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

THE REVIT KILLER?

BricsCAD BIM, the new DWG-based rival

Design verification
BIM from Finland
Free viz assets

iModel unleashed Blockchain for AEC BIM for construction

Bentley embraces open source Why you should be paying attention Autodesk, Topcon and Trimble take aim

November / December 2018 >> Vol.99

p01_AEC_NOVDEC18_Cover5.indd 1 22/11/2018 11:54

pXX_AEC_NOVDEC18_Bentley.indd 1 22/11/2018 08:29
 Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

editorial

50
MANAGING EDITOR
GREG CORKE
greg@x3dmedia.com

CONSULTING EDITOR
MARTYN DAY
martyn@x3dmedia.comm

CONTRIBUTOR
AL DEAN
al@x3dmedia.com

DIGITAL MEDIA EDITOR

STEPHEN HOLMES
stephen@x3dmedia.com

advertising

GROUP MEDIA DIRECTOR

TONY BAKSH
tony@x3dmedia.com

ADVERTISING MANAGER
STEVE KING
steve@x3dmedia.com
BricsCAD BIM 10 A new dimension 38
We report on a new product, written on With our industry’s attention turning to
U.S. SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR a ‘familiar’ package and backed by a construction, Trimble finds itself as a key
DENISE GREAVES huge company. Could BricsCAD BIM be player in the battle for the hearts and
denise@x3dmedia.com
the one to take on the might of Revit? minds of firms using construction BIM
subscriptions
MANAGER
ALAN CLEVELAND iModel unleashed 16 Free resources for
alan@x3dmedia.com iModel, Bentley’s format for exchanging
project information between design,
viz projects: pt 2 42
accounts
construction and operations, has just Enscape recommends the best places to
CHARLOTTE TAIBI gone open source to feed the Digital Twin pick up free elements that will bring your
charlotte@x3dmedia.com
architectural project to life
FINANCIAL CONTROLLER
SAMANTHA TODESCATO-RUTLAND OpenBuildings:
sam@chalfen.com
design and beyond 20 BIM from Finland 50
Following the success of Finnish firms like
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receive your regular copy please register strengths with focused design tools, cross BIM-centric technologies looking to make
online at www.aecmag.com disciplinary workflows and open data their mark on the international stage
about
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bi-monthly by X3DMedia Ltd
Connecting design Xinaps Verifi3D 53
Room 7, 1st Floor, Unit 2
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and construction 23 This new cloud-based tool uses BIM
models to establish if a design meets
London, N19 4DR Optimising the fragmented workflow building regs and is fit for purpose
T. +44 (0)20 3355 7310 between design and construction was
F. +44 (0)20 3355 7319
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never going to be easy. We report on the
latest from Bentley and Topcon Smart innovators 57
without prior permission from the publisher is In the second of a series of three articles,
prohibited. All trademarks acknowledged. Opinions
expressed in articles are those of the author and not of
X3DMedia. X3DMedia cannot accept responsibility for
errors in articles or advertisements within the magazine.
Forging ahead with Rebecca De Cicco details the importance of
supporting innovative companies in
construction 26 developing technologies for Smart Cities

Autodesk’s refocus on construction has

Epson: printing goes
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year’s annual user event in Las Vegas
back to basics 58
Blockchain for AEC 32 Epson’s new entry-level large format

SUBSCRIPTIONS
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contracts and even people? Also this month: 4, 6, 8, 9 News

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 3

p03_AEC_NOVDEC18_Contents.indd 3 22/11/2018 15:59

 News

Data to flow freely between Green light for

Autodesk apps
Revit and Unity game engine in the cloud
utodesk has updated
A its terms of use for
single user
subscriptions, so customers
can now virtualise and host
Autodesk software in the cloud.
Prior to this change, firms
required an exception agreement
in order to run Revit or other
Autodesk applications on a cloud
workstation, rather than a
physical workstation. This had to
be negotiated with Autodesk and
was usually reserved for major
accounts only.
■ Full story @ tinyurl.com/cloud-adesk

utodesk has teamed up with
A Unity to help data flow more
easily between its products,
including Revit and 3ds Max, and the
real-time 3D development platform.
Unity says the collaboration will make
it much easier for AEC developers to
quickly assemble VR experiences and
lifelike AR models of actual building
sites – at any stage of the project.
Unity will get sub-level access to
Autodesk’s applications so geometry, meta
data and textures will be able to flow more
freely. Previously, importing a Revit model
and all of its BIM data into Unity could be
difficult and time-consuming, requiring
multiple plug-ins. Some of the Revit data
(like BIM and materials) could also be lost,
creating additional work.
Unity is not the only firm looking to
solve the workflow challenges of bringing
design data into a ‘game engine’
environment. Epic Games recently
announced support for Revit to streamline
the transfer of BIM data into Unreal
Engine. However, as Revit is known for
being notoriously hard to develop for,
Unity will look to use its close relationship
with Autodesk to its advantage as the
leading ‘game engine’ developers look to
increase penetration in the AEC sector.
■ autodesk.com ■ unity3d.com
Autodesk
spends $875m
on PlanGrid
utodesk has acquired
A PlanGrid, a developer
of construction
productivity software, for a
breathtaking $875 million.
The two companies have stated
that they will be integrating
workflows between PlanGrid,
Autodesk Revit and the Autodesk
BIM 360 platform, for a seamless
flow of project information.
■ plangrid.com

Bentley opens up core iModel technology

entley Systems
B has open sourced
the development
of iModels, its project
data exchange technology
specifically designed for
the lifecycle of
infrastructure assets.
The new iModel.js open
source library will enable
third party developers to
incorporate web-based
hooks that can bring in
design and project data,
which is stored in iModels
on Bentley’s iModelHub -
the idea being that any
developer can now use the
iModel wrapper to integrate
2D, 3D, 4D and documents
into custom cloud
applications or services.
With iModel.js, Bentley is
making a big play to be at
the heart of Digital Twins.
Adopting iModel.js gives
developers access to the
iModelHub and opens a
window into the live Digital
Twin data in a completely
web friendly way, and at no
cost to the developer.
By opting for an open
source deployment,
developers are also free to
alter the code but Bentley
will have to do the job of
policing and maintaining
its open development
platform, as well as
collating wish lists and
changes which it will
incorporate.
iModel.js is available
through GitHub, a platform
for hosting software code —
especially open-source
projects – that was recently
acquired by Microsoft.
To find out more about
iModel.js see page 16.
Construction
mark-up
enderfield
T Construction Software
has released new mark-
up tools that allow contractors
to collaborate on their
construction plans and add
marked-up drawings to
construction notices.
The company has also
implemented BIM and CAD file
viewing capabilities that can be
used on any smart device.
■ tenderfield.com

4 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

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 News

Design viz inspired by nature

ROUND UP
Damage limitation
Oasys has released XDisp Version 20.0,
the latest release of the automated
building and utility damage assessment
software that can be used to calculate
ground movements induced by
tunnelling, embedded wall excavations,
shafts and mining works
■ oasys-software.com

Viz workstations
Lenovo has introduced Nvidia RTX
technology to its portfolio of
workstations and has announced
support for Nvidia Quadro RTX GPUs
in the ThinkStation P330 Tower up to
the ThinkStation P920. This includes
the new Quadro RTX 4000 GPU, which
is covered in more detail on page 9
eal skies, customisable 3D anything from a light drizzle to a whiteout
■ thinkworkstations.com
R grasses and atmospheric rain
and snow are among the new
blizzard, can be used to communicate
cozy spaces decorated with furry rugs and
features in Lumion 9, the latest release fluffy blankets. And for a true-to-life
Road design context of the AEC-focused real-time garden or park shot, new customisable 3D
Engineers that use the AutoCAD-based rendering tool. grass materials can also be applied.
vehicle swept path analysis and turning
With one-touch Real Skies, users can Also new for version 9 is LiveSync for
simulation tool AutoTurn can now
present their designs directly in Google present designs on the perfect clear blue Rhino that allows users to simultaneously
Earth thanks to a partnership between morning, stormy afternoon or unforgettable model in Rhino and render in Lumion,
AutoTurn developer Transoft and sunset. As the sky is changed, the design’s adding to the LiveSyncs already available
Plex.Earth developer Plexscape entire lighting changes with it. for Revit, SketchUp and ArchiCAD.
■ transoftsolutions.com ■ plexearth.com
Realistic rain and snow, including ■ lumion.com

360 walkthroughs
NavVis IndoorViewer, a web-based
application that displays ‘realistic’
digital twins using 360° panoramic
images, point clouds and maps
generated by 3D scanning devices, can
now automatically convert E57 point
cloud files into interactive, realistic
360° walkthroughs
■ navvis.com/indoorviewer
Fast NVMe storage
Samsung has launched its first NVMe-
based portable solid state drive, the
Samsung Portable SSD X5, based on
Thunderbolt 3, which is up to four times
faster than USB 3.1. The drive is
available in three capacities 500GB, 1TB
and 2TB and promises to read / write
large files very quickly
■ samsung.com/ssd
Large scale VR
WorldViz VizMove 2.0 is the latest
release of the scalable VR solution
designed for large-scale, location-based
or remote VR experiences. It combines
both software and hardware and
supports the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift or
WinMR headsets, as well as the Unity
and Unreal game engines
■ worldviz.com/vizmove
Solibri extends reach of QA BIM tool
olibri Model Checker v9.9, the the construction workflow.
S
new release of the BIM Quality Solibri has also updated its ArchiCAD
Assurance application, includes link extension which allows fast BIM
a rule template API (currently in closed updates and the use of Solibri Model
beta phase) that makes it easier and Checker (SMC) while working in a real-
quicker to generate and utilise self- time design scenario.
created rules and rulesets. With this integration, ArchiCAD users
In addition, to help connect to more third- can access Solibri’s Quality Control features
party platforms, the software supports the without having to save files and upload
latest version of BIM Collaboration Format back and forth between the programs.
(BCF), a standard for sharing issues within ■ solibri.com
Allplan 2019 for architects and engineers
uildings and buildings, a new module explains Richard
B structures with
high geometric
for modelling complex
stairs, improved teamwork
Brotherton, managing
director of Allplan.
complexity is a key focus for architects and “Allplan 2019 provides
for Allplan 2019, the latest engineers, and an architects and engineers
release of the German- optimised range of with a BIM tool with which
developed BIM tool. properties and objects. they can work together
New features include “BIM is increasingly successfully at any stage of
floor and level becoming the standard in the BIM process.”
management for complex the construction industry,” ■ allplan.com

6 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p04_06_08_09_AEC_NOVDEC18_News.indd 6 22/11/2018 16:19

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 Ray-tracing and real-time
ROUND UP blended into single pipeline
Unreal and Revit
Unreal Studio 4.21 now supports Revit
in its Datasmith toolkit, streamlining
the flow of BIM data into Unreal
Engine. Interactive, collaborative
design review also gets a look in, with
a new template that allows multiple
users to connect in a real-time
environment via desktop or VR
■ unrealengine.com

Asset visualisation
3D models derived from aerial
photography are helping Anglian
Water design, build and communicate
major infrastructure asset projects.
The Bluesky models are being used for
3D animations to inform designs and
gather public support
■ bluesky-world.com

28 core Intel chip
The Intel Xeon W-3175X is a new
workstation-class processor with 28
cores that can Turbo up to 4.3GHz out
of the box, with a base clock speed of
3.1GHz. It is designed to offer
balanced single threaded and multi-
threaded performance, so can be used
for BIM and ray trace rendering
■ intel.com
haos Group has released V-Ray
C for Unreal, which it is billing as
the fastest way for
architecture, automotive and visual
effects users to create immersive
experiences from their V-Ray content.
With V-Ray for Unreal, artists and
designers can bring V-Ray scenes from
3ds Max, Maya, Rhino and SketchUp
directly into the Unreal Editor ‘easily,
without needing to learn a new workflow.’
After designing a scene in V-Ray, V-Ray
for Unreal imports every part of the scene
file into the Unreal Editor. V-Ray lights and
materials are automatically converted into
their real-time equivalents and maintain a
smart connection to the originals.
■ chaosgroup.com/vray/unreal

BIM in the cloud

Graphics virtualisation specialist
IMSCAD has teamed up with global
IT services provider PhoenixNAP to
simplify cloud desktop deployments
for AEC firms. Customers can run
their desktops for a ‘predictable cost’
and still ‘maximize productivity and
flexibility on a global cloud platform.’
■ theimscloud.com
VR for cloud
Elecosoft has added a VR capability to
its cloud-based building information
management solution, IconSystem.
IconVR joins spherical photographs to
create an immersive 3D walkthrough
that can be viewed on desktops,
Cintoo makes light work of point clouds
intoo has launched a new
C
technology designed to handle
the gigantic point clouds
generated from terrestrial laser scans.
Developed with a focus on BIM
workflows, Cintoo Cloud enables users
to access high precision terrestrial laser
scans on demand via the cloud. It
features what Cintoo describes as a
unique, patent pending point cloud-to-
surface and surface-to-point cloud
technology that allows users to convert
point cloud data to 3D surfaces then
reconvert it when required.
Cintoo Cloud stands out for its ability to
handle even the highest scan resolution
data with over a billion points. Datasets as
large as 40GB can be streamed in 3D as a
mesh to ‘any desktop or laptop device’
using a standard web browser. Cintoo says
there is no compromise on accuracy.
■ cintoo.com

BIM Show Live to focus on real-projects

smartphones, tables and VR headsets
■ elecosoft.com

Azure-hosted BIM
Clouddirect has released a white
paper that puts forward the business
case for Microsoft Azure-hosted BIM.
The paper discusses improving
real-time collaboration, moving
computationally-intensive
tasks to the cloud and removing
VPN bottlenecks
■ tinyurl.com/clouddirect-BIM
IM Show Live is
B changing its
content streams
in 2019, to allow for more
real-projects to be shared,
giving a blend of how the
theories of BIM are
applied in real-time and
on physical assets as well
as virtual ones.
The new streams will
cover technology, stories,
people and next generation.
“BIM Show Live not only
brings digital construction
content to life but it is
leading the way in
revolutionising the
technological delivery of
BIM and attracts some of
the world’s greatest BIM
leaders and pioneering
thinkers,” said Rob
Charlton, CEO of Space
Group and co-founder of
BIM Show Live.
BIM Show Live takes
place in Newcastle upon
Tyne on 27 and 28 Feb.
■ bimshowlive.co.uk

8 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

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 News

AMD gives first glimpse of 64-core CPU,

promises phenomenal rendering speed
MD has given a first glimpse of
A its next-generation EPYC
server CPU. Codenamed
‘Rome’, it features up to 64 cores and
128 threads, double that of first-
generation Epyc.
Powered by the ‘Zen 2’ processor core,
‘Rome’ uses 7nm process technology to
deliver what the company has claimed is
much higher performance and more CPU
cores at the same power.
It will be available for one- and two-
socket servers, giving a potential 128
cores and 256 threads in total.
The new Epyc CPU should get the
attention of architecture and engineering
firms because it promises to deliver one with a single ‘Rome’ processor with despite it only using one CPU.
incredible performance in multi-threaded 64 cores; one with two Intel Xeon 8180M “Rome” is fundamentally a server
ray trace rendering applications. processors, each with 28 cores; and one processor, but it is very likely that the
At the launch event in San Francisco, with two first generation AMD Epyc ‘Zen 2’ technology on which it is based
AMD demonstrated the performance 7601 processors, each with 32 cores. will also trickle down to the desktop,
gains that one can expect by putting a In the C-Ray ray tracing benchmark perhaps as Threadripper 3.
single-socket ‘Rome’ system up against test, the ‘Rome’ system was 9% quicker Read our review of Threadripper 2 -
competitive dual socket systems. The live than the Intel system and 2.5% quicker tinyurl.com/AEC-threadripper
demonstration featured three servers: than the AMD EPYC 7601 system, ■ amd.com

Nvidia unveils mid-range Quadro RTX GPU for ray tracing

vidia has introduced the
N Quadro RTX 4000, a new
single slot ‘VR Ready’ mid-
range professional GPU powered by the
Nvidia Turing architecture and the
Nvidia RTX platform.
Like the high-end Quadro RTX 5000,
6000 and 8000 announced earlier this
year, the Quadro RTX 4000 is heavily
focused on ray trace rendering.
With Quadro RTX technology, Nvidia
says a designer can iterate a building and
see accurate lighting, shadows and
reflections in real time.
The Quadro RTX 4000 can also be used
for more conventional graphics workflows,
such as game engine viz and VR. Nvidia
says there are significant performance
improvements over the previous
generation Quadro P4000.
Commercial software that supports
Nvidia RTX is not yet available but global
architectural firm CannonDesign has early
access to the technology. “Our designers
need tools that unleash their creative
freedom to design amazing buildings,”
says Ernesto Pacheco, director of
visualisation. “Real-time rendering with
the new Quadro RTX 4000 is
unbelievably fast and smooth right out of
the gate — no latency and the quality and
accuracy of the lighting is outstanding.”
■ nvidia.com

