AEC Magazine January / February 2020 by X3DMEDIA

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

3D PRINTING THE FUTURE

Digital twins Autodesk University AMD Ryzen workstation Wind simulation

24 from the show floor Collaborative VR

Take pedestrians into the comfort zone

Top tech from AU that caught our eye

Design review through BIM 360

January / February 2020 >> Vol.106 p01_AEC_JANFEB20_Cover V2.indd 1

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

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p03_AEC_JANFEB20_Contents.indd 3

3D printing in construction 10

Discussing digital twins 36

As the construction industry experiments with offsite, modular and design for manufacture, could 3D printed concrete play a key role?

The challenge of creating digital twins and acquiring the “black art” knowledge required to wrangle project data

Autodesk looking beyond design 16 We report from Autodesk University where construction took centre stage as Autodesk re-invents itself as the end-toend AEC company

AU: 24 from the show floor 22 We report on 24 firms (and even more technologies) that caught our eye at the Autodesk University Expo

Collaborating in Virtual Reality 32 For collaborative design / review in VR, Autodesk BIM 360 is starting to emerge as a central hub, while the wireless Oculus Quest headset gains traction

Design for the new generation 34 In 2015, Autodesk released Project Fractal to investigate generative design in AEC. It has now evolved into Project Refinery

Excitech DOCS 40 The momentum might be with cloud, but there’s a lot to be said for having an internal management system completely under your control

Omnipotent DWGs 43 While AutoCAD still dominates the 2D market, Berlin-based Gräbert is looking to take DWG to new highs

Moving into the comfort zone 44 Exploring pedestrian wind comfort through the practical application of CFD technology on two real world projects

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 46 AMD’s first pro 7nm ‘Navi’ GPU packs a punch for VR, viz and rendering

BOXX Apexx A3 49 One of the first workstations to offer AMD’s powerful new 16-core Ryzen 9 3950X CPU Also this month: 6, 7, 8, News January / February 2020

03/02/2020 16:42

Dell Precision 5530 2-in-1 Powered by AMD Radeon™ Pro WX Vega M GL graphics. Maximum beauty. Minimal Size. Snowbike Images courtesy of CGPDesign. Image rendered with AMD Radeon™ W5700 & Radeon™ ProRender.

Dell Precision 7730 Powered by a choice of AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 4150 or VR ready WX 7100 graphic options. Superior power. Smaller Design.

AMD.com/DELL ©2020 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD and the AMD Arrow logo, Radeon, and combinations thereof are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Other product names used in this publication are for identification purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies. Radeon VR Ready Creator Products are select Radeon Pro and AMD FirePro GPUs that meet or exceed the Oculus Rift or HTC Vive recommended specifications for video cards/ GPUs. Other hardware (including CPU) and system requirements recommended by Oculus Rift or HTC Vive should also be met in order to operate the applicable HMDs as intended. As VR technology, HMDs and other VR hardware and software evolve and/or become available, these criteria may change without notice. PC/System manufacturers may vary configurations, yielding different VR results/performance. Check with your PC or system manufacturer to confirm VR capabilities. GD-101

Precision meets productivity Dell Precision™ workstations featuring AMD Radeon™ Pro graphics deliver a powerful and reliable platform for advanced design and engineering workflows. The entire AMD Radeon™ Pro range of graphics are certified by leading Independent Software Vendors (ISV) to help ensure stability and performance under extreme compute intensive workloads. AMD.COM/CERTIFIED

Dell Precision 3630 Tower Powered by a choice of AMD Radeon™ Pro WX 2100 up to VR ready WX 7100 graphic options. Small but mighty VR creation.

AMD’s professional graphics allow you to explore designs with the best viewport experience possible. Allowing you to concentrate on creating beautiful designs, but remaining within the tight budgets placed on you. The full range is built to match the

increasing graphical demands placed on them, whether used in a physical workstation or virtual desktop solutions, allowing you to work anywhere. AMD Radeon™ Pro graphics are for the visionaries of the design world.

AMD.COM/RADEONPRO

News

ROUND UP Boost for TestFit

Topology first approach to conceptual design

TestFit, the AI-powered building configuration software firm, has secured $2 million in seed funding from Parkway Venture Capital LLC. TestFit’s AI algorithm and ‘intuitive workflow’ is designed to help architects, developers and general contractors use practical generative design for feasibility studies ■ testfit.io

Render control Pulze Render Manager is being pitched as a simplified solution for managing render capacity and monitoring render software and hardware. It was designed with architectural visualisation in mind and is compatible with Autodesk 3ds Max, V-Ray and Corona ■ pulze.io/products/render-manager

OpenBIM teamwork PDC’s Digital Engineering team won first prize in the design category at the 2019 buildingSMART International Awards for its efforts on the $3.6 billion Queen’s Wharf project in Brisbane, Australia. The project explored best practice around IFC collaboration using ArchiCAD, dRofus and Solibri ■ buildingsmart.org

Road safety analysis Transportation engineering software developer Transoft Solutions has acquired Brisk Synergies, a specialist in automated road safety analysis. The company’s software applies continuous deep learning analytics on traffic video to help transportation professionals prevent vehicle, pedestrian and cyclist collisions ■ brisksynergies.com

AR goes underground UK geospatial specialist MGISS is working with Canada-based vGIS to use Augmented Reality to visualise real world objects such as underground pipes and enhance them with additional intelligence such as attribute information and maintenance records ■ mgiss.co.uk

Blockchain for AEC Robert Gordon University (RGU) is working on Archchain, a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) for architectural design. The idea is that large teams can work together to solve design problems while blockchain handles the transactions, and safeguards the IP of each participant ■ archchain.cc

January / February 2020

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opologic is a new software library for architects and engineers that can be used for 3D conceptual design. It creates topologically-connected lightweight building models that are adept at representing space rather than just building fabric. In the software, buildings are represented by an external envelope and the enclosed space subdivided into separate spaces and zones using zerothickness internal surfaces. According to

the developers, because Topologic maintains topological consistency, a user can query these cellular spaces and surfaces regarding their topological data and thus conduct various analyses, including energy analysis and structural analysis. Topologic is platform-independent so is designed to work with visual data flow programming applications such as Dynamo and Grasshopper and parametric modelling platforms commonly used in architectural design practice. ■ topologic.app

New tool streamlines flow of BIM data IMrx Core is a new application from global BIM consulting firm Microdesk designed to allow Revit and non-Revit users to harness the power of advanced selections and Microsoft Excel to quantify and manipulate model data. According to the developers, the software allows data to ‘quickly and efficiently’ be shared with all project stakeholders, with model information added or updated using the power of Excel. Collaboration between Revit and non-Revit users is streamlined by exporting BIM design information into a digestible format that can be used to make edits, enhance reporting and determine asset requirements. “BIMrx Core is our response to a common pain point seen across the AECO

industry,” said Michael DeLacey, Principal and CEO, Microdesk. “Project teams are wasting valuable time and resources transferring information between formats tailored to different stakeholders. With BIMrx Core, principal designers, project managers, and facility owners can directly export data and import edits to and from Revit models, improving the overall delivery cycle and increasing margins.” Meanwhile, Microdesk has partnered with M2 Technologies (M2), a manufacturing technology firm that also focuses on BIM for manufacturing. According to DeLacey, the new relationship will help ‘fuel innovation and amplify our goals of reducing the environmental impact of urbanisation.’ ■ microdesk.com/bimrx

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03/02/2020 16:47

V-Ray Next for Revit brings smart render tech to BIM

Addnode Group acquires Excitech ddnode Group, a huge pan-European software and services reseller that covers construction and manufacturing, has acquired Excitech, the UK’s largest Autodesk Platinum Partner. The agreed purchase price for 100% of the shares amounts to approximately GBP 22 million. Excitech will become part of Addnode’s Design Management Division, joining Symetri, the Nordics’ largest Autodesk Platinum Partner, which Addnode acquired in 2014.

■ addnodegroup.com ■ excitech.co.uk

evit is the latest application to get the V-Ray Next treatment, delivering a photorealistic renderer that Chaos Group’s Ana Lyubenova believes will “instantly make sense to architects.” New features include scene intelligence, asset management and simple workflows deep into the design process. With .vrscene linking for example, architects can now quickly populate scenes with high-quality entourage from any

V-Ray product for a more custom look. For lighting analysis, users can evaluate real-world lux values from daylight and fixtures to determine the true illumination levels of a design. To add variety to plants or trees the scale and rotation of V-Ray Proxy and V-Ray Scene instances can now be made random. Render speeds are also said to be up to 50 percent faster, with GPU rendering offering another 200 percent. ■ chaosgroup.com

BricsCAD BIM harnesses BCF format ricsCAD BIM users can now view, open and manage BIM model issues directly inside the software thanks to a new BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) panel that connects to the BIMcollab platform. Users can select an issue and have the relevant model elements automatically selected. According to the developers, this workflow enables efficient communication

of design issues, without the added hassle of sending emails and attachments back and forth via traditional channels. Also, users can add comments to model issues stored on the BIMcollab server and change the status of issue notifications. The integration has been made possible by the new open BCF API, based on BuildingSMART open standards.

www.AECmag.com

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BS has launched a suite of ‘Masters’ features within its cloud-based specification platform NBS Chorus. The Masters features enable users of Chorus to build a library of commonly used specification clauses tailored to their organisation and clients, ready to be repurposed on different projects in an instant.

■ thenbs.com/nbs-chorus

M&E Stabicad tuned for UK

The 7D BIM technology is designed to provide an accurate estimate of a building’s performance, predicting its running costs and carbon emissions over its lifespan.

tabicad, the Revitbased design and calculation software, is now available for the UK. The software provides integrated UK-compliant calculations, up-to-date manufacturer content, prefabrication and productivity tools to help Mechanical and Electrical (M&E) professionals create 3D constructible models.

■ cartwrightpickard.com

■ mep.trimble.co.uk/stabicad

■ bricsys.com/bim

Data-driven tech to reduce emissions rchitectural practice Cartwright Pickard is leading research into new software which aims to drastically reduce the carbon emissions of UK construction by integrating whole life cost data with BIM.

Custom clauses in specifications

January / February 2020

03/02/2020 16:47

News

ROUND UP NBS / ArchiCAD link NBS and Graphisoft have developed an add-on for ArchiCAD that enables direct linkage with NBS Chorus, the cloudbased specification platform. It allows architects, designers and engineers to build a project model and specification together in the ArchiCAD environment ■ thenbs.com

AEC finance Battery Ventures, a global, technologyfocused investment firm, and Newforma have acquired EleVia Software (EleVia), a financial software company for AEC companies that offers modules for electronic invoicing, payables approval and tracking, A/R management and collections, forecasting, and more ■ newforma.com

Model checking Solibri Connection is now available for ArchiCAD 23, allowing Solibri’s model checking software to be used in a realtime design environment. The add-on provides ‘fast and automated’ code and constructability checking, automatically processing only those elements that are changed in the ArchiCAD model ■ graphisoft.com ■ solibri.com

Plowman Craven Plowman Craven has received its BSI Kitemark certification for BS EN ISO 19650, which covers the organisation and digitisation of information about buildings and civil engineering works, including BIM. This includes both Part 1 (concept and principles) and Part 2 (delivery phase of assets) ■ plowmancraven.co.uk

Map partnership Landmark Information has partnered with AccuCities, a specialist in 3D city models, to provide its 3D terrain and mapping models as part of a new subscription service that is an extension of Landmark’s flagship mapping and location data service, Promap ■ promap.co.uk

BIM Show Live Biophilic designer and architect, Oliver Heath; Radio 4 presenter, Timandra Harkness; and American BIM expert Chris Tisdel will be among the keynote speakers at BIM Show Live. The theme for the event is ‘BIM for Good’, touching on the topics of sustainability, ethics and putting people first ■ bimshowlive.co.uk

January / February 2020

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Sidewalk Labs explores generative tools for planning idewalk Labs, the tech-focused urban design firm owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, is working on a generative design tool that can generate millions of planning scenarios, then identify options that ‘best reflect local priorities’. The software starts with a set of foundational information that can include a geographic area, physical or regulatory qualities of the place, and (if available) existing development plans. Guided by a designer’s input, it can then draw from environmental (non-personal) data that’s commonly used by engineers, architects, and developers to help plan a neighbourhood: things like street layouts, block orientations, real estate economics,

weather patterns, building heights, and more. Using all that information, the tool can “generate” a series of possible scenarios — along with their expected performance — for planners to consider using or refining as the design process evolves. According to Sidewalk Labs, the software often arrives at designs that traditional planning methods might not have found. The tool has the ability to ‘get smarter’ as time goes on. With machine learning, a generative design simulation can not only understand tradeoffs between various objectives like daylight and density, but also learn what’s worked (and what hasn’t) from years of existing neighbourhood designs. ■ sidewalklabs.com

Structural optimisation for Grasshopper eregrine is a new structural optimisation plug-in for Rhino’s algorithmic modelling tool Grasshopper that is designed to rapidly identify highly efficient (minimum volume) frame topologies for any given set of loads, supports and material properties. According to LimitState, the developer of the software, the key benefit is that it allows near-globally optimal solutions to

often be obtained in seconds, with these readily transformable into more practical designs using a range of built-in tools. It’s particularly suited to conceptual design. A technology preview is available freeof-charge until 30 June 2020. The software will then be available on subscription, although there will still be a free package available to academic users for teaching and research. ■ food4rhino.com/app/peregrine

New ‘assured’ cloud workstation service pen Boundaries has launched a new managed cloud workstation service that is said to provide AEC firms with ‘guaranteed instant 24/7/365 access’ to persistent workstations. Customers create bespoke templates pre-loaded with 3D apps so identical workstations can be replicated in minutes to respond quickly to changing project demands. With a ‘Cloud GPU Continuity Assured Workstation Subscription’ firms pay a monthly fee per workstation while time is bought separately on a ‘pay as you go’

basis. Hours can be topped up as required and carried over to the next month. Open Boundaries offers several different types of cloud workstations including a £50 per month ‘Design and Engineering’ instance with a dedicated 24GB Quadro GPU and a £35 per month ‘Technical Power Pro’ instance with a dedicated 16GB Quadro GPU. Both instances feature 30GB RAM and 8 x vCPU. Until 31 March AEC Magazine readers can get 25% off a Design & Engineering subscription using the code 26GMN7TW. ■ openboundaries.co.uk

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03/02/2020 16:47

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3D printing in construction Construction practice is changing. Old workflows, methodologies and practices are being challenged, as offsite, modular and design for manufacture concepts are under development. Could 3D printing technology be part of that change? Martyn Day investigates

s a species, we certainly have our flaws, but we are eminently resourceful at making things. We are natural engineers. When it comes to providing shelters, we have always used the resources around us to construct structures; wood, soil, clay, stone, straw. Our tools evolved, we made axes and chisels from metals, and we further refined and processed our raw building material, carved joints, planed surfaces, and baked bricks. We experimented with geometry, built towering pyramids with 2.5 tonne blocks, invented plumbing, heating, glass, built Great Walls visible from space. Humankind, ‘masters of construction’ since 9,000 BC. Not bad for a bunch of jumped up monkeys. We are always innovating. In the 21st Century, it looks like we might well move ‘beyond the brick’. Concrete actually dates back to around 700BC when lime mortar was first used in Jordan and Syria. The Nabataeans even had concrete floors and waterproof concrete cisterns, which still survive.

3D printing timeline

Obviously, the Romans turbo-charged the whole concrete thing and made domes, arches, aqueducts, amphitheatres etc. but they never figured out reinforcement. We had to make it through the middle ages and into the Industrial Revolution for Portland cement. An unhappy French gardener, Joseph Monier, miffed at his easy to break concrete pots, embedded an iron mesh in his next generation flowerpots. He went on to patent the process and made, reinforced tanks, beams and bridges. Now we produce over 10 billion tonnes of concrete a year for the building industry, and the steel rebar market is worth $121.1 billion alone. Concrete is now the most commonly used man-made material on Earth. As always, while our materials have evolved, so have our tools. Look out spades and shovels, the robotic revolution is upon us. And with precision motors, computer modelling / analysis and automation driving the next industrial revolution, construction is also at the forefront. In manufacturing, 3D printers have survived the hype curve and are now moving

Khoshnevis experimented with cement-based and ceramic pastes with modular reinforcement, built in plumbing and electrics in a continuous build process

1995

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Richard Buswell and colleagues at Loughborough University carried on Freeform’s research with an industrial robot. The technology was licensed to Skanska in 2014

Soar’s team at Loughborough University built a largescale construction 3D printing machine

2003 2000

Behrohk Khoshnevis, (pictured left) is arguably the father of construction 3D printing. He patented a ceramic extrusion process, called Contour Crafting

from prototyping plastic parts to making real plastic and carbon within the traditional mix of processes. However, despite becoming faster, more reliable and production-capable, 3D print is a long way from replacing traditional methods of mass production such as plastic injection moulding. It’s still carving its own niche. With 3D modelling now standard within construction, in the late 1990s there were a number of research projects examining how 3D printers could be used to speed up the process of fabricating buildings and components, both onsite and offsite. Behrohk Khoshnevis, director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) at the University of Southern California (USC) looked at the then formative 3D print process and realised that while manufacturing parts in 3D layers was a novel approach, making buildings in layers was actually a continuation of the traditional construction process. He went on to develop a layered, 3D print fabrication technology he named Contour Crafting.

