AEC Magazine September / October 2021

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

From BIM to twin Digital twin special edition

NXT BLD is back

Prisoner of vendor

Radeon Pro W6600

Book your place: London - 9 Nov 2021

Has AEC software become a trap?

AMD’s affordable pro ray tracing GPU

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

editorial

MANAGING EDITOR GREG CORKE greg@x3dmedia.com

CONSULTING EDITOR MARTYN DAY

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martyn@x3dmedia.com

DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR STEPHEN HOLMES stephen@x3dmedia.com

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GROUP MEDIA DIRECTOR TONY BAKSH tony@x3dmedia.com

ADVERTISING MANAGER STEVE KING steve@x3dmedia.com

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Industry news 7

NXT BLD preview 45

Autodesk invests in facilities management, Nvidia unveils new ray tracing GPU, Enscape to launch Mac version, and One Click LCA to boost low carbon structures

On 9 November 2021 AEC Magazine’s future gazing conference and exhibition will return to London in physical form

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MANAGER ALAN CLEVELAND alan@x3dmedia.com accounts

Autodesk Tandem 18 Even if you simply use Revit and think you have no interest in Autodesk’s digital twin solution you should still read this

CHARLOTTE TAIBI charlotte@x3dmedia.com

FINANCIAL CONTROLLER SAMANTHA TODESCATO-RUTLAND sam@chalfen.com AEC Magazine is available FREE to qualifying individuals. To ensure you receive your regular copy please register online at www.aecmag.com about AEC Magazine is published bi-monthly by X3DMedia Ltd 19 Leyden Street London, E1 7LE UK T. +44 (0)20 3355 7310 F. +44 (0)20 3355 7319 © 2021 X3DMedia Ltd All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or part without prior permission from the publisher is prohibited. All trademarks acknowledged. Opinions expressed in articles are those of the author and not of X3DMedia. X3DMedia cannot accept responsibility for errors in articles or advertisements within the magazine.

Digital twins - the case for open source 24 Sustainable digital twins require that you build your systems around open-source technology, writes Keith Bentley

Twinview digital twin platform 27 Space Group’s configurable browserbased digital twin platform is designed to extend BIM into the property sector

Build: Architecture 52 Next month Epic Games will host a highly focused virtual event showcasing innovative real-time projects

Graphisoft Building Together 54 Over 30 online talks covering technology, case studies and the experiences and views of architects on today’s hot topics

Art to engineering 56 Turning an artistic vision for a bold new stage design for Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” into a fully articulated, structurallyoptimised 12 metre high clown

Vectorworks Lifecycle optimisation 30 development 58 How digital advisors can help asset owners drive their digital building agenda and smart operations thinking

We caught up with the Vectorworks executive team to find out more about Apple Silicon, the cloud and lots more

Autonomous scanning 34 Radeon Pro W6600 62

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Leica launches the BLK ARC, a laser scanning module for robots, and the BLK2FLY, a fully integrated LiDAR drone

AMD’s new $649 pro GPU offers users of CAD software a gateway into design viz and VR, now and in the future

Prisoner of vendor 40

Arup Mail Manager 66

Has proprietary AEC software become a trap for firms with a high level of maturity in their BIM processes?

Firms can now capture and collate their project related email communication on mobile devices September / October 2021

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05/10/2021 13:38

BORNHORST + WARD COORDINATES DIGITAL PROJECTS WITH REVU Brisbane-based Bornhorst + Ward used Revu to markup changes to its latest design drawings. Within three months, the company saw a full ROI with Revu – saving £2.5k per month in printing and paper costs.

Taking a digital approach

Now, Taylor uses Revu to review drawings and create preliminary designs and sketches.

Revu’s Sets feature allows the Bornhorst + Ward team to view, access and navigate an unlimited number of source files as a single document in a single tab. Everyone reviewing the drawings can see their previous markups while checking the latest drawing.

Previously, Bornhorst + Ward engineers marked up paper drawings for in-plan reviews, meaning it could become difficult to determine which one was the latest version. This would lead to version conflicts and costly rework.

Once markups have been completed, the team uses the Overlay feature in Revu to overlay drawings and compare past iterations, ensuring accuracy of any changes and assisting with design and coordination.

Civil and structural engineering consultancy Bornhorst + Ward was growing – fast. With new opportunities in the form of high-profile projects, it needed software that allowed for digital collaboration.

The solution? Bluebeam Revu.

"Having so many people working on the job, if we were using paper, markups would likely get lost,” says director Brett Taylor. “Whereas with Bluebeam Revu, it's all consolidated in our set so that anyone can open up our markup set and see what has to be done.”

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Finding success with Revu Bluebeam Revu has allowed Bornhorst + Ward to go paperless while seamlessly transitioning from working in its former offices to working from home during the height of the pandemic and now working in its brand-new offices.

The new office has increased workstations by 10%, has much better collaborative spaces and reduced office floor space, allowing the firm to maximise productivity and reduce operating cost margins.

“Everything that we do, from the small jobs to the big jobs, is done in Bluebeam. We don't use paper anymore,” says director Brett Taylor.

Looking ahead, the firm plans to continue using Revu on projects of all sizes and scopes.

Find out how Revu can help digitalise your next big project: bluebeam.co.uk/go-digital

The company issues around 2,000 to 3,000 drawings per month, and each drawing revision would have been printed at least four times for checking by different team members.

That represents a saving of around 10,000 pieces of paper per month using Revu, saving the business £2.5k per month in printing and paper costs. On paper cost savings alone, Bornhorst + Ward saw a return on investment for Revu in just three months.

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Duke Ellington School of the Arts Architect: cox graae + spack architects / LBA Joint Venture Photo © Chris Ambridge

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News

One Click LCA and Trimble to boost low carbon structures

Issue tracking from IrisVR ssues discovered during collaborative VR coordination meetings in Prospect by IrisVR, can now be tracked.

Once classified, hard and soft clashes, general issues, requirement changes, or points of interest can exported to a variety of file types. This includes the BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) , which can be used to connect into existing issue tracking workflows, such as BIMcollab and Revizto.

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■ irisvr.com

o make it easier to design and deliver low embodied carbon structures, life-cycle assessment specialist One Click LCA is collaborating with Trimble on a free carbon assessment tool. The tool, which is fully integrated with Tekla Structures, Tekla Structural Designer, and Trimble Connect, is available for free until the end of 2021.

According to research by One Click LCA, structural elements are responsible for around 70% of a building’s embodied carbon footprint. Cutting the carbon of structures critical in the ‘race to zero’, as outlined in the COP26 UN Climate Change Conference goals.

The collaboration between One Click LCA and Trimble is designed to make it

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easier to calculate and reduce embodied carbon at any phase of a project: from early analysis and design, through to finished construction.

According to One Click LCA, the combination of its Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) database and Trimble’s constructible models enable the emissions of every nut, bolt or rebar to be calculated accurately.

The Trimble integration was developed by construction consultancy, Sweco, in collaboration with One Click LCA. It is one of a series of integrations, with One Click LCA also offering free tools and integrations with McNeel Rhino and IES Gaia, with the aim of supporting the sector to decarbonise.

■oneclicklca.com/cop26

Virtual job site navigation for Procore sers of Procore’s construction management software can now remotely ‘walk through’ a construction site thanks to a new integration with the CupixWorks 3D Digital Twin Platform.

Users of the software can navigate to the location of RFIs, observations and open items, search by location names and review job sites retrospectively.

According to Cupix, this enables teams to review iterative progress on a job site dating back days, weeks or months.

The integration of Cupix with Procore delivers a 360-degree panoramic view with ‘full 3D spatial context’, enabling users to search locations within a job site

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by the names they already use, (e.g. main lobby) without having to leave the Procore platform or alter Procore’s normal operations.

Cupix’s real-time 3D digital twin collaboration tool, SiteView, offers virtual remote site navigation, progress tracking, as-built vs. BIM analysis, 3D measurements, and 3D annotations.

“Before Cupix, we used to send cell phone pictures back and forth, or try to use Facetime. Now, using just an off-theshelf 360-degree camera, Cupix gives us the full context to solve problems,” says Shane Flanagan, senior project manager at Dome Construction.

■ cupix.com

Bringing BIM into AR / VR T-Platform is a new web platform from VT-Lab designed to enable AECO teams to visualise and work with BIM models in AR and VR, as well as with smartphone, tablet, and web.

The software targets the entire AECO process, from design and construction through to operations and maintenance. The aim is to give everyone involved in the construction process access to ‘productivity solutions’, to bring BIM to site and enable siteto-office communications.

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■ vt-lab.com

Harrow creates ‘digital twin’ arrow has added highdefinition street-level imagery and LiDAR data to its Esri UK GIS system, giving staff access to a ‘digital twin’ of the London borough.

The move is designed to improve the efficiency of various tasks in planning, highways and Council Tax and reduce the need for site visits.

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■ esriuk.com

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News

Nvidia RTX A2000 professional desktop GPU launches for tiny workstation vidia has unveiled the Nvidia RTX A2000, its first desktop GPU with ‘real-time’ ray tracing and AI acceleration capabilities that has been specifically designed for small form factor workstations (SFF).

With an estimated street price of $450, the Nvidia RTX A2000 is also a big step forward in bringing RTX technology into the mainstream workstation segment.

According to an Nvidia spokesperson, it opens up RTX to so many more designers who may have been working on small assemblies which now need to be ray traced.

SFF workstations like the HP Z2 SFF and Dell Precision 3450 SFF are extremely popular with AEC firms because they take up significantly less space than standard desktop towers.

However, because of their size, they are limited to ‘low-profile’ form factor GPUs. Historical low-profile GPUs like the Nvidia Quadro P1000 are not RTXenabled and are only suitable for mainstream 3D CAD or BIM workflows (although some SFF workstations offer a custom version of the Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000, an MXM form factor GPU typically found in mobile workstations).

The Nvidia RTX A2000 is ‘low-profile’ but a lot thicker than others. It takes up two slots on the motherboard, something typically associated with high-end GPUs like the Nvidia RTX A5000 or Nvidia

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RTX A6000. However, The Nvidia RTX A2000 is not limited to SFF workstations. When the GPU is purchased seperately (i.e. not as part of a fully configured workstation) it also comes with a full height ATX bracket so it can be fitted in a standard tower.

Specifications include 6 GB GDDR6 of ECC memory, four Mini DisplayPort connectors and a max power consumption of 70W. It features 8 TFLOPS of single precision performance (double that of the previous generation 5 GB Nvidia Quadro P2200), 15.6 TFLOPS of RT Core Performance and 63.9 TFLOPS of Tensor

Performance.

These specs are a fair way behind the more powerful $999 Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB), which is available in mini towers, and features 19.2 TFLOPS of single precision performance, 37.4 TFLOPS of RT Core performance and 153.4 TFLOPS of Tensor performance.

The Nvidia RTX A2000 desktop GPU will be available in workstations from manufacturers including ASUS, BOXX Technologies, Dell Technologies, HP and Lenovo as well as Nvidia’s global distribution partners later this year.

■ nvidia.com/en-gb/design-visualization/rtx-a2000

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on the new GPU This is a very smart move from Nvidia as it looks to extend the reach of its RTX technology among design, engineering and architecture firms.

It’s also one that took us completely by surprise. We had expected Nvidia to launch an RTX A2000 GPU but had no idea that it would have a low profile form factor, using a dual slot design to deliver the required levels of performance.

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By doing so Nvidia not only brings RTX technology into the mainstream but makes it compatible with the millions of Small Form Factor workstations already out in the market.

The hope is that firms that were previously unable to widely adopt RTX-enabled workflows without swapping out a whole fleet of workstations, can now do so with a relatively simple and low-cost upgrade.

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Nvidia will be particularly keen to use this to drive adoption of its Nvidia Omniverse collaboration and simulation platform, although there are plenty of other RTX-enabled applications out there such as Enscape, V-Ray, KeyShot, Unreal Engine and Solidworks Visualize.

Beyond RTX, the Nvidia RTX A2000 should also help give extended CAD- and BIM-focused teams access to

other real-time viz tools and, of course VR. We’re excited by this announcement and look forward to testing out the GPU later this year. The one question we have is will 6 GB be too limiting for some pro users, even ones considered entry-level? For a GPU of this capability, we would have expected 8 GB, especially as it’s quite a big step up to the 16 GB Nvidia RTX A4000.

www.AECmag.com

05/10/2021 08:36

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ROUND UP Colour critical print

Fuzor 2022 launches to boost a range of VDC workflows

HP has launched two new large format printers, the HP DesignJet Z6 Pro and Z9+ Pro, specifically designed for those that place a big importance on wide colour gamut and colour accurate printing. This includes GIS professionals and design visualisation artists ■ hp.com

Enscape for Archicad Real-time rendering and VR software Enscape has released a Service Pack for Archicad 25. It will give access to latest features in Enscape 3.1, including the new material library, simplified assets, panorama gallery, and support for Nvidia DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology ■ enscape3d.com

V-Ray 5 for Unreal Chaos has released V-Ray 5 for Unreal, an update to its production rendering plug-in designed to import V-Ray scenes, bake lighting and render ray-traced images and animations in Unreal Engine. The new version is said to offer a new level of control over light baking ■ chaosgroup.com/vray/unreal

Construction One Trimble has launched Trimble Construction One, a connected, cloudbased construction management platform designed to bridge the gap between constructible models and project financials during all phases of the construction project lifecycle ■ construction.trimble.com

Assisted reality RealWear’s head-mounted assisted reality HMT-1 device has been integrated Autodesk Construction Cloud. The ruggedised wearable is designed to give construction workers real-time access to information and expertise, while keeping their hands and field of view free for work ■ realwear.com

Inspection tech FieldGenius for Construction Inspection from Leica Geosystems is a new solution designed to increase efficiency and accuracy of daily work reporting for inspectors and engineers in construction firms ■ leica-geosystems.com

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uzor 2022, the latest release of the virtual design and construction (VDC) software from Kalloc Studios, has launched with several visual improvements to enhance realism, as well as many other functional updates for co-ordination and 4D construction simulation.

To boost visualisation on large projects, dirt maps can be used to add more realism, while ‘tile mitigations’ randomise repeated textures. Shadows are also improved so they are now reflected on water and there’s a dust particle effect that adds realism when animating excavation using heavy machinery.

High resolution trees with multiple tree types help provide a more realistic

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backdrop to 4D simulations, while mixed renders can be used in detailed animations to highlight specific parts of the model while everything else is rendered in wireframe to give context.

Finally, Fuzor 2022 includes scrollable textures help show direction, such as entrance / exit signs or to give the effect of concrete being poured.

Beyond visualisation, Fuzor 2022 introduces weight and volume estimation to help determine the most efficient delivery and installation method and adds the ability to export schedule and BIM data to platforms like Power BI for further data analysis. The software also includes enhanced clash detection reports..

■ kalloctech.com

CYPE focuses on OpenBIM for 2022 YPE has enhanced the OpenBIM workflow for the 2022 release of its AEC suite with improvements to its cloud-based BIMserver. center platform and the optimisation of IFC file exchange.

According to CYPE, its BIMserver.center platform is being used on a daily basis by almost 95,000 professionals from 180 different countries, 18,500 of which have joined in the

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first six months of this year.

There are also improvements to its 3D architectural modelling solutions and incorporated national and international codes. Most of the new developments centre on CYPE Architecture with updates including the creation of direct links to other programs, the export of BIM model information to other applications such as Open BIM Memorias CTE, and geometry editing improvements.

The 2022 version of CYPE also marks the launch of a new, free program for defining the initial conditions of a project site.

Open BIM Site is designed to establish the geographical location of the models, manage different types of maps, enter topographical surfaces and add elements to the site environment, such as plots of land and buildings.

■ cype.com

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News

Fixie and AMRC to bring together 3D printing and AR

ixie and the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC) have secured £500,000 from Innovate UK to help architects author their own immersive presentations.

Fixie will collaborate with the AMRC to explore the emerging field of WebXR, and to also focus on the interaction between

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physical 3D printed model production and the creation of overlaid augmented reality presentations.

By utilising the same originating data for the two formats, and putting ownership of the process into the hands of architects, Fixie believes the project will facilitate wider adoption by industry.

■ fixie3d.com

Symetri in partnership with matterlab esign and engineering software and services provider Symetri has formed a partnership’ with matterlab, a UK provider of strategies and software for the AEC sector.

This includes the development of custom workflows, enhancements for existing tools and solutions based around Autodesk’s BIM 360 ecosystem.

Of particular interest to Symetri, was matterlab’s product portfolio which has been designed to specifically enhance the

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user experience of Autodesk BIM 360.

The partnership will bring matterlab’s ArchiveHub, ValidationHub and SizeMyHub products into the Symetri portfolio. These tools provide users with the ability to archive and access a completely offline, local version of their BIM 360 data, summarise details around hub size/average file size/files per folder and create strict quality standards for all files uploaded to their projects.

■ symetri.co.uk ■ matterlab.co

BIM Holoview integrates with BIM 360 IM Holoview, a specialist in mixed reality for construction, has launched an integration with Autodesk BIM 360.

By connecting BIM Holoview and BIM 360, construction teams can create BIM 360 Issues with photo attachments directly from BIM Holoview on HoloLens and Oculus Quest. The newly created

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issues can then be assigned, updated and resolved in BIM 360.

Additionally, updates made to issues in BIM 360 can automatically display in BIM Holoview. According to the New Zealand company this can greatly reduce data transfer, model review and revision times and improve collaboration across teams.

360 Sync partnership esign and engineering software and services provider Symetri has announced an ‘exclusive partnership’ with Applied Software, a provider of products, workflows and customisations for AEC, MEP and manufacturing software.

The partnership will bring 360 Sync into the Symetri portfolio.

360 Sync is a migration and synchronisation tool designed for the AEC industry to sync and organise project files to and from a firm’s Common Data Environment (CDE), server, and other platforms. These include Autodesk Construction Cloud, Vault, BIM 360, Bluebeam, PlanGrid and Panzura.

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■ symetri.co.uk ■ asti.com

LiDAR scans on the iPhone iteScape, a developer of LiDAR scanning software for the iPhone Pro and iPad Pro, has launched a new subscription service for cloud-based collaboration.

Once scans are synced to the cloud they can be securely viewed or shared with collaborators on any device (desktop or mobile on iOS, Android, Mac, and PC) via a shared link. Users can also annotate scans with comments and measurements.

“We’re taking the scan out of the silo that is your iPhone or iPad and centralising it on the web so that all the various stakeholders can have really easy access. There’s now a single place to find all that information,” says Putch.