BIMobject taps into design visualisation with Twinmotion app

o date, BIMobject
T has focused on
having tight
integration with leading
BIM authoring tools.
Now the BIM content
provider has turned its
attention to design viz through
an integration with real-time
Twinmotion, the result of a
partnership with Twinmotion
developer Abvent
Twinmotion 2019 is based
on Unreal Engine but is tuned
for architects. It offers ‘instant
rendering’ of architectural and
urban models in real time and
in virtual reality and direct
ArchiCAD and Revit. It also
supports other 3D tools via
neutral formats.
Through the BIMobject
integration, users of
Twinmotion now have access to
free, instant and unlimited
download of more than
350,000 smart BIM objects
manufacturers hosted on the
BIMobject platform.
Users simply drag and drop
objects into the scene, then
customise them with materials.
The objects not only look great
in Twinmotion but all of the
BIM information is retained.
■ bimobject.com

visualisation and VR tool synchronisation with from the nearly 1,300 ■ twinmotion.abvent.com

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 9

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Preview

BricsCAD BIM
Considering what a hot topic BIM has become, there have been very few new
software firms willing to invest in creating new BIM authoring tools. This month
we report on a new product, written on a ‘familiar’ package and backed by a huge
company. Could BricsCAD BIM be the one to take on the might of Revit?
by Martyn Day

I
t’s been 18 months since we last This was all happening on top of as an alternative for its customers to pay-
saw BricsCAD, from Ghent-based BricsCAD, which is a DWG drawing and ing for Autodesk’s AutoCAD on subscrip-
developer, Bricsys. The company modelling tool which offers LISP, ARX tion. Bricsys pricing is based on a perpet-
started out developing an and all the familiar AutoCAD functions ual licence and works on Windows,
AutoCAD clone called BricsCAD and did you would expect. Bricsys thinks that macOS and Linux. The entry-level
a great job at creating a low-cost alterna- those who have not yet made the move to BricsCAD is $825 forever; AutoCAD is
tive to AutoCAD. Since then it has gone Revit, may have more 2D processes and $1,575 per year, LT is $390 per year.
beyond AutoCAD and developed all be happier doing their BIM modelling in Bricsys also offers subscription at $312
sorts of original functionality to its base a familiar environment, with the added per year, if that’s what you would prefer.
platform application. Although the com- advantage of it being cheaper. As things Bricsys works out a lot cheaper than
pany is dedicated to maintaining com- stood 18 months ago, however, the BIM Autodesk Subscription for AutoCAD.
patibility with DWG and AutoCAD, it functionality seemed all rather basic and Hexagon was perhaps the biggest third-
wants to be perceived as a CAD develop- there was evidently a long way to go. party developer to realise that it could
er in its own right and from what we saw use the familiar APIs that AutoCAD has,
at the firm’s recent London event, there is A new owner to port its existing applications to
good reason. At last month’s Bricsys conference in BricsCAD and offer to save its customers
Bricsys is not new to AEC or BIM. It London, the first big news was that the money on their AutoCAD subscriptions.
developed TriForma which Bentley company had been acquired by Hexagon
Systems sold as its core BIM application for an undisclosed sum. For those unfa- BIM and development
in the 1990s and then its own tool called miliar with Hexagon, it is a global giant of What a difference 18 months makes.
Architecturals in the 2000s. The firm a firm, that operates in construction, engi- From seeing the initial BIM development
recently developed a SketchUp work-a- neering, mining, automotive and plant work to what was presented on the stage
like BricsCAD Shape. The company also and has annual revenues in excess of £1.2 in London was really quite a marked dif-
develops tools for the manufacturing billion. It owns Leica, Intergraph, MSC ference. While the concept is the same,
market with powerful parametric solid Software, Z/I Imaging and many others. the capability and ease of use really blew
modelling (based on us away. At its core, you
ACIS) and sheet metal
applications.
AEC Magazine saw the
‘‘
With a low price point, innovative machine
learning development, this is a BIM product to ing
have a DWG compatible,
and very capable, draw-
platform. Bricsys has
company’s formative new harnessed the ACIS solid
BIM tools 18 months ago. watch. It’s the most promising modelling tool we modelling kernel to ena-
The demonstration have seen in BIM in the last ten years ble designers to create

’’
showed rectilinear ACIS incredibly complex
solids being used to shapes, using booleans,
model a building and then the user While Bricsys had annual revenues of workplanes, chamfers, surfaces, complex
applying IFC definitions post modelling. £13 million, now it is under the Hexagon wireframe manipulation - the usual
This turns products like Revit on their umbrella it will have all the resources it gamut of modelling tools.
heads, as instead of using a palette of pre- could ever need, plus access to markets as Designers can create anything they can
defined and customisable objects to a mature, trusted CAD platform. envision in geometry. So, now comes the
model with, like Lego, BricsCAD BIM Hexagon also has a reputation of leaving real magic. Bricsys has utilised machine
was model first, then define. The benefit the brands it buys alone to carry on learning to start the process of turning
of this approach was that the conceptual developing semi-autonomously. these models into BIM. Using the ‘BIMify’
phase didn’t require the architects to Hexagon previously ported its button, the software will analyse the
worry about object definitions, just AutoCAD-based plant application, model and turn the geometry it finds into
define the forms. CADWorx Plant Design Suite, to Bricsys rooms, floors, slabs, columns, walls, doors,

10 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

windows – regular IFC components. 1
The user can then edit or add objects
that the automation didn’t classify or
omitted. This is seriously impressive and,
unlike the first demo we had, it works
well on some pretty crazy geometry. Zaha
Hadid would have had some fun with
this tool. This is a fantastic solution to the
problem of linking conceptual modelling
to the creation of BIM models, together
with the added benefit of the backend
processes such as drawing production
being all in one package.
The curtain wall capability is also pow-
erful; model your spline geometry, select
face, create a grid and then dynamically
manipulate to make traditional or free-
form curtain walls. The software will
generate all the frame elements, which of
course can also be edited. 2
But as we all know, architecture is real-
ly only one component in the mix. Bricsys
demonstrated some intelligent modelling
of HVAC components within a BIM con-
text. Automatic sizing and connections,
together with some elementary auto com-
plete capabilities gave a good indication
of the way development was heading.
Bricsys isn’t looking to deliver for the
front end of the building process, but
throughout all professions, including
structural and site development (it even
handles point clouds).
Because BricsCAD BIM is built on a
DWG platform, it’s at this point that you
really see the benefit in workflow vs
something like Revit. We have lost count
of the number of firms we have visited
who take their Revit drawings into
AutoCAD to finish off the documenta-
3 4
tion. This breaks with the BIM process
as, if there are any changes, then the
additional hours of drawing in AutoCAD
need to be repeated. BricsCAD BIM is
already inside its DWG documentation
world and this destructive phase of using
other tools than Revit can be avoided.
Speed was also very impressive.
During the day’s talks all product demon- 5 6
strations were done live from laptops.
The underlying BricsCAD platform is a
modern CAD product, it is fast, uses mul-
tiple cores and benefits from fast GPU
graphics card accelerators. While one
would assume that modelling architec-
tural elements in full on solids over light-
weight geometry would lead to hefty and
unwieldy models, that certainly does not
seem to be the case.
4 BricsCAD BIM includes a feature called A.I
Parametrics are also built-in system- 1 The BricsCAD BIM interface
propagate, which uses artificial intelligence to
wide and can be used in a very intuitive 2 24/7 is a cloud-based collaboration tool, replicate component details throughout a model
fashion when designing. The ability to which is free to those on maintenance
5 6 BricsCAD BIM is not just for architects — it covers
quickly model floors and partitions was 3 BricsCAD BIM includes poweful curtain wall tools all professions, including structural, MEP and site

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 11

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 Preview

fabulous and at all times the mouse and here (see bricsys.com/bricscad). However, the driver for the acquisition was that
drawing lines give real-time feedback on one feature that we did see is indicative of being a great developer was not enough
relative geometry. Floors can be replicat- the kind of tools under development. We for success; marketing and sales required
ed in just a few clicks. In 2011, Bricsys had seen BIMify; now there’s ‘Blockify’, investment and as things stood, would
acquired the intellectual property rights huge models, 2D or 3D, measuring in the have diverted R&D funds to enable that.
from Russian developer Ledas, which Gigabyte range, automatically turned into Bricsys had been seeking investment and
developed very high-end 2D/3D con- blocks, drastically reducing the file size. Hexagon had been interested since it
straints tools and set up a technology Again, machine learning at play; the soft- ported its plant products to BricsCAD.
division in Russia under Dmitry ware automatically detects equally shaped Allen explained that Hexagon was
Ushakov. This move also enabled consid- solids in a model and replaces them by keen to offer customers a choice and with
erable advances for BricsCAD Platinum block references and searches the drawing Autodesk’s pricing changes, subscrip-
for Mechanical Design, which is aimed at for an identical set of a 2D entities and tion-only and potentially web-only prod-
the DS SolidWorks and Autodesk replaces them by block references. Just ucts in the future, Bricsys would be there
Inventors of this world. look at AutoCAD 2019’s new feature set to offer an alternative. In the process of
Bricsys demonstrated something it calls and wonder where the new features are, porting CADWorx to BricsCAD, Bricsys
A.I propagate, which uses artificial intelli- vs enhancements to existing ones. was incredibly responsive and over eight
gence to replicate component details million lines of code were ported in nine
throughout a model. Simply select a com- 24/7 collaboration months and the product is stable.
ponent, plus the elements you want it to Not just content with developing products Allen, while predominantly dealing
propagate over, and the computer does the for every vertical market, Bricsys offers a with the plant side of Hexagon’s busi-
rest. It also supports the import of RVT cloud-based collaboration product called ness, sees the Bricsys acquisition as a
components, live building play in all areas BIM,
grids and ceilings. This
can drastically speed up
modelling. The user inter-
‘‘
Using machine learning, the software will
analyse the model and turn the geometry it finds identified
manufacturing, drafting,
as well as plant. Allen
that Revit,
face also really gives a while popular in archi-
clear indication of where into rooms, floors, slabs, columns, walls, doors, tecture, isn’t in other pro-
the propagation of objects windows – regular IFC components fessions and they have

’’
will take place. picked up on a lot of end
When at the documen- user dissatisfaction.
tation stage, BricsCAD has some fabulous 24/7, which is free to customers on main- While Hexagon will certainly focus on
capabilities for multi-view layout and for tenance. It’s a global document manage- AutoCAD seats in its process plant cus-
automating call-out details. Again, all in a ment system for 2D drawings and 3D tomers, not just CADworx, Hexagon is
DWG workflow and so common AutoCAD models, which supports multiple roles looking at a much broader play.
commands are used for drawing. and access for defined users and has a De Keyser estimated that Revit had
BricsCAD BIM is $2,275 a seat, for a graphical widget application development only hit 16% of BIM penetration of all the
perpetual licence with one year’s mainte- ability to automate repetitive tasks. The possible users and in certain geographies
nance. Alternatively, it can be subscribed system has version control, activity logs it was not the No.1 choice, with
to for $910 a year. For comparison, Revit is and search capabilities. For BIM users it Vectorworks, Graphisoft and Allplan all
currently $2,250 a year or $6,075 for a has a fast 3D data viewer, model annota- occupying decent market share. de
3-year subscription. tion and DWG/ xref management. Keyser stated that with Hexagon behind
them, Bricsys would aim for 20-25% of
2D CAD Management Q & A the market with the sales pitch being
BricsCAD started off life as an AutoCAD Bricsys CEO, Erik de Keyser and ‘you don’t need to leave DWG or translate
clone. The company then went on to Hexagon’s Rick to/from DWG. The workflow stays in
develop functionality that you won’t find Allen, PPM one format as you move
in AutoCAD. As Autodesk went off to executive vice from application to
develop or acquire other tools (Revit, p r e s i d e n t application - at a frac-
Inventor, Fusion etc), the mentality that a n s w e r e d tion of the price. We
AutoCAD was the hammer that hit all questions on will win one customer
nails disappeared. Bricsys is of the men- the surprise at a time.’
tality that its DWG CAD platform can be a c q u i s i t i o n Looking forward, de
extended to solve BIM, MCAD solid mod- (this came as a Keyser stated that with
elling and other verticals. In one respect shock to most IFC 4.0, it will become
at least, the persistence of drawings in B r i c s y s harder for firms, such
our new 3D modelled world, would back e m p l o y e e s as Autodesk, to trap
this view up. too). de Keyser customers in proprie-
BricsCAD v19, the new version, will explained that tary
offer a range of powerful tools but we don’t
have room to high-
light them

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 13

Preview

file formats, as substantially more of the
data will be transferable.
While it’s the plant division of Hexagon
that led the charge to acquire Bricsys,
Allen made it clear that all divisions of
Hexagon would have access to the tech-
nology and the buy-in was not simply cost
justified on the benefit to the plant divi-
sion. The company is taking aim at
Autodesk and all players in BIM, mechan-
ical, plant and drafting. With Autodesk
dominating so many areas in the built
space and with Autodesk Subscription
increasing the cost of ownership, Hexagon
is out to offer a lower cost alternative with
enhanced functionality.
of AutoCAD customers currently use. ple platforms, with unique BIM work-
flows, in a single environment, with
We are in strange times. Autodesk’s
move to Subscription without questionmachine learning cleverness, powerful
MCAD part and assembly modelling,
increases costs to users in ownership over
Autodesk APIs and even collaborative
three years, compared to the traditional
cloud-based management.
historic buy and upgrade cycles of around
At the wrap up from the event, de
three years. Subscription does offer suites
Keyser took issue with the company
but that comes at a cost and not many uti-
lise many of the products they get. being called a ‘clone developer’ by the
press during that day’s tweets. He feels
Autodesk’s channel is showing signs of
the development teams are now way
rebellion, after years of deflating mar-
gins, with one or two now offering beyond performing that work and are
AutoCAD clones as alternatives to developing new functionality in all verti-
cal areas. Even though the origins of the
AutoCAD LT. This is a clear and present
danger, as we estimate 40% of all company are certainly defined by the
work it has done on mim-

Conclusion
Many years ago, we
‘‘
It works well on some pretty crazy geometry.
Zaha Hadid would have had some fun with this. now
icking DWG functionality,
it’s true that Bricsys is
defining a unique
watched Dominic Gallello, path. de Keyser quipped,
then Autodesk VP of It’s a fantastic solution to the problem of linking “We are not a clone devel-
Mechanical, launch conceptual modelling to BIM model creation oper, we are a cyclone in

’’
Autodesk Inventor. This the industry!”
was a big deal for For now, BricsCAD BIM
Autodesk as it was the first new code Autodesk licences are AutoCAD LT. is certainly something to watch. Revit
stream the company had delivered since Revit’s development velocity has slowed has decades of development work put
AutoCAD decades before. At the time, and many are wondering when it will be into it and I can’t see many switching like
Autodesk was trying to get into the 3D re-written as the core is 20 years old. The for like. However, with the velocity comes
modelling market and had established conceptual side of BIM has never really a trajectory and backed up with Hexagon,
players such as SolidWorks, Dassault been solved by anybody who can take with a low price point, innovative
Systèmes, Siemens, PTC etc. all with that data on to be used throughout the machine learning development, this is a
mature CAD products. design and documentation workflow. BIM product to watch. It’s the most
Gallello’s pitch was don’t judge us by Bricsys now has a giant backing it up. promising modelling tool we have seen in
the current feature set, judge us on the A giant that sees an opportunity in BIM in the last ten years.
product’s ‘velocity’. Gallello was telling Autodesk’s base. Bricsys offers low-cost, Next year will certainly be an interest-
us the development team had new ideas AutoCAD func- ing one in the BIM market. Hexagon has
to crack old problems and would be tionality with come to the table with Bricsys and a very
delivering on new functionality in a way p e r p e t u a l impressive development team. We hear
the mature competition was not. licensing (or Dassault Systèmes has a construction
With BricsCAD BIM, we see that devel- s u b s c r i p - BIM tool coming out. Siemens and
opment velocity. In just 18 months the tion), on Bentley continue to dance together and
software has gone from being formative m u l t i - are working on many joint developments.
building modelling to offering something Nemetscheck has a new Allplan and
really different and innovative for BIM Vectorworks and Graphisoft are continu-
workflows. At the same time, it bashes you ing to execute well. Things are hotting up
over the head as it’s all happening in an and new and innovative solutions are still
AutoCAD work-a-like, which is commit- coming to the market. AEC Magazine will
ted to supporting all be here to keep you up to date.
the 2D process-
es millions Download a trial version of BricsCAD BIM at
■ bricsys.com/bim