2005 2005

Rupert Soar formed the freeform construction group at Loughborough University

2008 Enrico Dini, Italy, patented the D-Shape technology, formed Monolite UK and produced a large 3D printer that used sand with an inorganic seawater and magnesiumbased binder

www.AECmag.com

03/02/2020 16:39

Feature 1

Today there are over 20 firms selling 3D print manufacturing services, cement 3D printers or 3D printed buildings, from fixed gantry-based systems to portable robot arms. That said, it’s still very early experimental days, with the most common use of 3D printing being the production of wax moulds for items like panels, an example being Laing O’Rourke’s FreeFab wax 3D print methodology (freefab.com) which was used recently in some stations for London’s Crossrail.

3D printed buildings The ‘dream’ solution is that one day buildings would be printed in concrete, onsite, with robots and gantry systems laying down fast drying cement, working 24/7 to deliver at great speed, affordable structures for housing, offices, barracks, hotels and more. The reality of the limitations of the technology has meant there is more development in the deployment of 3D printing offsite, in a controlled environment, where the temperature and moisture levels can be maintained. This

1 Royal BAM’s onsite comes with build-size limitaThis was eventually shipped and offsite 3D print tions for 3D printed compoand assembled in Dubai. technology uses ABB nents, as they have to fit on a To hear a first-hand testimorobot arms trailer to be shipped to site. ny on the project, Jorge Barrero 2 The finish of 3D The real hype for 3D printed (formerly at Gensler, now at printed concrete can be rough, a bit like dry buildings took off when HKS) talked at DEVELOP3D elephant skin China’s WinSun demonstrated Live in Boston and I highly recin 2013 that it could make 10 single storey ommend 30 mins of your time, it’s both buildings in 24 hours, using prefabricated informative and hilarious (tinyurl.com/ 3D printed components. This indeed was HKS-D3D). WinSun has gone on to build an impressive feat, however the design massive buildings which have drastically component of the ‘architecture’ (four walls improved on its initial forays and continwith a roof) left a lot to be desired. ues to champion 3D printed buildings. WinSun carried on its rapid developAI Space Factory is one of those Teslament and created a 3D concrete printer kind-of-firms. Set up in 2017 with the which measured 20 feet tall, 33 feet wide, main purpose of competing in an ‘X Prize and 132 feet long and had created its own like’ NASA competition to design 3D special liquid concrete from recycled printed habitats for Mars, which the combuilding material, which was given the pany won in 2019 with a very interesting name CMS (Crazy Magic Stone). WinSun conical design, material and print prowon over the Dubai royalty with the idea cess. It is now moving on to design habiof having the first 3D printed office and tats for Earth. so WinSun teamed up with Gensler to The firm is eschewing traditional design a 250m2 concrete C-shaped cas- forms and has devised TERA, TERAsette structure, with metal reinforcement mini, ASTRA and EVO habitats, ranging between the layers, costing $120,000. between 500 and 1,000 sq ft, ranging

Laing O’Rourke invented FreeFAB Wax to create concrete moulds, machined in 5-axis CNC for a fine finish. The moulds melt off and material is reused. Used on London Crossrail

ll at ersity m’s ustrial gy was ka

2013 2013

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Branch Technologies’ Cellular Fabrication (C-Fab) 3D printing process uses proprietary algorithms to create geometry and robotic motion to construct complex geometries

CyBe Construction in Netherlands developed its own system and mortar. It offers a ‘fixed’ printer with 15m reach as well as a ‘portable’ robot printer attached to a crawler

2013

WinSun made ten simple houses (pictured right) using 3D printed components from its factory in Suzhou, China. The printer was 20ft tall, 33ft wide, and 132ft long

2014 2013

BetAbram, a gantry based concrete extrusion 3D printer from Slovenia, starts production. It can print up to 16m x 9m x 2.5m

2014 MX3D experiments with robots and welding tools to ‘print’ in metal. A 12.5m bridge was installed in Amsterdam in 2018. It used 4.5 tonnes of stainless steel

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03/02/2020 16:39

3D printing timeline

AMTSPECAVIA in Russia offers 7 printers from small to ‘3 floors’. In 2017 it was used by 3DPrinthuset / COBOD International to print a small building in Denmark

2015

2015 2015

US Army Corp of Engineers formed Automated Construction for Expeditionary Structures (ACES). In 2017 it 3D printed in concrete a barracks and a bridge

Apis-cor founded by CEO Nikita Chen-iun-tai. Creates its own 3D printer, print software, slicer and materials. It recently printed in-situ, a two storey 640 m2 building in Dubai

Ai Build develops Artificial Intelligence and Robotic technologies for large scale additive manufacturing, mainly using polymers and composite materials

2016 2015

XtreeE formed and started work on a 3D printer based on a 6-axis robot arm. The French 3D print firm works with Vinci, LaFarge- Holcim and ABB

2016 Office of the Future 3D printed by WinSun in China and assembled in Dubai. Designed by Gensler in association with Thornton Tomasetti. 2,000 sq ft $120,000 fully fitted out

from 1.5 – 3 floors and up to 24 ft high. Royal BAM but it does act as a kind of reinforcement The company is claiming green creden- Outside of the University research labs, as it is added layer upon layer. tials using reclaimed and local materials 3D printing in construction has seen BAM and TU/e are currently printing (basalt and biopolymers) and looking development and limited use in big firms and assembling a ‘freeform’ 29 metre towards a carbon negative model. such as Skanska and Laing O’Rourke. pedestrian and cyclist bridge by Michiel In November 2019, the firm started to But a lot of the development is coming van der Kley, for the city of Nijmegen. A print a TERA habitat in-situ at Garrison, out of the Netherlands. Rhino and Grasshopper model had to be New York, on the Hudson River. The TU Delft University, Eindhoven created, to allow analysis and optimisation birch plywood interior is being made in a University of Technology, DUS of the expressive form. It required a lot of factory and will be inserted when the Architects, MX3D, Houben / Van Mierlo experimentation and structural analysis to outer shell is complete. It will operate as Architects and Aectual have all been develop the best componentisation and a short-term rental as they test the insu- experimenting and building at 1:1 scale, sectioning for assembly and transport. lation materials and longevity. I think refining their processes. The Netherlands For now, printing offsite, in a factory, is these designs are gorgeous, but have no is amongst the global leaders in 3D print the preferred method, as the environclue as to how liveable they would be. research and certainly a leader in the ment is completely controlled, but BAM US-based 3D print specialist Apis Cor commercialisation of the process. foresees a time when printing onsite will is one of the leading firms in delivering on Royal BAM has been working with TU also be common practice. the 3D print utopia. i.e. actually printing Eindhoven and Weber Beamix since 2015 At a recent demonstration, it was pretall walls and floors onsite. It has complet- to develop an onsite and offsite 3D print ty clear that BAM believes this technoloed a number of buildings which go way capability, which uses ABB robot arms. In gy is now ready for commercial use. It’s beyond many of the 50m2 demonstration 2017 the company printed the world’s first currently in talks with Heathrow to use it projects you will find on the on the next phase of expanweb. It has developed its own sion and London print technology, software As architects continue to push the complexity Underground and Thames and gypsum-based material. Tideway have visited to see of form with generative architecture, It recently completed a twothe ‘portable’ version in construction firms are going to be looking at action. Over time, BAM storey, 640m2 curve-laden administrative building for expects the process to all options to bring them to life the Dubai Municipality. The become more economical 3D printing arm was moved than the traditional concrete around the site by crane to build the con- fully structurally pre-stressed concrete methods, perhaps as low as 50% in a few crete walls. The company has even cycle bridge (8 x 3.5 metres) in six sections, years’ time. And as usage grows, BAM worked out a process as to how to print in two days. By 2019, BAM had opened a has said it would open factories in the floors and roofs. i.e. horizontal printing dedicated 3D print facility in The UK and Ireland. over voids. The company estimates a 250 Netherlands, which can build elements up sq ft space takes eight hours to print and to 3.5m in height, but theoretically could Print pros and cons would cost $5,100 in print material. go up to 25m. However, the limitation is 3D printed structures offer a range of In all the case studies I have men- the weight and size to fit on a lorry. potential benefits. The primary ones are tioned, you will have hopefully picked up The key point with BAM is that while cost and speed. Should this be making that if it wasn’t for super-rich Middle- most others see the prize as building components offsite or printing onsite, East royalty or mind-blowing space com- cheap houses, the company is primarily there is no doubt that a whole lot of time petitions, 3D printed buildings, while focussed on solving the hard problems, could be saved in replacing brick and capturing the imagination, have yet to like performance, weight and reinforce- block work. gain any real industry acceptance. And ment because it wants to apply the techIt’s pretty basic, but as there is no need there is rarely a repeat order. Someone nique to civils projects which operate for formwork or shuttering, a whole load could easily argue that 3D printing in under higher loads. Figuring out the of time, effort and on-site wastage can be construction is a solution looking for a strength issue will open up all the exist- avoided. According to TU Eindhoven, this problem. But many people thought that ing areas where concrete is used. BAM’s could lead to a financial saving of 35% to about 3D printing in manufacturing and 3D print technology can simultaneously 60% compared to traditional methods. after the hype curve, it is now starting to lay metal wire within each layer of a 3D With the construction industry facing make the impossible, possible. print. Primarily this is to stop cracking, labour and skills shortages, a technology

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BAM Infra, part of the Royal BAM Group, prints and installs first fully structurally pre-stressed concrete cycle bridge (pictured right) in cooperation with TU Eindhoven

2017

Arup and CLS Architetti of Italy took 48 hours to 3D print a house in 35 modules using CyBe Construction RC 3Dp Robot

2017 2017

2018 Aectual starts up in Holland and offers design, 3D print in floors, panels, concrete facades, stairs (printed moulds), and pavement tiles

A family in France become the first to move into a 3D-printed house. 54 hours to print, but four months for contractors to add windows, doors roof etc costing £176,000

IMAGE COURTESY OF APIS COR

AI Space factory creates tech for long-term missions to the Moon and Mars. In 2019 won NASA 3D Printed Habitat Challenge. Has also developed house styles for Earth

2018

Apis Cor has completed that reduces head count and has become an affordable several buildings using delivers more with consistent reality. With 3D printed metal its own print technology, quality, with less, deserves furvoids can form within the software and gypsumbased material ther investigation. unfused material, altering the For eons we have been slaves strength characteristics and to the right angle and those that have potentially resulting in a future stress gone curved have paid an additional failure in service. price, 3D printed forms can bring in In the half-a-job-bob category: 3D interesting geometry at no extra cost and printed buildings can’t really finish a produce unique facades. complete building - at best you get a shell. With the greenhouse gas issue, tradi- Work still needs to be done for structural tional concrete is not our friend. New placement, rebar placement, electrics, green materials are in the pipeline which plumbing etc. A 3D printed house in will make 3D printing a better alternative France took just 54 hours to print – but it to using today’s cement. Using algorithms, took four months for contractors to add it will also be possible to ‘lightweight’ windows, doors and the roof. One only structures and optimise material usage. has to look at offsite construction methIn the negative camp, there are some key odologies from firms like Katerra, where problems which need a solution: rein- wood walls arrive on-site and everything forcement and tensile loads have limited is inside ready to go. the number of floors 3D printed buildings There are limitations to what geometry typically can have, as well as the loads can be printed. In the manufacturing structural elements can bear. There have space, 3D prints regularly have to be printbeen some advances in doing this, but per- ed with support structures to hold a 3D formance is still a critical concern. print together and are removed afterwards. Related to performance, certification This is not so easy with cement. Most print and testing of concrete is baked into jobs will need a strategy of which way the way we build. It is challenging to round it should be and how to optimise the monitor the material to check for stabili- print to get the required shape. ty and strength, even in the manufacturWhen printing, you have about ten ing world, where printing in metal minutes to put down the next layer,

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3D printing in manufacturing Manufacturing is decades ahead of construction in its use of 3D and factory-based assembly. It still has a long way to go, but 3D printing has evolved steadily over the last decade from an overhyped novelty making plastic parts into a more commonplace manufacturing technology, printing in metal. Low-volume, high-value parts have risen in popularity among automotive and aerospace manufacturers, with material properties, finishes, testing and quality control hurdles gradually being overcome. The 3D printing hardware itself is developing faster, now that may of the leading names in the technology, such as HP and GE, are also their own biggest customers. HP 3D prints parts for its own 3D printers, because the volume/cost ratio makes sense. GE, meanwhile, has placed almost 300 3D printed parts into each of its new GE9x plane engines, helping push the entire industry forward in accreditations for aerospace. Trials by companies like Volkswagen, which enlisted HP and GKN Additive, are acting as a learning curve for mass manufacture – churning out over 10,000 metal AM model cars for an exercise in part management and quality control. Footwear designers are also using production grade 3D printing materials for manufacturing sneakers. Carbon has been working with Adidas to develop an elastomeric polyurethane material used for midsoles and New Balance has partnered with Formlabs to develop ‘Rebound Resin’ from springy lattices. But mass production is still far away. With 3D printing comes the ability to ‘print in’ performance, should that be light-weighting or strength. Design tools for this topology optimisation and generative design are now incorporated into the major CAD software for product design as standard. The next big step is happening now, with new software utilising AI to add speed, automation and intelligence to the actual print process – promising to make even existing machinery work faster with more efficiency. Stephen Holmes

COURTESY OF AIRBUS

O tai. 3D ware, ls. It -situ, m2

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Feature

Laing O’Rourke’s before the underlying layer ponents for a decade or more. FreeFAB Wax process cures to the point that the two It has to be said that it took creates concrete moulds, won’t properly fuse. I’m not humans a while to realise that machined in 5 axis CNC sure what happens if there is a for a fine finish. Pictured moving nine metre-tall, 25 here being used on power cut or a nozzle jam and tonne granite rocks, 25 miles to London’s Crossrail your print is compromised the Stonehenge construction halfway through. site was probably not the best way of delivFinally, the finish. To me, it looks like ering material to site. Bricks and blocks dry elephant skin. The waffled edges of have been our ‘go-to’ solution for over layers are incredibly rough. While all 2,000 years and, guess what? They are might be homogeneous within the printed optimised for the size of our hands! It’s only concrete, the outside really needs extra right that we should keep looking for alterwork to smooth out the finish. Even if you natives and despite the current drawbacks I didn’t like the 1950s grey Brutalist build- am convinced that 3D printing has a role in ings, the surfaces were at least clean and the new mix of technologies that will be had an aesthetic. adopted, especially offsite. With major construction firms such as Conclusion BAM working with Weber Saint Gobain, As the construction industry modernises, as well as other building innovators in it is fantastic that major firms are literal- construction like Skanska and Laing ly rethinking every step of the process to O’Rourke, the technology is set to go improve delivery time, quality and price. mainstream as these firms add 3D printWithout moving to 3D, whether that was ing to their list of available processes. SketchUp, Rhino or Revit, I don’t think the There will be projects where it fits well industry would be considering connecting and others where it doesn’t. As architects its design systems directly to fabrication continue to push the complexity of form machines. 3D printing is perhaps the most with generative architecture, construcesoteric of these, as it’s been happening in tion firms are going to be looking at all the more traditional steel and wood com- options to bring them to life.

Construction 3D printing firms XtreeE

■ xtreee.eu

Apis Cor

■ apis-cor.com

Cybe Construction WASP Crane

Contour Crafting MX3D

■ cybe.eu

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■ mx3d.com

Vertico / University of Ghent AECtual

AI Space Factory COBOD

■ aispacefactory.com

■ cobod.com

BetaBram

■ betabram.com

SPECAVIA

■ specavia.pro

D-Shape

■ d-shape.com

WinSun

■ winsun3d.com

Branch Technologies Ai Build

■ iconbuild.com/technology

■ mudbots.com

Totalkustom SQ4D

■ branch.technology

■ ai-build.com

Icon Build Mudbots

■ vertico.xyz

■ aectual.com

■ totalkustom.com

■ sq4d.com

Constructions-3D

■ constructions-3d.com

The 3D printed metal car Hackrod is a California-based company on a mission to 3D print in metal a car chassis. The firm has built a massive 3D print bed, with a combined metal deposition print head and CNC milling arm. As the metal is deposited it is simultaneously machined to produce a refined finish. Using computer simulation, derived from forces when driving a real race car, the chassis geometry was actually ‘grown’

by generative design. As the aim was always to 3D print the chassis, the design was unencumbered by the limitations of traditional manufacturing processes, which typically comprises metal tubing. The company’s technology is still in development and a presentation on the vision can be seen in this DEVELOP3D Live video by Hackrod founder Mouse McCoy: tinyurl.com/hackrod-D3D

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BIM BIM Product Product of of the the Year Year ARCHICAD a quantum in ARCHICAD 23 22 delivers delivers design leap tool BIM performance and by speeding everyday improvements also up introduces design and design editing processes ensures enhanced workflow and processes. uninterrupted the most These representworkflows significantforperformance improvements as well as productivity frequently used tasks. With brand-new tools to enhancements to accuracy, its core design processes increase modelling enable fast editing as as to multidisciplinary collaborative andwell streamline error-free, interdisciplinary workflows. design coordination. For further information on ARCHICAD 22 To see the new ARCHICAD 23 contact contact GRAPHISOFT at graphisoft.com or call

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Feature

Autodesk looking beyond design Greg Corke reports from Autodesk University where construction took centre stage as Autodesk re-invents itself as the end-to-end AEC company

ver the past 18 months Autodesk has been on a shopping spree like no other in its 37-year history. With the acquisition of big-ticket software firms like PlanGrid, BuildingConnected and Assemble Systems, the company is betting big on construction and cloud-based collaboration. It now has new capabilities in mobile construction management, bid and risk management, as well as takeoff, estimating and scheduling. However, the area in which Autodesk is looking to dominate already has many players all trying to do the same thing, such as Trimble and ProCore. As a company, Autodesk looks very different to the laser focused design software firm it used to be. It now has a comprehensive portfolio of technologies for architects, engineers, contractors and owners that touch the entire construction process from concept all the way through to operations. Of course, when any software developer acquires so many disparate technologies, it’s always going to have a huge job on its hands to deliver an integrated solution while keeping its new customers happy.