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■ sitescape.ai

■ bimholoview.com

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News

Enscape shares future roadmap with Mac version, SDK and integration with TestFit nscape has given a glimpse into the future of its real-time visualisation software. At its Envision 21 user event last month it announced plans for an Apple Mac version, shared a detailed roadmap, and launched a Software Development Kit (SDK), so its real-time engine can be deployed in more software applications, starting with conceptdesign tool TestFit.

difference being you can do it for your own applications. “[The SDK] is built on the same foundation as our core product, meaning it’s easy to use, it’s high quality and there is great performance that comes out of SDK and TestFit the box.”

Enscape already works with all the Enscape’s first partner in the SDK leading CAD and BIM tools – Revit, Rhino, programme is TestFit, an algorithmSketchUp, Archicad, Vectorworks, and driven tool designed for property Bricscad. To help make the software more developers and architects for use in the accessible to a wider AEC audience, such initial planning phases.

Enscape on Mac as contractors, engineers, or property Users of TestFit will be able to render Like many AEC viz tools, Enscape has been owners, the company has now launched a and export visuals for client Windows only for many years. However, Software Development Kit (SDK). presentations, zoning board meetings and with the popularity other applications. of CAD and BIM Any changes made software on the With the popularity of CAD and BIM software on the Mac in TestFit will Apple Mac platform, platform, strong interest around the new Apple M1 silicon, automatically strong interest update in Enscape. and increased competition from Twinmotion, it makes around the new According to the perfect sense for Enscape to develop a version for OSX Apple M1 silicon, Texas-based and increased company, Enscape competition from will improve its Epic Games Twinmotion, it makes perfect “We’ve taken our renderer API, our software’s existing lighting tools with sense that Enscape is now developing a programming interface (the same one that complex inputs like calendar and time of version for Mac OSX. we use to develop Enscape internally) day for shadow studies. Trees and cars Details of the Mac version of Enscape are and, for the first time ever, we are opening can also be parametrically allocated with still thin on the ground, but we do know that up to external partners,” said Petr TestFit’s configurator. that the software is planned for release in Mitev, VP of Enscape’s visualisation Goodbye OpenGL, hello Vulkan the first half of 2022. We expect it will product group, speaking at Envision 21. work with SketchUp, Archicad, Rhino and Next, directly addressing AEC software Enscape confirmed that it is continuing Vectorworks (the first BIM tool to have a developers at the conference, he added, its transition from the original OpenGL true Apple Silicon version), but maybe not “The idea is that our renderer API can sit graphics engine to one based on the more all four at launch. on top of your custom apps, whatever modern Vulkan API. This will allow the Incidentally, Nvidia RTX real time ray they are, and together, you can create software to be optimised more, both in tracing, which takes rendering in Enscape powerful visuals experiences for your terms of visual quality and performance. to new levels, does not work on Apple Mac, users just like we’re doing, the only However, according to Enscape’s Mitev, it

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so it will be interesting to see how Enscape on Mac OSX will address high quality ray tracing in the forthcoming release. We presume this will be done through the Vulkan API (see later).

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PIX4D updates terrestrial reality capture mobile app IX4D has updated its ground image capturing app that uses photogrammetry to turn video recorded on a mobile device into a 3D model for construction, or to accurately map underground utilities.

The Android and iOS app automatically records video frames with geolocational data.

Those with a LiDAR-equipped iPad Pro or iPhone Pro can

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also get live ‘augmented reality’ feedback of the site and the completion of the scan with a 3D mesh layer overlaid on the video frame. The recording can be paused at any time and the scene feedback remains on the device’s screen and shows the user what’s already been covered.

Once captured, the data can be automatically uploaded for processing in PIX4Dcloud to

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generate ‘highly accurate’ geolocated 3D models.

Alternatively data can be exported for free to photogrammetry software such as PIX4Dmatic (or any other photogrammetry software).

To increase accuracy, users can also connect a viDoc RTK rover (real-time kinematic positioning) device to geotag the captured images.

■ pix4d.com

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05/10/2021 08:36

might take a release or two to really start to feel the benefits.

Enscape also highlighted the recent support for Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS), a rendering technique accelerated by Nvidia RTX GPUs designed to enhance quality and frame rates.

Nvidia DLSS works by rendering internally inside Enscape at a lower resolution, then using deep learningbased upscaling techniques to output ‘a clean and sharp high-resolution image’ for high- quality videos and highperformance virtual reality walkthroughs.

Expanded assets Enscape is putting a lot of resources into expanding its asset library with a particular focus on vegetation, more diverse people, accessories, and furniture – as well as more regional assets.

Mitev explained the complexities of balancing demand for more believable people with the performance expectations of a real-time engine. Enscape’s development team is still trying to figure out its strategy here, but is looking at different options including working with partners and bringing in third-party libraries.

“We want to add those assets, but we want to do it the right way that’s consistent with the performance and the quality that you expect from the Enscape product,” said Mitev.

The way in which designers work with assets is also changing. In the 3.2 release of the software, scheduled for November 2021, users will be able to add, delete or edit existing assets directly inside Enscape.

Currently, this needs to be done in the BIM authoring tool which can break the workflow especially when working

interactively with clients. more integrated with thirdAlso new for the 3.2 release party arch viz tools. will be the ability to randomly Enscape currently uses its place objects such as forests own material format which is and crowds. Simply select an tightly connected to the area, then choose density and distribution material system of the CAD or BIM type such as uniform, jittered or software. As a result, it’s not currently completely random. possible to share materials with tools used downstream in the arch viz process. In the Material benefit 3.3 release, however, scheduled for March Enscape is also looking to significantly 2022, users will be able to export Enscape grow its material library, acknowledging materials into Nvidia MDL (Material that because the library is quite new, it Definition Language) so scenes can be isn’t yet as robust as the one it offers for further developed in tools like V-Ray. assets. Mitev explained that in addition to offering a wider and deeper selection of All presentations from Envision 21, including materials, the team is also exploring the Enscape’s strategic outlook, future roadmap, idea of giving designers the ability to customer stories, technical lounges for modify or change materials for a really practical tips and a preview of the integration bespoke design aesthetic. with Testfit are now available to view Plans are also underway to increase the on-demand. Registration is free. value of Enscape assets by making them ■ enscape3d.com/envision

VRcollab integrates with BIM Track for issue management EC-focused virtual reality (VR) software VRcollab can now be integrated with BIM Track, the web-based issue tracking platform for BIM coordination.

Users can take 3D models and corresponding issues from BIM Track and bring them directly into VRcollab for interdisciplinary coordination in immersive VR

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and on the desktop.

Conversely, users can bring models into VRcollab directly from the BIM authoring software complete with metadata (e.g. Autodesk Revit, Autodesk Navisworks, Graphisoft Archicad, McNeel Rhino3D, Trimble SketchUp or IFC), select BIM Track as the issue manager, and then any issues created in VRcollab can be directly synchronised back

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to the BIM Track project for issue management.

According to Muhammad Khalil, senior digital delivery manager, Boustead Projects, the streamlined workflow from BIM Track to VRcollab and vice versa has enabled the design-and-build specialist’s BIM coordinators and BIM modellers to be much more productive and accelerate BIM co-ordination. “Now I think

because of the seamless data integration, we cut the time by half,” he says.

VRcollab supports multiuser design coordination, so teams from different locations can collaborate over the web.

The software is focused on VR, but also runs on Windows so stakeholders don’t have to have a VR headset in order to participate.

■ vrcollab.com ■ bimtrack.co

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05/10/2021 08:36

News analysis

Autodesk invests in facilities management ith the pandemic highlighting the need for facilities management, and Autodesk’s recent launch of its Digital Twin platform, Tandem, it’s perhaps unsurprising that Autodesk is now getting active in the Facilities Management market.

This month the company made a strategic investment in Houston-based iOffice, which recently merged with Atlanta-based SpaceIQ (a rebranded FM developer better known historically in the Autodesk developer community as Archibus FM).

The firms develop integrated SaaS, mobile and desktop solutions that give businesses the ability to analyse and optimise key aspects of their real estate and assets.

According to Autodesk, the combination of iOffice + SpaceIQ represents the industry’s most comprehensive solutions portfolio for integrated workplace and enterprise asset management platforms.

More than 10,000 customers worldwide use these tools to manage more than 2 billion square feet of space valued at more than $64B. The company’s platforms, including the widely deployed IWMS (Integrated Workplace Management System) Archibus, help 170,000-plus maintenance technicians respond to 1.3 million work orders a month.

The Archibus platform was one of Autodesk’s first facilities management developer partners, and this investment expands the combined capabilities to increase collaboration and scalability.

Out of all the vertical markets which Autodesk entered in the 1990s, the one it actively avoided acquiring any partners in was facilities management. The company’s leadership at the time said it was hard to find the right people with FM budgets and so Autodesk never became a major player, other than through thirdparty developers.

Twenty years later, with the adoption of BIM and now the emerging digital twins scene, FM is seen as a more identifiable market category. Autodesk had been in talks with SpaceIQ about investment as late as last year. SpaceIQ had bought some of WeWork’s in-house developed, advanced AI-based workspace management tools when WeWork became distressed.

In August 2021, iOFFICE and SpaceIQ merged following strategic investments in

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the companies by global private equity firms Thoma Bravo and JMI Equity, which had made a significant investment in iOFFICE only the month before.

Facility and Asset management is seen as a hot market. As opposed to acquiring the merged firms, Autodesk’s undisclosed investment allows it to get involved in FM, better integrate capabilities into its own digital twin efforts and protect the technology from falling into the hands of competitors.

Nicolas Mangon, Autodesk vice president AEC Strategy, explained to AEC Magazine that the investment is the start point of a wider strategy to play in the post design and construction phase of the lifecycle of buildings. Owners are becoming more aware of what is capable with IoT monitoring operations and being able to visually see their data on dashboards. Mangon could also envisage how data gleaned from the real-world use of buildings and assets could be fed back into early design.

Using the example of Spacemaker AI, a firm Autodesk acquired last year, Mangon was excited at the idea of feeding actual data into SpaceMaker’s generative engine, to better refine the design output from the next generation of design tools.

One could argue that if facilities management was truly going to be a big market, Autodesk could do itself a favour by buying these combined firms now, as opposed to making a strategic investment and trying to acquire later.

From what we can see, private equity and venture capital firms have become very embedded within the sector, and

especially within iOffice, which has been propelled at pace over the last three years with investors. The more successful these firms become, the higher the price tag for ownership. Mangon explained that the investment route let Autodesk approach the area ‘at our own pace’. This segment is undoubtedly going to see a lot more focus in the coming years.

“Combining design, operational and performance data and workflows in a single platform to improve the comfort, safety and efficiency of building assets has never been more important,” said Nick Stefanidakis, general manager, Archibus, the iOffice + SpaceIQ product.

“The strategic investment from Autodesk allows us to deliver the solutions organisations need to meet this demand.”

“Users of both Archibus and Autodesk products will see value in a tighter integration of BIM-based design and construction data with operations insights and workflows to optimise facility performance, comfort and sustainability,” said Stefanidakis. “Owners and occupiers can leverage these operational data to make better, more informed, design and construction choices.”

Autodesk and iOFFICE + SpaceIQ currently offer integrations between Autodesk Revit and AutoCAD and Archibus with plans for future integrations with the Autodesk Construction Cloud and Autodesk’s Forge platform. Customers, including global housing and construction provider Daiwa House, have already leveraged the existing integration to benefit their businesses.

■ iofficecorp.com

www.AECmag.com

05/10/2021 08:36

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Software

Autodesk Tandem Previewed at Autodesk University in 2020 and launched recently, Tandem is Autodesk’s cloud-based digital twin technology platform. Martyn Day talked to the development team to find out more

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efore we start, I know what you ings or existing brownfield facilities. As are thinking: ‘Digital twins, here it has become more widely adopted it’s we go again - the next over- also being used for bridges, roads and hyped industry buzzword!’ even cities. The model can be augmented Having watched a fair number of with connections to remote sensors, feedindustry hype-cycles, I completely ing back operational live data. Assets understand that point of view. Typically, stored in the database can be tagged with there is a nugget of reality to some firm’s QR codes for quick referencing onsite product launch, it gets some using mobile devices. traction, then every firm sudThe digital twin utopia denly re-pitches their own that we are being sold is a Even if you product so they can get a dynamic reference model think you have where usage and perforpiece of the action.

Digital twin is falling prey no interest in mance can be seen in conto that and it’s going to take a either historically, curdigital twin or text, while to really work out rently or even predicted. facilities exactly what technologies Autodesk is not first to and firms play in this space. I management, market from the CAD space. find it helps if you think of Bentley Systems (see page 24) this article digital twin as the converbeen championing digi(and Autodesk has gence of BIM and facilities tal twins for a number of Tandem in management on steroids. It’s years now with its iTwin not for everyone, or every technologies aimed at large general) still project, but new business infrastructure projects, has a lot of models are evolving, and it which also reflects the prorelevance to addresses a market of owner/ file of its customers. those who use operators that have been When Autodesk gets into underserved for decades. a market, it’s usually a sign Revit. So, I Even if you think you have that it is, or it is set to would urge no interest in digital twin or become, a volume play. you to read on Enter Autodesk Tandem, facilities management, this article (and Autodesk the company’s cloud-based Tandem in general) still has a platform which, in its first lot of relevance to those who use Revit. version, is primarily aimed at greenfield So, I would urge you to read on and con- projects created using its popular design sider the creation and reuse of data, authoring application Revit. together with how you view big Revit Tandem development models.

The basic concept of a digital twin is to Development of Tandem started in produce a reference model from design, February 2020 and came out of discusconstruction and service data, which can sions on the continuity of data in the AEC serve as a dashboard and database for lifecycle, between Autodesk CEO Andrew assets that need tracking or maintaining.

Anagnost, the AEC leadership team and It can be applied to greenfield build- Bob Bray, now senior director & general

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manager, Autodesk Tandem.

I’ve talked to Bray before when he was Sr. director preconstruction at Autodesk, involved in figuring out the issues created from the convergence of construction and manufacturing.

Bray seems to get involved in a lot of the projects which require blended solutions, harnessing Autodesk’s internal technologies to bring out a product response to new market segment needs. (tinyurl.com/ digitalfab-AEC) Bray explains his analysis behind Tandem’s development, “The key issue was how do we help our customers move their data more fluidly from the beginning of the project lifecycle, all the way through to handover, that would generate a richer deliverable.

“For sure, digital twin is the hot topic in the industry - it’s the buzzword out there - but you’re not going to go and buy ‘a digital twin’ from a single vendor. We had to figure out what’s our place in that ecosystem.

“As we started to look at this eighteen months ago, if you asked ten people what a digital twin was, you would easily get ten different answers! And while that still may be true, it is starting to crystallise and become clearer with time.

“As I looked at all of these [digital twin] solutions, pretty much all are bespoke today. There’s a lot of bespoke data collection, with ‘duct tape and bubble gum’ to glue systems together to create a digital twin. It’s not very repeatable.

“My realisation was that a lot of the data that’s foundational to those digital twins is data that’s created, designed or captured in construction. We can better stitch the data together through the design lifecycle if we begin with that end in mind. We could create a repeatable www.AECmag.com

02/10/2021 15:46

process to deliver a digital twin to the owner and then connect that into operational systems.”

For Autodesk, its start point is really its AEC customer-base, but the company recognises that it’s not yet a volume market. Bray explains, “On looking at the maturity of the industry, [digital twins] is not a play for everyone right now. But for firms who are serial builders, those who build health care centres, data centres, water treatment plants, repeatable business, that’s where we see AEC firms having to take partnership with the owner.

That’s our starting point.”

Given the low number of actual digital twin projects completed, versus the hype, it’s hard to make the allegation that Autodesk is joining the party late. The Tandem development team said that some of Autodesk’s construction engineering customers are being asked to provide things that ‘look like and smell like’ what could be defined as digital twin deliverables. It’s just that they are not onboard with the sector branding yet.

There is certainly realisation amongst customers that there might be an opportunity to monetise these requests by offering deliverables, but this means becoming data companies.

In practice this could just be in delivering a static digital twin at construction hand-off, or contracting to maintain the digital asset on behalf of the owner. In www.AECmag.com

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Autodesk Tandem is some cases, firms are already data needed to be cleaned and primarily aimed at contracted to design, build and repurposed before it could be greenfield projects maintain buildings for as long used as a foundation for asset created using Revit as 25 years or more. Here they management. Bray explains create, maintain and consume the data for that the core criterion for the new datatheir own benefit and may have been try- base format was, first and foremost, to put ing to do this in BIM. unlimited amount of data into it.

Autodesk wanted to be able to render Fundamentals that extremely quickly and it needed to Autodesk Tandem is built around a mod- be able to ‘live edit’ metadata attached to ified Forge viewer. Unlike opening files components in the cloud, while keeping from Revit, AutoCAD or Inventor, full transaction history of those changes.

Tandem is 100% cloud-based and has a By tracking change history, if the brand-new database centred around underlying Revit model gets edited and streaming asset-centric models. is re-submitted to Autodesk Docs, for When creating a new platform for a new example, any changes to the design market segment, it can come with the lux- needs to be reflected in the Tandem dataury of having a new database format. base. Instead of reloading everything, The Tandem team needed an asset-cen- Tandem just streams in the ‘delta’ differtric database which would be fit for pur- ences to discrete geometry or metadata pose, lightweight and able to stream data that has changed. from the cloud to each user.

“What we wanted to create with the In the Autodesk BIM world, the key Tandem database is really an asset inforstart-point for building a digital twin mation model. At the beginning of the would probably be a Revit model, but project, you specify your asset informaRevit’s database format is old, bloats tion requirements, and bring in all this quickly and was not designed for a mod- data from Revit and other design sources, ern cloud-based streaming world. Added like construction data from Autodesk to that, Revit’s database was designed to Build, in terms of what has been hold information for geometry editing, installed.” explains Bray. “It’s a way to such as parametrics, with all their basically pull all this data together so we dependencies, and this serves no purpose can represent assets, spaces (like rooms), in the downstream management of an and clearance zones etc. But what’s most already constructed building. important is the ability to infer the relaFor Tandem it was clear that the Revit tionship, meaning ‘this asset is part of

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Software

that specific system, and it serves that about Revit. IFC support is in the works, Tim Kelly, senior product manager at specific space.’ If we can do that, it’s pos- then Plant 3D formats and various Autodesk shares his thoughts, “This is sible to visualise all kinds of interesting Autodesk verticals like Civil 3D. Also going to take evangelism and education. digital twin problems.” point clouds aren’t yet supported to cap- From our approach of being pragmatic To enable these complex semantic ture the as-built but, again for the initial about what the data requirements are, searches, the Tandem team has overlaid platform, greenfield projects are the tar- and structuring that as part of your inian additional graph database (tinyurl. get. As Tandem’s view widens to brown- tial project delivery team conversations. I com/Graphdbase) above the more tradi- field renovation, Autodesk already has think you have to have the ability to push tional core database. Graph databases scan-to-mesh technology in its closet. back on your client and say, we don’t contain relationship logic which will think you need that.” enable Tandem to connect up and ISO 19650-3 understand related components, such as In its initial offering, Tandem has a three- User Interface MEP piping systems. step workflow. Firstly, to specify the asset The interface of Tandem is clean and the The new asset-centric database com- information requirements up front, then dashboard shows twins of facilities you bined with the Forge pipeline in the to capture all the design and construction own and facilities shared with you. On cloud means Tandem never actually data created through that process and opening a file, most of the screen is occuopens the Revit file. In the background all map it against those asset information pied by the Forge model viewer. The surthis repurposing and fileting is going on requirements. rounding icons offer the following cateto produce a lightweight model that can Bray explains that the team also wanted gories: Filter, Properties, Asset Files, be streamed and loaded very quickly. to build some rules to validate that build- Users, Reports, History, Inventory.