14 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

 Feature

iModel unleashed
For over 10 years, iModel has been Bentley’s format for exchanging project
information between design, construction and operations. It has expanded into a
fundamental platform in its own right. But, what we didn’t expect, writes
Martyn Day, was for Bentley to open source its development

O
ut of all the firms we cover in but developers or customers will be free suite of tools that can interrogate a stag-
the industry, Bentley Systems is to ‘iModel enable’ any application they gering array of project information and
perhaps the most cautious and want. Customers of custom web applica- metrics, including project history and
long-term developer we have tions that wish to use iModel will have to changes. In short, adopting iModel.js gives
seen. While others all around are changing take up an iTwin subscription with access to the iModelHub and opens a win-
their file formats with every other release, Bentley to host the data. dow into the live Digital Twin data in a
or buying applications and never integrat- Bentley picked Java as it is the most flex- completely web friendly way, and at no
ing the technologies, I can only remember ible standard for modern cloud and web cost to the developer.
two file changes from Bentley in my life- development. It is written in TypeScript Keith Bentley told AEC Magazine that
time and everything eventually works on and leverages open technologies including the development landscape has changed
the MicroStation backbone. With co- SQLite, Node.js, NPM, WebGL, Electron, and, with the Googles and GitHubs of this
founder and CTO Keith Bentley still writ- Docker, Kubernetes, and of course HTML5 world, development tools are predomi-
ing code and actively involved in the sys- and CSS. The same codebase can produce nantly free. He posed the question, how
tem architecture, the company just doesn’t cloud services and web, mobile, and desk- would you get a developer interested in
do short-term software architecture. top applications. The source code is host- using your tools if there was an upfront
iModel has become a growing differen- ed on GitHub, a platform for hosting soft- cost to become an accredited developer?
tiator for Bentley, with Bentley also explained
wide adoption in its base,
as well as other AEC devel-
opers like Topcon, building
‘‘
Adopting iModel.js gives developers access to more exciting to get tools
the iModelHub and opens a window into the which
that as a programmer it’s

you can look into

an ecosystem of firms and edit as you wish. The
which actively want to live Digital Twin data in a completely web net result will be something
share BIM data, despite friendly way, and at no cost to the developer interesting, he said, adding

’’
being in competition. that by giving iModel.js
At last month’s Year In away as open source, he
Infrastructure (YII) event in London, ware code — especially open-source pro- hopes to proliferate the format but also
iModel became even more important. It jects — and is distributed under the MIT enable innovation in our space.
became the connection between all project licence. GitHub was recently bought by One example of how iModel.js could be
participants and the hosted Digital Twin, Microsoft for $7.5 billion. used was given by Shenzhen Expressway
though the new Bentley iTwin services By opting for an open source deploy- Consulting Group, which already uses
offering, which connects Bentley’s iModel- ment, developers are also free to alter the iModelHub and sees a use of iModel.js for
Hub, with a Connected Data Environment code and Bentley will have to do the job of crafting a custom web-based tool for digi-
(CDE). Attendees witnessed Microsoft, policing and maintaining its open devel- tal handover, after the completion of a
Siemens and Topcon all buying into the opment platform, as well as collating wish project. It would enable visual operations
Azure hosted Digital Twin strategy. lists and changes which it will incorporate. and maintenance, feeding from data
Bentley Systems then announced iMod- Keith Bentley explained that “by open- stored in its own iModelHub. Any chang-
el.js, an open source library to enable sourcing the libraries we use to create es made and documented by the company
developers to incorporate web-based hooks our ‘iTwin’ cloud services, we expect to post-handover would also be immediate-
that can bring in design and project data, foster a substantial and vibrant ecosys- ly updated online.
which is stored in iModels on Bentley’s tem of innovation.” Clearly this is a play
iModelHub. The idea being that any devel- for Bentley to drive the standard into the Tracking origins
oper can now opt to use the iModel wrap- burgeoning cloud-development fraterni- As with all Bentley innovations, it’s worth
per to integrate 2D, 3D, 4D and documents ty, who have very few tools to integrate recapping on what the company delivered
into custom cloud applications or services. complex BIM data into their solutions. last year, to make iModel even more power-
iModelHub is secure, so permission is iModel is not providing developers with ful. Bentley has always had a passion for
always required to access the model data, a dumb viewer of 3D files, but a powerful trying to capture history and provenance of

16 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p16_17_19_AEC_NOVDEC18_BentleyiModel.indd 16 22/11/2018 16:24

 Bentley Systems
co-founder and CTO
Keith Bentley is at
the heart of iModel
development

What is an iModel?
An iModel is a Bentley
authored model and project
data exchange format spe-
cifically designed to work
in the lifecycle of infra-
structure assets. It’s not
just a CAD file. Essentially,
it’s a wrapper for a multi-
tude of data types: business
properties, geometry,
graphics, and relationships.
This means a whole project
can be contained within
one file, irrespective of how
many sources the original
data came from.
Unlike proprietary for-
mats, iModel is open and can
be used by many competitive
infrastructure developers.
The format is very effi-
cient, crushing giant files,
and designed for today’s
cloud-based and mobile
workflows. They are secure
and play well with server-
level security.
Additional information
can be added to the iModel
without impacting the data
originally contained within
it, great for lifecycle data
capture tasks.
As of last year, iModels
can also contain all the histo-
ry of changes that have hap-
pened in a project’s lifetime
when used in conjunction
with Bentley iModelHub.
iModels can be created
with Bentley products, as
well as those from other
sources, including PDMS,
Revit, AutoCAD, Rhino,
ArchiCAD, IFC, JT (plug-in)
to name but a few. iModels
can be filtered prior to crea-
tion, limiting what data is
exposed.
iModels can be used for
many tasks: viewing 2D, 3D
data, review (desktop or on
mobile), access ODBC data,
spreadsheets, reports, clash
detection and now as a con-
tainer for access to Digital
Twin models.
iModel.js will mean that
Digital Twin assets can be
utilised in custom web
applications. As iModel.js is
open source, the capabilities
are also expected to expand
with input from the wider
community.

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 17

p16_17_19_AEC_NOVDEC18_BentleyiModel.indd 17 22/11/2018 16:24

Building toward
a stronger
infrastructure.

We have the technology to simplify your layout process.

Whether you start your workflow from printed plans, PDF’s, or fully
coordinated Building Information Models. Moving the construction
data from the office to the field and back has never been easier.

The Intersection of Infrastructure and Technology™

Learn more at topconpositioning.com/vertical

 Feature

project changes. It has delivered a number In the space of one month, I’ve heard yet to happen in this space and by lower-
of capabilities over time to capture the delta Digital Twin on the mainstage at Bentley, ing the barrier to entry and being open
in model revisions. Autodesk and Trimble events, as well as about who uses it, it might find it has an
Last year’s innovation brought this pas- from Microsoft, Topcon and others. advantage over our traditional proprie-
sion to iModel with the introduction of the According to Keith Bentley, it was com- tary industry mindsets.
iModelHub. When deployed, the Hub will pletely serendipitous that both Microsoft The other benefit is that Bentley
capture all the changes that happen in a and Bentley were pursuing the same doesn’t have to create all the tools that
project’s lifecycle in an unalterable time- track. Microsoft has been focussing on customers want. It’s now possible for
line. Just as accounting systems track the construction space for a couple of customers to create their own solutions
money in and out, iModelHub provides years, everything from BIM to Digital and leverage their investment in Bentley
digital security to identify what changed Cities and IoT. It has been working on back-end technology.
when and by whom. It’s a journal of layers of machine learning which reside From this year’s YII, there was an over-
record and could be invaluable to identify in the Azure cloud and have been used to powering feeling of momentum behind
in projects when problems occurred. With learn from big data caches on the city Bentley’s vision of Digital Twins and
a machine learning hat on, that could be scale. Bentley explained to us, “It sounds iModel. For years, Bentley Systems has
valuable data to use in predicting prob- like we have been working on this for a been Microsoft’s biggest, best and most
lems on other projects in the future, but while together but it was only when we loyal AEC developer, but had benefitted
we will come back to that later. talked about it that we discovered they little from this.
iModels can now hold this data too. The had a Digital Twin strategy.” In the past, Microsoft people who cov-
cloud is where the changes are stored but As Bentley is almost a 100% Microsoft- ered the AEC space didn’t seem to be
everyone using iModels fully switched on, as to
could theoretically get
access to the project time-
line. It’s safe, as the master is
‘‘
freak, it would have been a huge surprise for it in
trends in the industries or
For fear of calling Bentley Systems a control the technologies that were
play. The Microsoft peo-
held in the cloud and the ple we met at YII were a
local instances are just syn- to open source anything, let alone something completely different class
chronised. This also works so fundamental to project collaboration to those we have met

’’
with non-Bentley products, before, showing a deep
for which it has written knowledge of IoT, BIM,
‘Bridges’, so the data is collated and added based company, its choice of Azure for Digital Twins, as well as properly under-
to the iModelHub timeline. This capability cloud storage will also benefit, in time, standing what Bentley has developed.
is unique in our industry and is yet anoth- from Microsoft’s focus on machine leaning Topcon too has really closely partnered
er powerful iModel benefit. It’s similar to in the space. If the data is hosted on Azure, with Bentley and is certainly speaking
blockchain to a certain degree, although special built environment-centric analysis from the same page.
the authentication chain is online, and tools are in the works from both Bentley The elephant in the room was Siemens
stored in one place, not in every iModel file. and Microsoft. Autodesk won’t benefit — Bentley’s giant development buddy,
from this partnership as its customers’ who is increasingly looking to focus on
Digital Twin data is hosted on Amazon Web Services. the AEC space. Bentley is integrating into
Digital Twin has to be the phrase of the Siemens’ uber document management
moment. People have almost stopped Conclusion system, Teamcenter, and even licensing
using the word BIM and now seamlessly iModel.js is a big technology story from technology to Siemens.
drop ‘Digital Twin’ in as a replacement. Bentley’s stand point. For fear of calling Keith Bentley told us that he likes the
In many respects we welcome the substi- the company a control freak, it would partnership as it is, the companies talk the
tution, as BIM is utterly meaningless out- have been a huge surprise for it to open same language and have little overlap, and
side of the gleaming digital spires of our source anything, let alone something so it’s certainly helping their combined efforts
enlightened object-oriented castles. fundamental to project collaboration. in Power and Governmental customers.
Digital Twin is short, simple and gives a Bentley is looking to gain traction and One wonders how long the engagement
glimmer of hope that the uninitiated would proliferate its formats. It realises that goes on before there is a marriage.
have some clue as to what we are on about. there is a lot of web-based development ■ bentley.com

Investing in machine learning and IoT

One of the big surprises at
YII (it also surprised some
Bentley employees) was the
under the radar announce-
ment that Bentley had
acquired machine learning
and IoT development com-
pany AIworx.
Keith Bentley gave us
some background to the
acquisition and the impor-
tance of machine learning
going forward, “It came
together very quickly, they
are a great talented group of
smart guys,” he said. “I’d
guess in today’s terms it
would be described as an
‘acqui-hire’ — we bought the
company for the talent, as
they don’t actually have any
products.
“We had an ‘AI’ summit
and invited some CIOs to
shoot around ideas and the
most common answer is, ‘we
just want an easy button for
my project’.
“In reality, firms need
help to not repeat mistakes
and to fine tune their perfor-
mance, which is reasonable
if you have enough data.
“Last year we asked firms
if they would like to contrib-
ute their project data (iMod-
elHub), but we didn’t get a
whole lot of traction but this
year we asked again and
there seems to be a more pos-
itive reaction to pooling data,
so we can machine learn. The
problem now is going to be
narrowing down the develop-
ment opportunities,” he said.

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 19

p16_17_19_AEC_NOVDEC18_BentleyiModel.indd 19 22/11/2018 16:24

Feature
OpenBuildings:
design and beyond
Bentley Systems’ new OpenBuildings platform is more than just
AECOsim Building Designer rebranded. Greg Corke explores how
Bentley intends to play to its strengths with focused, vertical design
tools, cross disciplinary workflows and open data
W
ith the arrival of
OpenRoads and OpenRail
for civils and rail design,
and the much-needed
simplification of the Bentley Systems
product portfolio, an ‘OpenBuildings’ was
inevitable. But the new Bentley Systems
brand, announced in October, isn’t just
about giving AECOsim Building
Designer a new name; it’s about trans-
forming the building design tool into an
open platform that can be tightly integrat-
ed with tools for other disciplines; not
just the road / rail design and simulation
(structural, geotechnical, energy and
pedestrian) applications from the Bentley
stable but those from third parties as well.
Bentley is also looking to
use OpenBuildings as
a platform on which
to build niche verti-
cal design tools,
focused on specific workflows.
AECOsim Building Designer simply
isn’t getting a look in on many bread
and butter building projects because of
the dominance of Autodesk Revit.
“We realised that half of the [awards]
submissions at YII [Bentley’s annual
Year in Infrastructure conference] use
[AECOsim] Building Designer; they
don’t use it for vertical buildings, they
use it for non-traditional buildings — sta-
diums, airports, metro stations, water
treatment plants,” explains Santanu Das,
Bentley’s SVP of design modelling. He
adds that firms working on those types of
specialist projects don’t want a ‘Swiss
Army knife’ type product like Revit or
ArchiCAD that they then have to try to
customise extensively.
“The deliverables, the integration with
20 November / December 2018
specific analyses, the sharing [collabora-
tion], it’s different whether you’re doing
an airport or a train station, versus a hos-
pital – even the construction sequenc-
ing,” he adds.
All aboard
AECOsim Building Designer has always
been relatively strong in rail and metro sta-
tion design because of Bentley’s dominance
in the civil and rail markets, so it makes
sense that the first asset-specific design tool
that Bentley has built on top of its new plat-
form is OpenBuildings
Station Designer.
1 However, simulation isn’t limited to
Das uses
the example
of HS2, the high-
speed rail link that
will connect London to Manchester
in the North of England, to explain the
need for a bespoke station design tool
that works closely with other disciplines.
“They have their Mott MacDonalds doing
the rail / civil side of it, then they’ve got
people doing the train station, the archi-
tectural stuff, in Revit or something like
that,” he says. “The first thing they come
to us and say is, can you fix this interop-
erability, because when we’re changing
the track alignment or changing the tun-
nel, everything [in the station design] has
got to be changed manually.”
OpenBuildings Station Designer
includes special templates for creating
tunnel segments (by utilising Bentley’s
computational design tool GC), which are
based on linear alignments from
OpenRail. So, if the track changes, the tun-
nel will automatically change as well, and
the station will also align.
As one would expect, the software also
includes parametric digital components
such as gates, turnstiles, signs, lifts and
escalators that are very specific
to an asset type like a
station.
Das emphasises the
importance of being able to
link seamlessly to Bentley’s
simulation tools, highlighting
the company’s ‘unique’ geotech-
nical engineering capability
through the recently acquired Plaxis.
stresses, strains, deformation and stabili-
ty; it also encompasses human behaviour.
Bentley’s newly acquired pedestrian sim-
ulation technology, Legion, which uses
machine learning to predict how people
will move through a building, will sit on
top of OpenBuildings Station Designer.
The software can be used for emergency
evacuation, circulation and operational
efficiency, such as working out how to get
passengers off trains faster, down into
the metro or into the retail stores.
“We can actually identify where the
congestion is happening at any time, and
therefore, as an owner, as a designer, do
something about it,” explains Das. “Maybe
move my lift over 15 feet, maybe put an
extra turnstile in there, maybe switch the
www.AECmag.com
barrier around at 5 O’clock so there are
more people going in one direction than
going in another direction.”
Pedestrian simulation is not just appli-
cable to station design and will almost cer-
tainly play an important role in other ver-
tical OpenBuildings design tools, which
Bentley has said it intends to launch in the
future. Stadium and airport design seem
the most likely candidates although there
is a risk of becoming too niche.
Customisation and collaboration
There is a long history of Bentley custom-
explains that the Chinese firm is already
looking to build its next generation of
applications on top of OpenBuildings,
rather than on top of MicroStation. He
says this is because it gives them a better
granular starting point and with iModels
they get web visualisation tied into the
iModelHub, and they can also work with
their cost estimation partner.
Conclusion
For some years now, Bentley has been
losing the battle with Autodesk and other
firms when it comes to mainstream
simulation, structural analysis and geo-
technical engineering.
While we expect to see Bentley develop
other niche building design tools for
large scale assets such as airports and
stadiums, perhaps the biggest opportuni-
ty for the company is not as a traditional
provider of design software. Through
iModel.js and iModelHub it’s all about
what you can do with the project data
that comes from Bentley tools and other
applications, which is something we
explore in more detail on page 16.
■ bentley.com

ers developing bespoke solutions to work
with MicroStation and MicroStation-
based product like AECOsim Building
Designer. Das says that this has hap-
pened a lot in China, where workflows
and deliverables are often different.
building design software. Now with a
focus on verticals like station design it is
starting to play to its strengths, offering a
building design tool that can take advan-
tage of its ‘open’ applications in areas
such as rail and road design, pedestrian
1 OpenBuildings Station Designer
2 Pedestrian simulation will play a key role in
Bentley’s new OpenBuildings design tools
3 With OpenBuildings Station Designer, Bentley
will be looking to gain traction in projects like the
Nagpur Metro in India, which used OpenRail