At Autodesk University in Vegas last year it took the first steps on the long road to delivering a cohesive technology stack.

Construction Cloud The big news was the official unveiling of Autodesk Construction Cloud, which essentially brings together Assemble, BuildingConnected, PlanGrid and BIM 360 (Docs, Layout, Ops, etc.) under one umbrella. While the majority of these tools are focused on contractors, and were developed mainly for US-based processes, Jim Lynch, vice president and general manager of Autodesk Construction Solutions made the point that Construction Cloud isn’t just about construction. It actually connects the entire project workflow, he said, which is why it’s also important to architects and engineers. As the Autodesk mantra goes, it’s ‘design, plan, build, operate’. In practical terms, it’s about making critical data available to anyone who needs it along that path. “You can start in your authoring tools, collaborate across the team during design, push plans and models to pre-construction for procurement, coordination, and quantity takeoff. And once you’re ready, directly push that data to your teams in the field,” said Lynch. Of course, for this to happen, data

needs to flow seamlessly, and Lynch believes connectivity is the most important part of Construction Cloud. “There are a lot of great technologies in the market in the construction technology sector that deliver meaningful productivity gains in a specific area, but it’s really when you thread these things together it creates workflows that deliver the real value.” On a technical level, Autodesk has started to create connections between its key technologies. During the AEC keynote, Allison Scott, Autodesk’s director, head of construction thought leadership & customer marketing, who previously worked for Skanska, ran through some of the recent developments. With Navisworks Publisher for Assemble, she explained how teams can now bring coordinated models from design review software Navisworks into Assemble so they can be used for estimating, scheduling or other downstream workflows. Importantly, all data is accessible onsite through the Assemble mobile app. Autodesk is also aiming for tighter connection between the ‘plan and build handoff ’ with a new BuildingConnected to PlanGrid workflow, as Scott explained, drawing from her own experiences in industry, “Models, plans, estimates and documents are often manually uploaded into project management tools - I remember this. This is a time-consuming process that can result in missing files and data errors. So now, with a simple push of a button, you can automatically send preconstruction files from Skystone is using Autodesk products to help design and build the world’s tallest modular hotel, soon to be erected in Manhattan

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Build Change, founded BuildingConnected to PlanGrid.” solutions, and we’re focusing on workflows, but it faces a huge Scott explained that companies are strengthening their ties,” she by Elizabeth Hausler, is challenge in terms of educausing Dynamo scripts to already benefitting from this new work- said, adding that the new tion. With the breadth and automate the retrofit flow. For example, global consulting, PlanGrid Connect integration depth of its newly acquired design of buildings in emerging nations design and construction services firm platform has deepened the contechnologies, it will take time CRB can now ‘seamlessly transfer com- nection between office and site, and investment to get the most plex data from the design and planning while still allowing users to work in either out of the software. And, in many cases, phase into the hands of the workers on BIM 360 or PlanGrid. firms will need to undergo huge cultural the site.’ According to Scott, the company “Now, you can automatically sync doc- change to move away from long estabestimates this integration will save them uments, drawings, issues, tasks, and lished paper-based workflows. at least two weeks of work on every pro- more between BIM 360 and PlanGrid,” Autodesk also acknowledges the chalject and help them improve communica- she said. “Information can be created and lenge of working with firms with proven tion with their subcontractors. shared from BIM 360 and directly digital processes and the importance of But it’s not just cloud to cloud. pushed to PlanGrid users in the field and taking small steps, as Scott explained durPlanGrid BIM is designed to allow users PlanGrid users can now take the custom ing the AEC press conference. “We have to access BIM data from Revit, in either field reports they’ve created and auto- customers that are really using Assemble 2D or 3D, directly within in a way that’s very effecPlanGrid on mobile tive for them. We can’t devices, the idea being In a heavily fragmented industry, Autodesk has a change that. But how do that construction teams extend and improve very ambitious vision for Construction Cloud. It we can get quicker access to upon that? How do we models and metadata to not only needs to nail the issue of data mobility but extend and improve upon get a better understandthe way that teams are faces a huge challenge in terms of education ing of design intent. using PlanGrid? How do Autodesk has also we extend and improve been linking up its core tools, connecting matically save them back to BIM 360.” upon BuildingConnected and BIM 360, Civil 3D to BIM 360 Design. Autodesk AI The integration between these two and then begin to connect the ways they development manager Racel Williams tools is not just for site work. It has also talk to each other, so that we’re not disruptmade the point that, when combined with been extended to operations, to help bet- ing the way that they work? the existing Revit Cloud Worksharing ter support building maintenance. “We’re just making it easier for them capabilities, this will benefit firms who “BIM 360 Ops users can easily manage to their day jobs, and also in some cases design airports, railway stations, and work order tickets created from uncovering new ways of working, they other complex projects with both vertical PlanGrid,” said Scott. “So, as a building didn’t know possible.” and horizontal structures. manager is walking a facility, they can creAutodesk also has the added challenge ate an issue on the as-built plans using Industrialised construction that there is some overlap between its prod- PlanGrid on their mobile device, and a In this magazine we’ve written a lot about ucts. PlanGrid and BIM 360, for example, ticket is automatically created in BIM 360 the growing trend for offsite, modular or are both used during the build phase for Ops for tracking and resolution.” industrialised construction and the lack project management and collaboration on In a heavily fragmented industry, of tools fit for purpose (May / June 2019 site, something that Scott acknowledged in Autodesk has a very ambitious vision for edition). According to Lynch, Autodesk her presentation, “We’re being extremely Construction Cloud. In order to deliver Construction Cloud will become the thoughtful and understanding the capabili- on this vision, it not only needs to nail the foundation for the convergence of conties that you know and love in each of these issue of data mobility through optimised struction and manufacturing, enabling

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Feature the seamless flow of data from design, to tured in Poland. This means a rapidly opening keynote with Anagnost focusing fabrication, and ultimately out to the job accelerated, more predicable construc- on how Airbus is using the technology to site. Autodesk Inventor, the company’s tion process and one that creates less dis- optimise a new factory for installing primary manufacturing software tool, ruption and noise on site. engines. Anagnost explained that Airbus looks set to play a key role, with the comLooking to the future, because of the turned to generative design because of pany working on a connection with Revit. technology stack that Skystone is using, the challenging plot of land on its There are many challenges ahead and and the rich information held within the Hamburg campus, which was triangular Autodesk is working on answers to three models, the company would be able to and smaller than it would have liked. in particular: how does a design team give a quote with detailed pricing for a On a building like this, form always approach a design when they know how similar hotel with different room config- follows function, so Airbus identified ten it will be constructed or fabricated, how urations in three days or less. different sets of variables to optimise for, do you get the level of detail required for covering the social, environmental, finanthe shop floor and how do you manage Generative design / design automation cial and operational aspects of the design, the installation or assembly? Autodesk Few would argue that there is huge including the flow of workers and parts has technologies that can handle all of potential for generative design in archi- throughout the factory. The study generthese, but they’re not yet connected. tecture and engineering, especially when ated hundreds of options, which Airbus Modular Construction was one of the it comes to optimising designs for multi- then narrowed down to two designs, as key themes for the opening keynote with ple, often competing criteria, like costs Anagnost explained. “Both have better Andrew Anagnost highlighting one of the and performance. flow scores than the existing standards, most ambitious modular projects currentAutodesk has offered the technology in so either factory functions more efficiently in progress, the AC Marriott New York various forms for nearly ten years now, ly, the engines are installed more quickly, Hotel in Manhattan. At 26 storeys when but it’s never gone mainstream in its cus- the logistic flows are more efficient, and finished it will be the world’s tallest modu- tomer base. One of the reasons for this is so are the workers because they take lar hotel, comprising hundreds of individ- strong competition from Grasshopper, fewer steps each day... Both options are ual steel-framed modular rooms. Each the Rhino-based visual programming less costly, so now they just need to room gets fully fitted out in a factory in tool, but also because generative design choose the one that suits them best.” Poland, including all finishes, furniture software is often not that easy to use, as Autodesk is also working on new tools to and equipment, before being taken to site Williams explained, “Many generative automate tedious, time consuming tasks, and stacked much like shipping containers. design tools out there can be really hard something that chimes with Williams, a New York City construction company to leverage because they typically require former architect who spent the early days Skystone is leading the proof her career doing ‘boring ject. The company used Revit activities’ like creating door to develop a library of parts The huge investment and pursuit of cloud schedules. In her own words that can be mixed and she was basically just followservices has come at some cost to the matched to spec using ing standards. development of its more mature products, ProjectFrog’s KitConnect serVisual programming tool vice, which is built on especially in the discipline of architecture Dynamo has been available Autodesk Forge. for Revit for some time, but Skystone uses KitConnect Autodesk is now looking to to publish component libraries to the you to know how to code or understand make task automation much easier with cloud, from where they can be assembled special terminology, or how a genetic the introduction of Dynamo Player. and configured into a single central algorithm works.” According to Williams, it allows anyone to model, as Autodesk CEO Andrew Autodesk is now looking to change this run a script to automate tasks even if they Anagnost explained, “So if a component and make generative design more acces- don’t know how to code or use Dynamo. like a window is swapped out, the Bill of sible, and not just for those who know Williams showed how the technology Materials for each module remains con- how to code. It’s working on a beta tech- could be used to quickly generate clash sistent and accurate, because the changes nology called Project Refinery, which is free structural reinforcements for winpropagate to the Revit model, and to any integrated into Revit. dow and door openings. “A task that used other tool referencing it, like BIM 360, During the AEC keynote, Williams to take ten minutes to do manually in which Skystone is using to share 3D docu- gave a demonstration showing how a Revit now only takes ten seconds using mentation across all phases of the project.” designer could perform a massing study Dynamo player,” she said. Skystone has also recently started using to explore the allocation of retail versus Dynamo player is also being used by Assemble. At the moment it’s just to iden- office space - the key aim being to mini- Build Change, a non-profit organisation tify when materials have arrived at the mise cost and maximise rentable area. that strengthens buildings in emerging facility and to mark off when modules are The software presented the options in a nations to help protect them from earthcomplete, but there are plans to use many design grid, complete with 3D thumb- quakes and typhoons. Almost all houses other aspects of the software in the future. nails that can be individually rotated, are different, and each requires its own In the factory, robots are used to weld zoomed and panned. To dial into the set of designs and drawings which, in the the steel frames, but the rest is done by details, the inputs and outputs were dis- past, would have been done manually. hand. The biggest benefit to this offsite played in a Parallel Coordinates graph. By embracing new technology, the approach is that work can be done in par- Project Refinery looks like a very inter- company has now built an automated allel, so the building’s concrete founda- esting technology and one that we cover design to construction workflow which tions and core can be constructed on site in more detail on page 32. uses Revit and Dynamo scripts to autowhile the modules are being manufacGenerative design also featured in the mate the retrofit design for light types of

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buildings. The team codes in Dynamo, creating structural engineering rules, and then Revit is used to produce a 3D design, Bill of Materials and the construction drawings. “What once took our team of three people four to five days, now takes one person three hours. That’s 97% less time,” said Elizabeth Hausler, founder and CEO, Build Change. This is a hugely impressive saving and one that will completely transform the way its skilled architects and engineers are used, but Build Change is not stopping there. It’s now looking to save even more time by using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to change how homes are assessed. Rather than sending out engineers and architects to every house, home owners can upload photos to the Build Change cloud and these are then used to quickly and automatically assess homes, as Hausler explained, “It looks at things like the continuous length of solid walls and proximity of walls to the corners, the length of wall between openings. We train the machine for image capture and all that data then tells us if it’s possible to retrofit the home.” Build Change has the ambitious goal of strengthening 10 million homes in the next 10 years but needs three million dollars to fund the program. On stage Anagnost revealed to Hausler that Autodesk would be donating half a million dollars to help Build Change reach its goal. On a day where heavily scripted presentations were the norm, seeing the genuine surprise and emotion on the face of Hausler when Anagnost broke the news was a truly wonderful moment. It’s not just buildings that are benefitting from Dynamo. The visual programming tool is now available for Civil 3D as well and can be used to automate a range of repetitive tasks such as the design of guardrails for road projects, signals on a rail track or disabled ramps on a site. Williams explained how global design and consultancy firm Arcadis hired an intern to write a script to design the overhead wiring on a railway track, “When they changed the track layout, the script would automatically update the overhead wiring along with it,” she said, adding that the results were so impressive and saved them so much time that they even included wind deflection in the same script to ensure none of the poles would hit the nearby infrastructure in bad weather.

Digital twins It’s been widely reported that 70% of the total cost of ownership for a building is during the operation phase. And with the www.AECmag.com

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1 Dynamo Player is promise of cost and energy more. In one possible scenario designed to make task savings, it’s no surprise that the door didn’t shut, or was automation much easier building owners and operablocked, so triggered an alert 2 Project Dasher, laying tors are increasingly looking in facilities management softthe foundations for to digital twins. According to ware BIM 360 Ops, producing digital twins Nicolas Mangon, VP AEC a ticket for a technician, who strategy and marketing, there are 30 bil- is then sent to the exact location using an lion Internet of Things (IoT) connected indoor map based on the Revit model. devices in buildings and this is growing. As the technician is reviewing the tickDigital twins as a technology is being et, AI indicates that there’s an overdue pushed hard by many AEC software maintenance on one of the exhaust fans developers, especially Autodesk competi- that might result in a possible contaminator Bentley Systems. Autodesk hasn’t tion. Dashboards can then be pulled up to really jumped on the digital twin band- show how the fan has been performing wagon yet, but as the AEC industry grap- over time and if other fans are meeting ples with definitions, it had a strong and requirements. Armed with this informaclear message for AU. According to tion the owner can take a proactive Mangon, you get your digital twin by approach to maintenance in this and combining BIM plus IoT plus Artificial other hospitals. Intelligence (AI) and it can then help The model-centric software used in building owners and operators better this demonstration was not a product, manage and understand the performance rather a technology based on Autodesk of the built environment. Forge that can visualise and aggregate In the AEC keynote, Mangon focused all kinds of IoT data. It was later on a hospital project which was fitted revealed to be Project Dasher, which with smart doors, complete with sensors actually dates back to 2016, but should that can monitor smoke, temperature, come to market in 2020. humidity, particles, air pressure and Mangon stressed the importance of

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Feature using AI in Digital Twins to look at large amounts of data from other sources including occupant data, social media, weather conditions, HR systems and many more. “[Digital twins] will provide owners and operators with insight like never before. Our buildings will be more efficient, they will produce less C02 and they will be more resilient for the future,” he said.

Navisworks, ArchiCAD, Rhino and SketchUp is also in the pipeline. Autodesk confirmed that there will be a future integration with Autodesk BIM 360 that will allow users to flag design issues in VR and have them show up automatically in BIM 360’s issue registry so they can be resolved later on. It’s this kind of round-trip workflow that’s lacking in most AEC-focused VR tools at the moment, even though BIM 360 integration is everywhere. Unity has big plans for the software, including new workflows for on-site Quality Assurance & Control and support for higher quality visuals through its High-Definition Rendering Pipeline. It also has several use case workflows under consideration, including a twoway live link, drone scanning, smart cities (IoT) and construction sequencing. It’s refreshing to see a company share its roadmap and potential future plans so openly, but one can’t help but wonder if Unity will start to tread on the toes of the company that gave it the keys to Revit and a level of integration enjoyed by no other.

include Civil 3D, InfraWorks, Revit and Inventor. Virgin Hyperloop One is also adopting BIM 360.