This core development By clicking on commeans that Tandem ponents in the model, offers something which the property tab disThink of digital twin as the convergence of BIM and plays all the correall Revit customers can facilities management on steroids. It’s not for benefit from, which we sponding element data. will come to later. everyone, or every project, but new business models Filtering is pretty comprehensive to slice and are evolving, and it addresses a market of owner/ Lighthouse family dice, turn off/on and operators that have been underserved for decades assign ghosting, isoAutodesk has about a dozen ‘lighthouse cuslate, create section tomers’ for Tandem, boxes, plans etc. Asset who have had access to the software for phase data because a lot of that is very classifications supported are almost a year, helping define require- manual today and open to errors. Once Masterformat or Uniformat. Uniclass ments, prioritisation and process. Almost completed, the twin can then be then has yet to be supported. The COBie supall fall into Autodesk’s large customer cat- handed over at the end of the construction ported is the US variant. egory, being Enterprise users. They phase of the project lifecycle. include architects, engineers, contractors From talking with many firms which Dasher and owners to cover the complete industry deliver major BIM projects, the growing For Autodesk watchers, Autodesk’s aspiracross section. They are, in the main, burden of contractual digital deliverables tions and experimentations in post-conUS-centric firms. is starting to become painful. They are struction AEC deliverables actually preThis has meant that Tandem, as it often 300+ pages and require everything date the digital twins hype by many years. stands, is less ‘out-of-the-box ready’ for including the digital kitchen sink. It’s Project Dasher (tinyurl.com/dasher-Adesk) is more governmental standards-driven BIM clear that many owners don’t know why the longest running Autodesk research and digital twin markets, such as the UK. they are asking for it and the consultant technology project (seven years and countBut the development team is aware of this who they hired has gone over the top. ing). It even pre-dates Forge. and is looking to address those deficienBray explains, “We’ve been using, ISO Those that follow the work of Kean cies for different geos.

19650 -3 asset information requirements Walmsley, an Autodesk software architect But there are more fundamental issues specification as a sort of guidepost, and based in Switzerland, would have seen at the moment, such as the omission of we’re really trying to build a system that experimental solutions using BIM data support for the industry standard IFC for- puts together a pragmatic framework for and live IoT sensors, along with dashmat. In this first version, it really is all implementing it.” boards for space and occupancy analysis

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What is Autodesk Forge?

Autodesk is a huge software firm that has hundreds of desktop applications which all share certain requirements, such as the ability to read and write DWG files, print/plot, IFC, render etc. As the company deemed that the cloud was going to replace the

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desktop, it went about the process of rewriting core functionality as a set of services on the cloud. It called this Autodesk Forge.

As Autodesk ported applications to the cloud, or acquired new software firms, this meant that there were

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common services which could be accessed via Forge APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

This Forge backbone has grown to enable access to more complex services, such as a viewer, rendering engines, data translation, document

management etc. By not having to reinvent the wheel, Autodesk and its third-party developers can save a lot of development time and all benefit from updates to incorporated web and mobile Forge components.

■ forge.autodesk.com

www.AECmag.com

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and real-time building performance.

In many respects Autodesk was researching the hard stuff before contemplating the platform. The other surreal thing about Dasher is that it was never intended to be a forerunner to a product, just experiments in combining BIM models with IoT to derive the technology.

Bray explains that Dasher technology was now finding its way to market, “A lot of the Dasher technology has now been incorporated back into Forge. There are a set of visualisation extensions in Forge right now, which allow us to connect to real time data, create overlays, enable sensory analytics and that display data on the model, and display it on the Forge viewer.

All of that will come into Tandem as well.”

Pricing Pricing is based on the number of tagged assets and the use of Autodesk Tandem is free up to a total of 1,000. Free means an unlimited number of users, unlimited facilities, unlimited data sources, DOCs integration - the whole works. However, it comes with the proviso of ‘internal business needs only’. It’s $3,000 a year for up to 5,000 tracked assets and, at the time of launch, was $510,000 for unlimited enterprise but this might have changed.

A tagged asset means any element (e.g. a light, a boiler, a chair) that has an asset type specified and additional asset data attached via the use of Autodesk Tandem.

Elements which contain only data imported from the data source, such a Revit, are not counted as tagged assets.

When you get over 1,000 tagged assets, Autodesk’s payment bands kick in. But to help keep the asset count lower, they can be tagged at the ‘type’ level and so do not need to be set on every instance. This way, a single type of light fitting, which might appear 10,000 times in a model, only counts as one Tandem asset.

Tandem’s broader benefits Want to open a hulking huge Revit model quickly in the cloud? What are your options? Maybe the Forge Viewer in BIM 360, Navisworks? Tandem is now a new alternative and it’s free to load and view Revit models.

With the lightweight database, the Tandem application can open very large models and stream them to the viewer.

Tandem only charges for defined assets for tracking, not for imported Revit components. So, you could view Revit models that have hundreds of thousands of elements as they won’t register on the billing.

Even if you are loading a detailed BIM 22

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model which might have a ly aligning a number of prodProject Dasher was never intended to be a light fixture with associated ucts, services and investforerunner to Tandem, classification code and data but it experimented with ments in expanding into post included in the metadata, construction data flows. combining BIM models with IoT technology Tandem will still not count it We have already seen as a tagged asset. The user has there’s seven years plus work to physically enter the classification gone into Dasher to enable IoT connectivvalue in Tandem, for it to count. ity in the not-too distant future and Autodesk’s recent investment in SpaceIQ Conclusion (formerly Archibus FM) (see page 14), also Autodesk Tandem has a long way to go clears a path to a mature and popular FM before it could be seen as a turnkey digi- application, which is coupled with some tal twin solution. It does some of the of WeWork’s AI occupancy technology. basics but has many obvious limitations.

Autodesk is piecing together big chunks It currently only fits a very Revit-centric of technology and integrations, which workflow and, as digital twin tools need could give Tandem significant velocity, to be data agnostic and powerful aggrega- should that be wanted in the future. Early tors, support for formats like IFC are adopters, willing to pay, will obviously get essential. But then, with such huge mar- input into the feature development at such ket share, Autodesk knows that, for some a preliminary stage in its development but customers, this is a strength as opposed here it really is initially suited to greento a weakness. field projects.

The other issue is that the integration of The development work done in creating the ODA’s IFC toolkit is underway but not a new lightweight, but still informationin place. This might be what the Tandem rich, cloud-friendly database format has so team is waiting for. many possible application areas for downAs product developments go, for a big stream data, it kind of blows the mind.

CAD firm, Tandem’s eight months concept The fact that the rules for free use of to beta with a small team is meteoric, Tandem qualify it as being a free, fast BIM showing the benefit of starting with Forge viewer and an alternative to Navisworks components as building blocks and hav- or Revit could be a good alternative for ing a very focussed and limited feature set customers. Also, If the Tandem database to deliver. is accessible to third-party developers, it Here, the key judgement area will be on too could spawn radical improvements in the velocity of its future development. In non-editing ‘Revit’ workflows. So, even if the past, Autodesk has done big launches you have absolutely no interest in digital into market segments only to run out of twins, asset management or facilities steam or interest, here I am thinking management, Tandem still has something mainly of mapping and process plant. I to offer you! If only Tandem could open am pretty sure the digital twin efforts up more file formats. will not suffer here, as Autodesk is clear- ■ intandem.autodesk.com www.AECmag.com

02/10/2021 15:47

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Opinion

Digital twins: the case for open-source In order to achieve sustainable infrastructure digital twins, it is imperative that you build your systems around open-source technology so the keys to your destiny remain in your hands, writes Keith Bentley, founder and CTO, Bentley Systems

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digital twin is a realistic and dynamic digital representation of a physical asset, process, or system in the built or natural environment.

As was the case with BIM nearly 20 years ago, digital twins are now reshaping the built world in terms of how infrastructure is designed, constructed, and operated.

The industry has always faced challenges managing the volume and variety of data, as well as the varied ways it changes over time. This can be overwhelming for infrastructure professionals, whether their specialty is in project delivery or in operations.

The advent of digital twins has helped the industry advance existing BIMcentric processes by improving data quality and accessibility. Importantly, infrastructure digital twins can be achieved “in place,” without having to disrupt or replace existing workflows or systems.

Regardless of infrastructure type, over time the digital twin of an asset or a project will become both its lifeblood and its central nervous system. That is — it’s going to be really valuable.

We believe that to achieve sustainable infrastructure digital twins, it is imperative that you build your systems around open-source technology so the keys to your destiny remain in your hands.

You are not going to “buy” your digital twins from a single vendor. Instead, you’re going to assemble, build, customise, and evolve your twin from pieces from many vendors, the mix of which will change over time. Each of them will tell you how “open” they are. Only those who are open sourced (meaning you have the ability to use your digital twin 24

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and the source code that powers it without a fee) really mean it.

form that is relevant for many different use cases. Our platform handles some important and difficult tasks such as perBuilding the foundation for iTwin.js sistence, visualisation, scalability, securiWhen we announced iTwin.js, we ty, and interoperability. Of course, your described that the foundadigital twins will have diftion upon which it is built is ferent mixes of data sourcthe most open, productive, es and features depending intuitive, and powerful on the type of asset. development environment The goal of an open platfor capital projects and form is to allow anyone infrastructure assets, ever. working on one aspect to The iTwin.js library easily combine their efforts (itwinjs.org) is a comprewith people working on hensive collection of other aspects. That means JavaScript packages that the whole thing doesn’t build on the most open, need to be written all at popular, and flexible stanonce and from one vendor. dards for modern cloud and In the software world You are not web development. Though there are many data going to “buy” it can be used from any prosources. An open platform your digital gramming language, it is helps us to combine everytwins from a written in TypeScript (my thing we use with little favourite programming effort. A good infrastrucsingle vendor. environment ever, by far) Instead, you’re ture digital twin platform and leverages open technolshould do the same. going to ogies including SQLite, By building your platassemble, build, form on open-source techNode.js, NPM, WebGL, Electron, Docker, customise, and nology, you provide your Kubernetes, and of course and others who will evolve your twin users, HTML5 and CSS. The same extend the platform, with codebase can produce cloud from pieces from the ability to change it. services and web, mobile, many vendors, They can copy the proand desktop applications. the mix of which gram source and access The source code is hosted their data without paying will change on GitHub and is distributed a licence. over time under the MIT licence. (N.B. An open-source stratefull disclosure – there is a gy has worked extremely native Node.js module that well in other industries, Bentley builds and distributes via NPM but it has yet to be fully adopted in engifor each platform. It is not open source but neering, BIM, or CAD. The reason is that is delivered with a right-to-run). there has not been a meaningful platform By leveraging these open technologies, open enough to allow people to layer on we have created the Bentley iTwin plat- it, and even enable competitors to create

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solutions that work together with it.

To create an infrastructure digital twin (we call it an “iTwin”), we fuse together many types of data sources. One source is what we call “digital context”—observations sampled or surveyed in the past.

Another source is “real-time” or current data, such as IoT sensors, control systems, ERP systems, and emergency response systems.

The data source that makes infrastructure digital twins most challenging is engineering and/or BIM data, because they often represent some future state of

This 4D visualisation app includes new the twin. The concept of applications to the ability to synchronise and “future state” is a challengimprove asset perforvisualise 3D engineering data, AIing computer science probmance, including sustainpowered HSE data, and IoT data Image courtesy of Digital Energy lem because it is nonlinear ability, productivity, occu(i.e. there can be multiple pancy, energy, safety, and valid states extant simultaneously). That’s maintenance. The questions are then: the main reason infrastructure digital “How do you structure the data?,” “What twins have never existed heretofore. transaction model?,” “How to visualise Obviously all three data sources, past, past/current/future in a single winpresent, and future, change continuously dow?,” and “How do you make the sysbut with different granularity. tem secure?”

Nonetheless, if you could fuse all those The answers will vary for each data data types, it’s clear that infrastructure type. If every organisation working on just digital twins will provide the basis for one part of a digital twin had to solve all

Data for digital twin development

Reality model from the UK National Digital Twin pilot project captured by a Topcon drone and processed with Bentley ContextCapture

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When we’re asked about the data that comprises a digital twin, our answer is that the types of data vary with the use case. But getting started does not have to be difficult.

In the simplest example you might just want to go out and take pictures or LiDAR with your mobile device, then turn that into a digital mesh of your asset. That’s a wonderful start, because while that mesh may not start as very “sophisticated,” it is very accurate. The process provides you with the digital context for

creating a digital twin.

For engineering/BIM data we’ve created free “connectors” that synchronise with the most popular formats (e.g. .dgn, .dwg, .rvt, .ifc, etc.). There are also APIs for others to create their own connectors. Since a single iTwin may hold data from an eclectic mix of connectors, you can continue to design with your current set of authoring tools and seamlessly synchronise with multidiscipline, multivendor, and multi-organisation infrastructure projects.

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Opinion

Create heatmaps of high-risk areas Image courtesy of Digital Energy.

those problems on their own, they’d never The app synchronises and visualises our users. Through accreditation, develfinish, and nothing would work together. data including 3D engineering, artificial opers gain an understanding of the basic The answer, like all computer science intelligence-powered health, safety, envi- principles and components of developing problems, is to layer on top of a compre- ronment (HSE) data and IoT to better pre- software applications including data synhensive but extensible platform that sup- dict what will happen, where, and when chronisation and federation, visualisaplies implementation of the pieces. For to enable safe and prioritised operations. tion, and querying iTwin data. that platform to be both technically and “As a developer of novel digital AI economically feasible, I argue that it must advisors to asset heavy industries, the Empowering people to do more be an open-source project sponsored by a ability to portray insights and analytics We developed the Bentley iTwin platform profit-motivated organisation. I offer in real time on a digital twin makes adop- to be as open as we can make it. People iTwin.js from Bentley as that platform. If tion faster and impact for clients clearer,” now use it to solve problems that have you feel there’s some part of it that you said Dr. Morgan Eldred, founder and nothing to do with Bentley Systems. We would rather work differently, you can chief ventures officer, Digital Energy. did not do this to be charitable. We did it change either by forking our code, or, “Within ODIN Safety, the digital twin because we believe that as our platform is hopefully, by generating pull requests to shows the evolution in potential risks at leveraged by third parties in creative our repositories on GitHub. That way the various locations enabling clients to bet- ways, then we will be relevant when they ecosystem strengthens itself. ter intervene and prioritise efforts using succeed. We are fostering an ecosystem of The purpose of an open, innovation that will grow scalable, vendor-agnostic around a common set of platform is to enable an source codes and data ecosystem of developers We are fostering an ecosystem of innovation that types that can be defined will grow around a common set of source codes with open-source tools to create and bring to market solutions that that are built on open and data types that can be defined with opensolve real infrastructure standards. source tools that are built on open standards problems by leveraging In my opinion, as an digital twins. industry the opportuniOver the past few years, ties for improving outwe have seen this ecosystem of user 4D visualisation of risk and heat maps of comes enabled by infrastructure digital organisations, strategic partners, and high-risk areas. The Bentley iTwin plat- twins are vastly larger than at any point third-party developers grow. All who form enables open, scalable, and quick in the 37 years I’ve been in this business. work with iTwin.js, and the Bentley application development that provides At Bentley Systems, we’re excited about iTwin platform, are focused on building an incredibly powerful way to bring that potential, but we don’t aspire to be solutions to tap the vast potential of infra- complex context to organisations, teams, “the infrastructure digital twin compastructure digital twins. and people.” ny,” since it’s clear there will be need for One company developing on the iTwin At Bentley, we are dedicated to having many hundreds of such companies. platform is Digital Energy. It focuses on developers, like Digital Energy, engage, Instead, we intend to be the “infrastrucsolving complex value chain problems by share, and learn from each other. We cre- ture digital twin platform company” embedding efficiencies in artificial intel- ated a partner program for software ven- working in an ecosystem of innovation ligence solutions for industrial planning, dors and systems integrators to get sup- along with partners leveraging that platsupply chain, and work execution. Its port and guidance to help them innovate, form. We think this will create a world application, ODIN Safety, helps asset accelerate, and scale their development where infrastructure digital twins really owners to predict and manage real-time efforts to deliver digital twin solutions. can improve the quality of life for everyworker health and safety conditions for Learning and expanding the knowledge one on the planet. warehouses and the process industry. in the platform is important to us and to ■ bentley.com

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Software

Twinview digital twin platform Twinview is a configurable browser-based digital twin platform designed to extend BIM into the property sector, connecting data from real time building

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hen it comes to digital twins, one might have assumed it would be one of the big software companies that would democratise the technology. After all, large global firms have all the resources, access to millions of customers, deep pockets and long arms.

However, to date, the most accessible and obvious contender for a rounded digital twin ‘product’ comes from Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. Space Group is one of the few architectural practices that truly understands that programmers can solve problems in construction, and if it can develop something which benefits its business, it will probably be useful to others too. www.AECmag.com

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Space Group’s Twinview is a cloudbased digital twin platform which works with data from most construction applications. While it started out life in the UK, since its launch in 2020 it has gone global, with resellers in Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Portugal.

The initial feature set was directly targeted at Facilities Management, which we explored in this 2020 article (aecmag.com/ digital-twin/twinview/).

However, over the last 18 months it has expanded to also focus on carbon reduction and helping owners understand how buildings are actually used.

Lots of commercial clients are now becoming really concerned by carbon output. Real estate investment trusts are

looking at environmental, societal and governance aspects. Shareholders want to see increases in efficiency and reductions in carbon before they invest.

This means that the buying audience for digital twin technology is not so blinded by the hype but has very definite definable outcomes to monitor performance for deploying twin technology.

Last year, Internet of Things (IoT) connections to Twinview were still experimental but now the company has a number of clients with its Building Management Systems (BMS) wired into Twinview services. We asked Space Group’s Adam Ward how definitive IoT devices were to saving money for clients.