‘‘
OpenBuildings is different
2

to AECOsim Building
Designer because it can
take full advantage of
Bentley’s new integrated
product stack

’’
“[Chinese infrastructure services compa-
ny] ECIDI, for example, has been taking
our product, MicroStation, for years and
bolting on their own workflows and call-
ing it their own,” he says.
Customisation and collaboration are
key differentiators between AECOsim
Building Designer and OpenBuildings.
They currently share the same tradition-
al software development kit (SDK) but 3
what makes OpenBuildings different is
that it can take full advantage of Bentley’s
new integrated product stack. Firms can
use the new cloud-based services and
also connect to third-party applications
through the open source iModel.js
IMAGE COURTESY OF MAHARASHTRA METRO RAIL CORPORATION LIMITED

library and the iModelHub, which offer

web-based APIs.
“Because the technologies are open
source, everybody has access to them and
it actually makes it really, really easy —
much easier than the standard SDKs that
came with AECOsim Building Designer,”
says Das who goes on to explain that
because the schema is open, firms can
also dive into extract additional data
from OpenBuildings, such as meta data
that may not have come across.
Returning to the example of ECIDI, Das

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 21

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 Feature

Connecting design
and construction
It’s been two years since Greg Bentley coined the term ‘constructioneering’,
describing a process that aims to solve the fragmented workflow between design
and construction. Greg Corke looks at how the latest developments are starting
to make this joint vision of Bentley Systems and Topcon a reality

H
aving a vision is one thing; ly transformed into engineering-ready Magnet Live
delivering on it is another reality meshes or digital surface models. Topcon is currently developing a new ser-
thing entirely. And for a It involves an integration between vice called Magnet Live which, in Hallett’s
vision as bold as construction- Topcon’s Magnet Collage Web platform words, aids communication, data
eering was in 2016, Bentley and Topcon and Bentley’s ContextCapture reality exchange and collaboration around con-
knew the engineering and construction modelling cloud services. structible models. Much of this centres on
gap would take some time to fill. The cre- “Big data that is collected by Topcon can making survey data instantly more usa-
ation of a digital twin, a design / con- be pushed through to the cloud service in ble, without having to change the estab-
struction model that responds to the ever ContextCapture and returned as a reality lished workflows of those on site.
changing reality on site, not only model,” explains Hallett. “The engineer “If you can go out and generate a BIM
requires great technological change but a can now take the reality mesh and go do model from a survey then you can actu-
significant cultural one as well. something a lot more meaningful. Point ally introduce that right into the design
Bentley and Topcon laid the first foun- clouds are very cumbersome to work with tools in a more meaningful way, explains
dations last year by connecting their — all of us recognise that. The reality Hallett. “So, as they [surveyors] are
cloud platforms – ProjectWise for engi- mesh is very useful, especially when doing their traditional practices, it
neering project collaboration [Magnet Live] generates a
and Magnet Enterprise for
construction execution.
Projects in ProjectWise can
‘‘
If you can go out and generate a BIM
survey BIM model.”
“They [surveyors] don’t
have time to change their
now be associated with pro- model from a survey then you can actually practices and re-train their
jects in Magnet Enterprise,
making it easier to share data
introduce that right into the design tools people, so what we’re trying to
do is make that more of an
and then push that data out to in a more meaningful way automated thing.”

’’
site, as Jason Hallett, vice pres- Topcon is also looking to use
ident of global software busi- Magnet Live to help contrac-
ness development at Topcon Positioning you’re planning out concept designs.” tors get more value out of construction
Systems explains, “It allows a cloud-to- This is reality modelling as a service, estimation. “When you’re doing your esti-
cloud connection without actually having where operators can upload UAV image- mating, you’re building take off models, so
to move data all the time. You can have ry direct-to-web and all of the heavy-duty do that into a BIM model as well,” says
access to the data whenever you need it.” processing is done in the cloud. It means Hallett, adding that by creating a digital
Bentley and Topcon have also added an firms can get results back very quickly twin at this preliminary stage helps catch
online cloud conversion service that and they do not have to invest in expen- potential errors much earlier on.
Hallett says allows firms to take iModels sive local hardware.
and transform the portions they need This helps pave the way for keeping the Real time flow
straight out to the field for machine control design and on-site reality in sync, as Ted One of the key visions for constructioneer-
or surveyors or anybody that might need it. Lamboo, senior vice president of ing is for information to flow seamlessly
Bentley’s strategic partnerships, explains between the construction site and the
Capturing reality “Now, all of Topcon’s positioning technol- design office. The quicker an engineer gets
Constructioneering was never designed ogies can help to continuously survey a eyes on an issue, the quicker it can be
to be a one-way street and Topcon and site’s digital context, synchronising pro- resolved and the quicker the new design
Bentley recently announced a new inte- ject digital twins to make construction- can be implemented on site. Bentley’s new
gration that allows survey data to be easi- eering even more compelling.” iModelHub, which tracks and manages

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 23

p23_25_AEC_NOVDEC18_Bentley_Topcon.indd 23 21/11/2018 15:40

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 Feature

change, is set to play an essential role here.
“Our future with the iModelHub and
this new open source, iModel.js, will
make it more real-time,” says Hallett. “As
soon as the guy is done with something
in the field he can say ‘here’s my survey
for the day, I’ve picked that area you
needed’. The engineer gets notified and
iModelHub tracks the latest stuff it
receives and all of a sudden, they’ve got
an iModel sitting out there that repre-
sents everything that’s been done.
“You’ll get to a point where it will say
“I always love scanning devices. They
pick up so much information, but maybe
I don’t need all of it. So maybe I can rec-
ognise something and only scan that.”
Hallett is being somewhat cryptic, but
appears to be describing a world of auto-
matic construction verification, where a
drone with a video camera records a site,
recognises features, captures specific
areas precisely, then highlights any con-
struction errors or future clashes.
“Imagine what you can catch just by
reviewing the iModel at the end of the
lating the flow of information is the next
challenge and iModelHub and iModel.js
look set to play an important part here.
The ultimate goal for constructioneer-
ing is for a continuous representation of
reality, where as-built data is captured
automatically and fed into a digital twin,
identifying and resolving construction
issues along the way. This is still some
way off, and will require significant
change in technology and industry, but
it’s a very compelling vision all the same.
■ topconpositioning.com ■ bentley.com

‘hey, there’s a new design’ and it pulls day,” he says.

right in and you can see it and you can Topcon and Bentley still have a long
push that out to the machines.” way to go before constructioneering 1 2 Aerial photographs captured by an Intel
becomes a seamless workflow. But with Falcon 8+ Drone – Topcon Edition, can be fed
Adding intelligence links between their cloud platforms and into Bentley’s ContextCapture reality modelling
cloud service, via the Topcon Magnet Collage Web
Topcon has been a driving force in con- extended services, they have started to lay platform, to create engineering-ready reality
struction automation for some time with solid foundations. Automating and regu- meshes or digital surface models
machine control technology that guides
construction machinery. Currently there
still needs to be a driver in the cabin with
1
a red button for safety but Hallett says
this will evolve. “You’ll get to a point
where you don’t need to have the people
because when the machines are aware of
the design, the constructible model, the
environment around us, then you can
have a safe working environment. And
that will be where we go with construc-
tion and survey.”
True construction automation through
the application of Artificial Intelligence
may still be some way off, but the impact
of AI is already being felt in some areas
of construction.
Earlier this year Topcon acquired
ClearEdge, a specialist in computer
vision and object recognition whose soft-
ware compares point clouds of as-built
construction against design or fabrica-
2
tion models, flagging out-of-tolerance or
poorly installed elements.
“ClearEdge is used by a lot of people to
make sure stuff is put into the right
place,” says Hallett. “Once you start pour-
ing concrete it gets pretty tough to
change!”
It’s a very cool application of the tech-
nology he says, but there is also a huge
value in applying to other areas. “We don’t
typically acquire tech and leave it as an
island,” he says. “[We consider] how can
this augment our business and improve
our workflows across the board?”
Hallett gives an example of an autono-
mous car driving down the street which
instantly recognises ‘people’, ‘stop signs’
etc. “That’s object recognition from video
and it’s not real precise but imagine what
you can do if you start integrating some
of this stuff.

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 25

p23_25_AEC_NOVDEC18_Bentley_Topcon.indd 25 21/11/2018 15:40

 Feature

Autodesk forges
ahead with construction
Autodesk’s refocus on construction has never been so clearly evident than
at this year’s annual user event in Las Vegas. Using all possible
technologies, Autodesk is seeking to digitise design and fabrication, while
easing collaboration and enhancing the process with machine learning

by Martyn Day

U
nder its previous CEO, Carl the collaboration hub, the construction BIM managers were there ten years ago?
Bass, Autodesk doubled BIM and the best connection to digital Industries change, new roles are created.
down on development in the fabrication. Winter is coming — well it is Anagnost took a look at his home town
highly competitive manufac- November, what do you expect! of LA and how it will build necessary
turing area, producing products such as infrastructure to host the Olympics in
Fusion and embracing digital fabrication. Anagnost keynote 2028, while leaving a positive legacy for
Of course, as this is Autodesk we are talk- As if to prove automation will not take all the city’s inhabitants. Anagnost looked at
ing about, the company covers multiple our jobs, the keynote opened with people technologies like Autodesk BIM 360,
markets, so this wasn’t the only area dancing with a robot arm. Anagnost start- which can provide collaboration with
which developed — the ground was laid ed with automation and concentrated on real time feedback, showing constructa-
for cloud and the move to subscription. how it can help with making things ‘better’. bility, cost and risk, building a Digital
The new CEO, Andrew Anagnost, now In 1900 40% of the USA worked in Twin. This also works for manufactur-
in his second year in the role, has made sig- farming; today it’s 2%. The value chain ing, with everyone working together,
nificant changes, de-focusing from prod- for food extends well beyond farm to looking at the options for a design, with
ucts that are not yet commercial, culling market, but we now have more access to the computer choosing those that are eas-
ones that were not reve- iest to make, replace etc.
nue generating and invest-
ing in the products that
are currently being used
‘‘
A monumental effort is being put into BIM 360 designing and manufac-
and Forge as Autodesk pushes itself to deliver
We operate today on

turing in constraints
by customers. The com- which are self-imposed.
mitment to the cloud has enterprise quality platforms for collaboration Using automation we can
continued and the compa- and application development free ourselves from this,

’’
ny has made a number of as the computer will stop
key acquisitions. design hazards before
The one area Anagnost has always food than ever before - cooking shows, they ever happen and customers can
highlighted is the potential for the con- plant-based meats, gluten free every- design these tools themselves.
struction market to revolutionise the way thing, etc. Farming is making better use
it works, and benefit from digital fabrica- of land, producing great yields and repet- Borduin keynote
tion and automation. From what we, at itive jobs have been replaced. Now we Over the summer, Autodesk lost a num-
AEC Magazine, have seen on our travels have organic farmers as well as industri- ber of long standing execs, including Jeff
this month, he is not alone in this alised food production. Kowalski, the company’s CTO. His
thought. Bentley Systems, Microsoft, Transportation is going to change. The replacement, Scott Borduin, is actually a
Dassault Systèmes, Siemens, Trimble and US currently has 4 million people long-standing Autodesker who once held
others have all placed construction as employed as drivers, and while in the the role of CTO.
their key market. Next year promises to future this will decrease, there will be more Borduin talked about how data flow
be a real-life Game of Thrones, as we will opportunities, moving more people, more and automation can bring benefits. But
witness the battle of the CAD giants for efficiently than ever before. How many historically, data flow is hard when the

26 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p26_27_29_31_AEC_NOVDEC18_AU.indd 26 22/11/2018 15:21

 data is getting bigger and every firm has
unique workflows.
Borduin said that Autodesk, on its
journey to the cloud, realised that mov-
ing a product like Revit to the cloud
would only change the location of the
application. It needed to develop a solu-
tion that would allow customers to define
their own workflows and provide a pipe-
line for that data to flow and for tools to
plug into, even those of its competitors.
Part of this is Forge, Autodesk’s develop-
ment platform, which enables applica-
tions to access and manipulate design
data held in Autodesk’s cloud.
Dr Erin Bradner, Autodesk’s robotics
expert, then gave an example of a concept
for a landing vehicle, designed by JPL to
investigate one of Jupiter’s icy moons.
Using Autodesk Generative design tools,
JPL removed one third of the weight in
the design, but also designed for addi-
tional competing issues, such as manu-
facturability and cost.
By analysing dozens of designs, opti-
mising for 3-axis and 5-axis milling, mak-
ing the generative design manufacturable
with today’s technologies, the JPL engi-
neers were only presented with design
options that fitted their criteria. They
didn’t waste time looking at designs that
failed to meet their performance enve-
lope. This was pretty amazing stuff.
Looking at a single part, Autodesk’s gen-
erative software can give geometry solu-
tions which fit the manufacturing
resource available: additive (3D print),
www.AECmag.com
p26_27_29_31_AEC_NOVDEC18_AU.indd 27
cast, 5-axis or 3-axis CNC. Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost concluded that
Moving on to buildings, Anagnost sets out his automation will need new
vision for Architecture,
Autodesk has been helping Engineering and skills, bring better jobs and
Daiwa House Group Construction there will be a scarcity of skills,
(daiwahouse.com/english) solve not a scarcity of jobs. The talk
challenges around Japan’s chronic short- finished with three new terms,
age of build space. The Japanese company Adaptability, Resilience and Community,
builds houses, care homes, hospitals, saying he and the company felt they had a
shopping complexes — pretty much any- moral and social responsibility to address
thing — and is focussed on automation the challenges and help its customers.
and BIM to fabrication.
When spaces become available, Daiwa AEC keynote
House uses generative design tools to Game engine visualisation and Virtual
identify the best small pockets of land Reality (VR) is becoming big business in
and develop speculative uses. They then AEC. At this year’s AU, Autodesk
approach the land owners to see if they announced a strategic partnership with
are interested. The software assesses Unity, which will provide the developers
plots quickly and runs through many of the real time 3D development platform
iterations until the best design and with sub-level access to Autodesk’s appli-
return on investment is identified. As cations to integrate its VR tools. This will
each project is done, machine learning is lead to seamless integration with Unity,
applied to enhance future proposals. allowing geometry, meta data, textures to
At the end of the presentation, flow into VR environments without any
Anagnost announced that the company need for end-user translation.
will expand from offering product-based Eventually the data flow will be both
training to role-based certifications, so in ways with designers being able to change
addition to Revit, customers could also the designs in Unity and have that flow
qualify as a BIM manager. back to update products such as Revit.
Anagnost felt that upskilling for careers With a target date of October 2019, the
is more important than how to run a spe- company says that some of the links will be
cific individual product. Autodesk will delivered earlier.
move from offering physical training to This is an unusual move for Autodesk,
more digital training, with a new learning as it has a suite of VR/AR developers
engine in development. The company is working on tools for its platforms, includ-
working with four US labour unions and ing Epic Games (Unreal Engine), IrisVR,
firms such as Village Capital, Nexus Edge, Enscape, Lumion and Twinmotion.
blendoor and sorcero. Autodesk also had/has its own game
November / December 2018 27
22/11/2018 15:21
BIM Product of the Year
ARCHICAD 22 delivers design tool
improvements and also introduces
enhanced design workflow processes.
These represent significant performance
improvements as well as productivity
enhancements to its core design processes
as well as to multidisciplinary collaborative
workflows.

For further information on ARCHICAD 22

contact GRAPHISOFT at graphisoft.com or call
01895 527590.