Conclusion

With its recent big-ticket acquisitions and launch of Construction Cloud, Autodesk is arming itself for the next big battleground in AEC. It has huge ambitions for construction but now faces the challenge of making Construction Cloud Where GIS meets BIM bigger than the sum of its parts, while It’s been two years since Autodesk fending off competition from the likes of announced its partnership with Esri to ProCore and Trimble. Autodesk’s trump build a bridge between GIS and BIM. card might be its connection with its The aim is for users of Esri software to be design authoring tools, but with the able to access, update and use BIM data move towards digital fabrication it will in a spatial context throughout the lifecyalso face competition from firms with cle of an asset. Conversely, architects and more knowledge of direct manufacture engineers will get better access to GIS within AEC, such as Dassault Systèmes data from within Autodesk’s design and Solidworks and Catia. (You can read construction tools. more about this topic in the May / June “The more we talk, the more we realise 2019 edition). that our customers are demanding that The huge investment and pursuit of engineering and design workflows aren’t cloud services has come at some cost to just in isolation, they have to have conthe development of its more mature prodtext, environmental context, social conucts, especially in the discipline of architext,” said Esri CEO Jack Dangermond. tecture. Those with Revit would have To date, the two companies have connoticed the depth of yearly additions sufnected up ArcGIS (Esri’s mapping and Hyperloop One fer. Also, the next generation BIM and colanalytics platform) to InfraWorks, When it comes to customer stories, few laborative technology Project Plasma (forMap 3D and Civil 3D, so infrastructure can compete with the engineering won- merly Quantum) has been stretched out projects designed in those Autodesk der that is Virgin Hyperloop One. During as more of a multi-year project. products can be pubHowever, Autodesk has lished directly back to a renewed focus on design ArcGIS. But the real The next few years are going to be critical for automation and generative prize is through the Making it more Autodesk as it repositions itself as a company design. cloud and work is underaccessible with Project way to connect ArcGIS that takes every bit of architecture, engineering Refinery and Dynamo and construction as seriously as the others data to models in BIM Player could help realise 360. But it’s not just the potential of what have about bringing in contexbeen slow burners in tual GIS data, it’s also about being able the AEC keynote, CTO Josh Gievel gave terms of technology adoption. Digital to access Esri services. an insight into the futuristic transport twins, currently one of the buzzwords in In the AEC press conference, Mangon technology that shoots electromagneti- AEC and a big focal point for Bentley explained how some of the major AEC cally levitated passenger and cargo pods Systems, is also on the agenda, and it will companies are using both Autodesk and through a depressurised tube. be interesting to see what Autodesk delivEsri software but admitted that Autodesk By eliminating the impact of air-drag ers in 2020. and Esri could engage with these firms and friction, less energy is used making But Autodesk has also set some boundbetter. “As we go and talk to customers, it cheaper to operate. And, of course, aries. With its close relationship with sometimes we go separately, and we need pods can travel at exceptionally high Unity and the plethora of VR collaborato build that connective tissue, reinforcing speeds. The ultimate aim is to reach tion tools that now plug into BIM 360, it the partnership,” he said. 670mph, as fast as an aeroplane and seems more than happy to let third parthree times as fast as a high-speed train. ties handle the gamification and expanFrom BIM to real time 3D To date, 240mph has been achieved on a sion of BIM into real time visualisation, Autodesk’s partnership with Unity was 500m test track that was built in Las virtual reality and mixed reality, while it the big news from AU 2018. One year Vegas in a mere six months, but the com- manages the data from the cloud. later and we now see the first real fruits pany plans to take it to commercial operAs Autodesk continues to branch out of this relationship with the launch of ation in just a few years. from design, the next few years are going Unity Reflect. The real-time 3D tool, Of course, technology is playing a key to be critical as it tries to reposition itself which can create live links to multiple role in making this a reality and the as a company that takes every bit of Revit models and also bring across the design team is using a raft of tools to architecture, engineering and construcBIM metadata, is available now for an design both the linear infrastructure and tion as seriously as the others. annual subscription of $690. Support for the vehicle design simultaneously. These ■ autodesk.com

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Feature

24 from the show floor Greg Corke reports on 24 firms (and even more technologies) that caught his eye at the Autodesk University Expo

utodesk University is much more than just a conference. The expo provides an incredible opporutunity to explore some of the very latest technologies. This year AEC firms took the lion’s share of the show floor, with Autodesk’s new focus on construction attracting many exciting newcomers to Las Vegas.

Avail

CADbox CADbox offers a simple solution for sharing AutoCAD and Revit files with other users over the Internet. It works a bit like Dropbox or Box insofar as it creates ‘Sync folders’ on the Windows PCs of collaborators and files are replicated in everyone’s sync folders. When a user wants to make changes to a shared file, CADbox acquires a ‘File Lock’ for the user, so only their changes are synced to the CADbox cloudserver. There’s also a CADbox marker iPad app that lets you view and markup CAD drawings.

Magazine that it will be a game changer for his company’s review process with its clients. “The review process today has to come to a screeching halt, to gather all the assets, put them together, then review it, so it’s not effective. I think Lavina is going to allow us to not have to do that. “On top of that, it’s also going to allow us to review the actual look and feel [of the project],” he said, adding that current reviews often need to be done at low res and with lighting approximation.

Many Revit users share the frustration of searching for Revit family objects. ■ chaosgroup.com Structuring data in folders can be good Cupix for storage but terrible for retrieval. ■ cadboxplus.com Avail is a content management system In the AEC industry there’s currently a designed to help firms take control of their Chaos Group massive focus on laser scanning, but for digital assets. The software sits as a layer Chaos Group didn’t have its own stand at some workflows a 360° photo is enough – on top of your existing file network and AU, but on the Nvidia booth it was show- and the data is much easier to capture extracts metadata from with an affordable 360° camRevit and other applicaera like the Ricoh Theta. tions to make it easier for Cupix offers a cloud-based In the AEC industry there’s currently a teams to find content. service that enables construcUsing a plug-in users massive focus on laser scanning, but for some tion firms to create a photocan search for content workflows a 360° photo is more than enough graphic record to document within Revit, then drag site conditions or to monitor – and the data is much easier to capture and drop the content into construction progress. The the Revit model. There are resulting ‘3D tour’ can then be some neat management tools that let ing how V-Ray Next GPU is now able to aligned to a BIM co-ordinate system and users add comments to content to flag use the dedicated ray-tracing hardware compared to the as-designed BIM model. issues with a particular asset so they can within Nvidia’s RTX GPUs to speed up The comparison feature is very slick be fixed later. Managers can also use the production rendering. The first applica- and uses a split screen where the 360° system to track asset usage. tions with this capability are V-Ray Next Tour and BIM model are synced together, Avail can work with any asset but cur- for 3ds Max and Maya. Support for other so when the user changes the view in one rently has deep integration with Revit, V-Ray products is coming in the future. window, it automatically adjusts in the AutoCAD and Rhino. Next year this will Also on show was Project Lavina (soon other. Measurements can also be taken extend to Civil 3D, 3ds Max, MicroStation to be in beta). This will be a separate off both the BIM model and the 3D tour. and (hopefully) Sketchup too. Chaos Group product for exploring and Cupix supports Revit, Navisworks and At AU, Avail announced an agreement manipulating V-Ray scenes within a SketchUp files, as well as IFCs. with collaborative file and data manage- ‘100% ray-traced environment in real- ■ cupix.com ment specialist Panzura so its technology time’ using Nvidia RTX GPUs. can be used more effectively by distributCarlos Cristerna, RadLab Director at Faro ed design teams. creative agency Neoscape has been trying Faro showed a whole raft of new innova■ getavail.com out the technology and told AEC tions, from mobile reality capture and

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1 Spectar is a cloud and software platform that can bring Revit, AutoCAD or Navisworks models into Microsoft HoloLens so on-site teams can view them at 1:1 scale 2 Boston Dynamics Spot robot was everywhere at AU, pictured here sporting a 360° camera for use with HoloBuilder’s new SpotWalk application 3 Avail’s content management system is designed to help firms take control of their digital assets, especially Revit family objects

autonomous laser scanning to design verification and Scan-To-BIM. The Faro Swift is a new mobile scanning solution that combines its Faro Focus laser scanner with its Faro ScanPlan 2D mapper. Both devices are mounted on a tripod, along with a phone, tablet or laptop, and the system is then wheeled around at normal walking pace to capture the reality on site. A Faro spokesperson described the technology as being SLAM(ish), referring to the Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping technology used in handheld mapping devices, self-driving cars and Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot. Accuracy is quoted to be under 2cm and depends on how fast the device is wheeled along. At the moment the output is monochrome, but colour scans are ‘on the table’ for the future, as is an integrated, more compact device. Faro reckons the Faro Swift enables kinematic 3D scans to be completed up to 7x faster than a series of traditional, fixed point scans over comparable areas. Additionally, as the mobile scanner includes a fully functioning Faro Focus, it can be used as a fixed scanner. Users can switch to ‘high-fidelity scan mode’ in real time for ‘seamless integration’ with mobile scan data. Faro also gave an update on where it’s at with Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot with a view to delivering a solution for fully autonomous laser scanning. It’s still early days but the basic idea is to use the robot’s mission function to first walk it through the construction site to create an initial 3D map, then define waypoints for it to go through and locations for it stop and scan. In the future, Spot could potentally be used for continual scanning using Faro Swift which is something www.AECmag.com

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Feature

FARO Tracer for real time layout and construction verification

Faro’s lab team is working on. Michael Perry of Boston Dynamics explained that Spot will also be able to conduct autonomous missions on a changing job site using SLAM, “We’ve been through sites where, one day, the drywall framing is up, the next day, the drywall is installed, and we’re trying to make the robot’s ability to navigate these spaces as robust as possible, so you don’t have to continuously remap. And that’s one of the efforts that we’re doing, together with Faro,” he said. Spot stands at thigh height, and while a Faro spokesperson admitted that laser scanners can benefit from a higher viewpoint, he reckoned an elevation of around a foot should be sufficient for most scans.

Workstation technology at AU AMD (amd.com) The big news from AMD was the launch of the AMD Radeon Pro W5700, a new professional GPU that is designed for 3D CAD, Virtual Reality (VR), real time viz and GPU rendering. The double height board features a USB-C port so it can connect to new generation VR headsets, but AMD was pushing its wireless VR capabilities with the HTC Vive Focus Plus. For AEC firms, this looks to be a powerful feature. On the show floor at AU, those trying out the technology were able to roam freely without having to worry about trailing cables. Multiple users can also collaborate in the same space without getting tied up in knots. The big advantage of the AMD Radeon Pro / HTC Vive Focus Plus combination is model size, as data is streamed from a powerful workstation. This is in contrast to the Oculus Quest, which was seen on several stands at AU, where all the processing is done on the device and BIM models typically have to be broken down into manageable chunks. At AUs gone by, AMD’s presence would have started and finished with professional graphics but these days the company offers much more for users of Autodesk software. AMD new CPUs - 3rd Gen Ryzen and 3rd Gen Ryzen Threadripper – are giving Intel a serious run for its money in the workstation sector and machines based on

both processors were seen crunching their way through ray trace renders. AMD was also promoting the new Microsoft Azure NVv4 cloud workstation instance, which uses AMD GPUs and CPUs to stream 3D applications to virtually any device. The beauty of this new instance is that it’s highly scalable. Users can use a quarter of a GPU to run Revit, for example, making it much more cost effective than other GPU-accelerated Azure instances, then scale up GPU resources when using a more demanding 3D application like Enscape. Billing is done by the hour. We review the AMD Radeon Pro W5700 on page 46 and a BOXX workstation with the new 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X CPU on page 49. BIM Box (bimboxusa.com) BIM Box is a specialist manufacturer of high-performance workstations for the AEC sector. I’m a bit of a workstation geek, as regular readers of AEC might know, and I had some great discussions with CEO Buck Davis on the show floor. I was particularly impressed with his extensive

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knowledge of Revit and other AEC applications including Leica Cyclone for point cloud processing and Enscape for real time viz, which means the company is able to match workstations accordingly. BIM Box’s bespoke, highly tuned workstations (pictured below) use liquid cooling to hit CPU frequencies up to 5.4GHz. The company is based in the US but it has plans to enter the UK market.

Dell (dell.co.uk) The big news coming out of Dell was that it has re-engineered its Precision 7540 mobile workstation so it can take the more powerful Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 (16GB) GPU. Previously, Dell’s mainstream 15-inch mobile workstation was limited to the Quadro RTX 3000 (6GB), meaning those who needed a GPU with more power (or

more memory) for real time viz, GPU rendering or VR had to shop elsewhere, or choose the significantly larger 17-inch Dell Precision 7740. This new update to the Precision 7540 took everyone by surprise, not least Lenovo who previously was the only major manufacturer that was able to offer the Quadro RTX 5000 in a 15-inch mobile workstation. With Dell’s updated Precision 7540, Lenovo has not only lost its market differentiator, but Dell reckons its re-engineered cooling system means it can run the Quadro RTX 5000 at 80W, 10W more than the ThinkPad P53. HP (hp.com) HP’s big workstation announcement wasn’t a new piece of hardware. Instead the company launched a software suite designed specifically for remote workstations. HP ZCentral allows individuals to connect remotely to a dedicated HP Z workstation and IT managers to create pools of HP Z workstations for groups to share. HP ZCentral is a new product, but it’s not an entirely new technology. The remoting software, HP ZCentral Remote Boost Software, is really just an evolution and rebranding of HP RGS (Remote Graphics Software) with a bigger focus on collaboration whereby users can ‘easily share’ screens. What is new, is HP ZCentral Connect, a software broker that HP says allows IT

departments to easily assign workstations, monitor connections and logins all through one simple interface. Users can access the next available workstation within an assigned pool of centralised workstations. Lenovo (lenovo.com/thinkworkstations) Lenovo often lets its customers do the talking and at AU we met with Neoscape’s Carlos Cristerna who explained how his Lenovo ThinkPad P53 mobile workstation, which features the powerful Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 GPU, is changing workflows at the AECfocused creative agency. Cristerna first spoke about his experiences of real time ray tracing with Unreal Engine at NXT BLD in June. He explained that in a matter of minutes, he can do as many renderings as he wants for a customer presentation. But it’s not just about getting renders back quicker. He’s since been looking at how the technology can help change the creative process within his team. As an experiment he got together a programmer, art director and artist (himself) to work on an animation project. Cristerna explained that as soon as the art director had given feedback, he started walking away, as that’s what he’d always done. But Cristerna called him back and the changes were done on the fly, dramatically accelerating the creative process. On the news front, Lenovo

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Height becomes more important if the scanner needs to see above obstacles like a table or desk, but Spot could stand on tip toes to achieve this. Scissor lifts could also offer a solution. Spot is generally very stable and can walk over rugged terrain, but it has been known to fall over. To protect the laser scanner, Faro is working on a roll cage that will be attached to the frame of the robot. If Spot does take a tumble, it’s able to get back on its feet automatically. At AU we saw many examples of how mixed reality can be used for design layout and construction verification using a headset like the Microsoft HoloLens. Faro is taking a different approach with its Faro Tracer, which projects a laser outline

of a design onto a physical 3D surface or object so everyone can see it. The idea is that these ‘virtual templates’ can be used by workers in a pre-fab factory or on an actual construction site to quickly and accurately sequence work and position components. With reinforced concrete, for example, it could help workers precisely place formwork and rebar. It looks like an exciting technology and one that could lead to construction layout and construction verification being done at the same time. Faro also demonstrated As-Built Modeler, a new Scan-To-CAD or Scan-ToBIM software that is designed to minimise the effort and time required to create as-built documentation. The software

Silverdraft Devil GPU with ten Quadro RTX 6000 GPUs

announced a new partnership with industrial VR/XR head mounted display (HMD) manufacturer Varjo whereby the two companies will create “Certified for Varjo” pairings on Lenovo desktop and mobile workstations for all Varjo HMDs. The certification process includes testing of ports, adapters, firmware, Nvidia Quadro drivers, Windows, etc and recommendations go down to CPU, GPU and memory level on fixed workstation models. Lenovo was also showing its new rack-mounted workstation, the ThinkStation P920 Rack, which is based on the ThinkStation P920 desktop workstation and supports up to two Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 GPUs. The machine can be used as a 1:1 high-performance workstation or, through virtualisation, can support multiple users concurrently. Nvidia (nvidia.com) Nvidia RTX took centre stage with the real-time ray tracing technology being

can import as-built reality data as point clouds or meshes from Faro and other scanning solutions. ■ faro.com

HoloBuilder HoloBuilder has been working with robotic manufacturer Boston Dynamics for some time now but at AU formalised the partnership and marked the launch of SpotWalk, a robotic construction capture solution. SpotWalk equips Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot with ‘autonomous’ 360° image capturing technology, allowing customers to remotely walk a site and ‘instantaneously’ create a ‘living digital record’ of their construction projects. HoloBuilder says the technology is incredibly easy to use.