“We know, at a device level, at a room September / October 2021

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Software level, at a floor level, on a building level, “The real super value is doing something on a portfolio level (which has multiple with this data,” explains Space Group CEO buildings), all that data. With Twinview, Rob Charlton. “At the moment, it’s static in everything we do is based on building the that we’re using it to turn things on, turn data from the asset level up. For example, things off, looking at performance. if we have a sensor on a boiler, we’ll have “In a couple of years, or sooner, there temperature, water flow rate etc. That will be some really interesting machine data streams on an asset level, that asset learning around the autonomous conbelongs to a room, that room sits on a trols on buildings. We are working on it floor level, that floor level now with universities. It sits in a zone, that zone sits will be basically merging in a building, that building building performance with It doesn’t sits in a portfolio of a buildbuilding usage, to learn sound like ing. Because we have that from the building and use we’re all that AI to optimise it. data structure, we can look at all the energy use in the Ward added, “We are far off a time kitchen, on level seven, already able to see when when down to a particular asset.” there is a 97% chance that Most new builds are now computers, our the boiler is going to break in coming with BMS built into the next six months. We benevolent many of the key components overlords, will know the failure curves from - boilers, heating and ventimany of the manufacturers. be running lation systems. The problem “These will tell you that if building is that, traditionally, access you run a boiler at 30 to the sensors has been degrees at 90% capacity for operations locked away and, apart from than 24 hours a day, its autonomously more servicing, if there is an issue, failure rate is ‘x’. it is only identified when “If you take that failure something goes wrong. rate data and combine it Twinview can be wired up to these sys- with how the assets are maintained and tems through APIs, to get data across all used in the building, information availaassets in a building, even controlling the ble through our FM system, then you can devices as well such as turning valves on train a machine learning system to make or off. failure predictions.”

Ward was quick to highlight the benefits of this, “We can hardwire your trig- New features for 2021 gers so if the temperature drops below Capture is the fourth module within 20° in our node assistant engine, we can Twinview - the others being Access, create a rule that automatically raises a Manage and Analytics. It is designed to ticket to alert facilities management.” replace the manual and error-prone pro-

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cess of defining, collating, and validating asset data. Firms first define who is responsible for what data and at what stage. The system then emails the consultant a login to populate their data as defined in the AIR (Asset Information Requirements). Capture then validates that the data is correct, provides reports capabilities and audit logs and can output BS1192:4 (COBie).

Document Vault is a new Common Data Environment (CDE) for documents and Operations and Maintenance (O&M) information, whether associated with an asset or not. If a document is associated with an asset it can be tagged, meaning it then appears as an asset attachment in Twinview. This could be a test certificate or warranty.

Field app is an iOS and Android app which brings the desktop capabilities to mobile. It’s possible to raise tickets and attach photos. Users can get asset information on demand filtered by their location, or with QR codes, and even access data streams.

Dashboards have been improved. In the first release they were only able to show data on a single project. Users can now create their own dashboards for their own requirements and can include data sources from multiple projects. There’s a widget library to quickly create bespoke widgets for dashboards too.

QR codes can now be created on the fly and these can be printed off and put on

Space voyage - becoming a software developer Rob Charlton, the CEO of Space Group, explains how the North-East architecture firm accidentally morphed into a software developer

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In my early career as an architect, the most significant innovation was the advancement in Rotring pens, from the bottled inks of Isograph to the cartridges of Rapidograph.

At Space Architects, it was only with the introduction of parametric software in the early 2000s that we started to experience exponential change. And, ever since, we’ve been using technology to find new

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ways to design better buildings with more predictable outcomes.

Technology quickly became such an integral part of what we do, that it led to the formation of Space Group, a design and technology business focused on the built environment, which also includes Bimstore, BIM Technologies and, more recently, Twinview.

At Space Architects we originally used parametric software to address a resource shortage in the industry. After being asked regularly for advice on using software and other emerging technologies, we then

launched BIM Technologies, one of the first BIM consultancies globally.

Our architects were also struggling to find manufacturer content for their models, which led to the development of bimstore.

We realised we were entrepreneurial, but we did not plan new businesses; instead we were interested in improving processes that became a service and, ultimately, a company.

The market has generally driven the need for separate businesses.

Within the group, however, we operate as a single team. The individ-

ual companies compartmentalise what we do for the outside world to understand.

Internally we call this One Space, where the value is when we connect everything.

Not all software or processes we have developed have become businesses. For example, in 2014, we developed Warboard, an issue management tool still used by the BIM Technologies team every day.

In 2007 we launched Digital Synergy, our strategy to connect data in a single model for continued improvement in design, construction, and operation.

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every maintainable asset within building. It’s then possible to use your mobile device to scan each asset and pull up relevant documents, performance, maintenance history etc.

Bluetooth Beacons are now supported in Twinview. There will be instances when assets are not accessible or within reach of a QR scan. When placed in a room each beacon makes Twinview mobile instances self-aware and you can get information streamed to your phone about all assets near your position.

Database enhancements are designed to make the system more efficient. With the ability to be connected to so many live IoT devices, which collect and store data every second, 10 or 20 seconds, any database could soon become bloated.

Twinview gets around this by only storing data when it changes.

Conclusion Twinview’s development is progressing at quite a pace. While it was initially aimed at facilities managers, it has diversified dramatically into a platform for many building performance and monitoring needs, digging deeper and wider as customers give their feedback.

It’s interesting that traditional facilities management has been slower to climb aboard the digital twin bandwagon, with areas such as energy efficiency and carbon emissions starting to drive feature development.

It’s worth pondering just how far ahead Space Group is with its Twinview func-

From BIM to digital twins We quickly foresaw the value of collecting data through the building lifecycle, which became the driver for developing our digital twin platform, Twinview, which launched in 2019.

Twinview is a browserbased platform providing access to models and data collected through design and construction. Having consistent data that can be connected to existing Building Management Systems enables design models to become a digital twin.

As with bimstore and BIM Technologies, Twinview is

tionality versus Autodesk’s Tandem (see page 18). It’s like night and day.

Talking with Rob Charlton and Adam Ward, their enthusiasm for machine learning and AI is infectious. It doesn’t

now a business in its own right. Fifteen years after its inception, the Digital Synergy strategy is now a reality.

The data collected during design and construction is now used in the operational stage allowing property owners to optimise their buildings whilst improving future development.

Our current focus is to use Artificial Intelligence to learn how our buildings operate to predict and optimise performance.

We have certainly come a long way since the invention of the Rapidograph. While the role of the architect

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sound like we’re all that far off a time when computers, our benevolent overlords, will be running building operations autonomously.

■ twinview.com

might not have changed much since the 16th Century, the way in which buildings are designed and delivered is barely recognisable – from complexity and culture to procurement and (especially) technology.

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Opinion

Digital transformation across whole asset lifecycle Mark Coates of Bentley Systems and Mark Lenton of SRO Solutions, explore how independent digital advisors can help asset owners drive their digital building agenda and smart operations thinking

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ith asset owners seeing an increase in external pressures—whether regulatory, political, or financial—some organisations are beginning to take a radically different approach to achieve their business outcomes within the built environment.

One such example is the introduction of digital advisory experts supporting clients in driving their digital building agenda and smart operations thinking.

Positioned either client-side or supporting the more traditional architecture, engineering, construction (AEC) community, digital advisors are increasing the focus on how technology can drive leaner, more economical, compliant, and flexible operational outcomes. After all, it is in the operational phase where we typically find over 80% of a building’s total cost of ownership and carbon emission footprint.

Accreditation plaques on the wall received at handover will not guarantee or deliver desired outcomes—the operational estates and facilities management (EFM) teams will.

Unfortunately, digital maturity for many operations and EFM teams is often low, hence support is needed from digital advisors specialising in digital buildings and smart operations.

For capital programmes, BIM processes help, although they alone will not provide the digital transformation needed to unlock the opportunities a smart building can offer. In general, new build projects need to look way beyond handover and consider how a building will be used on a day-to-day basis.

The introduction of some integrated thinking and digital know-how across whole asset lifecycle can avert the traditional cultural and organisational barriers when projects transition between design, 30

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build, operate, and maintain phases.

There are a lot of different technology solutions covering needs within the design, build, operate, and maintain phases. These solutions cover everything from design software, information collaboration, operational and facilities management (FM) tools, to dedicated building management solutions (BMS) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications.

A lack of integrated thinking across whole asset lifecycle means a majority of these solutions fulfil a unique purpose and, therefore, operate in silos with siloed data sets.

Having independent digital expertise working with operational teams positioned early in capex or opex projects will ensure that necessary data is created, structured, and shared between systems, and that data usage is maximised throughout the whole asset lifecycle.

A radically different approach Firstly, there must be early engagement of estates, FM, and operations teams on capital projects to ensure the “design and build for operations and maintainability” consideration.

Secondly, there needs to be early engagement of digital advisors with subject matter expertise in digital buildings and smart operations. Emphasis needs to be on delivery of business outcomes in the operational phase and, therefore, the alignment of the right digital strategy covering cradle to grave asset lifecycle rather than just the project lifecycle.

While AEC organisations have some digital skills, however, they have a specific role and remit as part of a project lifecycle that does not cover all necessary digital aspects nor the whole asset lifecycle. For example, it’s unlikely that they’ll have a deep or wide enough IT knowl-

edge when it comes to IoT, big data analytics, AI and machine learning, maintenance or asset management solutions, digital twins, blockchain, or horizon scanning of emerging technologies, such as 5G or immersive realities. They are also likely to be incentivised to promote their own proprietary or preferred solutions, which may suit the AEC’s immediate needs but not necessarily the client’s needs as part of an integrated and interconnected long-term digital strategy.

Similar to AEC organisations, the BIM advisor’s role is very different to the digital advisor’s role. Their knowledge of IT isn’t wide or deep enough, plus their role is typically focused is on the design and build phase and very little on the operate and maintain phases. For example, the BIM advisor role wouldn’t consider interoperability between technologies across lifecycle or how active data (data from IoT sensors, or BMS/SCADA) aligns with static data, such as assets’ name or number, materials, or dimensions.

A key part of the digital advisor’s role is to provide owner-operators and EFM teams with the “art of the possible” education on the importance of end-to-end and with-end-in-mind lifecycle thinking to remove silos across data, systems, processes, and organisational structures.

Also, it’s important to highlight the dangers of falling into closed, proprietary, single vendor IT architecture that may create their own set of problems.

Better & smarter business outcomes While the UK government’s mantra is “Build Back Better,” we need to consider altering it slightly: “Build Back Better… and Smarter.” When we say “smarter,” we mean in terms of technology, processes, and organisations, and smarter in terms of the approach for how we deliver www.AECmag.com

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desired business outcomes.

Business outcomes for AEC organisations and owner-operators are driven by outside political, financial, and compliance forces. Some examples include:

operational efficiency benefits.

No matter what technology is used to support whichever process by any organisation, the data that they create or manipulate is key.

•

The importance of data

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The Hackitt report, which includes Golden Thread traceability and auditability.

Government Soft Landings and Treasury’s Green Book.

ISO standards, British standards, and new engineering contracts (NECs).

Whatever the desired business outcomes are—such as reducing maintenance backlogs, target net-zero carbon emissions, enhancing patient or staff well-being, service quality, personnel productivity or asset reliability—they will need data to inform or confirm the investment business case.

Every decision should be data driven, and every “thing” (asset) can be connected and monitored either at installation or retrospectively. Once the right data has been identified, collected, filtered, structured, analysed, and shared, it can provide decision makers with:

Additionally, About 40% of the world’s carbon footprint comes from built environment.

• Following the COVID19 pandemic, there is a focus on staff and patient and client wellbeing, efficiency, and health and safety.

• Organisations are looking for new business model opportunities or new ways of working that are enabled by data Accreditation and digital innovation.

•

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Goal Alignment – Ensuring that target KPIs are fed the right data to inform accurate and insightful reporting.

Technologies to achieve wall received at Confidence – Eliminating integrated, whole asset lifeguess work and estimates by handover will cycle management have ensuring that you make decinot guarantee or sions with knowledge that been available on the market for several decades. deliver desired they were made from trusted Until now, though, they Decisionoutcomes—the information. have only been used effecmaking becomes easier, fastoperational tively in industries such as er, and more reliable. estates and oil and gas, aerospace, defence, and utilities.

Insights – Facilitating facilities However, as they become deep-dives into data and management more cost-effective, we see uncover patterns and them more frequently (EFM) teams will events. With the addition of adopted in built environmachine learning and artiMark Coates ment projects. Even if most ficial intelligence, additionof us do not fully underal insight can be provided stand the ins and outs of this technology into future predictions and forecasts (IoT, edge and cloud computing, blockchain, big data analytics, digital twins, Real-time Information – Maintaining and smart asset management), we do currency of asset performance data know they are integral when covering the across the whole organisation, reducing whole asset lifecycle. the need for periodic reports or unschedTo avoid data and organisational silos, uled events. solutions need to be open, interoperable, and integrated to meet client needs, and Situational Awareness – Knowing what whether these technologies are used for is happening in the asset’s performance new builds or incumbent legacy estate. and reliability, as well as the effects of It is clear that open, interoperable sys- management decisions over time. tems—comprising modular best-in-class solutions that produce re-usable (non- Contextual Visibility – Bringing data to siloed) data—will mitigate risk and offer life through harmonising design and

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engineering data, from 2D process diagrams to complex 3D/4D models, reality meshes, and digital twins.

Where possible, data-driven decision making should use client owned data.

Data should not be limited to static information, such as materials used or dimensions, but also include active data from smart connected assets and locations, such as room occupancy, footfall, asset tracking, asset performance, and from BMS/SCADA systems. The digital infrastructure for a building or project should also be able to accommodate other data sources, including anonymised visitor and/or patient data, socioeconomic data, and procurement and supply chain data.

The more varied and precise the data sets, the more valuable the insights and knowledge.

Part of the role of the digital advisor for digital buildings and smart operations is to identify the right data, in right format, for the right person and at the right time.

And this can only be achieved by aligning systems, technology and processes with the client’s immediate and future desired business outcomes.

Who are the digital advisors?

Certain large organisations may suggest that they can provide “all of the answers,” although there’s an obvious risk that they will achieve them using their own closed proprietary, single vendor IT architecture, therefore potentially tying the client into a long-term contract complicated to terminate.

If the client’s digital and data strategy is based on criteria such as open, interoperable, re-usable data, future-proof and “best in class,” then approach of an ecosystem digital advisors becomes imperative.

This paper stems from an ecosystem of organisations, each specialising in different aspects across the design, build, operate, and maintain project phases of a construction project. Ecosystem partners range from large multinationals to small subject matter experts, each providing specialist subject matter expertise and collaborating to address key issues.

Together, they drive transformational change that will enable and deliver significant business benefits for the end client and wider built environment sector.

By removing traditional organisational and technology silos to ensure open and interoperable systems and data, supporting an integrated end-to-end process, this ecosystem of complementary partners are September / October 2021

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Opinion

currently developing a proof of concept in accurately measure all critical factors Early engagement with operations, association with Leeds Teaching Hospital relating to its operations, estates and facil- estates, and FM team and digital advisors Trust (LTHT) to measure the value and ities management, and sustainability. on capital projects is key. Operations and benefits of a different way of working.

Digital advisors, underpinned by subject EFM ensure delivery of data-driven busiThe focus of the ecosystem of partners matter experts operating as an ecosystem ness outcomes while digital advisors work is ensuring that the necessary data partners, will allow the client to grow ensure interoperability across whole projto achieve desired business outcomes is their digital capability and understand- ect and asset lifecycle, as well as the availcreated, structured and shared between ing, as well as adopt a proven methodolo- ability and re-usability of necessary data. open and interoperable systems from gy for others to follow.

Like the role of data scientists several early in design and build phase, as well Michael Boyd, head of digital services years ago, the position of a digital advisor as ensure that a “golden thread” of infor- at WSP, commented, “WSP have been to enable digital buildings and smart mation is maintained across whole asset engaged as digital design advisor to sup- operations will evolve and be adopted by lifecycle into the operate phase. port the Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust the industry over time. The role should Amanda Gomersall, Leeds Teaching to deliver a world-class smart healthcare not be hidden organisationally under an Hospital NHS Trust’s general manager, facility. Our digital healthcare advisory AEC’s IT department, nor confused with corporate services and real estate, said, service in partnership with our specialist BIM advisors. The digital advisor role is “Our trust has embarked on one of the SME adviser SRO Solutions Ltd. will one that needs to be included in key decilargest hospital builds in recent years, help drive an operational focus into the sion points, advising the client and workproviding us with an opportunity to delivery of this innovative project.” ing with all stakeholders to ensure that rethink how we integrate technology Gordon Mitchell, convenor – ISO/ guidelines are followed and forwardwithin our capital projects and legacy TC267 – WG6 – Technology in Facility thinking principles are adhered to. estate for the benefit of patients and staff. Management, added, “Examples like this Building owners and operators are The trust absolutely recognises the showcase the opportunity to integrate the understanding that data is pivotal in importance of static and active data, gen- best of the world of standards coming out helping them deliver business outcomes. erated from a joined-up suite of ‘best in of technical committee 267 and our relat- Accordingly, they should endeavour to: class’ interoperable solutions covering ed bodies into realised examples, which whole asset lifecycle. in turn inform the future needs for our • Break organisational, process, and “We are working collaboratively with international roadmap. This creates a technology silos and ensure that the digital advisors, part of right people are an ecosystem of subaround the decisionject matter experts, table from day We’re already seeing the green shoots of meaningful, making which together is a key one, including E&FM differentiator.

This early engagement from some initial adopters who are and digital advisors ensures that our operfor digital buildings prepared to lead the way in applying smart ational estate teams and smart operations. technology for more efficient ways of working will continue to deliver • Make technolagreed business ogy and the resultant requirements, improve data part of a coherent, patient outcomes, operational perfor- continuous circular approach which joined-up, digital strategy that covers mance and sustainability targets for the enables us all to have a say in what best the whole asset and project lifecycle. next 30 years.” value digitisation looks like for the opera- • Contractually ensure their entitleSarah Thomas, Department of Health tional built environment.” ment to all data created throughout and Social Care, added, “The New the asset lifecycle.

Hospital Program is working with digital Conclusion • Harvest client-owned data from open subject matter experts, ensuring that new The built environment is evolving. We’re and interoperable systems that will digital innovation and sustainability are already seeing the green shoots of meanenable modular, best-in-class, and at the heart of everything being consid- ingful, early engagement from some initial future-proofed solutions. ered by NHS Trusts engaged in the gov- adopters who are prepared to lead the way • Generate and manage data to faciliernment’s new hospital build initiative.” in applying smart technology for more tate enhanced decision-making to As the proof of concept (PoC) progresses efficient ways of working. As a result of assure desired outcomes. through the Royal Institute of British these initial engagements, lessons learned Architects’ (RIBA) stages, partners will will help the client realise benefits, sup- The benefits of applying these simple continue to identify and remove obstacles ported by robust digital evidence. rules can enable and support the delivery whilst focusing on improving people, In a diverse industry sector, which has of business outcomes such as net zero organisation, processes, and IT, including not always enjoyed integrated thinking, carbon emissions, improving well-being respective product and data integration. the opportunity to realise digital benefits agendas, and reducing maintenance The PoC is only possible because of the is significant within the built environ- backlogs and operational costs. client’s desire to embrace a transformative ment. Savings in productivity, efficiency, The built environment must adopt a approach in use of digital technology traceability, health and safety, compli- new way of working and recognise digiwithin a built environment project. Along ance and particularly sustainability are tal—and how it’s applied. This environwith the participating consortium of eco- attainable—if organisational, process, ment is just as important as the bricks system partners, the client recognises the and technology silos are removed and and mortar. need to significantly improve its ability to digital expertise is engaged.

