bounds these last two years has seemed like an eternity. AEC Magazine has now heard from several trusted sources that development work for a next generation cloud-based BIM tool is underway and will be with us ‘sooner, rather than later’.
There are very few, if any details, available at present but Fusion could be a template to look at should you be interested.
When it came to creating a new 3D cloud-based modelling tool for manufacturing Autodesk chose to start from scratch and Fusion360 had a thin-client / server architecture, and now has an inbrowser option (see Project Leopard). But with Revit, I would be very surprised if Autodesk did a complete ground up rewrite to make it cloud-deliverable — even though that is what I believe Revit needs.
Autodesk realises that the AEC market moves at quite a slow pace and people are quite conservative. To come out with a radical new product that could confuse all their customers would be risky.
For the first few years, Fusion did not really offer an alternative to what was available on the desktop, just a few key capabilities. With Revit, Autodesk may look at a way to get what is available today but host it online, offloading some of the hardware problems by splitting off the Revit Database (as seen in Project Skyscraper) and having a thin-client style interface as Fusion has.
Saying that, it may surprise us completely and create a new Revit style product. A cloud-based BIM tool would also liberate Revit from Windows and finally bring it to the Mac. The benefits of having a BIM tool hosted in the cloud would be huge for collaboration, with datasets being available to all project participants via the BIM360 service, as well as hosted management, rendering, analysis and benefits on-site. And instead of a beast of a machine with 32GB of RAM, you might be able to get away with an iPad Pro! It is at this point I must seem like a child feeling his Christmas presents a little bit too hard.
In the meantime let’s look at what else Autodesk’s AEC division has been up to. Computation design Autodesk is keen to rapidly develop and link its products to the Dynamo computational design engine. Integrating FormIt with Dynamo is the first stage of enhancing conceptual design with computationaldriven forms. Again this echoes Autodesk’s manufacturing division’s vision of providing optimisation and generative solutions for structural designs in products.
In the time it takes a designer to model one solution to a problem, with generative and evolutionary design tools, the computer could suggest 50 or 100 geometrical variants, which would solve the design criteria. We are not that far off from when the computer actually aids the design process, as opposed to just helps document it. Expect a deeper integration of Dynamo in all products as well as more cloud-based computational tools. Fabrication With modular construction becoming increasingly popular, Autodesk is aware that its AEC products need to be able to link to and drive fabrication machines. These could be laser cutters, robots, CNC milling machines, or concrete 3D printers.
Autodesk has a team dedicated to developing solutions and interfaces for core products such as Revit to ‘play friendly’
with this emerging, connected, modular, Recap supports photogrammetry and building sites. It could also be used to fabrication market. It seems convergence is laser scans but is probably more targeted at find materials, check building progress not just for software development but also the surveying and wide area data capture and create 4D timeline models. for industries, as ‘digital manufacturing’ field, which is dominated by very expensive, Skycatch transforms the way sites can be becomes the end goal for all professions. difficult-to-use applications, mainly from surveyed and monitored. Autodesk ReCap laser scanning vendors. can be used to process the collected data. BIM360 Recap is a relatively low cost solution that Autodesk BIM360 is the cloud backbone to can work on a tablet and show in real time AutoCAD connect Autodesk’s AEC products and cus- the results of collective scans. Unfortunately, We tend not to write much about 2D and tomers. It currently consists of four prod- despite a soft release, the product suffered AutoCAD, however it is still a significant ucts, Glue, Field, Plan and Building Ops. some negative feedback with a number of contributor to Autodesk’s income and Glue is like an online Navisworks for model early technical issues but with subsequent makes up for a considerable percentage of viewing, analysis and markup. It works in releases, the team is really starting to get the usage within Autodesk Suites. the browser and on an iPad and drives the product in shape. Autodesk wants to improve the way its BIM360 Layout App, which links BIM to a Memento is a generic application that software upgrades on customer’s desktops. robotic total station for on-site layout. again works with point clouds or photo- As opposed to having to delete the previous