Dell Precision 7540: now with the powerful Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000

shown in several new applications including Chaos Group V-Ray Next GPU and Autodesk VRED. Immersive VR was also on the agenda with Nvidia’s variable rate shading (VRS) technology being demonstrated using Autodesk VRED 2020.2 beta and the HTC Vive Pro Eye, an enterprise VR headset with builtin eye tracking, running on a Dell Precision 7820 tower workstation with two Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 GPUs. VRS (also known as foveated rendering) works by only rendering at the highest quality the part of the scene where the user is looking. It means GPU resources can be targeted where it matters and not wasted rendering pixels at unnecessarily high quality in your peripheral vision where it won’t be noticed. The demo on Dell’s stand featured a McLaren 720S but this type of technology could be used for high-end VR experiences in architecture where quality is of paramount importance. Nvidia also presented its

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new CloudXR software development kit, which is designed for low-latency AR/VR streaming over 5G networks to ‘any device’, such handheld tablets, VR headsets and AR glasses. CloudXR runs in the cloud but, for firms that have their own 5G networks, also in on-premise data centres. Automotive is always the go to industry for new technologies like this but we think there could be real value for AEC firms as well. Silverdraft (silverdraft.com) Silverdraft was showing off its Devil GPU, an ultra-powerful server that can be kitted out with up to ten (yes, ten) Quadro RTX 6000 or RTX 8000 GPUs. Considering that Nvidia normally does demos on a server with three or four GPUs, this is a phenomenal amount of processing power for real time ray tracing in applications like V-Ray GPU. And if ten GPUs isn’t enough then you can even connect up multiple Devil GPU servers over Infiniband. The Devil GPU is not just

about real time ray tracing. It can also be used for multiuser VR in a single system. Silverdraft was also showing off its range of ‘Demon’ desktop workstations. Workspot (workspot.com) Workspot offers cloud desktops and GPU-accelerated cloud workstations exclusively on Microsoft Azure. The company delivers what it describes as turnkey SAS solutions that make it very easy for admins to deploy virtual desktops. With multiple regions of Azure, Workspot reckons latency is often less than 25ms wherever you are in the world. For all cloud workstations, low latency is essential if you want an experience that is comparable to a desktop workstation. However, the company also understands the importance of data sovereignty. At AU, a Workspot spokesperson told us about a UK customer that has contractors and employees in India that connect to an Azure datacentre in the UK. In this exam-

ple, Workspot admits that the latency is not as good as you would want it to be, but the customer doesn’t have any versioning problems. It’s all about what trade off you are willing to accept. On a different deployment in the US, Workspot set up one AEC firm on two different Azure datacentres and replicated data between the two using Panzura technology. Workspot currently uses GPU instances powered by Nvidia Tesla M60 GPUs over a 1:1 connection, but in the future will be looking to use the new AMD powered Azure GPU instances which will allow customer to scale down GPU resources. As it stands, we reckon one Tesla M60 is overkill for Revit users, meaning customers might be paying for resources they don’t need. Workspot is not the only cloud workstation provider offering virtual desktops on Microsoft Azure. UK-based IMSCAD also has an Azure offering through IMS Cloud.

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Feature

Cupix uses output from 360° cameras to create photographic records to document site conditions or to monitor construction progress

The SpotWalk app has two general modes. The first enables project teams to teach Spot the capture route simply by driving the robot via a smartphone interface. The second mode drives Spot autonomously on its trained path, taking pictures along the way at defined capture locations. Images captured by SpotWalk are automatically analysed by HoloBuilder’s machine learning engine, SiteAI. General contractor Hensel Phelps has already begun testing SpotWalk on the $1.2 billion San Francisco Harvey Milk Terminal 1 Airport project. ■ holobuilder.com

Leica Leica had a couple of major announcements surrounding its 3D handheld imager, the BLK3D, that allows users to take precise 3D measurements from any 2D image it captures. First up, the company launched BLK3D Web, an online collaboration workflow that allows users to share the 3D measurable images online. It means anyone with access to the shared link can measure and mark-up the image files without requiring additional software. Leica also announced a BLK3D integration with Autodesk BIM 360 Docs which will enable BIM 360 users to use BLK3D measurable images in the issue creation and resolution workflow. ■ leica-geosystems.com

OpenSpace There’s some incredible technology out there for capturing construction sites but many require specialist skills. The approach of San Francisco-based OpenSpace is to make things so easy that anyone can use its technology. www.AECmag.com

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OpenSpace uses a 360° camera fitted on top of a standard construction site hard hat and then lets its Vision Engine technology do the rest, capturing 360° video and photos ‘passively’. All the user does is hit record on their smartphone, then walk the site. Photos are captured every half-second and are ‘automatically’ tied to project plans using AI. The technology can be used to document site conditions over time. There’s also a BIM Viewer that can help improve coordination by enabling side-by-side photo-to-model comparisons. OpenSpace reckons the technology can reduce physical sites visits by up to 50%. At AU, OpenSpace announced a new integration with Autodesk BIM 360, which is designed to streamline RFI and QA/QC processes for construction teams. The software is also integrated with Procore and PlanGrid. ■ openspace.ai

Paracosm The Paracosm PX-80 is a handheld SLAM-based 3D mapping solution that incorporates LiDAR, colour imagery, and IMU (inertial measurement unit) data to capture hi-res point clouds in colour. It’s particularly well suited to complex indoor environments but with a range of 80m can also be used outdoors. The PX-80 comes with Capture, an iOS scanning application that runs on an iPad attached to the scanner. Through the app, users can see points being collected in real time, with a heat map showing where there’s good coverage and where more data is required, so you don’t leave the site with incomplete data. The scanner can collect 300,000 points per second and quoted accuracy is 1cm to 3cm.

Paracosm is putting a lot of resources into software development and is currently working on a solution that will allow captured data to be tied into ground control points, and then post processed to increase accuracy. Most of Paracosm’s customers are in the US, but UK general contractor nmcn is using the PX-80 to capture detailed 3D site geometry on brownfield, greenfield, and refurbishment sites — both at the beginning of each project and regularly throughout the construction process for daily QA checks and as-built models. ■ paracosm.io

Project Frog Project Frog had some great exposure at AU with Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost highlighting the use of its new KitConnect software on the modular AC Marriott New York Hotel in Manhattan. Autodesk owns part of the company and its industrialised construction team actually helped develop KitConnect on top of Autodesk Forge. KitConnect is an integrated Revit to web application that is designed to manage configurable, modular ‘Kit-of-Parts’ content for scalable prefabricated building systems. Each component is designed for manufacturing and ease of assembly on site — better known as DfMA. The software has two main roles. First it helps teams define components for their building systems with manufacturing in mind, capturing the rules and DfMA logic. Those components are then utilised during building design, with the cloud-based software acting as a Revit configurator to aid the design team. KitConnect can also be used to verify that standard components are available January / February 2020

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KitConnect is an integrated Revit to web application that is designed to manage configurable, modular ‘Kit-of-Parts’ content for scalable prefabricated building systems

to purchase in the supply chain and, if they’re not, swap them out for an alternative. This is designed to cut out the traditional iterative loop where a component goes back through pre-construction, gets validated, and then goes back to procurement. KitConnect isn’t just focused on Revit. Project Frog is also developing workflows with Autodesk’s Project Refinery for generative design, Dynamo for design automation, as well as manufacturing solutions Inventor and Fusion. We expect to hear a lot more from Project Frog in 2020 and think the company could play a key role in Autodesk’s ambitions for industrialised construction.

for pre-construction or for actual installation work, such as stud walls or for complex geometry that might be hard to install using 2D plans, especially if being done by apprentices. The thing that caught our eye about the technology was the built-in repositioning tool that helps users deal with drift, a phenomenon often experienced with HoloLens where the model becomes misaligned with the real world over distance. When this happens, Spectar’s software essentially lets you grab the model and manually realign it to a grid line.

■ projectfrog.com

Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot made many appearances at AU, not least during the AEC keynote presentation. Trimble used the event to promote a new partnership with Hilti and Boston Dynamics. The companies are working on a “proof-ofconcept’ solution that integrates Trimble’s and Hilti’s construction management software solutions, GNSS technology and reality capture devices with Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot platform. The thing that stood out about this news is that the reality capture devices carried by the robot will directly communicate with a cloud-based construction management application. Speeding up and automating data acquisition is one thing, but automatically pushing the data to the cloud means it can be used in a timely manner by whoever needs it.

Reconstruct There are plenty of apps and services out there that use 360° images to help track construction progress, but Reconstruct’s Visual Command Center goes one step further, generating point clouds from 360° videos. The resulting reality model can then be aligned to the BIM model to provide a 360° ‘augmented reality experience’. Everything can be tied into a schedule so firms can simulate how a building will be constructed. With frequent walks of the construction site, firms can track progress or build up a past, present and future record of how a building was constructed. The SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform is built on Autodesk Forge. ■ reconstructinc.com

Trimble

■ vimaec.com

Virtual reality comes to Autodesk BIM 360 At AU we saw several examples of how collaborative VR tools are now linking to Autodesk BIM 360 to help support more efficient workflows and improve issue resolution. Check out the latest from InSite VR, The Wild and IrisVR on page 32

■ trimble com

Spectar Spectar is a cloud and software platform that can bring Revit, AutoCAD or Navisworks models into Microsoft HoloLens so on-site teams can view them at 1:1 scale. The technology can be used 28

■ spectar.io

blending the digital and physical worlds. VIM, short for virtual information modelling, is Magic Leap’s exclusive AEC partner. At AU the company invited delegates to check out its mixed reality demo in collaboration with Chicago-based general contractor, Skender Construction. Skender is using VIM’s technology in its modular manufacturing facility to help its clients visualise what their modular buildings will look like before manufacturing and construction begins. By doing this in mixed reality, rather than virtual reality, Skender reckons it allows for a much more natural augmented collaboration. VIM isn’t just about mixed reality. The company says its technology can be used to put large and fully coordinated Revit projects and other BIM model data into the hands of stakeholders and construction professionals, on a range of devices and platforms.

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VIM Microsoft HoloLens has been the dominant mixed reality headset in the AEC sector for some time, but Magic Leap offers an interesting alternative for www.AECmag.com

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THE FUTURE OF ARCHITECTURE ENGINEERING & CONSTRUCTION TECHNOLOGY TWO STREAM CONFERENCE (INCLUDING DEDICATED DESIGN VIZ STREAM)

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Collaborating in VR For team collaboration and design / review in VR, Autodesk BIM 360 is starting to emerge as a central hub, while the wireless Oculus Quest headset gains traction. Greg Corke reports

hen the first wave of AEC-centric VR tools came out in 2016 the focus was on bringing CAD or BIM models quickly into VR, automatically optimising model geometry so users had a comfortable VR experience. To some extent, this has now been realised and in the last few years attention has shifted to adding practical functionality to support team collaboration and design review, with local or global teams. We all know that VR can be great for spotting and resolving issues, or simply for better understanding of design, especially when non-technical folks are involved. The emphasis is now on workflow and Autodesk BIM 360 (autodesk.com/bim-360) is emerging as a key enabling technology. Both Insite VR (insitevr.com) and The Wild (thewild.com) recently integrated their collaborative VR products with Autodesk’s cloud-based construction management platform. Iris VR (irisVR.com), which we reviewed back in 2017, is in the process of doing so, and Unity Reflect (unity.com/aec/ reflect) will also have a future integration. The big benefit of integrating with BIM 360 is that VR becomes a natural extension to design review. Rather than having to actively prep data for a VR meeting using a plug-in for Revit or another BIM authoring

tool, the VR optimised model is pre-processed in the cloud. Then, when you think an issue might be best resolved in VR, simply pop on a headset and away you go. With Insite VR and The Wild, data automatically gets pulled in whenever a new Revit, Navisworks or other 3D file is published to BIM 360. It means project participants don’t have to worry about having the latest revision. In InSite VR, entering VR is as simple as clicking the ‘View In VR’ button in BIM 360. You’ll then need to download the model locally, of course, but the workflow is seamless. Once inside VR, project participants can explore coordination and constructability issues, looking for visual clashes or collaboratively working on resolutions to ones that have already been identified. In the shared virtual space, project participants see each other as avatars, who may or may not be in the same physical room. As everything is done via the cloud, collaborative VR knows no geographic boundaries. A New York architect can collaborate with a London structural engineer and talk over VoIP.

Model markup Using a keyboard while wearing a VR headset is impractical, so software developers first turned to virtual keyboards, but these were clunky to use. Now the standard way to flag up issues in VR, adding annota-

tions to a model is via speech-to-text. In both The Wild and InSite VR users can point at an object, then dictate to leave a text comment. Annotations are persistent, so not everyone has to be in VR at the same time. Comments can also be viewed on a desktop viewer. The Wild also has an Augmented Reality app for the iPad. Measurement and sketching tools are standard, but The Wild goes one step further with a massing tool that lets you model simple 3D boxes inside VR. It’s not particularly sophisticated, and there are better tools for conceptual design in VR including Arkio (arkio.is) and SandBOX I/O from Foster + Partners, but it’s a great way to explore spatial concepts.

The feedback loop When an issue is identified or resolved in VR, keeping track and making sure decisions get acted upon has long been a shortfall of VR software. While most applications can generate PDF reports, this breaks the digital workflow, and firms then need to manually locate those issues in the BIM authoring tool or feed them into some kind of issue resolution software. InSite VR is solving this by making its BIM 360 integration bi-directional with the help of cloud-based development platform Autodesk Forge. When an issue is flagged in VR using speech-to-text, it auto-

VR collaboration beyond BIM 360 For a managed design / review process using VR you don’t have to go down the BIM 360 route. Revizto (revizto.com) is a real time, cloudbased issue tracking and collaboration tool that has VR built in. The software’s VR capabilities aren’t as advanced as the others covered in this article. For example, annotations

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are added using keyboard and mouse, usually by someone not wearing a VR headset. However, the software stands out for its highly optimised issue tracking workflows for teams. Revizto has plans to extend its VR capabilities in the future. It currently has basic BIM 360 integration and also is working with Autodesk Forge.

Of course, VR doesn’t have to be done with VR headsets and Revizto can also be integrated with 1:1 scale CAVElike solutions, including the Fulcro FULmax (fulmax.co.uk), Igloo Shared VR cylinder (igloovision.com) and Soluis Reality Portal (soluis.com). Some AEC firms prefer communal systems like these for better team communication.

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Feature 1

1 The Wild has been built from the ground up for immersive collaboration for teams 2 With Insite VR users can go from Autodesk BIM 360 into VR at the click of a button. Conversely, an issue can be flagged in VR and automatically funnelled back up into BIM 360 as a BIM 360 issue 3 The Oculus Quest is proving popular with AEC firms because of its easy set up and cable free approach

matically gets funnelled back up into BIM 360 as a BIM 360 issue. At the end of the collaborative session, the project manager can then go into BIM 360 to assign issues to individuals and set due dates etc. It’s all about accountability. There’s still plenty of room for improvement here, and it would be great to get an integrated workflow for clash detection, but it’s a good first step to closing the all-important feedback loop. The Wild and Unity are also working on similar functionality.

Cutting free of the cable In AEC, VR has been dominated by cables, but the Oculus Quest (oculus.com/quest) looks to be changing this. At Autodesk University in November, The Wild, Insite VR and IrisVR were all doing demos with the new wireless VR headset. While other VR headsets are supported, including the tethered HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality, it’s the simplicity of the Oculus Quest that is proving popular with AEC firms. There’s little to no setup and, of course, collaborators don’t have to worry about tying themselves up in knots. The Oculus Quest is completely selfcontained. It doesn’t need a workstation or external sensors. But like its tethered counterparts, it supports six-degrees-offreedom (6DoF) movement tracking, so users can walk freely, lean into objects and use the hand controllers like wands. The downside of the device is performance. The built-in processor is significantly less powerful than a 3D-accelerated workstation. While experiences might feel the same, they probably won’t look the same, as the models need to be rendered much more simply in order to deliver a 3 www.AECmag.com

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comfortable frame rate. In addition, the size of models that it can handle are significantly smaller. The Wild gets around this to some extent by streaming in the model at different Levels of Detail, but best practice in both The Wild and InSite VR is to section up models in advance. From a workflow perspective this isn’t necessarily an issue. Most of the VR software companies we talked to for this article agreed that design / review is often done best in a managed way. So rather than loading in an entire building and letting participants roam freely, sessions are pre-planned to focus on specific issues, with each having its own bite sized dataset. With InSite VR, for example, models for the Quest are typically around 20MB. The Oculus Quest does have a trick up its sleeve. A new fibre optic cable called the Oculus Link allows the headset to be connected up to a workstation, so it works like an Oculus Rift and can sup-

port much larger models. This extends the usefulness of the device, as it would allow an architect to quickly view an entire building in VR during the design process using a tool like Enscape (enscape3d.com).