■ bentley.com

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Feature

Leica goes autonomous In years gone by, Leica Geosystems often appeared to be the most conservative of the point cloud technology developers. However, since the release of the BLK360 in 2016 the scanning giant has consistently surprised and innovated. 2021 does not disappoint

by Martyn Day

T

he concept of automated laser- accurate enough for basic interior cap- dense as a tripod-based traditional scanscan surveys has very much tures, Leica is obviously looking to inno- ner, but good enough for most applicabeen in the realms of science fic- vate and bring point cloud technology to tions, and very fast. tion. In the film Prometheus, the the masses in a portable form factor. It has Meanwhile Boston Dynamics unleashed astronauts launch flying, laser scanning never managed to keep up with demand. its SPOT robot. At AEC Magazine’s NXT balls to map the interior of the alien strucNext came the equally beautiful BLD 2019 event (nxtbld.com), R&D teams ture. While we are some way off that tech- BLK2GO, a handheld SLAM scanner. from a number of laser scanning firms nology, Leica flew in specifically to Geosystems has cleartry out their tripodly set itself on the path based scanners on Robots and drones will at first assist manual processes SPOT’s payload bay, to alchemising science until proven, but there is a sense of inevitability that fiction into science as they had not had fact. What happens this will revolutionise the speed at which site data can access before. Trimble when you combine was first out with be captured and relayed to those that need it mobile SLAM techSPOT for construction nology (Simultaneous with various payLocalisation and loads, but the scanner Mapping) with robots and drones?

Using a dual axis LiDAR dome and an was for traditional static use.

Looking back at Leica’s development array of 12 megapixel cameras, it capThis month Leica Geosystems path, it’s interesting to see how we got tured environments as you actively launched two autonomous variants of the here. The BLK360 was a surprise, low- walked through them, building point BLK2GO: BLK ARC, a laser scanning cost, small form factor laser scanner. With clouds as you went, at a rate of 420,000 module for SPOT, and BLK2FLY, a fully a product that is exquisitely designed and points per second. Not as accurate or as integrated LiDAR drone.

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The fusion of LiDAR, radar, cameras, and GNSS ensures safe flight paths and users can seamlessly and simultaneously combine data from the BLK2FLY with interior scans of buildings and structures captured with the Leica BLK2GO or the robot hosted BLK ARC. As is now usually the case, the Leica industrial design vocabulary is beautiful, and both devices fittingly look like they have been sent back from the future.

The BLK ARC takes its cue from the BLK2GO and sits at the front of SPOT with aerial ‘antlers’ adding to the aesthetic, whilst the BLK2FLY is really next level design, with the scanner body pretty much being the fuselage, with caged protected blades, and only a single button to operate it.

BLK2FLY is smart too. From a tablet, just click on an area you want to capture and it will create its own flight path, go off and scan, then return, using its built-in www.AECmag.com

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obstacle avoidance to keep safe. built site documentation for The Leica BLK ARC autonomous laser The point cloud model streams buildings to monitoring and scanning module riding to your tablet and using the situational awareness of steady on the Boston model it’s possible to tap an remote or hazardous environDynamics Spot robot area for the drone to capture ments, such as mines, factory additional data. It’s also possible to take floors, off-shore facilities, fire investigaover control using a virtual joystick. tions and more.”

To define SPOT’s scanning/walking These devices are geared up to stream path through a building, this can be sim- into Leica’s enhanced HxDR cloud-based ply drawn onto a drawing or BIM model. visualisation service for AI-enabled post SPOT will complete the mission autono- processing of the captured data. mously, avoiding obstacles on the way.

Obviously, Cloudworx is also available The result of these two methods of data for additional prep work. capture are colourised 3D point clouds to compare against BIM designs, to Conclusion assess site conditions, site progress We are now at the start of adopting and for digital twins. remote and autonomous survey technolHexagon president and CEO, Ola ogy. Robots and drones will at first assist Rollén, explained at the launch, “The manual processes until proven but there robots, sensors and software work is a sense of inevitability that this will together, dynamically adjusting reality revolutionise the speed at which site capture missions to offer seemingly lim- data can be captured and relayed to itless business applications – from as- those that need it.

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Feature

The Leica BLK2FLY can autonomously capture building exteriors, structures and environments

With advances in AI, real-world building objects like doors, walls and windows will be able to be identified and turned into accurate as-built BIM models, which can be used to compare to the original design, or act as a start-point for a digital twin. It’s also conceivable that the scans could be used to identify and audit assets (desks, chairs, computers) within the building.

I’m guessing one of the first concerns is, given how much the scanners and robots cost, any errors in flight path or floor height levels could be expensive mishaps.

It’s bad enough if a laser scanner gets stolen onsite, let alone a $70,000 robot it’s sat on. I suspect that close supervision will be mandatory to stop dog-napping.

Regulation might also be a constraining issue. There are stringent rules on where drones can fly, by whom and how high. Regulations on sharing workspaces with robot dogs are a little less constraining. I suspect these will change over time.

There is a major convergence of technology development happening in sur-

veying – robots, drones, cloud, AI and digital twins. These will radically improve productivity and bring new opportunities for surveyors, especially towards the back end of the building process, through the building lifecycle, as we

start to digitise buildings through various stages of their use and redesign.

While point clouds are inherently dumb, there are an increasing number of smart applications for the technology.

■ leica-geosystems.com

HxGN Metro HD urban landscape In addition to launching the new scanners, Leica unveiled its HxGN Metro HD urban landscape with high-definition digital twins of global cities with data available in 2D and 3D in nine different data sets (LiDAR, mesh, land-use, digital surface, 3D buildings, digital terrain, obliques, true ortho and ortho photos) derived from 5cm resolution aerial imagery and 20 - 25 points/m² resolution LiDAR data.

Hexagon claims to be the only aerial data provider to capture both aeri-

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al imagery and LiDAR data simultaneously, ensuring consistency between the data.

Cities captured in 2021 include Munich, Cologne, Vienna, Milan, Amsterdam, Stockholm, Tokyo, Dallas, New York, Stuttgart and Frankfurt. More cities will be added in early 2022. Leica said that the data consistency makes it the ideal data source for artificial intelligence, machine learning, automatic feature extraction and large volume analytics.

■ hxgncontent.com/products/metro-hd

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(C) RDF TELEVISION / ITV

Portmeirion, Wales, ‘The Village’ in 1967 TV show, The Prisoner, where ‘Number 6’ is held captive, isolated from the mainland by mountains and sea

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Welcome to The Village, customer No.6. A place of architectural beauty, a utopian world built by software developers for their customers, isolated from the mainland by mountains and sea, making ‘happiness’ literally inescapable.

By digitising your design process, you joined the inhabitants, ensuring permanent residency in The Village.

As long as you are cooperative and keep providing information in our approved proprietary formats, you won’t need to worry; we have a saying that ‘a still tongue makes a happy life’.

Those that are unfamiliar with the cult 1960s TV series ‘The Prisoner’ may be a tad lost at this point. ‘The Village’ is a mysterious place, where people of interest (spies) are incarcerated and subjected to interrogation for information.

Meanwhile, on the surface, the village functions as if it’s a thriving and cordial community.

The series plays on the individual, their freedom, versus an Orwellian collective and its authority. If an inmate does transgress and tries to escape, a large white balloon called Rover appears, chases them down and smothers them to death!

With almost two decades of experience in this generation of BIM tools, most AEC firms recognise that their in-house expertise, defined workflows, legacy data and historic investment locks them to a particular software developer’s solution. www.AECmag.com

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This investment makes customers vulnerable to shifting software business models, licence changes, and any price hikes which their vendor of choice enacts.

As the architectural and construction market has slowly migrated to BIM processes and matured, the business models of our software suppliers have evolved far quicker.

Getting the elephant in the room out of the way early on, we have a market dominating firm in the guise of Autodesk, moving from the desktop and investing in cloud / software as a service (SaaS) technologies.

Over the last five to seven years, the majority of Autodesk’s development work has been in creating a cloud stack of capabilities and services. Its AECrelevant desktop applications (AutoCAD, Revit, 3ds Max, Civil 3D etc.), on which its users rely, have seen much less in the way of development and improvements.

The company has also followed business innovations which impact its routeto-market, such as subscription, championed by Adobe. As Autodesk converted its user base from perpetual to subscription licences, it has seen its share price triple over the last five years and is generating the kind of profits that other AEC developers could only dream about.

While this is undoubtedly good for Autodesk’s business, why are so many of its customers still complaining to us?

For Autodesk, the process of moving firms from its old model to subscription took a long time. It involved ratcheting up the pricing of perpetual and maintenance over three years, until eventually

the lowest cost of ownership for new seats was subscription.

The company accelerated its plans to subscription by completely pulling sales of perpetual licences, with the final offer being an eight-year discount for tradingin perpetual licences.

I call this ‘upgrades through acts of regular coercion’. This rapid evolution through licence models has made the lives of BIM managers extremely painful, especially when having to deal with multi-licence types, multi-site and multigeos. Even Autodesk CEO, Andrew Anagnost, admitted it is ‘licence hybrid hell’ for customers.

In a previous article (tinyurl.com/adeskletter), I reported on how surprised Anagnost was to hear of broad discontent from customers in 2019, eight months before the Open Letter to Autodesk from dozens of AEC firms was posted Without wasting precious column centimetres re-telling the story, Autodesk ended up reinvigorating development in Revit. But the discontent continues with the same issues: depth of development, escalating costs, licensing, openness and audits.

The Autodesk ‘Village’ is popular, but many customers still complain to me that they feel they have little control, that they feel like sheep being herded through gates. When talking about software development, especially with advanced signature architecture firms, I invariably get the response of ‘they are not listening to us’. But the company is clearly doing something right if you look at the share price.

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THE PRISONER (C) ITV

Cover story

Follow the leader

to reduce development velocity and industry’s software developers feel their If something is proven to be very success- makes customers question value for applications are worthy of higher value, ful, others are going to copy it. It’s a fact money with greater frequency. usually under the guise of instigating a of life. Autodesk and Adobe, and their The innovation in subscription seems cloud business model, together with the financial results, are a beacon to software to be more in product bundling and promise of increasing the rate of developfirms which want to drive growth and upselling, than developing design ment. This is built on the assumption improve shareholder value. authoring tools. Specifically in the BIM that cloud-based everything is good and The trailblazers of the software sub- market, where a new generation is long the concept that customers need more scription service are now influencing overdue, business model evolution is just capabilities in their product. other industry players, competitors in the not cutting it.

Many AEC firms are already strugmarket. Many of these software firms are There is only so much budget that firms gling with low margins and price hikes, also publicly listed and have undoubtedly will allocate for design tools. Many of the so vendors mandating named-user come under pressure from investors to software firms which are jumping on the licences is the last thing the industry change to a ‘subscription model.’ subscription bandwagon also have appli- needs. Design IT directors are trying to The net result of this has been a steady cations which are mature, having seen lit- cut the cloth to fit their budget. This flow of software firms rocking up at exist- tle development in the past five years. means prioritising software by value to ing AEC customers, looking to eliminate To suddenly change the model, jack up the business and being less flexible perpetual licences, remove flexible net- the cost of ownership and promise yearly when looking to take on new solutions. work licences and mandate named-user updates is going to be met with looks of Budget compromises will mean not licences or cloud-based accounts. incredulity. A case in point here being always having the best tool for the job.

This is now a village-wide This presents barriers to pandemic, and simply staystart-ups getting a foothold. ing at home is not going to Out of all of this, the death The problem comes when software firms protect your firm from it. The of the network licence is the start asking for subscription to products new business models of softmost problematic. ware companies will mean Historically CAD systems that are old, that lack development velocity, increasing the cost of ownercost a lot of money and firms or any depth to new functionality ship of running today’s AEC would have dedicated users, tech stacks and getting the ire eight hours plus per day of BIM Managers and anyone ‘drawing’. Once that market that has to justify the design software Trimble, which has revamped its was highly penetrated and saturated, the budget. The more you use, the more you SketchUp business. By volume, SketchUp next sales opportunity was the occasionrely on, the depth of the integration, the is simply ‘bloody huge’, it’s a staple of al user, someone who didn’t need a full more complex the proprietary format, many architecture firms. licence but needed to open files and carry the more limited the API, the less conThe new business model for SketchUp out some basic CAD functions. trol customers have on their data and impacts big firms which have lots of The birth of the network licence meant their costs. users. Trimble has removed the floating more revenue from big customers We were led to believe that subscrip- network capability and gone for a named bypassing that horrible question of who tion would mean lower cost of owner- user licence model. Several AEC firms we really needs to have a full copy of this ship, more flexible licensing, and better spoke with estimated the additional cost expensive professional tool. consumer focus. of all the extra seats they would need, The reality is the network licence It’s true that professional software in would result in an increase of between served a really good purpose enabling our industry no longer costs $2,000 to 100-600%. Some have said they would company-wide access on demand for a $6,000 for a club membership fee. Start- stick with old perpetual versions instead reasonable cost. When a software firm is ups benefit hugely here from low turn- of paying the increase. Some were told seeking growth, the easiest place to look key access. But in the long term, it invari- that would not be possible... for is in its current customer base. ably increases cost of ownership, tends We are entering a period where our Eradicating network licences and forcing

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THE PRISONER (C) ITV

“I’m not a number, I’m a named user licence”

one copy per user might be good business, but it’s a quick way to make your customers resent you and start to consider that the relationship is in trouble.

Escaping the village When the world was flat, Autodesk’s market dominating DWG file format, ruled the drawing world. All the competitors had to support both DWG and DXF as they were the lingua franca of the design world.

It took years of work but the ODA (Open Drawing Alliance), a body which was collectively sponsored by Autodesk’s competitors, eventually reversed engineered DWG, providing a common toolset for the industry. We actually got to a point where design files could easily be shared among project teams and DWG became the ubiquitous .DOC of design.

On moving to BIM and 3D, the industry took a massive retrograde step and returned to proprietary formats, and the veritable Tower of Babel. Interoperability between BIM systems has never been a straightforward affair. Not only were they proprietary, but they were also intended to hold vast amounts of project information — not just schematics like drawings. A proprietary file to hold everything in a project seems like a great lock into a vendor and also a silly idea, given how big that file would get.

For most of its life, IFC (Industry Foundation Class) was a lowest common denominator format and left a lot to be desired. While it was sold as an interchange format, it really was only good for geometry referencing, given the dumbing down of the representations it could support.

Creating a proprietary BIM model required it to be sliced up like a sausage to share. It also didn’t help that there were so many poor interpretations of the standard. Revit even had trouble importwww.AECmag.com

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ing the IFCs it generated! In the early face the same technological problems as days, IFC presented a false sense of data an industry. portability. Thankfully the industry The main focus is on developing tools didn’t give up working on it. to liberate their data out of the old softNow, 20 years into BIM, the liberation ware silos and legacy systems, to derive of data is now seen as fundamentally their own solutions to get productivity important amongst mature users, enhancements which they are not seeing because with portability comes choice of from traditional BIM software developapplications, workflows and exchange. ers. While this is all still formative, the Over the years, IFC has improved. The increased costs, lack of control and feelODA’s IFC toolkit now looks set to make ing of being trapped is focussing their it an industry standard with even the minds to act. most unlikely of events occurring, One obvious target here is to attempt to Autodesk joining the ODA and adopting better automate the 2D drawing process, its IFC as a foundation. This was an an original promise of BIM software that organisation that Autodesk never really delivered. This had previously sued for could lead to breaking up reverse engineering the processes, which are done Beyond DWG format. today in monolithic softtraditional The ODA is now also deep ware applications to disinto reversing the Revit file crete components, lessensoftware format (RVT). Other advancing the need for expensive developers, es in openness are underway BIM seats. Imagine a world several key — Nvidia is promoting where you could design in Pixar’s USD (Universal architectural any number of platforms Scene Description) for geom- practices are in and the data just flows, like etry collaboration through swapping web browsers deep Nvidia Omniverse; Speckle and using the Internet. discussion on is an open source collaboraOther architectural firms tion tool which can stream ways to work are setting up working objects between platforms; groups to engage with the together and McNeel has Rhino Inside wider developer communipool resources ty to try and ensure, at an which acts as a magical geometry data bus (to and early stage, that new prodfrom Revit to just about ucts actually do something everything); and there are more. they need. If the current BIM software Indeed, in the last two years, there have developers insist on merely evolving never been so many third-party tools what is already available, this is not going with which to collaborate, data wrangle to meet the needs of AEC design in the and bypass the limitations of proprietary next ten years. IT directors need to see file formats. longer term visions and are wondering Beyond traditional software develop- where this is all going. ers, several key architectural practices are in deep discussion on ways to work The cloud together and pool resources. They may A lot of what is driving this, so I’ve been well be competitors in the field of archi- told by software developers, is the ultitectural design, but they recognise they mate end goal of having everything in the

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Cover story

cloud. And you can’t have a cloud busi- cage. However, given what has happened always have their place in bread-and-butness model without a subscription model before, I only see being repeated down the ter work, the top 20% of mature AEC because its transactional and a service. line. The Village hotel, ‘The Eagle’, is very firms are actively investigating alternaThere are undoubtedly obvious bene- proud of its motto, you can check-out any tive workflows. It’s easier when your confits to having a cloud-based workflow. time you like, but you can never leave. ceptual approach is more concerned Construction and design are iterative and about geometry, using products like collaborative. Having the data in a central Conclusion Rhino and Grasshopper. repository, which is easily accessible and Subscription is inevitable. It’s taking While ‘Lego BIM’ may well be always updated, makes perfect sense. But over the whole software industry. Even involved, it’s probably as a downstream the question we should be asking early King Canute would not put a wager on process for the production of drawings on here, is why should the data be held turning back that tide. While brand-new from a model, rather than being used as by one software vendor? services and cloud applications start out an actual design system.