University Library Freiburg, Germany, DEGELO ARCHITEKTEN, www.degelo.net, Photo © Barbara Bühler
 engine viz / VR tool called Revit Next year there will be industry’s well documented mate mundane tasks.
Live. Selecting one developer to streamlined workflows inefficiencies. Added to those • Customisable check lists for issues,
between the Unity 3D
gain special access isn’t usually game engine and Revit, problems, 95% of firms can’t identify causation and resolution.
in Autodesk’s playbook, unless plus other Autodesk find enough skilled workers, • Dashboards all now in one place.
it has bought them. With Unity applications 20% of the industry’s work force • Reports can be sent to anyone.
that is highly unlikely. is about to retire and 35% of • Machine Learning to analyse the data.
Unity does have two advantages over architects are over 55 years old. Part of the • Predictive analytics for projects now
the others in that, for the last year, it was answer is deploying new technology and ready for use.
the first developer to access the Autodesk workflows. Autodesk is concentrating on
FBX SDK for Max and Maya, seamlessly collaboration tools, automation tools and Autodesk customers — Mott MacDonald,
sharing assets for in-game iteration. It’s predictive tools to look ahead and identify Lera Consulting Engineers and Paric —
possible the success of this brought Unity trouble before if happens. all gave examples of how they used
closer to the development teams. The A raft of new features related to Autodesk technology to innovate within
other being that Unity supports 28 differ- Autodesk BIM 360 was shown on stage: recent projects.
ent interactive target platforms.
It seems Autodesk’s efforts in • A new BIM 360 ‘site collaboration for Project Plasma
game engine viz and VR for the AEC sec- Civil 3D and Revit’ was shown, linking Remember that big article we did on
tor will be phased out, as they were civil data with Revit dynamically. Project Quantum, the future of Revit and
never that competitive to the cloud? (tinyurl.com/
the third party partner
‘‘
applications in the market. Anagnost has always highlighted the potential going into stealth mode, the
This is perhaps the first
for the construction market to revolutionise project
quantum-AEC). Well, after

has been re-brand-

sign of Autodesk choosing ed Project Plasma and is
to vacate the market, to the way it works, and benefit from digital back on track. Our under-
concentrate R&D dollars fabrication and automation standing is that some of the

’’
on something they have technologies that were
better competency on, or being developed were going
greater opportunity. However, it does • Model co-ordination in BIM 360 can to be so useful to all Autodesk customers
somewhat leave Unity’s competitors at a now run automatic clash detection and products that some of that technolo-
disadvantage. between models. gy needed to be examined in a platform
Traditionally Autodesk has bought the • A new PlaceMe tool lets you place context, as opposed just to Autodesk’s
one developer to own that space. I can’t an icon within a 2D drawing and call Quantum sphere.
help but feel that this is some kind of dere- up a 3D view of where that is in the By all accounts the development work
liction of duty of a software developer. 3D model. is now looking really good. We hope to
However, with ESRI and now Unity, • New timelines for tracking project bring you a deeper insight into where the
Anagnost’s tenure looks to be different to progress and collaboration. project has got to and the basic benefits of
any previous Autodesk CEO, in that a • New approval workflow process in collaborative working and connecting
strategic partnership is sometimes good BIM 360, initiate and sign reviews, design to digital fabrication.
enough. Unity’s Pro offering does come in organised in sets.
at the high side of its competitors. • Assemble Systems for quantities and ESRI partnership
Jim Lynch, Autodesk’s vice president & building elements in BIM 360. One of last year’s biggest announcements
general manager, construction business • Cost management model added to was Autodesk’s strategic agreement with
unit, talked about the benefits of adopting a BIM 360 linked with change orders. ESRI to co-operate and work together.
manufacturing-led mind set to defeat the • A new freeform rebar tool to auto- The development teams have been hard

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 29

p26_27_29_31_AEC_NOVDEC18_AU.indd 29 22/11/2018 11:38

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 Feature

at work and the fruits have been first
seen in the release of ‘Autodesk
Connector for ArcGIS’, which links
Autodesk InfraWorks with the ArcGIS
online system. This capability improves
BIM workflows by directly connecting to
GIS data in a more seamless way, versus
an import with no ability to refresh if GIS
data is updated. All attributes of the GIS
data are added to the InfraWorks model,
making the 3D context model more
robust and accurate.
ESRI will also be linking ArcGIS’s
online, vector, image and map data to Civil
3D, Map and AutoCAD. ESRI will add sup-
port for Revit at some point too. This ability
was demoed earlier this year at ESRI’s user
event in London. Both companies are
working on an integration between ArcGIS
and Autodesk BIM 360. The partnership
will be really exciting for those wishing to
design in context or access geographically
sorted data. There is a special offer for
Autodesk customers to have a complimen-
tary subscription to Esri ArcGIS till the
end of 2019 (tinyurl.com/GIS-free-AEC).
Robots in Construction
On day one, AU hosted a special ‘Connect
& Construct Summit’
which featured a whole
day of future gazing talk
topics, together with
Autodesk realised that moving Revit to the cloud breathtaking $875 mil-
would only change the location of the application. lion
today but there are now a number of large number of mature DWG work-a-likes
examples of customers and developers available including BricsCAD, Graebert
who have deployed Forge components to ARES, Dassault Systèmes Draftsight (cre-
share, analyse or collaborate their designs. ated by Graebert) and ZWCAD.
Developers have wanted to run with We understand that Autodesk’s
some of this technology but have been planned significant price hike in mainte-
frustrated with the rate of development nance to ‘persuade’ customers that
of certain components, together with a ‘Subscription makes more sense’, comes
meandering business model. A key com- into effect in March 2019. This will see
ponent being Revit.io – a cloud version of 20% added to the cost of maintenance for
Revit which developers can call on to non-subscribed applications. In general,
access Revit functionality. When this sta- this is to be seen in the context of a gener-
bilises, I expect we will see a raft of com- al trend of increased cost of ownership
mercial applications based on Forge. for Autodesk’s products, for those out-
Autodesk has hired ex-Google cloud side of subscription all the way to those
platform guru Sam Ramji as VP cloud with enterprise licences.
platform, to come in with deep cloud It will be interesting to see if there is
experience to stir up Autodesk’s develop- any dent in the subscription rate with
ment and ensure Forge is an enterprise customers seeking alternatives or if the
level, robust cloud API. Ramji was stickiness of customers and their
incredibly impressive on stage and can be AutoCADs proves durable.
watched here (tinyurl.com/ramji-AEC)
Conclusion
Rebel dealers Autodesk University this year was all
In recent years, Autodesk has been about BIM 360 and Forge. A monumental
reducing the number of dealers it has effort is being put into both those elements
worldwide and the margins on product as Autodesk pushes itself to deliver enter-
sold and subscriptions. The net fallout prise quality platforms for collaboration
has been approximately 600 resellers and application development. Just as we
were going to press,
‘‘
Autodesk announced a

acquisition of
hands-on workshops. PlanGrid, a developer of
There was quite a bit It needed to develop a solution that would allow construction productivi-
of content looking at customers to define their own workflows ty software that delivers

’’
current experimenta- blueprints, project docs,
tion with automation markups, RFIs etc. on
onsite and in factory settings. On the have either sold up or closed up shop. As synchronised mobile devices. I suspect
show-floor, some of the work Autodesk Autodesk drives the subscription model this is the biggest acquisition in Autodesk’s
has completed with customers was and increasingly goes direct, the days of history. If there was any doubt about the
being demonstrated, including a ship- the small Value Added Reseller (VAR) company’s focus on construction, here’s
ping container with two robot arms have been numbered. 875 million reasons to believe them.
which had been used to experiment in What we have seen is a number of very The construction market is certainly
creating and assembling structures. large resellers have continued, usually heating up with big developers hoping
Autodesk is bringing its knowledge offering expanded services, but many of to get a slice of the market. Oddly, every-
from the manufacturing space into the these are now struggling with the loss of one seems to be going for the same core
AEC world and working with R&D teams margin on commodity product, especial- areas – cloud-based management, co-
from large architecture firms to experi- ly AutoCAD LT. One large and respected ordination and collaboration. I guess
ment and build using new materials and European reseller and developer, Graitec, when everyone identifies inefficiencies
production methods. Autodesk’s Build broke ranks just before the show to offer in a federated or fractured process, it’s
space facility in Boston featured heavily its own, in-house developed IntelliCAD- the go to destination to look for a solu-
and it now seems to be recognised by based clone called Advance CAD, as an tion. However, there will also be battles
architectural firms in the US as a place to alternative to AutoCAD LT for DWG edit- over the construction BIM and how to
go and try out the impossible. ing at just £300. (graitec.com/advance-cad). connect design to digital fabrication as
This is a significant departure for a chan- well as interoperability – CAD compa-
Autodesk Forge nel that has traditionally been very loyal. nies have inherently failed to be truly
One of the key messages of the conference We expect others to follow. open while preaching that they are. As
was that Autodesk web development plat- Perhaps the 2D drawing market will, the battle moves from desktops to the
form, Forge, was for developers, dealers, after decades of domination, now see cloud, it will be interesting to see if
customers — anyone — to develop and increased competition, with perpetual access to APIs and data is or isn’t shared
create their own workflows and products. licences costing a fraction of a full equiva- amongst competitors.
It’s taken quite a while to get where it is lent Autodesk subscription. There are a ■ autodesk.com

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 31

p26_27_29_31_AEC_NOVDEC18_AU.indd 31 22/11/2018 11:38

 Feature

What
does
blockchain
really
meanfor
AEC?

‘‘
We need to divorce blockchain from
currency. Blockchain will have more impact
in the world than Bitcoin will ever have
Malachy Mathews, senior lecturer in
architecture, Dublin Institute of Technology

’’
32 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p32_33_35_37_AEC_NOVDEC18_blockchain.indd 32 21/11/2018 15:32

 Feature

Randall Newton cuts through the hype and explores

what impact the distributed database technology could
have on BIM, contracts and even people

W
hen the popular business
advisers and father-and-
son team Don and Alex
Tapscott turned their
attention to blockchain technology in
2016, it set off a firestorm in the business
world. “The blockchain is an incorruptible
digital ledger of economic transactions
that can be programmed to record not just
financial transactions but virtually every-
thing of value,” they wrote in “Blockchain
Revolution.” The praise was up and down
the corporate ranks. No longer was the
hype just about Bitcoin, but something
more useful. The reaction from Microsoft
CEO Satya Nadella was typical: “This
book has had an enormous impact on the
evolution of blockchain in the world.”
Fast forward to late 2018. Where are all
the blockchain solutions for business?
More specifically, where are the block-
chains for AEC? To answer, let’s back up
a bit. Because hype seems to travel faster
than reality, let’s start with definitions.
“Blockchain is a distributed database
where many copies of the data are repli-
cated and synchronised,” says Casey
Mullen, vice president of technology strat-
egy at Bentley Systems, one of many com-
panies in BIM software examining the use
of blockchain tech. “It solves the problem
of trust — or lack thereof — among two or
more parties.” Data is replicated and syn-
chronised, but not copied, a key distinc-
tion. Blockchain offers a new type of
Internet, where digital information exists
in a state of consensus — not a state of
“copied” — among two or more parties.
In financial technology (fintech) circles,
blockchain is often called “distributed
ledger technology” because the ledger of
transactions is distributed among all
nodes of a vast peer-to-peer network, gen-
erally thousands of computers. The net-
work uses cryptographic techniques to

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 33

p32_33_35_37_AEC_NOVDEC18_blockchain.indd 33 21/11/2018 15:32

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 Feature

verify transactions, reward nodes on the toral research, Mathews took a close look ‘proof of handshake’ to prove the BIM
network with a tradable token (where at how new technologies could improve Manager, the architect, [and others] agreed
cryptocurrency comes from) and prevent collaborative processes between contrac- on the model,” says Gueguen. “We believe
corruption of the ledger. The blockchain tors and their supply chain partners. “The this will be able to replace the scattered
ledger establishes its trust because every process of procurement seems to be set papers-and-signatures process with an
copy of the ledger must always be in against trust,” Mathews says. indisputable system.” Bimchain is using
agreement with all others. Once written Two years ago Mathews started looking the Ethereum blockchain, the second-larg-
to the ledger, a transaction cannot be at other disciplines for ideas and technol- est cryptocurrency by market capitalisa-
unwritten. Terms such as “trustless,” ogies. “A convergence of language” led tion and the first to introduce specific
“immutable,” and “decentralised” also Mathews to examine blockchain. “I see big smart contract tools to the blockchain eco-
describe blockchain technology. database companies like Oracle and system.
The first blockchain came with Bitcoin, Google taking an interest in design and
the digital currency invented by the anon- construction,” Mathews says. “It is a tril- One step at a time
ymous programmer(s) known as Satoshi lion-dollar industry ripe for disruption.” “The typical AEC project involves tens if
Nakamoto. In Bitcoin the blockchain is a Mathews believes blockchain technology not hundreds of parties,” notes
transaction record created by the con- can be the catalyst, despite the distraction Autodesk’s Sheppard. “Unfortunately,
stant solving of cryptographic puzzles of Bitcoin as a very public financial phe- the interaction of so many parties can
that generate coin. Notes, records, and nomenon. “It colours the public view of lead to confusion. Sometimes this confu-
agreements can be appended to coin what blockchain is; we need to divorce sion is significant enough to lead to liti-
transactions. For Bitcoin and other cryp- blockchain from currency. Blockchain will gation. Blockchain is a technology that
tocurrencies, those transactions are gen- have more impact in the world than can help reduce confusion and resulting
erally buying and selling of the currency. Bitcoin will ever have.” litigation.” Sheppard is quick to point out
But it doesn’t have to be. Newer block- that, while Autodesk employees are tak-
chains including Ethereum, Hyperledger, BIM and blockchain ing a close look at blockchain, the compa-
IOTA, and EOS offer various forms of “BIM is very data-centric, and the best ny is not commenting on any specific
“smart contracts” which enable parties to way to establish trust is to trust the data development initiatives that may or may
record and monitor transactions. There itself, which is not the case today,” says not exist within the company. Such a cau-
are ways to minimise or eliminate the use Arnaud Gueguen, co-founder of tious attitude is typical of established
of cryptocurrency tokens for players in any industry. When
such transactions, depending
on the blockchain used.
“The basis for blockchain
‘‘ the major players in AEC, like
Bimchain’s Proof of Contribution module, Autodesk, Bentley, or Trimble
is where contributions, agreements, and move into a new technology
security is encryption,” says space, they generally do it by
Scott Sheppard, a long-time validations are certified on the blockchain acquisition.
researcher and tech evangelist and made part of the Revit BIM model Moving slowly into such

’’
with Autodesk Labs who now potentially disruptive technol-
works in the office of ogy is about more than soft-
Autodesk’s chief technology officer. The Bimchain.io. The French startup is work- ware developers wanting to get it right.
encryption uses key pairs, one public ing on a web-based application to track The current methods — as inefficient as
and one private. The public key is a ran- communications and commitments they are — are deeply entrenched.
domly-generated string of numbers rep- between project participants in the com- “Everyone trusts the old system with its
resenting a user’s address on the block- plete design and build ecosystem. The inherent faults, and may even be deeply
chain. The private key is like a user’s app will connect directly to Autodesk vested in mitigating those faults,” says
password that gives the user access to Revit. Gueguen is seeking beta testers Mathews. “The same or greater level of
their assets in the blockchain. As part of willing to use Bimchain on a real project. trust must be demonstrated and main-
ensuring that assets on the blockchain To Bimchain, trust means “everything tained in any new system in order to be
are incorruptible, users must safeguard on the signed paper, not the 3D model,” adopted and lead to commercial success.”
their private keys much in the same way says Gueguen. “All the legal signed stuff. The use of blockchain in AEC “is quite a
they protect their passwords. All instanc- That was our entry point into the solu- fundamental thing,” says Abel Maciel, a
es of cryptocurrency theft happened not tion, trying to connect the contractual director at Design Computation, Ltd., a
because somebody hacked the block- paper base with the operational digital London consultancy. Maciel is also a
chain, but because they stole private keys data.” Bimchain’s goal is to make the founding director at the Construction
or hacked apps that work with block- model the unique source of truth. “Today Blockchain Consortium (CBC) and a facul-
chain data. BIM data is not contractual; there are ty member associate at the
many sources of truth: BIM, PDM, DWG, University College
Fragility of trust in AEC paper,” says Gueguen. “We believe using London in both
“Trust in the design and construction Revit as the single source of truth will
industry is a very fragile thing,” notes make the model far better.”
Malachy Mathews, a senior lecturer in Bimchain’s first step is a Proof of
architecture at the Dublin Institute of Contribution module, where contribu-
Technology. The industry is “not tions, agreements, and valida-
set up to deal with trusting rela- tions are certified on the block-
tionships, even though we need chain and made part of the
them.” While doing doc- Revit BIM model. “It is a