Conclusion AEC-focused VR software has come a long way since the early days. Tools that essentially started out as VR viewers for BIM models are now evolving into powerful collaborative platforms. But rather than re-inventing the wheel, the software developers are now piggybacking on the back of Autodesk BIM 360 to develop managed workflows for design / review and issue resolution. It’s interesting that Autodesk is happy to take a back seat here. In 2016, with Stingray and Revit Live, it had its own aspirations for VR, but now it’s actively working with companies like InSite VR and of course, building a special relationship with Unity. VR is a tough business, with new headsets coming online all of the time. Providing the cloud backbone for these VR focused firms to plug into is a smart way for Autodesk to get involved. January / February 2020

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Software

Design for the new generation In 2015, Autodesk released Project Fractal to investigate generative design in AEC. It has now evolved into Project Refinery and Lawrence Hooker, technical consultant, Excitech explores the Beta

enerative design is, in essence, a collaborative effort between human beings and machines. The process takes perfect advantage of the merits of each contributor; computers excelling at working with enormous datasets and algorithms and humans being really good at selecting rational, realistic designs, and evolving these designs into a real project. When creating project schemes, the human designer only has time to generate a few design alternatives. Typically this is a very time-consuming process and hence expensive. The ideal design may be missed or, not even explored due to time and cost restrictions. This is a perfect application of generative design. The human can then select the best designs and refine these further if required. The process starts with the designer defining a number of inputs that are important to a particular design. For example, if we are designing a high-rise conceptual building, we may want to set a series of inputs such as total required floor area, maximum height, the maximum footprint, faรงade area, and so on. 34

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The generative design software can then use these inputs and iteratively generate numerous outputs using variations of each input. The software can potentially generate hundreds or thousands of design alternatives. Many of these will be inappropriate but some will likely fall within the parameters of a good design. The key part of the process is ranking the large amount of results into a few possibilities that the designer may want to evaluate further. In order for the software to rank the designs, the designer will need to define a series of ideal outcomes. Using the example of the high-rise building design, the outputs may contain parameters such as cost of construction, height to width ratio, core to floor ratio and façade area. This is achieved with the use of specialised algorithms.

Dynamo and Revit Project Refinery relies heavily on the use of Dynamo to define inputs, outputs, perform calculations and generate any model geometry that may be required. Dynamo is a visual programming tool that is included with products such as Revit, Civil 3D and Advance Steel. It aims to unleash the power of programming to the masses making use of its visual programming interface, which is far easier to learn and quicker to implement than traditional coding. Access to specific Autodesk application tools and commands are provided within the Dynamo interface, as well as a raft of tools to create custom geometry, manipulate and sort data and define custom logic. You can also use Iron Python and C# to extend the power of Dynamo further and also link data and geometry to other software applications. In figure 1 you can see a very simple Dynamo program to create a range of Revit levels from 0 to 12,000mm with a floor to floor height of 3,000mm. The Level name is generated by concatenating a string “Level “with a list of numbers from 1 to the count (i.e. how many items occur in the list). A typical Dynamo script for Project Refinery will have a series of sliders with ranges set to define inputs. The bulk of the Dynamo script will then build geometry and data based on these inputs. The geometry will initially be defined in Dynamo but can also be generated in Revit. For example, a basic tower massing model can be built with Dynamo geometry and then Revit floors, walls, structural columns and curtain walls could be added to build a basic model. A series of www.AECmag.com

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Dynamo watch windows are created to show various outputs. In our example of a high-rise massing study the outputs may be data such as Core to Floor ratio, Floor area and material volumes, as seen in figure 2. These watch windows are used by Project Refinery to rank the models.

Project Refinery Project Refinery can be run directly from the interface of Dynamo for Revit or Dynamo Sandbox, Dynamo now having a menu dedicated to Generative Design. Once inside the menu you can export your project for generative design. You are prompted to write a simple description for your project and add an image. The Dynamo graph is evaluated within the Export for Generative Design dialog and, if no errors are found, is ready to go! Typical errors will be if the outputs cannot be passed, i.e. the output is not an Integer or a number or the Dynamo Graph has not been saved. The next stage is to create a study on one of your published designs. The image and description are helpful and aid you when selecting a particular study. Once a study is chosen then a solver must be selected from a list, as shown below, to determine how Project Refinery generates and presents the models. Solver methods Randomize

Creates a series of random outputs by randomly assigning a value to each input slider

Optimize

The Optimize solver will run a series of generations and then use a chosen evaluator output to evolve the designs

Cross Product

Good for exploring all possible outputs, the cross product will use all values from all inputs

Like This

This Solver is used when you have already chosen something you like and require some subtle variations on a theme

Inputs are then selected to drive the design, typically these will be sliders that have been defined within Dynamo. For example, the inputs for a high-rise tower may be tower height, floor to floor level, core to floor ratio, mechanical levels and structure type. Some outputs will typically need to be constrained, for example the slenderness factor may not want to exceed 1:10 and the core to floor ratio will not want to be exceeded to keep efficiency of the tower design. The next stage is to control the number of generations that Refinery will produce; the more generations you create, the slower the process.

For example, if you are using the crossproduct method with a large number of inputs the number of models generated can multiply quickly. If you are using a random generation then you can directly enter the number of models that you want to create. Once the models are generated you can then use a variety of methods to visualise the results and rank these by certain criteria. figure 3 shows the design grid view with the models ranked by total floor area, the scatterplot graph below is plotting the tower height vs the slenderness ratio. The size and colour of the circle can also be assigned to various parameters. Another method is to visualise the data by using a parallel coordinate graph. figure 4 shows all the inputs and then the values are plotted along the graph, the line is highlighted in blue when you move your cursor over the image in the grid view. When a solution has been selected you can open this in Dynamo which will then build the relevant model in your design application - in the case of the high-rise tower, Autodesk Revit.

Conclusion Project Refinery currently runs on the user’s local computer and uses some interesting technology to solve multiple solutions with a good amount of speed. For example., I generated 200 random versions of a tower massing study in just under 18 seconds! I would imagine in the future that the services will be running on the cloud to further increase speed. Autodesk is also releasing a number of toolkits that can be used within Dynamo to aid generative design processes. One challenge is the optimisation of space within a building or applications such as housing site layouts. These are very high on the wish list for generative design and are currently quite challenging issues to solve. Generative design will, year on year, become more and more important in all sorts of industry sectors. We have already seen real world examples of it being used within the manufacturing sector to refine, optimise and create stronger, lighter products. The AEC industry will surely have huge gains when reducing materials, making better use of space and, of course, increasing efficiency. If you want to use generative design processes in your next project, then you will need to make sure that your Dynamo skills are polished and ready to go! ■ autodesk.com/campaigns/refinery-beta ■ excitech.co.uk

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Discussing digital twins

There is a huge level of interest in creating digital twins and attaining the “black art” knowledge required to wrangle project data into a single place. Following on from our coverage last year, Martyn Day digs deeper into the subject with Bentley Systems

he concept of creating a digital twin for a project has really captured the imagination of not only designers and constructors, but also owners and operators. There are many possible use cases and benefits linking the digital realm to reality. But, as always happens in our industry, some software developers jump on the bandwagon, fuelling the hype cycle and generally only succeeding in confusing the market. Too many have used digital twin when what they really mean is the BIM process. With this in mind, AEC Magazine decided to dig a little deeper into the challenges that the industry faces when creating digital twins and also to explain some of the underlying technologies to deliver beyond the hype. To do this we talked with Keith Bentley, Chief Technology Officer, Bentley Systems and Adam Klatzkin, the company’s vice president of business development – iTwin Services. Last year at its Year In Infrastructure event in Singapore, Bentley Systems concentrated on explaining its broad digital twin strategy and platform technologies, with firms like Shell and Microsoft providing case studies on their digital twin experiences (read the article here tinyurl. com/ub4ug9a). Bentley Systems has been building its digital twin platform and services quietly over many years, from creating technology as fundamental as an open file format, building connectors and APIs, to offering full delivery services for scanning entire cities and producing accurate, 3D reality models. Bentley Systems is “all in” on creating, utilising, managing, and distributing digital twins. Keith Bentley described the reality of digital twins as, “The biggest opportunity to improve the overall value contribution of technology to infrastructure since the personal computer. Even with today’s digital twin applications, the opportunities to improve the overall value to the ecosystem are far greater 36

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than that of traditional CAD or BIM.” Digital twins are fundamentally about big data: collecting old, new, live, and future data, geo-referencing it, finding out what has changed, displaying it, and doing something meaningful with it. To be holistic, digital twin technology needs to bridge many boundaries and access data that may be in proprietary formats and within different databases.

Openness Keith Bentley explained the key precept of the digital twin landscape, “Premise number one of a digital twin is that it’s

always going to be a federation of a lot of information sources. Think about IoT [Internet of Things] streams and resource management, asset management. You are

1 iTwins are continuously updated with data from the physical asset. This data is used to understand and model the asset’s performance. ©2020 Bentley Systems, Incorporated 2 A digital twin combining reality modelling with BIM data

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Feature

KEITH BENTLEY

not going to buy your digital twin solu- ties for creating, visualising, querying, tion from one vendor. There’s no way that mining, synchronising, aligning, and one vendor anywhere could take on the securing digital twin data. mission of supplying all the technology In the building industry, it’s impossible you need for your digital twin. to escape the predominance of Revit. “When we thought about it, we realised Bentley Systems has created what it calls that the way we can be most relevant is an iModel Bridge to extract Revit data into by participating in the ecosystem that iModels. Keith Bentley explained, “We will be there, making what you consume store the primitives as close to their Revit from Bentley as easily ‘integratable’ as form as we can. If you look at the schema possible into the world of other people’s for iModels, you’ll see a lot of commonalisoftware and other companies.” ty with Revit because we know that people But on the “theory of openness,” every- are going to want their Revit data to reprebody in this industry claims sent what it was when it was to be open. In reality, they in Revit. So, the transformatalk the talk, but rarely walk tion actually is greater going the walk. Keith Bentley gave from DGN into iModels than us his definition of openness, Revit into iModels.” “Sure, nobody would ever In the spirit of openness, say, ‘Oh, we’re closed!’ But Bentley Systems published there are degrees of openness the source code of iModel.js and here (in the context of on GitHub. Anyone, even digital twins), you either competitors, can download it, mean it or you don’t. My defimake a copy of it, edit it, or nition is this: a software veneven incorporate it into one of dor’s technology is designed their products. It also means and constructed in a manner that, fundamentally, the You are not such that the option to user’s data is never locked in. going to buy switch vendors is foreclosed Keith Bentley explained, your digital or not. And, we say that “We fully expect that most twin solution people will need features we’re not designing things, building things, and even that we won’t have the ability from one selling things that couldn’t the capability to create for vendor. There’s or be taken and used by another them. Practically every no way that vendor and have customer’s instance of a digital twin is one vendor data be stuck. going to involve a heteroge“It’s true. With the Bentley neous mix of vendors and anywhere applications, the Autodesk sources and use cases. could take on data applications, and all the You’re not going to get to all the mission of that from Bentley as a design applications that exist today, they’re really vendor supplying all bespoke product, like we can locked. You’re locked in. And, the technology in the design world. We in the iModel and iModel.js think customers will use our you need for world, we’re endeavouring to libraries to internally create your digital make that situation not true. solutions or perhaps develWe believe that we can be opers will make things for twin more relevant if our technolsale, and we’ll benefit indiogy is consumable by people rectly. We are okay with that; for purposes outside of Bentley’s primary if there are more iModels in the world, we mission,” added Bentley. will have more relevance, more opportunity to sell our iTwin Services, but you don’t iModels have to buy everything from Bentley.” To build a digital twin, data needs to While iModels are a big part of Bentley come from multiple sources, in multiple Systems’ digital twin world, Keith file formats, at different points along the Bentley was quick to add that, “It’s not asset’s timeline, from concept to decom- true that a digital twin is an iModel, or missioning. Typically, this data is all over that an iModel constitutes a digital twin. the place and needs to be assembled A digital twin of an infrastructure asset somewhere. Here, Bentley Systems has that’s of any magnitude will have a lot of created a new version of its iModel col- information from many sources. We laboration platform to act as an expand- think that digital twins mean a vast sea of able conduit for digital twin data. Called federated data sources, one of which will iModel.js, the platform contains capabili- be an iModel.”

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iTwins Bentley’s iTwin Services builds on top of iModels and are a set of services packaged together to enable the creation of digital twin workflows, such as design review or design insights, as well as workflows that can be developed by third-party organisations. iTwin Services brings all that project data together, especially focusing on Bentley Systems’ expertise in handling and understanding engineering and scanned data. Underneath iTwin Services, Bentley Systems has a technology called iModelHub, which enables iModels to pull in engineering data from core industry software applications, such as Revit and OpenRoads Designer, wherever it resides. iModelHub acts as a bridge to bring the data into a “normalised data model,” which aggregates CAD, BIM, and GIS data created elsewhere. As designs inevitably change, are updated, and are modified, they are synchronised via iModelHub. This means that iTwin Services maintains the timeline and sequence of changes to a project, even though the data might be federated across a number of systems. Keith Bentley explained, “This concept of federating is challenging – combining data sources together to make it appear as a cohesive whole. Engineering data has a lifecycle that follows an approval and review process. Then, the proposed changes become real changes, whereas things like warranty information, inspection records, and resource allocation come and go all the time. So, these assets need to be stored in a different place and have a different way to access it, and therefore will be federated. “Bentley provides ways that you can form those connections; and in our iModel world, there are ways that you can identify information through links to other databases, mapped back to the source application. Internally, there’s logic in the iModel.js library to know how to visualise it in 3D. Each visualisation always shows some elements from your reality data, your design data, your GIS, and your IoT streams. We just want to make it so that it can all be done as seamlessly as possible.”

Small digital twins Looking at the many layers of technology and the vast amount of data generated in all phases of design, construction, and operation, the general feeling is that digital twins are expensive to create and really only make sense for large assets, January / February 2020

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Feature iModel.js Open Source library capabilities

iModel.js is an open-source platform for creating, accessing, leveraging and integrating infrastructure digital twins

such as process plant and water filtration plants. Adam Klatzkin disagrees, “Actually, it’s pretty easy to get started at any scale, small or large. We’ve had just as much interest from engineering firms for project digital twins for construction, even without an owner onboard. Many firms are considering how they evolve their businesses into the future and how to offer services to the owners and operators. These firms are starting to become digital integrators. “So, how do firms change their business model around being relevant for the entire lifecycle of the asset? A lot of them have started exploring digital twin approaches on small projects, or even on small sections of larger projects or larger assets. The commercial model definitely supports small to large assets.”

more cost-effective and efficient, as it’s only the changes that need to be identified.

Updates to digital twins

ADAM KLATZKIN

The Bentley Systems vision means that there is a project or design digital twin that is used in the build phase of a building, road, or asset. Then, derived from this, there is a performance digital twin or twins, which could have many uses: to live monitor sensors in a plant, to conduct building analysis, to look at design alternatives for proposed changes, to analyse live data of office uses, and to perform asset management. New build vs. as-built Given the amount of investNew-build projects benefit ment in creating these perfrom having all the associated formance twins, we wondata created digitally and can dered how these changes to be made accessible. For predesign data drove the existing buildings and assets, updates of the twin models. digital data might not be so “Change propagation of easy to come by. Here, scanengineering data across We’ve had ning within a survey might multiple digital twins is reljust as much atively easy,” explained well be the starting point of capturing the as-built for a interest from Klatzkin. “Change is built digital twin. Bentley Systems engineering into iModels and iModelhas invested heavily in “realiHub from the ground up. So, firms for ty capture,” the art of either assuming that those perforlaser scanning or building 3D project digital mance digital twins were all models from photographs the same asset, from the twins for and/or videos. dataset, then the twin construction, same Klatzkin told us that it was simply subscribes to the even without change notifications, pulling early days, but that Bentley an owner Systems already had users in those changes. It’s very who started flying drones similar to how branches and onboard once a month, then weekly, forks are managed in source and now daily on projects to code development.” use photogrammetry to capture the build Keith Bentley added, “A project digital phases. They are getting a return on their twin and a performance digital twin will investment to carry it on. sometimes be different. There will be difOne transit authority was looking at ferent aspects modelled in one that aren’t continuous surveying of a 10-mile in the other. The essence is the connection stretch of track but at some point, all through change notification. Once a that data becomes a burden. Bentley change is approved and synchronised, Systems is looking at ways to make the you will want to know what the result of capture and storage of this type of data those changes was, and then run that

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through the same mapping process to update the performance iModel. I suspect that a lot of that logic and the ways to synchronise digital twins will be opportunities for third parties to write because there is usually not one type of performance digital twin. They will need applications, platforms, and an ecosystem, and that’s what we’re trying to create with iModel.js. “If you’re scanning a plant every day, from one day to the next, two data sets may both be large but may also be 92% or 97% the same, or maybe it’s unchanged. Customers need to be able to isolate what is different about the world today versus yesterday. Just having an up-to-date scan isn’t going to be good enough to know what happened. It’s all part of ‘digital twinness’ and also the reason why we say those concepts—being able to track in software and the state of the real world— don’t come into the whole BIM discussion of the last twenty years. Nobody thought about that. It wasn’t considered because it simply wasn’t possible.”