Sure, it makes it easier, but it also with a subscription model, at least these That said, firms are looking for alterensures reliance, and we know that iner- have relatively quick development cycle natives to enable more automated 2D tia and ‘proprietariness’ can lead to los- times. Being young applications, cus- drawings. Producing drawings should ing control of the cost. If all your data is tomers will appreciate high velocity not cost so much money or take so much uploaded to one company’s server, stored development, hopefully answering their time. Part of this will be driven by in its formats, how accessible is that to needs for the fee charged. embracing digital fabrication-capable people outside of that vendor’s cloud ecoThe problem comes when software tools and workflows, as well as developsystem, and how deep does competitor firms start asking for subscription to ing tools to lift their data out of the silos access to that API layer go? which the current generaThink of the Facebook tion of authoring tools have model. We commoditised created. While there is a Most AEC firms recognise that their in-house practical benefit to liberatourselves by putting our information on its servers. expertise, defined workflows, legacy data and ing their data, it’s not withFacebook profits from this by historic investment locks them to a particular out recognition that there being able to sell access to us, are many firms that don’t software developer’s solution based on granular knowlreally ever want to be in a edge of our unprivate lives. place where a single vendor By standardising on a sinowns their workflow and gle cloud system, you pay the company products that are old, that lack develop- can dictate terms. to alter your design, you pay them to ment velocity, or any depth to new funcThere are a number of initiatives bubstore the design, your partners pay them tionality. Unfortunately, the greatest bling underground to facilitate this. I’d to access your data and, again, pay the potential for subscription revenue for the highly recommend you come to London company to use the tools to edit/add to software developer is in the mature prod- on 9 November for AEC Magazine’s NXT the project. ucts, which have the biggest installed base. BLD event (nxtbld.com) to hear about them.

We are leaving the software business Here the developer has the lowest world of selling applications and entering maintenance cost for the code but the As an addendum. The bad news is that No.6 into one where they own your business highest income. The incentive to rede- never really did manage to escape The Village. platform, your supply chain. It’s vastly velop from scratch for a new generation The last episode upset so many viewers, hoping more profitable, and easier to sell to a sup- is simply not there if the product is not to find out who No.1 in the village was, that ply chain hooked on a proprietary format, particularly threatened by the competi- Patrick McGoohan had to leave the country, as than selling individual authoring tools. tion, and if you are actively pursuing so people ransacked his home.

Don’t get me wrong, there will be advan- many other new markets. tages and benefits for being in this gilded While traditional ‘Lego’ BIM tools will Be seeing you (as they say in The Village).

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The Prisoner’s creator and star, Patrick McGoohan used Portmeirion in North Wales as his set. It’s an Italianate village, or folly built by Sir Clough WilliamsEllis from 1925 onwards.

While many of the buildings were designed by Williams-Ellis, a number were rescued or donated instead of being demolished. The net result is an eclectic mix of styles, made all the more interesting, as most are at 2/3rds scale.

The architect also used trompe-l’œil

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techniques in building decoration to hide some more functional aspects of house design within the village.

The Prisoner can be seen on Britbox (watch.britbox.co.uk) or bought on Amazon. Portmeirion, situated on a shallow estuary (portmeirion.wales) is certainly worth visiting, it has a unique microclimate, extensive planting and evokes a sense of wonderment, in addition to the TV series mythology.

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06/10/2021 08:59

nxtbld.com

London 9 November 2021

The future of AEC technology The construction industry is on the verge of a revolution which will change the way buildings are designed and built. New technologies are having a profound impact on architecture, engineering & construction. At NXT BLD you will find out how

N

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

Last year, the pandemic forced us to go virtual but the incredible vaccine roll-out means NXT BLD 2021 will now take place at the prestigious QEII Centre in London on 9 November 2021 and we can’t wait to meet you all again in person.

The last eighteen months are already starting to feel like a dystopian VR dream, being confined to our homes for so long and only able to connect virtually. It was certainly the year in which the Internet rescued the AEC industry, with various cloud platforms enabling projects to keep going, despite working together, apart.

This experience has changed attitudes to where we work, how we collaborate and how we make our IT backbones more resilient. We will be addressing this subject within the conference with our partner, Lenovo, and others.

In terms of core AEC technologies, we have an inspiring roster of speakers for our two conference tracks, covering a wide range of hot topics — off-site construction, computational design, collaboration tools,

robots and construction, VR, mixed reality, digital twins, extremely high-resolution reality capture (photogrammetry) and the latest in powerful workstations. Each talk include an audience Q&A. See pages 46-49 for more details.

Event details Tuesday 9 November 2021 8:30am - 5:30pm (conference starts 9:30am) Queen Elizabeth II Centre London SW1P 3EE For all the latest information and to see our enhanced COVID safety procedures visit

Exclusive 2-for-1 offer for AEC Magazine readers For readers of AEC Magazine, we are offering a strictly limited number of tickets on a special 2-for-1 offer.

Simply use the promotional code 241AEC and you can pick up a pair for £69.

Tickets include full access to the conference and exhibition, refreshments, lunch and drinks at the networking reception.

When they’re gone, they’re gone! nxtbld.com/register-2

2-for-1 tickets

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The NASA control room for construction Dr. Marzia Bolpagni // MACE How can NASA control projects in real time and predict events, while in construction we are struggling? Is it possible to create a control room for our sector?

In this presentation Marzia will present the work that Mace has been leading together with other industry and academic partners to solve such a challenge. The work aims to help UK construction be more efficient and proactive rather than reactive with a scalable and repeatable plug-and play construction management and reporting platform known as the AEC Production Control Room.

Marzia works as Head of BIM International at Mace where she develops and implements digital construction solutions for public and private international clients in five international hubs. She holds a PhD in ICT and Smart Construction and she is passionate about filling the gap between industry and academia.

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nxtbld.com Autonomous robots in construction David Burczyk, Trimble Robots in construction have the potential to enhance fieldoriented workflows, reduce the amount of rework, and facilitate on-site tasks. Utilising robots for routine tasks in hazardous environments such as construction sites can improve safety, efficiency, and data capture consistency.

Trimble and Boston Dynamics announced an exclusive alliance agreement for Trimble to be the sole integration partner for construction data collection technologies, including 3D laser scanning, GNSS, and robotic total stations with Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot. With a focus on building construction and civil construction workflows, Trimble and Boston Dynamics will introduce new products and services to advance the use of robotics in the construction industry.

Design and code across realities Andreea Ion Cojocaru, Numena Numena, a design and software development company with a pioneering approach to the practice of architecture, comprises coding architects that both design and develop. The company works on spatial experiences and interactions across multiple dimensions and modalities.

Projects range from custom VR and AR applications, to virtual architecture, to physical architecture. Numena XR, a VR design tool at the heart of the company’s workflow was born out of its belief that architects should also design and code their own tools. Cojocaru will do a live demo and argue for two major propositions VR has to offer beyond visualisation.

Dimitrie Stefanescu Speckle Systems

Alex Coulombe Agile Lens

David Weir McCall Epic Games

A shared mission, a common greater good, collaboration, and passion are key ingredients of Open Source. In this presentation, Dimitrie will untangle what it means for the AEC industry, and how Speckle is attempting to transform the industry with those values in mind.

Alex Coulombe will discuss how the rapidly evolving landscape of emerging tech has presented myriad opportunities for architects to apply their skillsets to the digital realm. What happens when a virtual space needs to provide the same functions as a real one for hundreds of people?

David will explore how real-time technology is transforming the AEC industry, enabling faster, more iterative design solutions and bridging the gap between an idea and reality. The boundaries and output of the traditional architectural deliverable is evolving, giving new life to your digital models after design.

• Collaboration / interoperability 46

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• VR / architecture / NFTs

• Real-time viz / digital twins www.AECmag.com

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London 9 November 2021 Greg Schleusner Principal / director of design technology, HOK In this unmissable presentation, expect some hugely important news for the AEC software industry. Greg Schleusner, director of design technology and innovation at HOK will explore the necessity and opportunities for architecture and engineering practices to work together to solve the challenges facing our industry.

You will not want to miss this!

The Lenovo ThinkStation P620

BIM street: what’s around the corner?

George Matos Nvidia

Robert Jamieson AMD

Mike Leach Lenovo

Nvidia Omniverse is an open platform built for virtual collaboration and real-time physically accurate simulation.

Nvidia’s George Matos will explain how the platform allows teams to piece together many different tools, in an open and extensible way to focus on what matters most.

How the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, powered by AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO processors, is the platform of choice for demanding AEC professionals. By combining high CPU clock speed and industry leading core density, Threadripper Pro processors deliver the full spectrum of compute capability. .

Workstations / visualisation / simulation

With a major shift to hybrid working, it is important to understand how technology can streamline new & key business processes. How do you build on existing IT infrastructure, how do you better manage a growing hybrid workforce and can you still leverage immersive technologies whilst working remotely?

• Visualisation / collaborative design www.AECmag.com

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• AR / VR / remote workstations / AI September / October 2021

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nxtbld.com Foster + Partners Applied Research and Development (ARD) Group The in-house Applied Research and Development team (ARD) at Foster + Partners is legendary. Comprising, architects and engineers who can program, the multi-disciplinary team are tasked with solving complex design problems, developing tools for teams, as well as evaluating the latest hardware and software.

NXT BLD will feature two talks from ARD. The first, on its real-world evaluation of using robots in construction. The team (pictured right with Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot) will relay the positive and negative findings of their experiments with automation.

For the second talk, Martha Tsigkari and Francis Aish will highlight some of the research projects the team has undertaken to resolve complex design issues. ARD’s work covers: computational design, performance analysis, optimisation, fabrication, AR/VR, machine learning, and realtime simulation.

Both talks are not to be missed.

Martha Tsigkari

Sherif Tarabishi

Khaled Elashry

Francis Aish

Anders Rod

Adam Davis

Hilmar Gunnarsson Arkio

Johan Hanegraaf Arkio

Rob Harrison Epic Games

Hilmar is the founder of Arkio, a collaborative VR/AR design tool that allows designers to quickly prototype and validate designs with project stakeholders, wherever they are in the world. Designers can sketch out buildings and entire urban plans while experiencing and adjusting their designs at human scale.

Regular NXT BLD visitors will be familiar with Johan Hanegraaf, the Dutch architect who presented a concept of what an architectural virtual reality design system would look like, at the first NXT BLD. This year his prototype turned into a product and Arkio has become so much more.

Rob is connected to many of the leading architects and engineering teams, as well as a host of specialist firms that deliver real-time experiences, such as digital twins and immersive collaboration environments. At NXT BLD Rob will be joined on stage by one of these customers to explore their use case in detail.

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• VR / collaborative design

• Real-time viz / digital twins / VR www.AECmag.com

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London 9 November 2021 Digital twins within hands reach: remote inspections with mixed reality Greg Demchak, Bentley

Get hands-on with the latest technology

Very high resolution photogrammetry is bringing Digital Twins to life, with exceptional detail and accuracy. Greg Demchak, director of Bentley Systems’s digital innovation lab, looks at the latest mixed reality technology to aid construction planning and virtualised inspections.

NXT BLD isn’t just about its inspirational conference; it’s an incredible opportunity to get hands on with the latest technology in our exhibition.

Whether you’re starting out in arch viz / VR, want to push your workflows to the limits, or simply explore new tech for collaboration and more, then you’re in for a treat. Here’s a run down of the key exhibitors you’ll see on the show floor.

Lenovo will showcase the latest in virtual reality along with its powerful desktop and mobile workstations, including the new ThinkStation P620 with AMD Threadripper Pro CPU and Nvidia RTX GPUs.

IMAGE COURTESY OF FACTORYOS

Unreal Engine is the ‘world’s most open and advanced’ real-time 3D tool.

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

Cerulean Labs All great architecture starts with a sketch. Spaces by Cerulean Labs is bringing conceptual design to iPad. 3D Repo will show how its digital construction platform can transform workflows using live collaborative tools in a web browser.

Bluesky uses the latest in airborne sensor technology to capture current, accurate and integrated geospatial datasets.

Bricsys is focused on making cost-effective, unique CAD, BIM and CDE products.

Cadline provides guidance on the latest design, analysis, data management, collaboration and business process platforms.

Cadventure will be demonstrating the latest Bentley Systems software portfolio and its wider industry software solutions.

Correvate offers cloud technology that enables the automatic registration and subsequent analysis of 3D point cloud datasets.

Graphisoft says its award-winning solutions provide unrivalled open BIM workflows.

Leica Geosystems prides itself on precise and accurate instruments, sophisticated software, and trusted services.

Revizto provides a BIM collaboration platform for 3D and 2D workflows that enables users to work with all project stakeholders.

StrucSoft’s solution allows users to model their framing systems in Revit and then export data into a format readable by CNC machines.

SystemActive, the leading workstation hardware and immersive solution provider, will be showcasing the latest from Varjo.

Topcon provides end-to-end business solutions by integrating high-precision measurement technology, software and data.

Vectorworks is an award-winning design and BIM software provider.

Xinaps creates smart data validation and design automation solutions for professionals. in the AEC industry.

Wellington City Unreal Engine image courtesy of Buildmedia

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For more info visit nxtbld.com/sponsors-2021

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R E A D Y C R E ATO R

Event

Build: Architecture preview On 2 November Epic Games will host Build: Architecture, a highly focused and completely free virtual event where leading firms including, Zaha Hadid Architects, BIG and HOK will showcase innovative real-time projects

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ext month Epic Games is inviting architects, engineers, viz artists and visual effects professionals to discover the latest real-time innovations that are transforming architecture, engineering, and construction.

From cutting-edge digital twins to advancements in immersive design, attendees of Build: Architecture will hear how Zaha Hadid Architects, HOK, Foster + Partners and other leading AEC firms are spearheading innovative realtime projects.

The event will be split into three acts: act one will focus on design storytelling with architectural visualisation software Twinmotion; act two will showcase innovative projects with Unreal Engine; while act three will expand into the realms of digital twins and collosal open worlds.

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There will also be a whole host of focused ‘Dev Lounges’ where attendees can pick the brains of the industry presenters and Epic Games technology experts on all things real time.

cloud feature to engage with customers in real-time helped Cannon Design — and its customers — find a common place to work out design issues to make realtime design changes on the project.

Below are some of the project highlights that will be presented at the event.

Global architectural design practice Zaha Hadid used mixed platform design and game engines to bring an interactive design experience to consumers and stakeholders in Beyabu, Honduras.

The modular blocks of buildings, coupled with computational design parameters, have been merged into Unreal Engine to provide a photorealistic, realtime design configurator that allow users to integrate with their designs ‘like never before’. The technology extended to working with the manufacturing and production chains to bring the purchaser’s design request to reality.

Global design firm Cannon Design is a 1,200 person architectural firm based in New York. Twinmotion has allowed its design teams to collaborate in digital real-time environments and work closer together on large healthcare projects.

For Mercy Hospital in Phoenix, the team had to quickly create animations and visuals of both indoor and outdoor environments for a project covering over 300,000 sq.ft.

Using Twinmotion’s collaborative

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Danish architecture studio BIG will present Chongqing, the home of a new Hi-Tech Zone in China

The Canadian Parliamentary Precinct in Ottawa, Ontario is undergoing a decades-long renovation to modernise operational infrastructure, improve building performance, and enhance visitor experiences for generations to come.

HOK is leading the architectural design and conservation efforts with technical processes driven by three main principles: all physical conditions — past, present, and future — must be documented; the development projects and outcome must be transparent; and all data streams must be available in real-time.

For the project, HOK harnessed the power of reality capture, leveraging realtime technologies to share the various states of construction/progress to manage scope, and incorporating the data into daily workflows to better illustrate design intent, constraints, and options to the client.

Digital twin platform 3D Repo was instrumental in providing persistent cloud-based storage and model federation for HOK as part of the project.

3D revisions are automatically optimised and made available via APIs, saving months of time whenever a design change happens. By linking the same APIs to third-party business intelligence applications for extended data validation and inspection, 3D Repo is www.AECmag.com

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helping to remove risk from the engineering process even further.

Danish architecture studio BIG will present Chongqing, the home of a new Hi-Tech Zone, a centre of innovation for China for developing future technologies.

The project masterplan will integrate ‘artificial intelligence of things’, robotics, networking and big data.

Cloud Valley will be the first project milestone. a landmark for science and technology where the barriers between human and artificial intelligence are removed and the focus is on creating a space for technology and nature to thrive together.

The project is spread across two plots totalling an area of 51,000 m2. Each plot will be covered by a generous and permeable green landscape, beneath which will be a village of transparent buildings. These are shaped to efficiently accommodate the innovative activities planned for the campus, such as sports events, art exhibitions and product fairs.

The porous structure of the urban fabric will create generous green courtyards with natural light and ventilation.

Vouse is a Singapore-based cross-technology design consultancy that provides interactive applications development for

built environment industries.

Developed within Unreal Engine, the featured use-case at Build: Architecture — Changi Airport Digital Twin — is an integrated data model that synchronises operational data in real-time.

Together with the Changi Airport Group Terminal 5 planning team, applications were built using game technology to suit different operational needs and users within the airport environment.

Creative digital agency PureBlink, together with Elad Real Estate, has created an interactive sales tool for a new development ‘Galleria on the Park’.

The master plan consists of eight different buildings on an eight acre park, and the ability to bring users into an immersive experience to explore the urban development helped buyers better understand the vision.

Online sales tools also helped support the launch of ‘Galleria on the Park’ helping Elad hit its sales goals in a shorter period of time through Covid.

Registration to Build:Architecture is completely free and there will be different start times to cater to PDT, EDT, GMT and CET time zones.

For more information visit ■ unrealengine.com/events/build-architecture-2021

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Feature

Graphisoft Building Together Following the release of Archicad 25, Graphisoft aired over 30 talks in an online event, covering technology, case studies and the experiences and views of architects on today’s hot topics, writes Martyn Day

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hile many of us have now be viewed on-demand. All talks can been forced to work from be filtered into five groups: Keynote, Trend home over the last 18 Talk, Designed with Archicad, Roundtable months, the global BIM and Archicad 25 what’s new? conference season didn’t miss a beat and For this article we’ve chosen a talk from simply went online. each section but there’s a lot of other good Some of last year’s events had a feeling stuff. Irrespective of which BIM tool you of being held together by bubble gum, but use, the ‘Designed with Archicad’ section this year the industry raised its game and is by far the richest and features customvirtual events have looked a lot slicker, less ers talking about projects from all over time consuming and benefitted from being the world – USA, Croatia, Holland, Italy, planned for the medium.

Hong Kong and Norway.

In September, fresh after Keynote: Cradle to cradle as the launch of Archicad 25, Getting Dr. an opportunity in the conGraphisoft held its ‘Building Michael struction industry Together’ conference over Braungart as a Graphisoft headlined with a three days, for a few hours each day.