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 35

p32_33_35_37_AEC_NOVDEC18_blockchain.indd 35 21/11/2018 15:32

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 Feature

architecture and blockchain tech- long it took BIM to hit the 50% tipping Mathews. “Why wouldn’t we have a facil-
nologies. “There is so much point in design firms, blockchain adop- ity to comment on people we have
improvisation in construction now. Things tion has a long road ahead. worked with? This changes the dynamic
arrive on the job site wrong, broken, or not “It is all a bit theoretical and hypotheti- of the working relationship.” Mathews
as ordered.” Maciel gives the example of cal at the moment,” notes Mathews, “but I foresees a system whereby coin is award-
cast pipes and folded ducts. They have think there is merit in it.” Mathews ed to suppliers by clients “like merit
very different performance purposes, are believes, that like most AEC technologies, badges not currency.” Contractors could
used for different things, but they look it will be clients that drive adoption not win new work based on certified reputa-
identical and sometimes come from the practitioners. “How did the handshake tions written onto a blockchain.
same factory and can be mislabelled. If the develop? It was simple. I have a chicken, “Construction has been notorious for
duct is used in a high-pressure applica- you have the beans. We hold hands to not only inefficiencies and ineffectiveness
tion, it could explode. make the exchange.” Blockchain as the but also for traditionally importing inno-
“How do we avoid such a problem?” new transactional handshake will vations from other sectors and adopting
asks Maciel. “Blockchain could de-risk the require AEC firms holding the deliveries them in an ad-hoc manner,” notes Eleni
process.” A tightly controlled manufac- and clients holding the money to be will- Papadonikolaki, a researcher at UCL
turing environment could be certified and ing to “shake” on the trustless, immuta- Bartlett School. She foresees blockchain
posted to the blockchain. The result could ble, decentralised record found on their being just one of several new technologies
be “de-risking the construction process blockchain. “There can still be independ- gaining adoption. ‘The Internet of Things,
and creating a better Artificial Intelligence, and
designed asset. The tender-
ing process would be accu-
rate, with real costs.” By
many sources of truth: BIM, PDM, DWG,
‘‘
Today BIM data is not contractual; there are simplification, transparen-
BIM all promise to provide

cy, and an accountability

using Ethereum smart con- chain not only to the trans-
tract technology, “we can paper. We believe using Revit as the single actions across the construc-
move away from the idea of source of truth will make the model far better tion supply chain but
‘every two weeks of signing Arnaud Gueguen, Bimchain.io also for the interactions
is good enough.’ We can between physical and digi-
build a smart contract to
trigger payments based on validation.” ’’
ent operators from project to project but
tal systems.”
The construction industry in US and
Maciel and Robert Aish, known to they will have trust among the group. UK are “notorious for being largely
many as the father of generative design They won’t be tied to legacy necessities. adversarial.” The hierarchical nature of
technology, are working through the CBC Interesting things could happen.” contracting relationships is also an issue,
to launch three open source projects relat- But is blockchain the answer? “We Papadonikolaki notes, especially at a
ed to BIM and blockchain. One for distrib- must always ask, ‘is blockchain better time when network relations are proving
uted financing, one for smart procure- than the current solution?’” says to be more efficient. Blockchain could
ment, and one “most ambitious” project Mathews. The three crucial elements of help eliminate the doubt and mistrust.
related to the use of blockchain, machine blockchain — a record of value transac- “The supply chain map is a mess. It is a
learning, and BIM for design processes. tions, the formation of consensus, and the ‘blame the customer, don’t trust, don’t
coin or token — are all needed. In block- share’ environment.”
What’s next? chain the coin or token is the incentive,
Blockchain for AEC is neither pie-in-the but the incentive does not have to be Randall S. Newton is USA Contributing
sky or pie-on-my-plate at this moment. money. Mathews thinks reputation can Editor for AEC Magazine, and managing
But the day is close when AEC firms can be tokenised in AEC. “Reputation is a director of Consilia Vektor, a business advisory
try out applications and see how they currency. Look at Uber, Airbnb and oth- service working at the nexus of blockchain and
might improve workflows. Based on how ers offering comments on services,” says design-based industries.

Not waiting for the academics

Not everyone who thinks block-
chain for AEC is a great idea are
working through the theory or
creating consortiums; entrepre-
neurs are hard at work. The fol-
lowing list should not be consid-
ered as an endorsement; due dili-
gence is always prudent when con-
sidering new technology. Most of
these companies are actively seek-
ing investment funding as well as
working on their products.
Buildcash (USA) says its new crypto-
currency product “is freely tradable
digital money, developed to revolu-
tionise the construction industry
through real-time, peer-to-peer pay-
ments of goods and services.”
(buildcash.com)
Bopti (France) is a cryptocurrency
from the makers of Batopti con-
struction management platform.
The French company claims “a lead-
ing European insurance company”
is supporting the initiative. (bopti.io)
CustomCoin (Switzerland) is a pro-
ject to streamline the formation of
capital for construction.
(ccnowpro.com)
Builderium (Switzerland) is build-
ing a reverse engine bidding system
to connect clients to contractors.
(builderium.io)
BitRent (UK) is building a crypto-
currency platform to help users
“land reliable investment deals” for
construction. (bitrent.uk)
Etch (UK) is focusing on construc-
tion as one of the primary users of its
blockchain-based payroll platform. It
is working with the global account-
ing firm KPMG and the Construction
Blockchain Consortium mentioned
previously. (etch.work)

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 37

p32_33_35_37_AEC_NOVDEC18_blockchain.indd 37 21/11/2018 15:33

 Trimble Dimensions
With our industry’s attention turning to construction, Trimble finds itself as a
key player in the battle for the hearts and minds of firms using construction
BIM. With a history, and a client base to envy, what advancements has the
company been working on? Martyn Day reports from its annual user event

T
rimble has travelled far since its Trimble Buildings keynote tain every nut and bolt. Tekla Structures,
early days in 1978, from the Roz Buick, VP of Trimble Buildings, start- the construction modelling tool, is being
greatest proponent for GPS ed off by reminding the audience that specifically called out by Trimble as a dif-
devices, to becoming a key play- Trimble has been working in this space ferentiator. While other BIM tools strug-
er in construction, site development and for over 40 years, through many major gle with managing models of low level of
the global BIM market. While many changes and here again, the industry is on detail, Trimble sees the fact they can
might associate the brand with high-end the cusp of the next revolution, a digital model one-to-one and still maintain per-
laser scanning, and site survey and devel- transformation. Buick called the compa- formance, as a key component. The more
opment tools, it has acquired a vast array ny’s solution set the ‘Trimble accurate the BIM models, the better the
of industry-leading BIM brands, namely Constructible process’, which combines a cost estimation, scheduling and comple-
Tekla, SketchUp, Gehry Technologies, mixture of hardware, software and servic- tion. Constructible models allow you to
Vico, Sefaira and Viewpoint. es built on an open data principle. plan better and build it right, first time.
To date, Trimble seemed to have pre- The whole point of BIM, said Buick, was Buick claimed that half of the skilled
ferred to leave these brands to operate on to liberate the data, not silo it in proprie- workforce would retire in 3 to 5 years-
their own terms, with little visible consol- tary formats. Trimble wants to bring BIM time. The industry is facing a skills
idation. However, the company has an to the field and these models need to be shortage and will have to rely on technol-
industry product plan to address all the accurate and geospatially placed in context. ogy to fill the gap. Machine learning and
key stages of building design, analytics can automate work-
from concept through analy-
sis, to bid fabricate and con-
struct, as well as to manage
‘‘
Trimble wants to bring BIM to the field
flows, driving efficiency and
productivity.
and these models need to be accurate and data management tool, was
Trimble Connect, its project
and operate.
Trimble has authoring tools geospatially placed in context highlighted as the central plat-

’’
for architecture, structural form, which taps into the cen-
steel and concrete, analysis tral ‘constructible’ model. This
and optimisation. But, at the core of this Buick highlighted SketchUp as the com- then sends the right information to project
process, are a range of cloud services pany’s solution for concept design to con- participants, should that be 2D drawing,
which connect local and distant teams structible modelling. In the last year, 3D model or a Mixed Reality session using
with fidelity data, linked to constructible Trimble SketchUp for web has added 6 the Microsoft Hololens. Trimble has estab-
information which accurately price out million unique new users, added to the 35 lished a deep relationship with Microsoft
the build from the original digital design. million unique desktop users. Very few of and even took the Hololens and designed a
Trimble aims to digitise the construction Trimble’s competitors can quote anything construction hard hat to make it viable on-
process, both in the design office and like these numbers, although it is worth site. Trimble Connect has the ability to also
when breaking ground. pointing out here that the subscribers to perform analytics. Learning from past pro-
Trimble Dimensions is the company’s the professional version of SketchUp have jects and applying that knowledge to
annual customer event, where users can not been filtered out from total users. future business wins.
get their hands on the latest site technolo- The essential elements of Trimble con- To enable the industry to pivot, Buick
gy, as well as seeing software develop- structible have been called the ‘three Cs’, made the case for connecting all industry
ments from the Trimble Buildings team. Constructible, Connected and Content stake holders and that was the driver
This year the event was held in Las enabled. The constructible phase is where behind acquiring e-Builder and
Vegas, the week prior to Autodesk the models are made and enable opti- Viewpoint. E-Builder covers capital pro-
University. It has been a very busy month mised workflows by driving 5D models. gram management for owners and has
for AEC Magazine. The models can be so accurate they con- over 400 serial customers with 300 bil-

38 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p38_39_41_AEC_NOVDEC18_Trimble.indd 38 22/11/2018 15:54


lion in projects and connects contractors,
project managers and owners.
Viewpoint reaches over 8,000 con-
struction managers with construction
management software. To date, Trimble
connects over 500,000 machines, over
3,000,000 users of AEC tools and over
10,000 field mobile devices.
‘Content enabled’ in Trimble’s view,
points to the company’s development of
component warehouses. Buick claimed
that Trimble has a bigger cloud ware-
house than any other company in the
world, over 31,000,000 products and
pricing data for architects, engineers and
contractors.
Customers can also make their own
content in-house and store that online.
The SketchUp warehouse for architecture
and design had 28 million, downloading
290 million models, while 640,000 new
models were uploaded in one year, repre-
senting a 17% growth. The MEP team has
a library of 18 million fully managed high
level of detail models from over 400 man-
ufacturers. Trimble has also launched
new cloud-based estimating tools for
MEP and Electrical.
The Museum of the Future
Denis McNelis, engineering manager,
BAM, gave a presentation on BAM’s work
on the Museum of the Future in Dubai, an
incredible building which defies all
known concepts of what a building can
be. While McNelis was talking about the
project, Kim Nyberg, head-technology at
Trimble Solutions, was live-manipulating
the actual structural and architectural
geometry of the museum in the Trimble
World Viewer using a laptop. This demo
was just as incredible as the building
itself, as it was so fast and interactive.
www.AECmag.com
p38_39_41_AEC_NOVDEC18_Trimble.indd 39
Event report
The Museum of the Future is The incredible Museum be manufactured. Even then,
a 250ft high, seven storey steel of the Future in Dubai six months ago BAM couldn’t
defies all known
frame diagrid building. The concepts of what a model it and had to get
writing that covers the build- building can be Trimble to help enable the
ing’s façade are cuts to the skin trapezoidal stair spine to be
and form the windows. There are 1,045 designed in 3D. It turned out that there
unique doubly curved cladding panels was only one place in the world that
and boat building technology was needed could manufacture it.
to produce the shape. It was designed by Finally, the MEP in the building looks
Killa Design, contracted to BAM with to have been a complete nightmare, as the
AECOM and BuroHappold. McNelis con- designers had to avoid the complex and
centrated on just a few of the aspects of unique windows, with each duct having
the design which required innovative to be routed so as to not impact the build-
solutions, namely the Ringbeam, ing’s unique design. Spinning the model
Steework, Cladding and MEP. around in the Trimble Viewer you could
The concrete component of the building see where ducts were moved to avoid a
is relatively conventional with three clash. A fantastic talk about a bonkers
floors of slab supporting the complex building.
steelwork. There is a ring beam which is Matt Hedke, senior VDC manager - Self
75 metres long, 500ft in length. The Perform, Barton Malow, gave a frank and
building was designed in 3D software, honest talk about the pains his company
which had to be detailed, so they could had gone through to transform itself from
find a way of producing the rebar. The a traditional building contractor to a blue-
result meant that they had to change the collar BIM firm. Back in 2012, the firm set
shape of the beam, which in some instanc- a goal to double its efficiency by 2024, the
es meant a change of about 135mm. firm’s 100th anniversary. Hedke took a
The beam is 2.4m x 2.4m with 48 bars very strategic and goals-based approach
top and bottom. With so much metal to adopting new technology and processes
BAM had to develop a 3D reinforcement each year and he got the buy in of the
model to make sure everything fitted. management, so it was driven top down. It
McNelis said that if they had not done this covered every activity in the field and
there was no way they could have used back at the office using Trimble Connect
conventional technology to complete the and an array of other applications.
job. The pour was 1,200m cubed of con-
crete and had to be poured in one go. Construction futures
McNelis then moved on to the steel Part of Trimble Dimensions included a
structure. There are no internal columns trip to an off-site location to see some
and each floor is 30ft high. There is also a autonomous machine demonstrations,
spiral staircase which forms a double together with new technology that the
helix. It was modelled in NURBs surfaces company was working on. The area out-
and needed to be manufactured, but steel side of Las Vegas had been turned into a
doesn’t bend quite so easily. The spine of giant construction site, with areas marked
the stairs had to be redesigned so it could out for each of Trimble’s field solutions.
November / December 2018 39
22/11/2018 15:54
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 Event report

Our area of focus was on the future con- Obviously, things get trickier Artificial intelligence This also goes some way to
struction technologies displays. By far the when you mix automated being used to identify explaining why Trimble has
machines, people and
most impressive was the dedicated area machines and humans. There objects within the acquired so many applications,
for autonomous construction. Trimble would have to be a high degree autonomous site as it identifies with many
had three different vehicles performing of reliability in the artificial stakeholders with a variety of
autonomously in a controlled space. intelligence and safety mechanisms. This different needs. Trimble Connect is the
Simultaneously, the area was being moni- was an incredibly impressive display. central piece which brings these acquisi-
tored with parallax cameras and artificial Trimble also showed how augmented tions together and the company is on a
intelligence (AI) to identify machines, reality can be used on a digger, to show mission to enable design data and cost
people and objects within the autono- the operator what was under the ground, data to drive business decisions from
mous workspace. Each machine was fitted or the intended design outcome. What owners to the contractor on the ground.
with lidar, radar and remote control. was especially impressive was the ability Despite millions of users of SketchUp,
While they worked the designated area, to retrofit all of this kind of technology to and a dominating position in conceptual
geo fenced out from a controlling comput- existing machines. design, Trimble is not a typically strong
er, they were constantly checking for Another demonstration showed some player in the BIM-to-documentation phase
obstructions and other vehicles crossing early beta software which analysed the of the architectural market. It does howev-
their paths. Looking at the AI screen, we whole site and could define areas and er, have a very clear goal on where it wants
could see bounding boxes around each of paths, where earth was being removed to to be in the construction BIM market. This
the identified objects is where we are finding the
and vehicles on-site.
When another vehicle or
person walked into the
‘‘
Trimble Connect sends the right information the AEC space are coalescing
to project participants, should that be 2D
majority of major players in

their investments and devel-

camera’s view, the com- opment. Everyone, it seems,
puter attempted to iden- drawing, 3D model or a Mixed Reality session wants a slice of construction.
tify the type of object. using the Microsoft Hololens Trimble already has estab-

’’
This technology could lished connections with the
be used in combination construction firms and prod-
with autonomous vehicles, using active be placed where earth was required. The ucts such as Tekla are industry dominat-
sensors to maintain a safe site and avoid system would even work out the pathway ing. In conversations with Trimble repre-
any damage. The operator of the machines for the vehicles to blend the surface to sentatives, the company is aware of the
had a giant red button on his desk. If requirements. This promises to be a high- powerful tool that Tekla offers. As was
something drastic happened, by pressing ly efficient site tool and could be available demonstrated on the main stage, and on
the button, all the machines would stop. as early as next year. the show floor, Tekla has an amazing abil-
While this was a demonstration, it was ity to visualise huge models in full one-to-
clear that the technology was very close to Conclusion one detail. The majority of Trimble’s com-
being deployable. In the future, just a few Trimble doesn’t act like most software petition has difficulty displaying low lev-
managers could oversee an army of auto- companies, possibly because it spans hard- els of detail architectural models, let
mated machines as they perform key site ware, software and serviced solutions. alone high detailed construction-ready
operations such as grading, digging and Companies like Autodesk bundle up their BIM. In the future, construction BIM
rolling. The future of site preparation will software for the built environment, while models will need to directly drive digital
be a site being constantly laser scanned Trimble maintains clear and dedicated fabrication processes. It’s clear to me that
and the system being in control of the applications for recognised roles, all con- Trimble is already there.
machines, delivering precise results. nected through its cloud backbone. ■ trimble.com

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 41

p38_39_41_AEC_NOVDEC18_Trimble.indd 41 22/11/2018 15:55

 Feature

Free resources for

arch viz projects: part 2
In the second of a two part article, Enscape’s Helen Reinold recommends the
best places to pick up free elements that will bring your architectural projects to
life. This month she explores IES Lights, trees, vegetation, skyboxes and sounds