Conclusion The nature of data in our industry is that it can be as federated as the typical group of 25 or more companies that combine to design and construct assets. The concept of digital twins is about connectedness, and the aim is to bring all this data together, crossing the boundaries of formats, servers, IT silos, politics, and hierarchy. Once wrangled into an open digital twin, it’s possible to gain insights and make more-informed decisions with all the information at your fingertips, and even hook up IoT devices to get real time feedback. This practice applies to all phases: concept, design, construction, operation through to decommissioning. Bentley Systems’ approach through iModels, iModel.js, iModelHub, and the iTwin Services umbrella focusses on the area it knows best: corralling the engineering data. This tack has led the company to approach openness in a new way, because it can’t provide all the capabilities required and will have to work with a federation of application providers to connect the data to deliver a multitude of client’s needs. ■ bentley.com

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Excitech DOCS While all the main CAD vendors are pushing all singing, all dancing cloud-based ‘collaboration’ services, there’s a lot to be said for having an internal management system that sits within your firewall and is completely under your control. Martyn Day revisits Excitech DOCS

s we write this, big things are come feedback and feature requests have a feature or a data hook, there may happening to Autodesk’s and the software has grown from a well be ‘an app for that’. reseller network. In its move fairly simple drawing management and to subscription, the net effect transmittal system to a Swiss Army Knife ISO 19650 has been that its reseller channel (some- for data collection, management and The former British Standard (BS 1192) for times called Value Added Resellers or processing. managing the production, distribution VARs) started to condense into larger The underlying technology to Excitech and quality of construction information, dealerships. This month Addnode Group DOCS is M-Files, an Enterprise Content is now ISO 19650. One of the original announced it had acquired Excitech, Management system which approaches benefits of Excitech DOCS was that which also owns Symmetri, already a data storage on ‘what’ the data is, as deploying it would help your firm adhere huge pan-European software and services opposed to where the data is. This means to BS 1192. Now, it will assist compliance reseller to the construction and with ISO 19650. And as ISO manufacturing market. In one 19650 is being adopted around of the biggest deals of this type, the world, Excitech DOCS is The software is a naming convention it seems the brands will continup customers all over dream and handles not only file naming picking ue as is, but all firms will benethe place. but goes right down into the blocks and is fit from economies of scale. The software is a naming Within this changing nature convention dream and handles completely bidirectional of dealerships, many have not only file naming but goes stepped up their focus on right down into the blocks providing consultancy for major projects that users are presented with structured and is completely bidirectional. As a and also developing their own in-house data that doesn’t obfuscate project data drawing moves through the stages it software. Excitech has always offered by including the layers of system folders maintains the revision, naming and high-level consultancy, but the company and drives. Data is tagged and related to updates the title block. This means less is now establishing a reputation as being a projects. The net result is that it’s really errors in documentation and a significant key player in document management. easy to use, like Windows Explorer. productivity improvement – the larger the Excitech DOCS was launched in As the system is based on M-Files, it can number of drawings and documents, the September 2017 and in the last two and also benefit from the huge ecosystem bigger the benefit. a half years has continued to expand its of third-party add-ons from M-Files ISO 19650’s well defined approval capability and reach. With customers developers, so if Excitech DOCS doesn’t process is also baked in, dictating how

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03/02/2020 16:40

Review 1

1 Excitech DOCS has a powerful Transmittal feature which can handle uploading and publishing to multiple extranets 2 Excitech DOCS can now geolocate images taken onsite

a project document moves from a Work in Progress (WIP) state internally, to an approved external issue state, such as Shared or Published. The approval process is managed by a visual workflow management system, with stages and actions. It’s also possible to edit and create these workflows to make bespoke processes. While the initial version was mainly about BS 1192 adherence, baking in the defined workflow, customer feedback has meant the development team redeveloped the system to make it possible to customise and map these processes to internal requirements, which may not be targeted at those firms wishing to diverge from the ISO or BS standards.

Markup and geotagging Drawings can be quickly previewed and through the tabbed interface, identified exactly where they are in any defined workflow (WIP, Approved, Published etc) and document meta data read. Annotations can be added and shared, which automatically drive the approval process. A file sent for checking prior to publishing may be sent back with an annotation - this keeps the document in WIP until it’s approved. www.AECmag.com

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Excitech DOCS can now geolocate images taken onsite. By extracting the location data on images taken with mobile devices, as well as a whole lot of other meta data (date, time, resolution, phone type and even the exposure and F stop!). These can be added to projects via the mobile app in real time or uploaded at any point after. They can be seen on the built-in map.

Connections No man is an island, and neither is a document management system these days. Excitech DOCS has a powerful Transmittal feature, which was in the very first release. There have been a few updates here, for reissuing sets of updated documents in PDF and all sorts of other file options, with automatic transmittal sheet creation: project, client, who created it, date, to whom, their roles, document references, suitability codes, how they received it (email, extranet, fax, disk). This is extremely comprehensive and all automated and end-user configurable. Beyond direct transmittal, the development team has also expanded the range of collaboration portals that Excitech DOCS can connect to, adding Asite, Google Docs, Dropbox and

Viewpoint for Projects, together with Autodesk BIM 360. It can work with and remember settings for each user and per project and can even handle uploading and publishing to multiple extranets. Each project also has an extranet tab, where you can see what has been uploaded where and when. Outlook and email integration include a fair amount of intelligence, scanning email content (in and out) for relevance to projects as well as suggesting places to store them in the DOCS repository based on past actions. There are powerful filters to find relevant correspondence across a broad range of criteria. It’s available online and offline, using an intermediary cache.

Conclusion While Excitech DOCS is clearly growing in capability, the one thing that isn’t happening is any additional complexity in interface or usage. It takes what for most firms would be a daily management headache: ISO compliance, document naming, documents tracking, PDF creation, collecting project emails, approving and publishing document sets etc. and just handles it all for you. ■ excitech.co.uk/Products/Excitech-DOCS

January / February 2020

03/02/2020 16:40

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Feature

Omnipotent DWGs With AutoCAD still dominating the 2D market, some may wonder why 2D CAD software developers stopped innovating. But now Berlin-based Gräbert is taking DWG to new highs, writes Martyn Day AEC Magazine has been championing 3D modelling and BIM processes for well over a decade. As the industry has slowly moved to adopt model-based workflows, the one thing that is still fundamental to the process appears to be the creation of 2D drawings. Documentation still dominates the time spent in the design phase and, somewhat ironically, many BIM-based firms don’t like the automated output. This leads to add hours of work adding detail to the automated 2D output of model-based systems, breaking one of the key selling points of the BIM process — coordinated drawings during edits. From conversations with design and IT directors of leading AEC firms, beyond their issues with BIM, most agree that they have a problem with 2D output, in that they want the model system to fully automate the output, so they can spend more time designing. Suddenly the focus in firms is the ‘2D problem’. Other things are changing. Autodesk is rapidly hiking up subscription and enterprise licensing costs, to the point where firms are looking at their software budgets and ideal technology stacks. For all the positives of subscription, it always puts the cost of ownership up. Firms are also assessing the velocity of development, or lack of it. This is all driving the re-evaluation of AutoCAD licences.

Clone plus There has been an active and growing AutoCAD clone market for decades, but it hasn’t made a serious dent in Autodesk’s user base. The fact is, these firms have gone so far beyond just being ‘clones’ that they have become independent CAD systems in their own right, doing interesting and new things for 3D and 2D users, beyond AutoCAD, but still within a DWG ‘wrapper’. Previously we have looked at BricsCAD which has a unique, powerful and low-cost BIM modeller in a DWG environment. This month we highlight www.AECmag.com

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some innovations from long-standing German developer, Gräbert (Graebert). Gräbert is more of a traditional ‘CAD’ developer, in that it concentrates most of its development efforts on the production of 2D drawings. However, more than any other developer, it has really pushed its core platform to enable DWG drawings to be available on pretty much any device, any operating system, anywhere. The company produces three flavours of its ARES CAD software – Commander (for Windows, macOS and Linux), Touch (for Android and iOS phones and tablets) and Kudo - a browser-based variant for editing DWGs in the cloud (supporting all leading web browsers). At some point in the past, this seemed to be Autodesk’s objective as well, creating a cloud-version of AutoCAD, but it seemed to lose its focus and its feature set was never really completed. With ARES Kudo, Gräbert has produced a much more feature-rich, professional and reliable cloud DWG tool than Autodesk. Combining Commander,

Touch and Kudo, Gräbert offers a true multi-platform DWG tool and provides a unique ‘drawing anywhere’ solution with a consistent interface. All this for €250 a year, for all three environments (desktop, mobile, cloud) or €695 for three years. Flex (shared) or full perpetual license prices are available on request. To put this in context, a single three-year subscription licence of AutoCAD from its UK website costs £4,131 (including a 15% discount). That’s six licences to one. Out of all the global markets, Japan seems to be one which is most keen to reduce costs and opt to use DWG alternatives. Both BricsCAD and Gräbert have some key wins in big Autodesk Japanese customers. While talking with Dr Robert Gräbert, the company’s CTO, it was interesting to hear that Japanese companies really concentrate on regularly

benchmarking comparative products with every release, having dedicated teams who literally test performance feature by feature and the developers would be expected to improve performance to match or surpass competitive products. Gräbert is good at developing drawing tools. It provides OEM versions to key players in the manufacturing industry. Dassault Systèmes, for example, uses the Gräbert ARES DWG tools in its 2D CAD system, DraftSight, which now has over one million users. The ARES core also powers the 2D drawing engine of cloudbased product design system Onshape.

BIM Gräbert is also turning its eye to the BIM market, but as usual is taking its unique slant on selecting where it should add value. The new release of ARES is the first instalment to add IFC (in/out) & RVT import, a BIM Navigator (to filter and isolate required info), BIM data extraction to CSV and section and elevation view take-offs. These are all really about better integrating ARES into BIM workflows. However, this is stage one of a bigger plan. Gräbert is looking at the perennial issue of firms that don’t like the automated output of Revit, so have to embellish their drawings in a DWG CAD package, which currently breaks the automated documentation part of their BIM process. The company aims to develop some kind of associative design link, enabling the dynamic updating of BIMissued drawing sets which might be made in the modelling tool throughout the design process. This could be a huge play for the developer if it manages to pull this off, as ARES could provide a huge boost to those wanting to bring Revit’s automated output up to company standard without breaking the chain. Stay tuned!

Conclusion With customers who have cross-graded from AutoCAD, measuring performance feature by feature, huge MCAD developers who use OEM versions in their professional products and now BIM devotees who are looking for a more intelligent connection between BIM and drawings, Gräbert has managed to maintain and please a very demanding customer base. All this, without really stepping outside of its core comfort zone, the age-old art of producing drawings in DWG format. There seems plenty more innovation to come. ■ graebert.com

January / February 2020

01/02/2020 11:05

Feature

Moving into the comfort zone

Arnaud Girin, CFD application engineer at SimScale explores pedestrian wind comfort through the practical application of CFD technology on two real world projects

very new building, especially a skyscraper, can have an impact on the surrounding environment, creating new microclimates that affect pedestrian safety and comfort. Factors that dictate the outdoor climate include wind direction, wind speed, radiation and air pollution; all of which can be modified by the rise of a new building and its interaction with surrounding elements—other buildings or trees, for example. Depending on these elements, as well as the size, form, height or corner shape of the new structure, high wind speeds and phenomena such as the Venturi effect or passages can occur. The Venturi effect happens, for instance, when wind enters a narrow area in a built environment, resulting in a pressure drop and an increase in velocity, making the surrounding region windier. The ways that all of these factors impact people range from discouraging customers from visiting nearby shops to posing real safety risks to pedestrians and cyclists, even threatening lives in extreme cases.

Wind comfort issues The Flatiron Building in New York is a famous example of a structure that caused 44

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dramatic changes in wind flow. Since it opened in 1902, laws and regulations have been enhanced, with many urban authorities not granting permission for a high building without a pedestrian wind comfort study being conducted. Yet, despite the progress made on this subject, there are several cases of newly constructed buildings that have caused similar damaging effects. In fact, the 20 Fenchurch Street skyscraper (known as the ‘Walkie Talkie’

1 The ‘Walkie Talkie’ Building in London has been accused of creating a wind tunnel with extreme gusts, posing a danger to people 2 With its semi-coastal weather conditions, the Stockholm Royal Seaport makes a great subject for a pedestrian wind comfort study (Source: I99pema [CC BY-SA 3.0]) 3 Snapshot of transient results showing the acceleration of the wind between buildings at the Stockholm Royal Seaport (Source: SimScale)

www.AECmag.com

01/02/2020 11:04

building) in London is a notorious case. is surrounded by smaller structures, it were visualised in both a transient and Two years after sunlight reflected off the redirects the airstream down, creating a average state. building was found to be so intense it downdraft flow that will increase the With the standard wind comfort criteria scorched pavements and melted cars, the wind velocity at the bottom of the struc- in the industry integrated, such as tower was accused of creating a wind ture. Together with the cornering and Lawson, Davenport, and NEN 8100, caltunnel with extreme gusts, posing a seri- channelling effects, this phenomenon culation results were provided from all ous danger to people. influences pedestrian wind comfort. wind directions and analysed the wind Cases like these are forcing authorities As the skyscraper has already been frequencies at certain velocities. to reconsider construction standards and built, the solutions that can be taken to For the North-East wind direction, the put in place stricter requirements for improve the comfort of pedestrians and simulation results showed that there is an wind comfort assessments. Such studies cyclists are limited. What the simulation issue with the rows of apartment blocks. take into consideration meteorological results show is how much CFD technolo- The fact that they are perpendicular to the data, aerodynamics, and comfort criteria. gy can be used to predict design flaws or wind stream means that fluid flow The data regarding aerodynamics is pro- make improvements early in the process. between each space between the building vided by wind tunnel tests (physical accelerates from 8m/s to about 16m/s at experiments) and numerical simulation Case Study: Stockholm Royal Seaport times. This sort of undesired phenomenon with computational fluid dynamics The Stockholm Royal Seaport expansion is not uncommon in urban areas like the (CFD) software. project started in the early 2000s and Stockholm Royal Seaport and it often With simulation (or perhaps, more plans to create 12,000 new homes and needs to be addressed by architects, urban accurately, computer-aided engineering), 35,000 workplaces by 2030. This area in planners and project managers. the airflow over a building or urban area the capital of Sweden consisting of tall The multi wind direction study helps design can be modelled digitally. This apartment blocks, substantial buildings target the worst-case scenario and anticiapproach is faster and less costly than exposed to semi-coastal weather condi- pate any flaws, early in the design process. physical wind tunnel tests but, in general, tions makes the perfect subject for a The results of all wind directions comboth techniques are used in combination pedestrian wind comfort study. putations were combined into one set of to ensure all required data is provided and For the study, we used our online CFD results in order to create a heatmap showadequate testing ensured. solution based on the Lattice Boltzmann ing wind comfort criterion. By assessing pedestrian wind comfort, method (LBM) to obtain a detailed and The results shown by the wind comfort urban master planners, civil engineers accurate prediction of the wind velocity at criteria heat map highlighted and conand architects can predict firmed some of the observathe behaviour of wind flow tions previously made for around buildings while By assessing pedestrian wind comfort, urban the North-East wind directhey are in the design master planners, civil engineers and architects tion. Indeed, zones between phase. Wind speeds and the apartment blocks in the can predict the behaviour of wind flow around centre of the region of study other parameters can be buildings while they are in the design phase calculated at pedestrian levwere shown to be acceptels, and comfort can be able only for pedestrians assessed based on given criwalking fast. In addition, teria. This allows for changes and pedestrian level, using wind rose data some areas directly exposed to the shore improvements to be directly implemented taken from a third-party weather forecast indicated strong wind intensity. This into the design and iterated until the best supplier. The technology has been devel- means that, in all the regions shown in version is created. oped especially for pedestrian wind com- yellow (or red), residents will experience To assess the level of comfort and safety fort analysis as opposed to traditional discomfort if they are to stay (standing up of pedestrians around the ‘Walkie Talkie’ steady-state CFD analysis which has a or sitting down) in these locations. This building, we ran our own CFD simulation. more general use. information is very useful for urban A video, which can be at seen at tinyurl. After uploading the CAD model into the development planners in predicting the com/Walkie-SIM shows the average velocity simulation platform, selecting the areas of use of streets and planning the implemenat pedestrian head level (1.5m-2m altitude) interest, and choosing the analysis type, the tation of bus stops, parks, as well as reswhen one wind direction is considered. wind rose data was imported to input the taurant and bar terraces. These simulation results easily identified correct wind inlet profile for each direction. higher wind velocities around the corners Pedestrian zones were selected at cer- Conclusion of some of the buildings. This phenome- tain heights above the terrain, to match Pedestrian wind comfort studies are crunon is called ‘cornering effect’ and can local conditions and project requirements. cial in building design. Combining wind have an even stronger impact when two The simulation tool then computed the tunnel studies with CFD simulation can opposite buildings are subject to it, and calculations in all directions (in this case, ensure a comprehensive testing process when the street is parallel to the wind 16 directions). as well as an efficient and cost-effective direction. In fact, the simulation predicted A single computation, combining multi- way to deliver the best architecture projthis effect on the narrow streets on one of ple wind directions, produced time depen- ect possible. If the results of a simulation the sides of the ‘Walkie Talkie’. dent results, precisely revealing the tran- reveal problems, flaws, or improvement The red zones represent the uncom- sient wind effects such as gusts, vortex potential, designs can be easily modified fortable areas for pedestrians, where the shedding, and cornering effects. early in the process and re-simulated wind velocity is 8m/s and above. Due to Output quantities (e.g. streamlines, until the best CAD version is reached. the fact that the ‘Walkie Talkie’ is tall and cutting planes, isosurfaces, and more) ■ simscale.com