Historically, speaker was a fantastic talk from Dr. Graphisoft ran something it coup and he did Michael Braungart. In the called its Key Customer of sustainable design, not disappoint. world Conference, a rather excluthere is one key handbook — It’s worth sive invite-only, physical Cradle to Cradle: Remaking event which moved around registering just the Way We Make Things by the world. Going online William (Bill) McDonough for his 30 means that Building and Dr. Michael Braungart. minute talk Together can be seen by all, Published in 2002 the alone. I for free, and now on book’s message of upcycling demand. The only downside guarantee you’ll is all about keeping materiis there’s no free beer. in closed-loop industrial have a different als Software companies can cycles. perspective on spoil their events by making We are massive fans of the talks all about their architect McDonough and the material products. Sometimes it feels his efforts to educate the impact of like a never-ending sales world on eco-friendly buildings pitch. I’m glad to say that design. His TED talk on Graphisoft established a ‘What would buildings and really healthy balance products look like if designbetween Archicad technical sessions, ers took into account all children, all specase studies and round table discussions, cies, for all time?’ is an absolute classic and gave space for people within practice (tinyurl.com/TED-McDonough) to discuss some hot topics and provide McDonough partnered with German food for thought on some of the issues we chemist, Braungart, who had defined face — not just as an industry, but as a ‘lifecycle development’ in the 1980s to species. The underlying theme for this formulate sustainable materials and proyear’s event was sustainability. cesses. In this talk and following Q&A, There were 30+ talks, all of which can Dr Braungart does not hold back on what

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he thinks! Highly informative stuff.

■ tinyurl.com/GR-Braungart

Trend talk: Hiring the next generation of architects - Graphisoft’s global recruitment survey Graphisoft’s manager of global education, Szabolcs Mikó, gave an interesting talk on the results from the company’s research into the challenges of hiring new talent.

How do they choose their new hires?

What are they looking for? Does software knowledge really matter, or is it more about the architectural portfolio? How do new architects get their training? Mikó also gave an insight into Graphisoft’s strategy for Archicad education and how it is supporting students.

■ tinyurl.com/GR-NEXTGEN

Designed with Archicad: hypercars Marko Dabrovic of Croatian architectural practice 3LHD gave a fantastic talk on what probably is the country’s most interesting project and client. Top Gear fans may be very aware of a company called Rimac; it makes the fastest electric supercar on the planet.

In 2017, presenter Richard Hammond spectacularly crashed the one and only development car, the Concept One. Founder Mate Rimac is the Croatian equivalent of Elon Musk. While he produces the occasional supercar, his core business is in supplying batteries to the high-end and automotive manufacturers.

3LHD got the job of designing the Rimac Hypercar facility, which included a test track, factory, office buildings and extensive landscaping, with sheep and geese. Rimac is a vegetarian; he was very keen that his employees have a canteen which looks out onto grazing animals, so they can ponder the meat they are eating!

Certainly worth a watch.

■ tinyurl.com/GR-designed

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Croatian architectural practice, 3LHD was tasked with designing the Rimac Hypercar facility

The all-electric Rimac Nevera hypercar has a maximum speed of 258mph and goes from 0-60 mph in a breathtaking 1.85 seconds

Roundtable: the challenges of integrating BIM in the curriculum Szabolcs Mikó talked with five educators about learning new digital tools vs traditional skills and what is the best way to incorporate BIM into architecture degrees.

over any others, these talks are essentially updates for existing users to find out what’s new in the latest release, covering general updates, collaboration, design, documentation and visualisation.

■ tinyurl.com/GR-education

Closing thoughts

Archicad 25 What’s new?

It was healthy to see that, out of 30+ talks, only four concerned Graphisoft’s core product, Archicad. While not concentrating on pitching its version of BIM

At Building Together this year there was a good mix of customers and technical content, and a lot less concentration on the software tools — instead, focusing on the design objectives.

The messaging on how the industry

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needs to address the big sustainability problems faced by humanity is exceptionally pertinent.

Getting Dr. Michael Braungart as a speaker was a great coup and he did not disappoint. It’s worth registering just for his 30 minute talk alone. I guarantee you’ll have a different perspective on the material impact of buildings.

All presentations are available to view on demand after free registration ■ buildingtogether.graphisoft.com

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Case study

From art to engineering How a team of engineers turned an artistic vision for a bold new stage design for Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto” into a fully articulated, structurallyoptimised 12 metre high clown

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into every performance that takes the design to a whole new level.

The project is the result of meticulous planning carried out by engineering firm Lener & Schmid Ingenieure ZT GmbH. It took more than two years to bring the Rigoletto stage design to life, from initial idea to the final delivery.

Gerhard Lener, the engineer that heads up the project, is no stranger to stage design. Rigoletto is the tenth Bregenz Festival project he has been involved with in 20 years.

This, however, is his most elaborate to date: “The more movement there is in a IMAGE COURTESY OF KARL FORSTER

he Bregenz Festival in Austria is internationally renowned for its spectacular productions held on a large floating stage on Lake Constance. The current stage design for Verdi’s opera “Rigoletto”, however, surpasses all previous ones in a special way.

The structure on the lake stage weighs a full 140 tonnes and is a marvellous combination of art and engineering.

The twelve-metre-high clown head and equally long hands are impressive in their own right. But it’s the sophisticated stage technology that sets the structure in motion and breathes life

Actors and singers perform in front of, on top of, and even inside the head

construction like this, the more challenging it is for us,” he explains. “And this one was meant to have maximum movement. It is more of a machine than a static structure.”

A machine as a stage Rigoletto’s head can move in a multitude of different ways. A swivel drive directs the head, which weighs tons, up, down, left or right during the performance.

A total of eight drives are used to show facial expressions to match the action on stage. Eyelids open and close, eyeballs move up and down, and the mouth can also open or close as desired. The hollow head can accommodate up to ten performers who use it as part of the stage.

To the left and right of the head are two hands, whose six-metre-long fingers can also be individually controlled by means of a hydraulic swivel drive, so that their movement resembles that of a human.

In his left hand, Rigoletto holds a real balloon with a diameter of 14 metres, which is filled with more than 1,300 cubic metres of helium and - when weather and wind conditions allow - rises into the night sky during the performance.

Realising the vision The idea for the imposing stage set came from the stage designers, who turned to Lener & Schmid to help deliver on their vision.

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IMAGE COURTESY OF KARL FORSTER

SCIA Engineer models of Rigoletto’s head

The stage for Bregenz Festival’s “Rigoletto” is located on the edge of Lake Constance in Austria

engineers work for public-sector clients or stage set, you realise that it consists of specialist companies with a deep technical many construction parts and materials. It understanding. starts with steel, goes through wood to Working with artists is therefore fibreglass,” he says. always something special, which is the To save weight, the engineers relied on great attraction, but also requires a close both a wood-steel and a fibreglass-steel exchange and a lot of mutual understand- composite construction. The formwork ing. “We try to harmonise the artistic thus also became a load-bearing compoappearance, the required nent. “This is where we functionality, legal stanbenefited greatly from dards and technical feasibilSCIA Engineer, as this softWe try to ity, while implementing as ware covers all these mateharmonise the rials,” he explains. much of the specifications as possible,” says Lener. artistic To help make the project a appearance, the Safety first reality, the engineers relied The project is somewhat required on advanced structural softunique in that it is not only functionality, ware SCIA Engineer. The a structure, but also the first step was to model the legal standards workplace of several actors geometric representation and singers who perform in and technical and then analyse the movefront of, on top of, and even feasibility, while inside the head. Therefore, ment of the rotating head.

One of the major challeng- implementing as it was important to consides the experts had to face er strict safety requiremuch of the was the distribution of the to protect the actors. specifications as ments loads. This is because the In some cases, stunts are possible lake stage is built on a fixed also performed in which concrete core with a maxipeople fall off the stage. All mum load of 1,000 kg per of this has to be taken into square metre. “We had to think carefully account in the design, including the about how to distribute that. Because forces that such movements exert on the with Rigoletto that became extremely structure. tight,” explains Lener.

For the engineers, this meant a verifiIt quickly became clear that it wouldn’t able structural analysis needed to be work without lightweight and composite submitted. The dimensioning is done construction. “When you look at this according to the Eurocodes - i.e. corre-

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sponding European standards and dimensioning rules.

For this, Lehner & Schmid had to provide precise models and verifications.

“Keeping to the form of all the verifications was enormously time-consuming,” explains Lener. “Without software support, it would not have been possible to carry out the corresponding variants.”

“This is the huge advantage of the SCIA Engineer software. It contains all EN standards and verifications. During the calculation run with SCIA Engineer, the solution of the system of equations, the determination of the deformations and internal forces was achieved within a few minutes,” he adds.

This enabled Lener & Schmid to carry out the structural design and calculation quickly, and also to deliver the necessary verifications in a timely manner.

A masterly performance Thanks to the precise planning in advance, hardly any reworking was required, and the complex structure was accepted and fully operational on time for the start of the Bregenz Festival 2019.

During this year’s festival season, the Rigoletto stage set was in action until 22 August 2021. Now it is being dismantled and the materials recycled. Because Lener & Schmid are already planning the next stage design - Puccini’s “Madame Butterfly” in summer 2022.

■ scia.net

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Interview

Vectorworks development With the launch of Vectorworks 2022, Martyn Day caught up with company CEO Biplab Sarkar and CTO Steve Johnson to get their take on a range of issues, from Apple Silicon to the cloud.

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emetschek is an anomaly in the AEC space. It owns three BIM modelling companies Graphisoft (Archicad), Allplan and Vectorworks - which compete against each other, as well as the rest of the market.

Each firm retains distinct management, different cultures and sales networks.

While Graphisoft and Allplan are big in Europe, Vectorworks has always been the strong Nemetschek BIM brand in the US. Archicad, from its inception, was all about the 3D model, from which to derive 2D drawings; Vectorworks has had a more traditional, evolutionary development journey from 2D draughting to 3D BIM functionality. To achieve this there

has been a lot of ‘under the hood’ development work over the years from a very capable software development team keeping Vectorworks available on both Apple Mac and Windows platforms.

In this cycle, Vectorworks has performed the Herculean task of updating Windows and Apple Mac versions, while totally reworking the Mac variant to natively support Apple’s ‘system on a chip’ M1 Silicon.

Vectorworks is the first BIM software developer to bring out a true Apple Silicon version, both supporting native CPU (ARM) and native GPU (Metal).

While you may think that a software developer could do all this work in-house,

the reality of modern software development is that many sub-components of the software are developed by niche providers and are licensed, such as the Siemens Parasolid solid modelling kernel.

To achieve the rapid development of Vectorworks on Apple Silicon would have required a major effort across multiple contributing software companies all developing discrete components native to the new Apple ARM processors. It really isn’t as easy as you would think and getting all the component developers to have their code ported for new operating systems is akin to herding cats.

Vectorworks ‘C’ level team are very technical and CEO, Biplab Sarkar, was

Vectorworks 2022 - what’s in the new release?

Vectorworks 2022 comes in three flavours: Buildings, Landscapes and Entertainment, so there’s a version for architects, another for landscape architects and a third one for the niche profession of stage and theatre design.

While playing second fiddle to Archicad in mainland Europe, Vectorworks is Nemetschek’s top installed BIM solution in the USA. With a paucity of applica-

tions for landscape architects, Vectorworks stands head and shoulders above the competition, although that competition is likely to just be vanilla AutoCAD. With such a focused, niche lighting and stage design product, Vectorworks is the number one solution for entertainment.

While Apple Silicon support is obviously some big news especially for those looking for more perfor-

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mance, there are a range of enhancements to capabilities and features. It seems that in economic downturns, and now in pandemics, software developers tend to look for crowd-pleasing functionality as opposed to adding substantial new capabilities.

Uncertainty drives the need for certainty.

Redshift – Vectorworks has, for some time, supported CPU-biased rendering tech-

nologies from Maxon with Renderworks, but new support for Maxon Redshift means users can now render with their workstation’s GPU. This has two benefits: One, it takes the pressure off the CPU and two, it can take advantage of massive speed improvements from the latest GPU designs like Nvidia RTX, even in complex scenes with reflections, volumetric effects, camera effects, and anti-aliasing.

Twinmotion – it’s now possible to directly link Vectorworks models with Twinmotion from Epic Games. Vectorworks has incorporated the Datasmith link into the standard toolset.

As designs progress, updates can be sent at the push of a button, ensuring Twinmotion has the latest design, with no additional set-up required.

Surface texturing - upgrades to the texturing workflow

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Vectorworks 2022 now supports photorealistic GPU-accelerated renderer Maxon Redshift

formerly the company’s CTO. This always makes it great having conversations about ‘under the bonnet’ developments, as well as hearing about the efforts to push developers such as Siemens to better understand the needs and wants of the AEC market, in terms of geometry. With Parasolid at the core, Vectorworks has embedded possibilities in the ‘design to fabricate’ world of Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) and digital fabrication.

AEC Magazine: Could you explain the effort required to get Vectorworks on Apple Silicon only eight months after Apple’s launch?

add the ability to map textures to different faces of the same solid object, and to rescale on the fly.

The render tab has been updated to view and manage the textures on the faces of any selected object.

Direct editing stair tool – always a crowd pleaser, the stair tool has been radically enhanced to enable direct modelling in both 2D and 3D, using control points or sim-

Biplab Sarkar: We identified which components were our dependencies very early on. And of course, started communicating with these vendors of our intentions. The Parasolid modelling kernel (owned by Siemens) was obviously a big one. They just very recently gave us the final piece. That actually came in almost as we were packaging up the final product! But it is stable and, I must say, Apple has done a good job on providing development tools.

We were thinking that there would be a lot of variances between the Intel version and the ARM chip version, but Apple has done something really nice in terms of maintaining the stability and perfor-

ply grabbing the boundary box of the stair component.

control over their representation within drawings.

Wall objects – the wall tool has been redesigned to enable greater precision and more accuracy in the visual representation of walls and their sub-components.

Straight and round walls have been combined into a single object type. There are enhancements to wall assemblies, enabling more complex designs, while giving more

Data worksheets – UI improvements make it easier to generate targeted reports, schedules, and material take offs for complex objects.

Worksheets creation is easier with clearer UI, a new search function interface, and an improved formula bar.

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GIS – Vectorworks now better supports georeferencing

mance. We are probably running like 40% faster than Windows machines. A one gigabyte model which we would [previously] have had difficulty in navigating through, now it just flies!

AEC Magazine: We have found that some applications written for Apple Silicon might still rely on plugins that are running in Intel emulation mode, slowing everything down.

Biplab Sarkar: Vectorworks is now totally native on Apple Silicon.

AEC Magazine: How does Apple Silicon manage memory? How is it special?

in IFC and DWGs, improving coordination and alignment.

Bi-directional support for ArcGIS layers will enhance collaboration. Vectorworks now supports GIS-based tree survey information.

There is also a range of other enhancements such as: support for Autodesk Civil 3D, the ability to define subsurface geological strata, as well as cable and power planning.

1 Vectorworks can now be linked to Twinmotion 2 Surface texturing has been enhanced 3 Stairs get new direct editing capabilities 4 Worksheets creation has been improved 5 The wall tool now offers greater precision

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Interview Vectorworks is the first BIM software developer to bring out a true Apple Silicon version. The Apple M1 chip powers the new Apple iMac (pictured), Mac Mini, MacBook Pro and MacBook air

Biplab Sarkar: The basic architecture of the system, the way it transports data on the data bus, from one place to another, uses fantastic optimisation. This means the RAM is communicating with the CPU very well. And of course, you have to do the Metal transformation from OpenGL graphics.

AEC Magazine: What components have you had to get upgraded to natively support Silicon?

Biplab Sarkar: We have, ODA (DWG) core component, Adobe PDF, Google Chromium and of course Siemens Parasolid. The first time you launch Vectorworks on an Apple Silicon Mac, the biggest thing you notice is the startup time - it’s just so impressive. File open and operations like that, are instant.

I think the only component we have had to work around was Trimble’s for SketchUp. So we’re using Apple’s technology to communicate to the Intel process for that component. But it’s just used when importing SketchUp, so it’s really not a system wide thing. It definitely is a performance match of what was before.

It’s a hard to make a like for like comparison, but we definitely know that to compare an Apple Silicon machine vs an Apple Intel machine, which is probably comparative to Windows, is 2x or faster in general. You just feel like the speed limit went from 70 mph to twice that especially on start-up and when you do workspace switches.

Steve Johnson: The paging out to memory is quick. The unified memory model enables the SSD to communicate superfast because it’s physically so close to the chip. Apple has impressive engineering.

It’s kind of an interesting story for the consumer machines (those currently available) that are limited by how much RAM you can have.

We can put bigger BIM models in because of this efficiency, and all of that silicon, and it can work above capacity in 60

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a sense. It’s an interesting New World.

It’s hard to compare (to a Windows machine), because there’s a 16 GB maximum limit on these first Apple systems.

But we have big graphics capability with Metal, and we have file I/O and all the UI controls, all optimised for Apple Silicon.

Apple’s engineering seems to be quite impressive, with their development tools, and then we had to organise, to get third party people to get it all together. But when it comes together, it’s pretty impressive.

AEC Magazine: The BIM software industry seems to think the cloud is where the future of software is. What’s your view on that?

Biplab Sarkar: We are hearing a lot from our users that they would like a cut down version, like a browser version. I don’t think it’s the architects that need a browser version but most of the other people, like contractors, subcontractors or even founding partners - the upper echelon of architectural firms - think they would love a cloud / browser version.

We already are running Vectorworks on a cloud for our ‘Nomad’ services. Users submit their Vectorworks file from their desktops to the cloud, and it does the conversion, and it shows you the model, and the drawing sheets - everything. That is already happening, but it doesn’t offer much more interactivity than just markup and viewing. Now we are hearing customers want to actually edit.

AEC Magazine: With this release you are obviously focusing very heavily on rendering again, with links to Twinmotion and Maxon Redshift.

Biplab Sarkar: Yes, you should check out Redshift. It’s not really real-time rendering yet but it is pretty impressive in the sense that it’s a GPU-only photorealistic render. If you’ve got it - Nvidia RTX it really flies. If you’re doing a panorama that may take one hour to generate in

normal Maxon software, in Redshift it might need just half that time.

Our link with Epic continues and we’re giving out Twinmotion for free for a year.

So that is also good for our customers.

One benefit here is Epic’s Apple support.

55% of our users are on the Mac and Twinmotion is the only [real time arch viz] product now that has that supports both platforms.

AEC Magazine: You have a continued push on with GIS and Esri development again this year. Can you explain how that works?

Biplab Sarkar: We are part of their partner network and it’s a nice symbiotic relationship. Last year we integrated the raster image with the geospatial information capability with Esri. This year, it’s features like highway maps, or the underground sewer system maps. We have done a lot this time with GIS workflows.

IFC files and DWG files can have geospatial information, and we are now supporting that for both import and export.

You can bring these into Vectorworks, do your modelling and then upload bi-directionally with Esri products.