Y
ou’ve probably seen
it before, that ren-
dering that at first
glance fools you into
thinking it is a photograph of
an actual room or building.
Just by viewing your project in
Enscape, you can achieve fan-
tastic results, but how do you
take your project to the next
level, to amaze your clients with the
authenticity and atmosphere of the scene?
As beautiful as your building is, you’ll be
hard pressed to inspire your client’s imag-
ination if all the rooms are empty.
Choosing this content can be over-
whelming, simply because there are so
many different sources. And
acquiring the content can get In the previous edition...
expensive, especially if you
need a lot of it. But if you
know where to look, the right
elements don’t have to cost
an arm and a leg – in fact,
they don’t have to cost any-
thing at all!
This article will summarise
some of the best sources out there for free In the September / October 2018 edition of
elements to add to your architectural pro- AEC Magazine, Enscape’s Helen Reinold
ject: from furniture and skyboxes to tex- explored textures, entourage / accesories
tures, and everything in between! Create and 3D people. A PDF of that edition, plus
an emotional experience for your clients all the back issues of AEC Magazine, can be
downloaded for free at aecmag.com/pdf
without breaking the bank!
■ enscape3d.com

42 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p42_43_45_47_48_49_AEC_NOVDEC18_Enscape.indd 42 21/11/2018 15:35

 ●
4 IES Lights
Adding IES light profiles to your fixtures
is a subtle but effective way to make your
model even more authentic. IES stands for
Illuminating Engineering Society, which
created a file format to transfer photomet-
ric data via the internet. Today the format
is widely used by lighting manufacturers.
The great thing about IES lights is that
they represent realistic light emission pat-
terns based on manufacturer specifica-
tions; it’s the digital version of a real world
light. This means that if you know which
lighting product you are going to use for a
project, you can check whether there is an
IES profile available for that product and
give your model a huge dose of reality.
IES light files are created and made
available by many major lighting manu-
facturers and can usually be downloaded
from their website at no cost. IES files
can be used in any of the CAD programs
supported by Enscape.
Why IES lights are important to
architectural design:
Below you can see what our developing
model looks like in the evening (figure 1)
and at night (figure 2) with some added
IES lights. I don’t have to tell you that the
biggest difference is that you can now
actually see the model after the sun has
gone down. But much more importantly,
carefully placing your lights adds accura-
cy to your scene. If you are designing a
www.AECmag.com
p42_43_45_47_48_49_AEC_NOVDEC18_Enscape.indd 43
new home for a client, they won’t just
want to know what it will look like during
the day. Using IES profiles, you can give
them an accurate picture of the atmos-
phere in their new home at any given time.
1) Phillips (tinyurl.com/philips-ies)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
Obviously one of the leaders in the light-
ing industry is Phillips, who has devel-
oped an extremely handy and extensive
database of IES profiles. You can access
them all for free using the Philips
Photometric Database.
If you know which product you are
using, you can search for that specific IES
profile. However, what is so great about
the tool is that you can search by light fix-
ture, and see which lighting options are
available for that fixture. Once you have
selected your product, you can download
the IES profile directly to your computer.
2) American Electric Lighting
(tinyurl.com/American-IES)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
American Electric Lighting joined the
Acuity Lighting Group in 2001, and you
can find IES profiles for its products on
its website. The company offers well over
1,000 IES profiles. You can either find
the specific profile you are looking for
and just download that file, or download
a ZIP archive of all available files.
3) Lithonia (tinyurl.com/IES-lithonia)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
Lithonia is another member of the Acuity
Lighting Group, and also provides light-
ing for everything from commercial
buildings to residential projects. Just like
American Electric Lighting, Lithonia lets
you download individual files, or its
whole archive as a ZIP file.
4) Erco (erco.com)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
The German company ERCO is one of the
leaders in the field of architectural light-
ing using LED technology. On its website,
you can search its product catalogue and
download ZIP files containing IES pro-
files for entire product families.
5) LA Lighting (lalighting.com)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
LA Lighting is a great resource for
commercial and industrial lighting.
Browse its extensive catalogue, and then
download the corresponding light pro-
files for over 200 light fixtures directly
from its website.
1 Your room can’t make an
impression in the dark
2 IES light profiles let your model
shine at any time of day
November / December 2018 43
21/11/2018 15:35
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 Feature

●
5 Trees and vegetation

Trees and vegetation are important to

ground your scene in reality — inside and
3
out. Whether it is placing potted plants in
the lobby of an office building, or adding
trees to the exterior of your model, vegeta-
tion makes your scenes more dynamic and
authentic. We are so used to seeing nature
elements in our everyday lives that it is
immediately apparent when they are
missing from a rendering. Take a look at
some of the websites below and find the
plants that are just right for you.

Why trees and vegetation are

important to architectural design:
As you can see in our model to the right,
adding trees and vegetation, especially to
the outside of your model, can make all the
difference. It’s rare to see a house without
some form of landscaping in the real
4
world, which is why our model looks so
stark without any plants. By taking the
time and adding some of the models from
the Enscape RPC test project, I can give
the model a welcoming yard that makes
the rendered image much more dynamic.

1) SketchUp 3D Warehouse
(3dwarehouse.sketchup.com)
SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
Obviously there are hundreds of vegeta-
tion models in the 3D Warehouse, but I
wanted to emphasise those by user
SkapeUp (tinyurl.com/skakeup). He has
made some plants specifically for use in
Enscape and they really look great! He

‘‘Whether it is placing
potted plants in the lobby
of an office building, or
adding trees to the exterior
of your model, vegetation
makes your scenes more
dynamic and authentic
with close to 1,000 free models available,
there’s something for everyone.
3) SketchUp Texture Club
(tinyurl.com/sketchup-veg)
SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
SketchUp Texture Club also has a nice
selection of free textures and entourage,
but I wanted to specifically mention its
vegetation collections. There are six col-
lections available for download, with a
wide variety. There is a really nice palm
models available are for specific types of
trees. So if you are looking for a baobab
tree, a California buckeye, or a maiden-
hair tree, look no further than Polantis.
The drawback is that you have to register
an account to download the models, and
you can only download three models a
day, so you’ll need to practice patience.
5) Enscape RPC Test Project
(enscape3d.com/free-sample-projects)
Revit

’’
now has nearly 100 2D and 3D vegetation
models available.
2) Cgtrader (cgtrader.com)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
We already mentioned Cgtrader in the
entourage section (AEC Sept/Oct edition),
but I wanted to repeat it again because it
has some really nice vegetation models,
especially houseplants. You have to search
a bit to find your desired file type, but
tree collection, and a collection that has
some bare trees, if you are going for a
more wintery effect. You do have to sign
up to download the models, but by doing
this you will also get access to its free tex-
tures, so it’s worth a look.
4) Polantis (polantis.com/plants)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
Polantis has over 100 trees available for
download in many different file formats.
What is so great about the vegetation
available at Polantis is that most of the
The easiest way to add vegetation to your
Revit model is to use our free RPC test
project. Just copy and paste the trees and
plants you like directly into your model.
There are nearly 100 models to choose
from in a variety of sizes, colours, and
types. No sign up required!
3 Without trees, this
scene is rather stark…
4 …but, add a little vegetation,
and it really blooms!

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 45

p42_43_45_47_48_49_AEC_NOVDEC18_Enscape.indd 45 21/11/2018 15:35

 2019

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technology
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 Feature

●
6 Skyboxes

If you want to vary the background in

your model, the easiest way to do this is
5
to use a skybox in Enscape. You can load
it right into your model via the
Atmosphere tab of the Settings menu:
Skybox as a background. Skyboxes load-
ed into Enscape must be either in
Longitude/Latitude (panorama) or cross
format. For more information, check out
our Knowledgebase article on this topic
(tinyurl.com/skybox-aec).

Why Skyboxes are important to

architectural design:
Take a look at our model with two differ-
ent skyboxes applied; just that little
adjustment changes the atmosphere com-
pletely! The generic Enscape sky is a nice
backdrop by itself, but if you have a spe-
cific location in mind for the building,
6
using a skybox can transport your client
there with one click.
Even if you are not aiming to represent
a specific location, you can use skyboxes
to lend a certain atmosphere to the ren-
dering. Use a forest skybox for a more
intimate, rustic feeling, or any residential
street to ground the scene in reality.

1) Enscape Backgrounds (web)

enscape3d.com/free-sample-projects
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
You can download a collection of 12 sky-
boxes directly from our website. They are
HDR backgrounds in cross format, which
can immediately be loaded into Enscape.

‘‘Even if you are not aiming
to represent a specific
location, you can use
skyboxes to lend a certain
atmosphere to the rendering
The environment panoramas are great if
you want to set up a scene to make it look
like your building is situated along a city
street, or a more exotic location. You can
download high quality panoramas with-
out registering and with just one click.
4) HDRI Haven (hdrihaven.com)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
6) Make Your Own!
If you didn’t find a skybox from one of
these sources, or if you are going for that
extra level of realism, consider making
your skybox! Enscape supports Skybox
image files (*.hdr, *.bmp, *.jpg, *jpeg,
*png, *tif, *.tiff, *.tga) either in cross or
panoramic (Longitude/Latitude) format.
Panoramic skyboxes should have a reso-

’’
2) Textures.com
(tinyurl.com/textures-hdr)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
Textures.com doesn’t just have a lot of
high quality textures, they also have
HDR panoramas available. They have a
nice selection available, though with your
daily free credits, you are only able to
download the smallest image size.
3) Texturify (texturify.com)
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
On Texturify you’ll find both sky back-
ground and environment panoramas.
HDRI Haven is one of my favourite
resources for free high quality panora-
mas. They have everything from urban
lution ratio close to 2:1.
You can, for example, take a panorama
of the site where your future building is
backgrounds to countryside scenes. All to be situated to show your client exactly
of the panoramas are free and available what the view from their future office
in varying qualities, from 1K to 16K. will look like.
5) sIBL Archive
hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
Revit, SketchUp, Rhino, ArchiCAD
The sIBL Archive has upwards of 100
free high quality panoramas available for
download. You don’t need to register an 5 Use the Enscape sky for a
account, just choose your panorama and more universal look…
with one click download a ZIP file con- 6 … or add a skybox to place your
taining varying resolutions of the image. model in a specific location

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 47

p42_43_45_47_48_49_AEC_NOVDEC18_Enscape.indd 47 21/11/2018 15:36

 Feature

●
7 Sound Files

The elements discussed above are all great
for still renderings, but sound sources are
the way to really make your model pop
during a real-time walkthrough. In Revit
and SketchUp, you can add a sound
source to your model in just three clicks,
and immediately boost the authenticity
of the scene. Add crown noises to a
shopping mall, conversation to a
restaurant, or make music come
out of a record player in
the living room. You
can use any MP3 or
WAV file for your
sound source, but most
people probably don’t
have an MP3 of rain sounds or
a crowded room. Luckily, there
are great websites out there where you
can find just such sounds for free.
Why sound files are important to
present architectural design:
Placing an Enscape sound source takes
just a few clicks, and takes the live walk-
through of your model to the next level.
Learn more about placing sound sources
here in our dedicated Knowledgebase
article. During your live walk-through
you will then be able to create the exact
atmosphere you are looking for.
Add the sound of soft rain to cre-
ate an intimate space, or foot-
steps to enhance your crowded
shopping center, or airplanes
flying overhead your future
airport terminal. If you are
viewing the model in VR,
you might even forget that
the project hasn’t been
built yet!
1) FreeSoundEffects.com
Revit, SketchUp
This website has both free and paid
sound effects, but their free ones are defi-
nitely worth a look. You don’t have to reg-
ister an account, and can choose between
MP3 and WAV formats. They have a lot of
specialised sound effects you might have
difficulties finding on other sites, like office
sounds or airplanes passing overhead.
2) SoundBible.com
Revit, SketchUp
SoundBible.com is another site with a lot
of variety. You don’t have to register to
download the files, which are all available
in MP3 and WAV formats. You can pre-
view the sound directly on the site, and
they upload new files every week. You’re
sure to find what you’re looking for here.
3) freesound.org
Revit, SketchUp
At freesound.org, you can download hun-
dreds of sounds for free; they have all been
released under Creative Commons licenc-
es. If you are not sure what you are look-
ing for, you can browse by keyword or
tags. There’s a little something for every-
one, from city street recordings to sounds
of crickets chirping in a meadow. All the
files are free, though you do have to regis-
ter an account to download anything.

●
8 Manage your resources

One thing to keep in mind before you
begin to browse through the websites we
have summarised above is how to manage
all of the files you will end up download-
ing. Between testing out materials, and
seeing which chair looks best at the kitch-
en table you picked out, you can end up
with a lot of files floating around on your
computer. Here are some tips on how to
organise your resources so they don’t end
up lost in your Downloads folder.
First, decide which elements you need
for your project. Depending on the effect
you are going for, you might not need to
add all of the elements discussed above.
Next, create a resource folder list to
house all of your files. You can think of it
as your personal library. Expand this col-
lection even further with each project you
work on. With a nicely organised list,
you’ll never have to search through your
Downloads or Documents folder again;
all of your free resources will be right at
your fingertips!

●
9 Conclusion

Refining and enhancing your model with
the resources discussed in this article can
make all the difference between a happy
client and an amazed one. After all, you
don’t simply want them to like your
model – you want them to see themselves
in it. Adding some furniture and decora-
tions, 3D people and the right back-
ground will make your clients think they
are looking at a picture of the finished
product. And this wow-effect doesn’t
have to be expensive: in fact, as you have
seen, it doesn’t have to cost a penny!
Elevate your project with these
resources, and improve your time-man-
agement by organising them effectively.
On the facing page is our finished
model, before and after! In just seven easy
steps, and using completely free elements,
we took it from ordinary to extraordinary!
The websites I have in this article are
great places to start, but do some explor-
ing of your own, too! There are so many
free resources out there that it is impossi-
ble to feature them all in one article.
All offer free files, but many of them only
exist because of user donations, so if there
is a site you particularly value, consider
giving back by making a small donation!
■ enscape3d.com

48 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p42_43_45_47_48_49_AEC_NOVDEC18_Enscape.indd 48 21/11/2018 15:36

 ‘‘Refining and enhancing your model with 7 A beautiful, but empty architectural
space is transformed into…
8 … a vibrant, lived-in house
the resources discussed in this article can
make all the difference between a happy
client and an amazed one

’’ 7

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 49

p42_43_45_47_48_49_AEC_NOVDEC18_Enscape.indd 49 21/11/2018 15:36

 Feature

BIM from Finland

the new wave of tools
Finland is renowned for being a pioneer of BIM, with tools like Solibri Model
Checker and Tekla Structures enjoying huge global success. Greg Corke explores
seven new technologies looking to make their mark on the international stage

Tridify Convert (game engine visualisation)

Tridify Convert is a
new cloud service that
helps Unity developers
streamline the process
of bringing BIM mod-
els into the immersive,
interactive Unity game
engine environment
without losing the rich-
ness of the BIM data.
The service works with IFC files, exported from Revit and other BIM
tools, to deliver UV mapped and optimised models in minutes. During
import, models can be automatically split by type and/or storey.
Then, using the Tridify BIM toolset (available from the Unity Asset Store),
BIM data can be accessed in Unity. Developers have advanced search func-
tions for effective object-data management. The expanding toolkit for Unity
Editor also delivers other automated features such as material mapping, col-
liders, and lighting generation.
Tridify Convert is currently in beta so users can test out the service for
free and download the free Tridify IFC Tools for Unity Editor.
■ tridify.com/convert

GBuilder (BIM-based customer journeys) Congrid (construction quality / safety management)

GBuilder is a cloud Congrid aims to
platform for creating improve the efficiency
‘Digital Journeys’ for of construction site
home buyers. It is management with a
designed to be used by cloud-based solution
all stakeholders – home for contractors and
buyer, project manager asset owners. It is
and sales – from initial designed to reduce the
purchase to ongoing industry’s reliance on
maintenance. manual, paper-based
Customers log on to the platform, then choose materials for their new workflows by digitalising project management and documentation.
home – floors, tiles and kitchen cabinets etc. Materials are connected to a Using an iOS or Android tablet or smartphone, workers can use the
live database and are based on real quantities for accurate pricing. Designs Congrid mobile application to add photos or notes to document on site
can be visualised in 3D, VR and AR. issues, carry out safety assessments or perform quality inspections.
GBuilder is not only designed to improve customer experience. By giving Importantly everything can be recorded in the context of a site plan, making
the customer control of the process it helps increase efficiency and reduce it easier to communicate the precise location of issues, which can then be
the risk of costly mistakes. Builders get access to quantity information. resolved and logged once complete.
Project managers can deliver regular progress reports to the home buyer. The Congrid Live Portal gives insight into a project status and can be
Then, after moving in, snags can be documented and resolved, with used to monitor repair work and ensure all faults are fixed. Reports can be
replacement materials easily ordered, even after the warranty period ends. created easily and analytics used to improve efficiency.
■ gbuilder.com/en ■ congrid.com

50 November / December 2018 www.AECmag.com

p50_51_AEC_NOVDEC18_Finland.indd 50 21/11/2018 15:19

 ‘‘
Infrakit is designed to streamline the flow
of information from initial data collection,
through design, construction and all the
way through to operations and maintenance