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AMD Radeon Pro W5700 The Radeon Pro W5700 GPU marks a solid, if not standout, debut for AMD’s new 7nm ‘Navi’ RDNA architecture. AMD is going relatively hard on pricing, but will it be enough to turn heads away from the Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000? asks Greg Corke Price $799 Ex VAT amd.com/radeonpro

Over the last 12 months, AMD has been notably quiet in workstation graphics – certainly compared to Nvidia, which delivered its first Quadro RTX GPUs, complete with dedicated ray tracing cores and the ambition of ‘real time’ ray tracing. While Nvidia has been untouchable at the high end with the hugely powerful Quadro RTX 5000, 6000 and 8000 GPUs, AMD has concentrated more on price/performance with the entry-level, CAD-focused Radeon Pro WX 3200, also available for mobile workstations including the HP ZBook 14u and 15u G6. But this is about to change, with AMD’s launch of its first professional GPU to be based on its new 7nm ‘Navi’ RDNA architecture, which will replace its ageing 14nm Graphics Core Next (GCN) design. The AMD Radeon Pro W5700 is not simply for CAD or BIM. It’s really designed for more demanding workflows, including

real-time visualisation, virtual reality (VR) and GPU rendering. The double-height board features 8GB GDDR6 memory, five Mini DisplayPorts and one USB-C port for new generation VR headsets. It is being pitched as the ‘world’s first’ PCIe Gen 4 professional graphics card, which offers double the bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3. At first glance, one might presume it’s a replacement for the 3D CAD-focused Radeon Pro WX 5100, but it’s actually significantly more powerful. AMD has changed its long-standing naming convention and its professional graphics cards will now be aligned with their consumer equivalents — in this case, the Radeon RX 5700 which launched last summer. In terms of positioning, A M D says the Radeon P r o W5700 is a follow-on from the Radeon Pro WX 7100 (8GB) and WX 8200 (8GB), sitting somewhere between the two. But it’s also its most powerful professional workstation GPU ever, outperforming the high-end Radeon Pro WX 9100 (16GB). Rated at 205W and requiring a 6-pin and an 8-pin connector, the Radeon Pro W5700 is a power-hungry card. But a new powerefficient 7nm manufacturing process means it offers a superior performance per watt

LumenRT

over the GCN-based WX 8200 (up to 41% higher, according to AMD). Even so, it still plays second fiddle to the 160W singleheight Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000, against which it is being pitched. With an SEP of US $799, AMD is going relatively hard on pricing. We don’t yet know how this will translate to the UK street price, but it should be lower than both the Radeon Pro WX 8200 (currently £876 ex VAT on scan.co.uk) and the Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB) (currently £799 Ex VAT on scan.co.uk). Performance figures shared by AMD show marginal gains of up to 7% compared to the Quadro RTX 4000, when tested in a range of CAD and viz-focused applications and benchmarks, including Catia, Maya, Enscape and Unity. As you’d expect, AMD handpicked the tests for which it has shared benchmark figures, but our own tests, conducted at 4K resolution, all show it to be behind the Quadro RTX 4000 — marginally in some areas and more considerably in others. In some workflows, this will make a significant difference to the end-user experience. In Autodesk VRED Professional 2020, for example, a powerful application for automotive visualisation, the Radeon Pro W5700 dropped off considerably when anti-aliasing was turned on. In Solidworks 2019, on the other hand, the 10-20% difference will likely mean nothing to the end user. In real-world

Enscape 2.4

Autodesk VRED Professional 2020

Roundabout model @ 4K

Museum model @ 4K

Car model (no AA) @ 4K

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

0 5 10 RAM, Windows 15 20 Test machine: AMD Threadripper 2990WX, 64GB 10 Pro

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

23.5

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

0 5 1510 Pro Test machine: AMD Threadripper 2990WX, 64GB 10 RAM, Windows

32.5

34.6

0 5 10 1564GB20 25 30 10 Pro 35 Test machine: AMD Threadripper 2990WX, RAM, Windows

Autodesk VRED Professional 2020 Car model (medium AA) @ 4K Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB) AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB) Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

8.0

10.8 20.6

0 52990WX,10 Test machine: AMD Threadripper 64GB RAM,15Windows 20 10 Pro

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Review testing, we managed to get a perfectly acceptable 17 frames per second (FPS) out of a colossal 60 million triangle MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer telescope model, the most complex Solidworks assembly we’ve ever seen. Most Solidworks users will get nowhere near this complexity, so frame rates will be well in excess of 20 FPS for a very smooth modelling experience. For VR, of course, every little bit of performance is critical as it could mean the difference between a silky-smooth experience and a nausea-inducing flicker. In Enscape 2.6, the architecture-focused viz tool with VR built in, we found the W5700 was only 6% slower than the Quadro RTX 4000 when testing with a sizable museum model. AMD’s internal tests with Enscape using a ‘mansion model’ put the W5700 in the lead, at 5% faster. It goes to show that datasets can make a difference. For GPU rendering, the Radeon Pro W5700 doesn’t have any cores that are dedicated to ray tracing (that’s rumoured to come in future AMD GPUs), but it’s still a viable option. If you do intend to use your GPU for ray trace rendering, much of this comes down to application support. As you’d expect, the W5700 works with applications that support AMD Radeon ProRender, either directly or via a plugin. These include Autodesk 3ds Max, PTC Creo, Modo, Solidworks Visualize, Cinema 4D, Acca Software and others. It’s not compatible with Nvidia Iray or Nvidia RTX found in Luxion KeyShot 9, V-Ray, Unreal Engine, Enscape and others. Solidworks Visualize 2020 supports both Nvidia’s and AMD’s rendering engines

SPECapc Solidworks 2019 benchmark Shaded with edges enhanced graphics // 4K Scores (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB) AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB)

Performance is essential, but it’s certainly not everything and the Radeon Pro W5700 also has a few tricks up its sleeve. One of the less publicised features is out-of-the-box support for AMD Remote Workstation. This technology, as the name suggests, allows users to access their physical workstation remotely, from ‘almost any device’: PC, laptop or tablet. AMD says you get the same workstation experience you’d expect to get in the design office, although this will depend on the quality of your internet connection, both in terms of latency and bandwidth. This feature should resonate with those who need to work from home on occasion (think flexible working, boiler service or sick child) or finish off a design in the evening. AMD doesn’t charge a licence fee for the technology, which works with Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection and Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops. The Radeon Pro W5700 also supports ReLive for VR, giving users a professional wireless VR capability when using the HTC Vive Focus Plus, which has six degrees of freedom (6DoF) controllers, like the HTC Vive. AMD has had ReLive

3.61

3.5

4.0

for VR working with Unreal Engine and Solidworks eDrawings Professional.

Conclusion The Radeon Pro W5700 marks a solid, if not standout, debut for AMD’s new 7nm ‘Navi’ RDNA architecture, delivering a level of performance that should satisfy most designers and architects looking beyond CAD and exploring real-time viz and VR. At $799, it will likely have a lower street price than the Quadro RTX 4000, but it’s not as aggressive as one might have hoped. Prospective buyers also need to consider how important RTX is to their workflows now, or in the future. Nvidia has the backing of some major software developers, both in architecture and manufacturing, and we can only see GPU ray tracing with RTX continuing to grow. In saying that, AMD has Radeon ProRender, plus not all designers and engineers need ray trace rendering. Also, AMD has some real value adds, not least AMD Remote Workstation. Most designers probably won’t notice a 10% difference in FPS, but all will appreciate the flexibility of working remotely. Of course, the Radeon Pro W5700 is only AMD’s first professional RDNAbased GPU. Second generation RDNA is on the roadmap and we expect new Radeon Pro models next year – certainly at the high end, perhaps even with dedicated ray tracing hardware to rival Nvidia RTX. But AMD also desperately needs to freshen things up in the mid-range, the sweet spot for CAD and BIM, where its current models are now three years old.

Solidworks Visualize 2020

1969 Camaro @ FHD // 1000 passes, accurate quality ProRender // render time (smaller is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB)

3.29

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

Beyond performance

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

2.72

0.0 W-2125, 0.5 16GB 1.0 RAM, 1.5 Windows 2.0 2.5 Test machine: Intel Xeon 10 Pro3.0

– Nvidia Iray (+ RTX) and AMD Radeon ProRender – but it’s still not possible to compare performance directly, because there are visual differences between all render engines. In AMD’s world, however, there has been some generation-ongeneration progression, with the Radeon Pro W5700 completing our test render 11% faster than the Radeon Pro WX 8200.

441

Blue Room Frames Per Second (bigger is better) AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB) AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB)

396

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB) N/A (uses different render engine (Iray) 0 100 200 300 400 Test machine: AMD Threadripper 2990WX, 64GB RAM, Windows 10 Pro

VRMark Professional Edition

41.2

48.9

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB) 500

55.5

0 10 2990WX, 20 64GB 30 40 50 Pro Test machine: AMD Threadripper RAM, Windows 10

SPECapc Solidworks 2019 benchmark

Shaded with edges enhanced graphics + RealView + shadows + AO // 4K // Scores (bigger is better) AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

3.88

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8GB)

4.32

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB) 0 W-2125, 1 16GB RAM, 2 3 4 Test machine: Intel Xeon Windows 10 Pro

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5.22

January / February 2020

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Review

BOXX Apexx A3 [3rd Gen AMD Ryzen] BOXX is one of the first to offer the new 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, delivering impressive performance for rendering with no compromise for CAD, writes Greg Corke

019 will go down as the year that AMD really took the fight to Intel. The chipmaker’s 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen CPUs (the 3000 series) not only delivered excellent multithreaded performance (thanks to more cores than Intel at similar price points) but impressive single-threaded performance as well. For designers, engineers and architects, the benefits for ray trace rendering were clear but, more importantly, there was very little compromise in CAD or BIM software where single-threaded performance is king, something that could not be said for 1st or 2nd Gen AMD Ryzen. AMD launched its first Ryzen 3000 CPUs last summer, with five models ranging from the 6-core Ryzen 5 3600 (3.6GHz, www.AECmag.com

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Product spec ■ AMD Ryzen 9 3950X CPU (3.5GHz, 4.7GHz Turbo) (16 cores) ■ Nvidia Quadro RTX

4000 GPU (8GB GDDR6 memory)

■ 128GB (4 x 32GB)

DDR4 2,666MHz memory

■ 1TB Samsung 970

Evo Plus SSD

■ 2TB 3.5-inch Hard

Disk Drive (HDD)

■ 174mm x 388mm x

452mm (w x h x d)

■ Microsoft Windows

10 Pro 64-bit

■ 36 month return to

base (RTB) warranty as standard

■ £4,400 (Ex VAT) (special bundle price includes 24” Asus Pro Art PA24AC display, Cherry Wireless Keyboard and mouse and delivery)

boxx-tech.co.uk

4.2GHz Turbo) up to the 12core Ryzen 9 3900X (3.8GHz, 4.6GHz Turbo), which we reviewed in August 2019. Now there’s a new 16-core model, the Ryzen 9 3950X (3.5GHz, 4.7GHz Turbo), that boosts multithreaded performance even higher. And at £625*, it’s exceptionally good value. A few years back, a processor with that kind of spec was almost unheard of and would have set you back several thousand pounds. BOXX is one of the first workstation manufacturers out of the blocks, making the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X available in its Apexx A3 workstation. To see what the 16-core CPU was capable of, our first port of call was the push-button ray trace rendering tool KeyShot. Here, the Apexx A3 completed

our 4K, 128-pass rendering in 135 secs, nearly twice as fast as an 8-core Intel Core i9 9900K overclocked to 4.9GHz. But what does this really mean to your average user of CAD or BIM tools, who also uses ray trace rendering software? Rendering the same scene with 64 passes at FHD resolution took a mere 18 secs and with 128 passes, only 35 secs. At this speed, you really can render and adjust without interrupting your flow. At the other end of the spectrum, rendering a top-quality 256 pass, 7,680 x 4,758 resolution scene took just over 18 minutes. In short, you no longer need to leave jobs like these to run overnight. Single-threaded performance is equally impressive. In the past, it was unthinkable to have so many cores in a CPU without negatively impacting performance in CAD or BIM software, but with the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, you really can have your cake and eat it too. It completed our single-threaded Solidworks IGES export test in a mere 80 January / February 2020

03/02/2020 16:59

Review

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Architects who are 100% focused on CAD or BIM may still fare better with Intel but, for those into CPU rendering or other multithreaded workflows like point cloud processing or simulation, there’s now a compelling argument for AMD Ryzen

secs. Of all the workstations we’ve tested for this magazine, only the 8-core Intel Core i9 9900K overclocked to 4.9GHz beat this with a time of 75 secs. With 128GB memory spread across four 32GB DDR4 DIMMs, our test machine is fully loaded and set up to handle some very large datasets. Most BIM-centric workflows should be fine with 64GB, which would considerably bring down the overall cost of what is quite an expensive machine. Graphics is courtesy of the excellent Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB), which is a great match for mainstream real-time viz and VR workflows. In the arch-viz focused Enscape, for example, we got a decent, if not silky-smooth 19 frames per second at 4K resolution using a very complex museum model. The Quadro RTX 4000 is also good for GPU rendering, but if you’re considering a CPU with 16 cores, you probably have established CPU-centric rendering workflows anyway. The other benefit of going down the CPU route is having a massive 128GB to play with for loading in complex models, HDRi environments and materials. With the Quadro RTX 4000, you have to shoehorn everything into 8GB. When it comes to storage, there’s potentially some room for improvement. Tested with a single 500GB Samsung 960 Pro M.2 SSD, BOXX UK concedes that the machine would usually be configured with more modern Samsung SSDs and the as-reviewed machine is priced with 50

January / February 2020

p49_50_AEC_JANFEB20_BOXX.indd 50

a 1TB Samsung 970 Evo Plus. However, this drive is still PCIe 3.0, so can’t take advantage of the increased bandwidth on offer in the PCIe 4.0 Gigabyte AMD Ryzen X570 Aorus Ultra motherboard. To put some figures behind this, the Scan 3XS WA6000 Viz and its Corsair MP600 PCIe 4.0 SSD (tinyurl.com/scan-AEC) was 16% faster at copying 4.6GB of 3ds max data (comprising 60 large scene files and 4,400 smaller materials) and 6% faster at copying 2.1GB of Solidworks data (comprising 3,400 parts and assemblies). Of course, it’s important to note that not all workflows will benefit from PCIe 4.0 and reliability is equally, if not more, critical when it comes to workstations – and we’ve never had a Samsung SSD fail on us. The machine also comes with a 2TB 3.5inch Hard Disk Drive (HDD), although this wasn’t fitted in our test machine. A second HDD can be added if required. As we’ve come to expect from BOXX, the Apexx A3 is very well-built, made from ‘aircraft-grade’ aluminium, and with a strength and rigidity beyond that of offthe-shelf cases. And at 174 x 388 x 452mm, it’s also very compact, significantly smaller than Scan’s 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation. The CPU is liquid-cooled, connected to a large radiator with two fans at the front of the machine. In extended rendering tests, the CPU maintained an impressive 4.0GHz (0.5GHz over its base clock speed), but fan noise was noticeable. In fact, we

found the fans to be a little erratic, revving up and down from time to time, even when idle. They weren’t particularly loud – but the change in tone could be distracting to those who work in quiet offices.

Conclusion It’s telling that many of the workstations currently being offered for review feature AMD CPUs. This would have been unthinkable a few years back, given Intel’s long-standing dominance in the workstation market, but the tide seems to be turning. Architects and engineers who are 100% focused on CAD or BIM may still fare better with Intel but, for those into CPU rendering or other multi-threaded workflows like point cloud processing or simulation, there’s now a compelling argument for AMD Ryzen, or indeed AMD Ryzen Threadripper. And as an agile independent workstation manufacturer, BOXX offers both, giving it a distinct advantage over Dell, Fujitsu, HP and Lenovo, who are still 100% focused on Intel. With the Apexx A3, the execution is good and the build quality of the compact custom chassis superb. The only downside is the erratic fan noise which some may find distracting.

*CPU PRICES TAKEN FROM SCAN.CO.UK ON 4/12/19 (EX VAT)

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During January and February 2020, the BOXX Apexx A3, as reviewed, is available for a special bundle price of £4,400. This includes a 24” Asus Pro Art 1920 x 1200 PA24AC display, a Cherry DW9000 BT/RF rose gold Wireless Keyboard and mouse and delivery. www.AECmag.com

03/02/2020 16:59

P O WE RT O

A R C H I T E C T S

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