AEC Magazine: What’s the development plan going forward? Archicad is getting MEP and already developing structural workflow loops. Will Vectorworks get MEP and structural and start pushing the solids capabilities?

Biplab Sarkar: Yes, I think the biggest thing that we need to do and what our customers were asking for is the structural members, beams and the columns.

In Japan, they call it the ‘Ramen structure’, because it’s all noodles! We don’t have it well enough integrated with our architecture package right now. We have the architectural elements like columns, walls and beams which can interact. But the actual simulation and structural calculations we can’t yet do.

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Review

AMD Radeon Pro W6600 AMD’s new $649 professional GPU offers users of CAD and BIM software a gateway into design viz and VR, now and in the future, writes Greg Corke Price $649 amd.com/radeonpro

I

n recent years, architects have been expanding their software armouries.

Design visualisation, reality modelling and virtual reality (VR) are increasingly being used to augment breadand-butter CAD and BIM workflows.

The problem is that many architects don’t have workstation graphics hardware capable of effectively running these demanding software tools.

Most CAD and BIM software is CPU limited, shackled by the frequency of a single CPU core. So, if you only ever design buildings in Revit, Archicad, Vectorworks or similar, there’s little point in buying a high-end pro GPU. In such applications you’ll likely get the same 3D performance from a $200 pro graphics card as you would from one that costs ten times as much.

To cater to CAD/BIM users who want to embrace more demanding workflows, AMD recently launched the Radeon Pro

InvMark for Inventor 2022 (by Cadac Group and TFI) 1.23 Graphics benchmark score (bigger is better)

W6600, one of two pro GPUs based on the company’s 7nm RDNA 2 architecture.

With 8 GB of GDDR6 memory and 10.4 Teraflops of Single Precision compute performance, the Radeon Pro W6600 is significantly less powerful than the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 (32 GB, 17.83 Teraflops). But it’s much more affordable.

With an estimated street price of $649, it fits within a price bracket that architects are more likely to be comfortable with.

The AMD Radeon Pro W6600 is essentially a replacement for the Radeon Pro W5500 (8 GB, 5.35 TFLOPs), but it features enhanced Compute Units (CU) with dedicated ‘Ray Accelerators’ to provide an entry point for hardwareaccelerated ray tracing.

In terms of specs, it’s a full height, single slot PCIe 4.0 board. It has a peak power of 100W, so is suitable for entry-level tower workstations, and needs a 6-pin connector to draw extra power from the PSU. With four DisplayPort outputs it can drive up to four displays at 4K resolution or up to two displays at 8K resolution. It’s supported by pro drivers and is certified (or in the process of being certified) for many of the leading professional applications.

Hardware ray tracing The AMD Radeon Pro W6600 and the W6800 are AMD’s first pro GPUs to feature hardware-accelerated ray tracing. The dedicated ‘Ray Accelerators’ can either be used to bring ray tracing

Solidworks 2021 SP3 (OpenGL 4.5)

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - real time)

SPECapc benchmark (FSAA) - RealView, shadows & AO

Architectural house @ 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

1,359

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

1,341

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

1,356

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia Quadro P2200

Nvidia RTX A4000 300

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

1,417

0

900

1200

1.33 2.12

2.77

1.5

18.20

Nvidia Quadro P2200 3.39

1.0

8.93

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

1.52

0.5

9.43

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

1.70

0.0

5.03

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Nvidia RTX A4000

1500

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

Nvidia Quadro P2200

1,447 600

1.23

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

1,328

effects to real time applications like Unreal Engine or accelerate traditional photorealistic ray-trace renderers to produce stills and animations quicker.

As AMD’s ‘Ray Accelerators’ are brand new there aren’t that many applications that can currently take advantage, but this is changing.

The list includes applications that support DirectX Raytracing (DXR), such as Unreal Engine. Also, any that feature Radeon ProRender 2.0, the latest version of AMD’s physically-based rendering engine.

This comprises Solidworks Visualize, Acca Software, Autodesk Inventor, Rhino, Autodesk Maya, and Blender.

Looking to the future, it will also extend to any application that supports Vulkan Ray tracing, including those in development at Solidworks (Project Romulan tinyurl.com/SW-graphics), Autodesk (One Graphics System - tinyurl. com/Revit-GPU) and Enscape.

The Radeon Pro W6600 will not accelerate ray tracing in Nvidia RTXenabled applications such as Luxion KeyShot, Chaos V-Ray, Chaos Vantage, Enscape 3.0 and others.

Of course, the Radeon Pro W6600 can also be used for many other applications that don’t rely on hardware ray tracing.

This includes those that use the OpenGL or DirectX graphics APIs, which is pretty much all CAD and BIM tools and real-time design viz software like Lumion or Twinmotion, GPU renderers

2.0

2.5

3.0

5.33

Nvidia RTX A4000

3.5

0

15.97 5

10

Solidworks 2021 SP3 (OpenGL 4.5)

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - real time)

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - rendering)

SPECapc benchmark (FSAA) - shaded with edges

Architectural house @ FHD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution

Architectural house

1.23

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

1.14

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

1.70

Nvidia Quadro P2200

Nvidia Quadro P2200

0.0

0.5

2.46 1.0

1.5

2.0

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47.83 14.73

Nvidia RTX A4000 0

10

38.48 20

30

503

250

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

146

Nvidia Quadro P2200

40

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

263

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

25.20

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

1.27

Nvidia RTX A4000

AMD Radeon Pro W5500 24.77

AMD Radeon Pro W6600 2.00

Set of 8 FHD renders (1,920 x 1,080 resolution)

13.53

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

1.32

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

62

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

15

Nvidia RTX A4000

407 140

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that use OpenCL, as well as VR or quite clever. It detects when a 3D model photogrammetry software. is moving quickly in the viewport then automatically drops the resolution to Radeon Pro Viewport Boost reduce the number of pixels the GPU needs The AMD Radeon Pro W6600 supports to process. Then, as soon as that movement a new pro driver feature called Radeon stops, it restores the full pixel count.

Pro Viewport Boost, which is designed According to AMD, this can increase to reduce latency and boost viewport Frames Per Second (FPS) dramatically navigation performance. without impacting the visual experience.

The idea behind the technology is AMD Radeon Pro Viewport Boost

currently works with Revit, 3ds Max, Twinmotion and Unreal Engine (for packaged projects only, not currently Unreal Engine Editor). Support for other applications is coming soon.

As one might expect, the technology works best in GPU limited applications, as we found in this in-depth review (tinyurl.com/viewport-AMD) where we tested out the software with the Radeon

Enscape 2.6 (OpenGL)

Unreal Engine 4.26 (DirectX 12 - rasterisation)

Solidworks Visualize 2021 SP3 (ProRender)

Museum model @ FHD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution

Audi car configurator model (ray tracing disabled)

Computer model (denoising enabled)

1.23

FHD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

23 38

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

74

8

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia Quadro P2200

0

20

40

93 60

80

100

99.49 25.25

Nvidia RTX A4000 20

80.64 40

97 74 78

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

52

Nvidia Quadro P2200

0

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

60

80

145

Nvidia RTX A4000 100

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

51.33

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

100 passes, accurate quality (1,500 x 1,500 resolution)

AMD Radeon Pro W5500 51.94

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

Nvidia Quadro P2200

28.97

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

37

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

52 0

30

60

90

120

Enscape 2.6 (OpenGL)

Unreal Engine 4.26 (DirectX 12 - DXR)

Solidworks Visualize 2021 SP3 (ProRender)

Museum model @ 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution

Audi car configurator model (ray tracing enabled)

Computer model (denoising disabled)

1.23

FHD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

8

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

14

AMD Radeon Pro W6600

Nvidia Quadro P2200

2

Nvidia RTX A4000

25

AMD Radeon Pro W5500

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 N/A

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

5

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Nvidia RTX A4000

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

617 380 431

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

236

Nvidia Quadro P2200

0

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W6600 34.99

Nvidia Quadro P2200 N/A 31

1,000 passes, accurate quality (1,500 x 1,500 resolution)

AMD Radeon Pro W5500 N/A

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

0

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W6600 17.51

11

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

1.23

10

20

47.98 30

40

150

1,113

Nvidia RTX A4000

240 0

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Review

Pro W6800. It also delivers the biggest placed all GPUs closely together, with the mode at 4K resolution, more than enough benefits at higher resolutions (4K and higher-end cards only showing a small for a fluid viewport experience. above) and with larger models. performance benefit.

Throughout the test, GPU utilisation Real-time visualisation The Radeon Pro W6600 on test on the Radeon Pro W6600 rarely rose Real-time viz is one of the major reasons We put the AMD Radeon Pro W6600 above 40% and mostly hovered around for buying an AMD Radeon Pro W6600 through a series of real-world application 10-20%. We would expect similar results over a more CAD-focused GPU like the benchmarks, for GPU rendering, real-time in Autodesk Revit, which shares the same Nvidia Quadro P2200, Nvidia T1000 or visualisation and 3D CAD. core graphics engine.

AMD Radeon Pro WX 4100.

For comparison we used its more At this stage it’s important to note In the multi-purpose 3D engine Unreal powerful sibling, the AMD Radeon Pro that CAD applications are changing, Engine and arch viz tools Enscape and W6800 (32 GB), as well as the previous with new graphics engines that use Lumion, the Radeon Pro W6600 showed a generation ‘RDNA’ AMD Radeon Pro modern APIs like Vulkan to push more clear lead over the Nvidia Quadro P2200, W5500 (8 GB) and Radeon Pro W5700 processing onto the GPU and reduce especially at 4K resolution.

(8 GB). We also tested the Nvidia RTX the CPU bottleneck. This However, at 4K the A4000 (16 GB), which includes Nvidia’s includes future versions viewport wasn’t that 2nd generation ray tracing (RT) cores and of Autodesk Inventor and smooth. We recorded 11 FPS At $649, the the CAD-focused Nvidia Quadro P2200 Revit (and other Autodesk in Enscape and 8.93 FPS in AMD Radeon (5 GB), which will be replaced later this applications) and future Lumion, which is below the year by the Nvidia RTX A2000 (6 GB). versions of Solidworks. recommended 20+ FPS. As Pro W6600 All tests were carried out using an Intel And when these new a result, for larger design represents Xeon W-2125 workstation at FHD (1,920 x developments come to viz models the GPU looks excellent value better suited to FHD (1,920 1,080) and 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution fruition, you will likely for a certified using AMD’s enterprise 21.Q2 and Nvidia’s get bigger benefits from x 1,080) resolution. And 471.68 graphics drivers. higher-end GPUs. those that take design viz pro GPU for This is already starting seriously will probably CAD and BIM The full spec can be seen below. to be seen in mechanical want to look at the $1,000 software that CAD software Solidworks Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB) • Intel Xeon W-2125 (4.0GHz, 4.5GHz 2021, which features a can also handle or $2,250 AMD Radeon Pro Turbo) (4 Cores) CPU more modern graphics W6800 (32 GB). design viz and • 16 GB 2,666 MHz DDR4 ECC memory engine built around In saying that, the AMD VR workflows • 512 GB M.2 NVMe SSD OpenGL 4.5. The SPECapc Radeon Pro W6600 does • Windows 10 Pro for Workstation for Solidworks 2021 have a trick up its sleeve in benchmark showed a wider the form of AMD Radeon CAD / BIM spread of results, and a clear benefit for the Viewport Boost (see earlier). In Unreal As mentioned earlier, most CAD and higher-end cards, especially the Nvidia Engine, testing with a Paris interior scene BIM software is CPU limited. So, in some RTX A4000. from arch viz artist Benoit Derau, we saw ways testing with a CPU limited tool like However, it’s important to put this frame rates rise from 34 FPS at 4K to a Autodesk Inventor is less about ranking benchmark score in context. Even with whopping 88 FPS with Viewport Boost set GPUs by performance and more about our largest model, the colossal MaunaKea to max. You won’t get this degree of boost showing that there is no tangible benefit to Spectroscopic Explorer telescope (8,000 with all datasets, and AMD still needs to higher-end GPUs in many CAD workflows. components, 59M triangles), the Radeon expand the number of applications that Results from the Inventor 2022 Invmark Pro W6600 delivered 24.29 Frames per Viewport Boost supports, but dynamically benchmark from Cadac Group and TFI Second (FPS) in shaded with edges display reducing the resolution when models are in fast motion could certainly help users get that 4K visual experience without taking a performance hit.

Beyond pure processing power, it is important to talk about GPU memory.

One of the potential reasons that the AMD Radeon Pro W6600 massively outperforms the Quadro P2200 in Enscape at 4K resolution is because it has more memory (8 GB vs 5 GB).

Our museum test model ideally needs more than 8 GB to view at 4K, so this might explain why the Quadro P2200 virtually ground to a halt at 2 FPS, as it has to effectively share GPU memory with system memory (RAM). Of course, not all viz arch models are this demanding, but Lumion 11.5 house scene it highlights the fact that GPU memory is an important consideration for design

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Unreal Engine Paris interior scene from arch viz artist Benoit Derau

viz, much more so than pure CAD or BIM, that filters out noise from unfinished which rarely needs more than 3 GB or 4 GB / noisy images to help deliver better of GPU memory, even for huge models. looking renders with significantly fewer rendering passes).

Hardware ray tracing Memory is also important for GPU One of the key features of the AMD rendering. When rendering in Solidworks Radeon Pro W6600 is that is has Visualize with no other applications hardware ray tracing built in. To test this open, a 5,500-component industrial out we used Unreal Engine’s Audi A5 machinery Solidworks model used just convertible Automotive Configurator with over 6 GB of GPU memory. Meanwhile, DirectX Ray tracing (DXR) enabled. a 2,000-component bike model needs Real time ray tracing at 4K resolution just over 8 GB and the 8,000-component is really the preserve of super high-end MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer GPUs so we focused on FHD resolution telescope model needs even more. instead. Surprisingly the Radeon Pro W6600 was still able to deliver 17.51 FPS. Conclusion While this isn’t super smooth, it’s usable, At $649, the AMD Radeon Pro W6600 but dwarfed by the AMD Radeon Pro represents excellent value for a certified W6800 and Nvidia RTX A4000. The pro GPU for CAD / BIM software that can Nvidia Quadro P2200, AMD Radeon Pro also handle design viz and VR workflows.

W5500 and Radeon Pro W5700 don’t In most tests it stands shoulder to get a look in here as they don’t support shoulder with the Radeon Pro W5700, hardware ray tracing.

AMD’s previous generation flagship GPU, In reality, when it comes to ray tracing, which is dual slot and consumes more the Radeon Pro W6600 is probably better than double the power (205W). But the suited to applications like Solidworks Radeon Pro W6600 is not only smaller, Visualize which use Radeon ProRender less power hungry and cheaper, it also has to render out highest quality stills and hardware ray tracing built in. animations. Our tests showed it to be Pro applications that can take advantage streets ahead of the Nvidia Quadro P2200 of the W6600’s ‘Ray Accelerators’ might but significantly behind the Nvidia RTX currently be a little thin on the ground, A4000 and AMD Radeon Pro W6800, but designers and architects should look with and without denoising enabled (N.B. to the future before considering their next denoising is a post-processing technique workstation GPU. www.AECmag.com

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Thanks to developments at Solidworks (Project Romulan) and Autodesk (One Graphics System) it shouldn’t be too long before GPU hardware ray tracing can be used in the viewports of the CAD and BIM tools themselves. And the idea that ray tracing will become just another viewing mode, with users able to ‘instantly’ toggle between ‘shaded with edges’, ‘wireframe’, ‘realistic’ and ‘photorealistic ray trace’, is extremely compelling.

At the moment, the AMD Radeon Pro W6600 doesn’t have any real competition at its $649 price point. The Nvidia RTX A4000 costs $350 more and while the Nvidia Quadro P2200 is cheaper it’s significantly slower and lacks hardware ray tracing. That won’t be the case for too long, however.

Later this year Nvidia will start to ship the Nvidia RTX A2000, which will bring pro GPU hardware ray tracing to the sub $500 price point. The Nvidia RTX A2000 consumes less power at peak (70W), offers broader software compatibility and fits Small Form Factor (SFF) workstations as well as standard towers. However, it comes with 6 GB of GPU memory, 2 GB less than the AMD Radeon Pro W6600. This could limit the size and complexity of the models users can work with comfortably, as we saw with the 5 GB Nvidia Quadro P2200.

It will be very interesting to see how things stack up.

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Software

Mail Manager goes mobile For over 10 years, Arup’s Mail Manager has proved a popular choice for firms wishing to capture and collate their project related email communications. The latest developments give its mobile ability desktop power, writes Martyn Day

F

or decades the focus of the document management world was on drawings, design documents, revisions, security, and distribution. It was easy to replicate existing workflows for paper documents. As the digital world took over communications with email, it took a very long time before anyone started to log the messages that went along with those design decisions. In construction, with a federated approach to delivery, and a nasty habit of blame culture, email capture on project decisions is a necessity for both traceability and compliance.

Email is both a scourge and a blessing.

We get too damn many of the things, but they are a digital thread of essential correspondence concerning key decisions and instructions. In AEC, up to 80% of all project correspondence is done through email. Emails have to be captured and stored consistently against projects, as documents show decision trails and contain client sensitive information. function of Mail Manager, is to remind Mail Manager also provides a search Mail Manager does what it says on the the user to allocate relevant places to file tool to locate relevant messages stored tin and has been a popular choice for incoming and outgoing messages and to with the system. This is a big boost over firms using Microsoft Exchange/Outlook make this as simple and easy as possible. most email clients we have used. The over the last 10 years, achieving 92,000 It does this through prompts and is as larger the database of emails, the slower users in 2,500 companies. the response and then to The application integrates that, add filed items too. into Microsoft Sharepoint, Mail Manager is like a ‘hot Email is both a scourge and a blessing. We get Microsoft 365, Procore, knife through butter’ in too damn many of the things but they are a Viewpoint for Projects, this respect, just enter in a digital thread of essential correspondence Synergy, MS Team, Bentley key word or a phrase. concerning key decisions and instructions Projectwise, Opentree, MS Pricing varies, based on OneDrive, Dropbox and the number of users, term Box. Mail Manager doesn’t lengths and payment lock you into a particular system; you can simple as checking a box. options (annually or monthly). file to a network location or to the cloud.

Mobile device features include: comStandard terms are one-year agreeThe latest release aims to provide fea- pose new emails, add attachments, mark ments, billed in one off payments. For an tures that were available on the desktop, emails as read or unread, set reminders organisation of five to 25 people, Mail to those on mobile via the Mail Manager to file recently read emails, file multiple Manager works out at around £16 per 365 Mobile App - namely ‘on the go’ filing emails at once and auto-prompts users user, per month. of project emails. Essentially, the key to file when sent.

■ mailmanager.com

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September / October 2021

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05/10/2021 16:39

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