’’
Novatron (machine control and guidance) ModelSpace (project management)
Novatron has a key focus Gravicon is one of the
on machine control and leading BIM consult-
guidance technology. The ants in Finland with 20
company places a big years of experience in
emphasis on OpenBIM BIM Project
and develops software Management and 100
and hardware solutions projects to its name
to directly support using open standards.
model-based The big challenge for
construction. BIM is not technology,
Novatron’s Xsite PRO system is designed to support BIM workflows says Gravicon CIO Tomi Henttinen, it’s process - and that’s why the com-
with an emphasis on open formats. No conversion is needed; BIM design pany developed its cloud-based project management tool ModelSpace.
models, complete with meta data, can be read in directly and delivered on ModelSpace focuses on the flow of information across the whole network
site, to an excavator operator, surveyor or foreman. from planning and construction to BIM maintenance. It has a number of
Importantly, the system allows firms to respond to design changes very dedicated modules including ‘Space Management’, which covers the techni-
quickly as Petteri Palviainen, BIM Manager, Novatron Oy explains, “If we cal and functional aspects of a building and gives the ability to handle facili-
make changes to the plan, with traditional paper plans it may take 2-4 ty management, quality control and cost control, and ‘Project Management’,
weeks for the plan to reach the jobsite. When we make a change based on which offers specification and guidance on project tasks to help manage the
the data model with BIM, we can have those plan changes reach the project schedule, scope and cost. ‘FM’ then helps firms make the most of the
jobsite the very same day and building can start immediately.” building information model in the long run by keeping it up-to-date.
■ novatron.fi/en ■ gravicon.fi/modelspace/modelspace-modules

ProdLib (product library for designers) Infrakit (construction site management)

Prodlib, short for Infrakit is a cloud
product library, is platform for
designed to make the construction site
lives of architects and management – used by
structural engineers contractors, project
easier by offering them owners, design
an easy way to access engineers and surveyors.
high quality CAD and It’s designed to improve
BIM objects (and keep communication and
them updated). At the streamline the flow of
same time, it also gives manufacturers access to designers. information from initial data collection, through design, construction and
The online system is built on the premise that when making decisions all the way through to operations and maintenance. This includes design
as to which products are used during a building project, designers have a models feeding work machinery, such as diggers and bulldozers directly.
typical influence of between 30-50%, making the architects and engineers Teams have real-time access to up-to-date designs and as-built data, in the
the most significant single decision makers in the project. office and on site. According to Infrakit, this approach results in faster project
The product library contains thousands of BIM and CAD models for completion while improving quality – all culminating in vast cost savings.
the most popular design software such as ArchiCAD, AutoCAD and Revit. Infrakit is presented as an ‘open BIM’ platform, where BIM refers to
At the moment ProdLib has 50 manufacturers and 15,000 users, 9,000 building information management (not modelling) and ‘open’ refers to the
of which come from outside of Finland. ProdLib has bold expansion plans way it allows firms to use the best tools for each project phase, connecting to
for the UK, Germany and Spain. a range of CAD software, surveying equipment and machine control systems.
■ prodlib.com ■ infrakit.com/en

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 51

p50_51_AEC_NOVDEC18_Finland.indd 51 21/11/2018 15:19

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Verifi3D by Xinaps
BIM is great for co-ordinated documentation and visualisation, but having a 3D
model is also useful for establishing if a design meets building regs and is fit for
purpose. Xinaps has a cloud-based tool for doing just that. Martyn Day reports
B
ased in Holland, Xinaps has
been developing quality and
rule checking applications for
BIM models for almost three
years. These have been com-
mercial tools for the general public, as well
as bespoke applications for large players
such as Philips. As its business model and
technology offering has evolved, the latest
version of Verifi3D is almost ready for
release, using a brand-new cloud platform
to address some key design issues: disabled
access, doors and gate clashes, stair head
clearances, fire alarm egress paths, fire
hose access, and water sprinkler coverage.
Everything is done through a web browser.
The workflow is pretty straightforward:
models are either uploaded or accessed
from cloud repositories such as Autodesk
BIM 360, and seamlessly brought into the
Verifi3D environment which is powered
by Unity’s game engine. The net result is
that Verifi3D is a lovely and fast viewer
once it has rebuilt the BIM models. The
user interface is clear and there are key-
board shortcuts to move about, slice and
www.AECmag.com
p53_55_AEC_NOVDEC18_Xinaps.indd 53
dice the model quickly.
Unknowingly, by deploying Unity as the
viewing technology, Xinaps has picked the
VR developer that Autodesk has just cho-
sen to work the closest with, so in the
future we expect to see Verifi3D benefit
from faster translation and more meta data
like textures – not that this is particularly
important for the analysis component.
Analysis
Running the analysis routines is also very
visual and easy. Verifi3D organises tests
by project and data location. These can be
reloaded when required and are quick, so
long as the model has not been changed. If
there are changes then the model needs to
be reloaded.
The general rule of thumb is Red is bad,
Green is good. The system also provides full
report generation, filtering and quick ways
to find the areas of failure. In some calcula-
tions, it will also give text explaining how
the design infringes the code. The checking
system is volume-based and requires that
the model is, of course, accurate!
Review
Egress
simulation
for building
evacuation
As standards are different all around
the world, Verifi3D also includes its own
tool for the creation of these. No scripting
or coding is required; it’s very visual and
checkbox driven. As things stand,
European and American standards are
included for the areas Verifi3D currently
checks. These can be accessed within the
application, showing if the design has
passed or failed. Each of the building
codes are listed.
Egress: The speed of evacuating a build-
ing is important in many unforeseen cir-
cumstances. Verifi3D gives a very visual
result, showing the paths from each of the
rooms in a building. Should the path take
too long or not be close enough to an
escape door, these will be flagged in red.
It’s possible to isolate any of the paths and
the software will automatically section
the model to show the escape route, even
over multiple levels.
Fire: While egress is a component of fire
evacuation, Xinaps has addressed the
November / December 2018 53
21/11/2018 15:22
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 Review

issues of sprinklers and fire hose reach. 1

The sprinkler test is the most fun to
watch, as it actually ray traces water and
bounce interaction with walls and furni-
ture, clearly showing covered and uncov-
ered areas of a design. Each room
receives a percentage covered figure,
indicating if it has passed or failed.
Hose and sprinkler coverage can be
seen on plan views with areas that have
passed or failed. This is all recorded in
the reports.

Disabled access: These tests cover a

range of wheel chair manoeuvrability
access issues, such as toilets and access to
floors and exits. Design issues are again
quickly highlighted and it’s possible to
move about the model quickly, identify-
ing areas which have failed the tests. 2
Others: Door clashes and stair head
height have also been included, indicat-
ing where doors have been designed to
open out into each other’s arcs or stairs
that fail to meet building codes. The list
could be endless of all the case conditions
for which customers would want to track
and they can easily create their own
suites of tools for special situations.

Conclusion
Verifi3D is pretty fast. In most cases,
doing a whole building took about a sec-
ond or two. For ease of identifying the
results, while all tests could be run at
once, it’s better to do each in turn and get
grouped results, than fill the whole
model with red and green areas covering
multiple test results.
3 4
Unlike many other applications we
have seen, Verifi3D has evolved over the
last three years and it’s been an interest-
ing experience to see how developers
have to cope with the moving targets of
API development, technology, user feed-
back and big customer’s requests. It’s a
tribute to Xinaps that the product has
kept developing and held its focus on 5 6
offering really easy to use quality check-
ing for BIM models. Now it resides in
the cloud, it gets the benefit of omnipres-
ence for collaborative model and perfor-
mance sharing, without the need for
expensive model checking software of
BIM seat licences.
Pricing is still being worked on but
there will be a basic monthly fee, with a 1 Egress simulation
charge for storage, and discounts for 2 Checking for door clashes
company-wide subscriptions. The soft- 3 Sprinklers and fire hose reach
ware is currently in beta and we expect to 4 Headroom clearance on stairs
hear final pricing in the new year. 5 6 Checking for door clearance in a WC
■ xinaps.com/verifi3d (red = fail, green = pass)

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 55

p53_55_AEC_NOVDEC18_Xinaps.indd 55 21/11/2018 15:23

 Nov2018-AECadhalfpage-final-highquality.pdf 1 20/11/2018 14:25:28

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p56_AEC_NOVDEC18_Ads.indd 1 22/11/2018 16:37

 Opinion

Smart City innovators

In the second of a series of three articles, Rebecca De Cicco details the importance
of supporting innovative companies in developing technologies for smart cities

N
ew technologies are increas- could have an immediate impact on citi- oped and manufactured a fully autono-
ingly dominating and chang- zens. Take, for instance, the development mous POD that can run on private roads/
ing how we live. Our love for of applications for smart metering for cycle paths. It also produces the GTM vehi-
technology has seen compa- parking and utility management which cle (M1 vehicle), and (in conjunction with
nies like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and all need the willingness of the authority Johnstons Sweepers) makes an autono-
Facebook become the largest on the plan- for successful implementation. mous road sweeper that can detect foreign
et. Behemoths like Alphabet (Google’s objects. The company also enables platoon-
parent company) are looking to Smart Smart City technology companies ing of vehicles (a virtual train) to reduce
City technologies with, for example, its The use of BIM within infrastructure has congestion and supports trials, deploy-
Sidewalk Labs venture that aims to a significant bearing on Smart Cities, and ment and safety-case work with their team.
improve urban life. But while these as I mentioned in my previous article, Looking to ‘smart’ parking, the app
giants are servicing many of our desires, when BIM is utilised fully, ‘smart’ infor- from JustPark aims to make parking easi-
it’s the smaller tech companies that are mation could be translated to an asset er by enabling over 1.5 million drivers to
developing the tools to create and drive owner or city and reused downstream. find parking in seconds – with real-time
the Smart City. Ensuring these systems are connected to and predictive information on availability,
With so many developments and ideas other Smart City applications will offer restrictions and price. Drivers reserve and
on the radar like sensor technologies and the data required for future infrastruc- pay for a guaranteed space via the compa-
autonomous electric vehicles, it is the ture, planning and maintenance. ny’s apps helping property owners to
SMEs that have the ability to bring these As a small technology-based SME our manage their parking assets more effec-
ideas to market. The challenge, however, focus is not only on BIM and its technolo- tively – from office car parks to on-street
lies in supporting their businesses finan- gies for the built environment, rather bays, multi-storeys to private driveways.
cially and testing the offering insight to Grid Smarter Cities has an ecosystem
concepts. government and of solutions to connect communities and
Programmes such About the author institutional bodies people with transport, parking, goods
as Innovate UK and Rebecca De
on what the future and services. The company is involved in
the Future Cities Cicco is the of a city landscape telematics, disability access, virtual kerb-
Catapult are there to director and will be to develop side management, skip distribution and
support these inno- founder of policies and princi- waste management solutions. In its own
vative companies to Digital Node, a ples around it. We words, Grid envisages the city of the near
BIM-based con-
create the solutions focus on helping future as “digital, connected and conveni-
sultancy work-
to our urban chal- ing with clients
these policymakers ent”, aiming to revolutionise urban
lenges. By providing all over the understand that our mobility while reducing pollution.
support through world to educate, manage and support the current working The technologies supporting the smart
demonstrator pro- implementation of a clearly defined pro- methods just won’t city agenda will continue to evolve. We
grammes, grant cess, underpinned by technology. cut it in the future will see an explosion in the coming years
funding competi- and the time to start of a multitude of start-ups, which will
tions, network-build- planning is now shape how we use, grow and navigate our
ing activities, strategy, and Future Cities before we run the risk of running behind. cities. Future generations will not accept
Missions, SMEs can seize improved Cities across the world are currently analogue, and manual ways of interacting
access to knowledge and markets not just being supported by subject matter with services and objects and the way in
in the UK, but globally. experts in this field to help their strate- which this will evolve will not only be
Collaboration is a crucial part of the gies and make recommendations toward inclusive of the more forward-thinking
aim to grow UK companies and by pro- the services we’ll need to procure, test cities, but commonplace in the majority of
viding them with the environments to and review prior to implementing policy. our developed cities around the world.
test prototypes in real urban settings Digital Node was one of several SMEs The small, agile SME will take its place
along with the networks of leading aca- that travelled to Melbourne for the Future as an authority. These small companies,
demics, designers and architects, SMEs Cities Mission to Australia. We were for- fuelled by innovative and generally
in the UK could prove to develop the tunate to be exposed to many companies Generation X employees, will govern and
foundations for our Smart Cities across that are selling services to the market in drive the industry to challenge itself,
the world. Collaboration should also Australia, and all of whom are leading the while the technologies that support these
include local authorities; after all, this is future city challenge in London and glob- challenges will evolve further than our
where the monitoring of a city’s infra- ally. Here is a selection. minds can imagine.
structure, services and environment Westfield Technology Group has devel- ■ digital-node.com

www.AECmag.com November / December 2018 57

p57_AEC_NOVDEC18_Smart.indd 57 21/11/2018 15:14

 Overview
Epson: back to basics
Epson’s new entry-level large format printers
put the functional first, writes Stephen Holmes
E
pson has launched two new
large format printers in an effort
to woo the AEC sector over to
the benefits of its piezo print-
head technology.
It might have been expected that the
Japanese brand would go after HP at the
top of the tree with an all-singing, all-
dancing, multi-function printer/scanner.
However, Epson seems to be modestly
aware of where its technology can make
the biggest impact – at the entry-level,
targeting price conscious archi-
tects and engineers who
simply need a fast, reliable,
large format printer for
small workgroups.
The 24-inch (A1)
SC-T3100 has the smallest
footprint of its class, and
along with the 36-inch (A0)
SC-T5100, is available as a
desktop or floor-standing model,
both utilising Epson’s excellent piezo
printhead technology.
Its accurate nozzles, fired by piezo-
elements, which apply a voltage to the
ink, rather than the more familiar ther-
mal inkjet technology, mean there are
fewer heating and cooling stresses
applied to the Epson printhead.
The latest PrecisionCore MicroTFP
model installed here is capa-
ble of firing through an A1
CAD line drawing print in
31 seconds. Plus, from a
running cost perspective,
Epson states that the print-
head will last the lifetime of the machine,
so it’s one less potentially expensive con-
sumable to worry about.
The technology also has added bene-
fits: the ink used is not the typical dye-
based, but a pigment ink.
While a four-colour set-up means
there’s no gloss or matte black for the
fancier marketing posters, it makes way
for Epson’s UltraChrome XD2 ink that is
doggedly smudge and water-resistant.
We tried our hardest to smear the fin-
est lines straight off the printer, and they
refused to budge. Additionally, this ink is
58 November / December 2018
p58_AEC_NOVDEC18_Epson.indd 58
fade resistant – so for archiving or for
plans pinned up for long periods in
design offices, damp site cabins, or on
outside boards these have huge benefits.
The inks are slightly more expensive
than typical dye-based alternatives, but
this cost is generally offset by not having
to regularly replace the printhead, and
the results are accurate and the colours
bold and realistic.
Both printers seem happy sitting
somewhat discreetly on any large
desk, while the purpose-built stands and
the overall office installation can easily
be done by the user and is much simpler
than putting together an average IKEA
bookcase.
Users can print from CAD or PDF in a
variety of ways - over USB, Ethernet or
WiFi. Apple AirPrint is also supported
for easy printing from iOS devices. When
a WiFi network isn’t available or only
exists in the form of a closed corporate
network, users can connect directly to
the printer using Wi-Fi Direct.
It’s also possible to print directly from
a USB flash drive or other storage device
using the in-built touchscreen, which
although quite small by today’s stand-
ards is a clear and easy way to navigate
without instruction.
Both machines have relatively modest
capacity ink cartridges for their size (up
to 50ml colour and 80ml black) and
accommodate a variety of media - rolls
up to 24- and 36-inches and up to 50
sheets of A4 and A3 paper
through the auto sheet feeder
with autoswitch, as well as
cut-sheet papers up to A1
(24”) or A0 (36”).
This variety coupled with
some rather blunt product
design mean that both the
new models are meant to be
used as workhorses, not take
up space as decorative office
furniture.
That said, these are not the
most advanced printers on
the market, and they lack the
features of competitor HP
printers, like the ability to
print remotely over the
internet.
There’s no built-in scanner
for either model, although
the printers can be connect-
ed to third party document
scanners, and offer auto
enlarge controls via their
touchscreen controls.
Both models are marketed
as being designed for users ‘looking for a
compact plotter that fits neatly in their
workspace’, and they are certainly that.
For any AEC firm needing simple print-
ing capabilities, especially for CAD draw-
ings and renders that are likely to be
exposed to the outside elements or used
for archiving, then these will hardly break
the bank while offering great detail prints.
The SC-T3100 retails at £875 and the
SC-T5100 retails at £1,295.
■ epson.com
www.AECmag.com
21/11/2018 14:56
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