Field links on-site workers to the latest grammetry data, offers a very minimal installation and reinstall, or perform a pardesign information for collaboration and interface but can pull off magical results tial update to the code, which can damage reporting. Plan is a web service for creat- interpreting gigabytes of data. customisations and tool layouts, Autodesk ing and tracking project work plans, while Autodesk has used Memento on a num- is investigating ways to stream updates to Building Ops is a mobile facilities manage- ber of prestigious projects for data capture the software without negatively impacting ment asset management service. for international museums, archeology, the system. Here, AutoCAD is the guinea
Coming soon to this mix is Project environmental, gaming and reverse engi- pig and advances made will be shared Alexandria (projectalexandria.io), neering. It is a ‘Swiss Army knife’ for creat- throughout Autodesk’s other deskbound Autodesk’s latest attempt at delivering a ing rich project models from masses of applications. document management system. dumb data. This video will blow your mind
Autodesk has not had much success at on the possibilities of photogrammetry: Conclusion developing a enterprise-wide document (tinyurl.com/reality-video). For now, most of my thoughts are on what management systems, with a few historic Forthcoming capabilities will enhance the Revit team will deliver given the strong failures under its belt. Recently rumour of a Fusion360 cloudit has fared better with the likes of Buzzsaw and Vault but still does not compete with the likes of Bentley ProjectWise. I a would be complete ‘‘ very surprised if Autodesk did ground up re-write of Revit to delivery template. We have already seen cloud-delivered Revit sessions in the way Autodesk demonstrates forth-
Project Alexandria looks to make it cloud-deliverable — even though coming versions of Revit such be the company’s most serious attempt to date to provide a project-based management layer. It will be based within that is what I believe ’’ Revit needs as ‘Sunrise’, which became the R2 release. While I am sure many customers would prefer to have the BIM360 as a paid-for service. Project the resolution of taking these huge ‘life-size’ current system completely replicated and Alexandria will manage both 2D and 3D models to 3D printers enabling prints with delivered, I would be more impressed if it data, from multiple applications. details down to 10 micron. As Autodesk has was a ground up rethinking of what a Document viewing, markup, approval its own 3D printer, the Ember, the company modern BIM tool should be. and sign-off workflows can be created has been refining its scan-to-print, to pre- The more advanced BIM practitioners together with some degree of automation. serve the detail captured at high resolution. are crying out for better tools and are fed As it is in the cloud access can be from The market of reality computing is still up of work-arounds. The whole concept of anywhere — on-site, on a laptop or phone embryonic but all it takes is for designers to breaking down models in projects is — and it appears to have a very clean user realise the potential of this new capability. because of the limitations of Revit to haninterface design. dle large files. The need for expensive net-
While the codename Alexandria is more Skycatch working and compressors to shunt huge than a hint at the historic library in Egypt Autodesk has just announced a strategic models data around is also because of the and one of the seven wonders of the world, investment in US Unmanned Aerial Vehicle software architecture. A move to the cloud one hopes that the product does not share (UAV) company Skycatch, which it hopes should eradicate all this. Instead of harda similar fate. to support with Autodesk Recap. ware bottlenecks, large firms will need Skycatch (blog.skycatch.com) is an robust and thick internet connectivity. Memento and Recap autonomous drone that can fly around To just take the existing code and host it Through acquisition and development building sites at regular intervals on set online would be a travesty, not to take the Autodesk has created a number of laser flight paths, capturing structures and opportunity to re-architect and modernise scanning and photogrammetry applications landscapes with video. The drone can the code to perfrom better and make use of and capabilities for all vertical markets, return to base, drop the battery and the cloud infrastructure. product design, architecture, surveying, stored video, reload with a new battery It’s an important port as it’s the most manufacture, construction, films, and and memory and refly the route. important BIM platform out there and could games. The two main products it is champi- Autodesk can take this image data and impact hundred of thousands of users. oning are Recap and Memento. create accurate 3D survey models of ■ autodesk.com
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