This article by Chris France, former CIO of Little Diversified Architectural Consulting and President of Advance2000, follows up on his popular AECbytes’ articles on BIM and the Cloud by looking ahead to what he sees as the logical next step in AEC technology — VDC in the Cloud. Unlike BIM, which is primarily focused on design, VDC (virtual design and construction) addresses means, methods, schedules, costs, safety, logistics, inventory, manufacturing, etc. This article discusses the key business benefits of VDC in the Cloud, including Lean Construction, Agility & Mobility, Collaboration, Cost Reduction and Leveling the Playing Field.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/buildingthefuture/2013/VDC_Cloud.html

This article captures the technology highlights from the recently concluded AIA 2013 Convention and Expo, including some major developments from Autodesk, including enhancements to the conceptual design app, Formit, that was introduced at the last Autodesk University, and a new application for design scripting called Dynamo, Affinity 8 from Trelligence, form.Z 7.0 and bonzai3D 3.0 from AutoDesSys, the new IESVE for Architects from IES, the launch of Vectorworks Cloud Services, the new release of SketchUp from Trimble, and the upcoming TurboSite for Google Glass from IMSI/Design.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2013/issue_64.html

This article captures the results of a recent survey conducted by AECbytes comparing Bentley’s ProjectWise with Autodesk’s Vault Collaboration AEC for data management and collaboration in AEC. The results are shown in three categories: the first capturing the overall responses; the second showing the responses for those who selected ProjectWise as the solution implemented by their firm for data management and collaboration; and the third showing the responses for those who selected Vault Collaboration AEC. This enables a quick comparison of Bentley ProjectWise and Autodesk Vault Collaboration AEC from an implementation perspective.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/feature/2013/ProjectWise-Vault-Survey.html

This month Autodesk released its 2014 product portfolio, comprising of some new products and updated versions of its existing products across all of its “Design and Creation Suites” for the three main industries it caters to: Manufacturing, Infrastructure (including Buildings), and Media and Entertainment. This article explores the new 2014 Autodesk Building Design Suite that is targeted towards the AEC industry. It looks at key updates to existing products like Revit and Navisworks as well as new products that have introduced in the 2014 release, including AutoCAD Raster Design for vectorizing scanned drawings, and Autodesk Recap for working with point clouds.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2013/issue_63.html