This review looks at capabilities of SKYSITE, a cloud-based drawing management and distribution application specifically for the construction industry that was recently launched by the leading reprographics company, ARC Document Solutions. It also explores the larger question of whether a solution like SKYSITE, which is entirely focused on the document management piece of project management, even stands a chance of being successfully adopted by construction firms, given the plethora of established and more comprehensive project management and collaboration solutions in the AEC industry.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2015/Skysite.html

This review explore the features and functionality of the cloud-based collaboration solution, Aconex, which has grown steadily from a fledgling company in Australia, founded 15 years ago, to a company that recently went public and is used to manage several large-scale construction and engineering projects across the globe. It looks at the factors that contribute to its growing adoption and success, particularly when so many other collaboration solutions—especially in the AEC dotcom days—failed even to survive, let alone gain traction. It also explores the difference between project-wide and firm-wide collaboration solutions—which has not been well understood so far—and looks at the “Connected BIM” module of the application, which allows all the members of the extended design team to work with the project BIM models—using only a web browser—to identity and resolve issues as well as enhance the models with asset information for handover.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2015/Aconex.html

Originally the product of a startup company, SketchUp was acquired by Google in 2006 and subsequently changed hands once again in 2012 when it was acquired by Trimble, where it joins other AEC-specific products including Tekla and Vico that are also now part of Trimble. This review explores the key new features in SketchUp Pro 2014, the paid professional version of SketchUp, and, in particular, the increasing AEC-specific and BIM-related capabilities that are being added to it under the Trimble umbrella.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2014/SketchUpPro2014.html

This product review takes a detailed look at the new version of Graphisoft’s popular BIM application, ArchiCAD, which features dramatically improved built-in visualization with a brand new rendering engine, CineRender from Maxon. It also looks the additional improvements for modeling, documentation, collaboration, and interoperability in ArchiCAD 18, including multi-element editing, automated revision management, improved handling of PDF files, expanded IFC capabilities for better interoperability, and full BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) support.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2014/ArchiCAD18.html

This review takes a comprehensive look at GRAPHISOFT’s new BIMx Docs app, which includes the sophisticated and intuitive 3D model navigation capabilities of its predecessor, BIMx, and extends the scope of the viewing and navigation to 2D content as well, enabling all the models as well as the accompanying 2D drawings of a BIM project to be accessed and explored from a handheld device.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2014/BIMxDocs.html

This review takes an indepth look at the new version of Revit, the key product in the 2014 Autodesk Building Design Suite, to see what additional BIM capabilities it can provide to AEC professionals across all the three design disciplines it targets: architecture, structure, and MEP. These include several improvements made to the core Revit platform for enhancing user productivity and efficiency including displaced views and the ability to apply temporary views to a display, improved modeling and editing of stairs and railings, several structural and MEP BIM improvements including better visibility and greater control over the structural analytical model and the ability to divide MEP systems to make them easier to work with, and a new engine for point clouds that makes them faster to work with and provides greater control on their appearance.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2013/Revit2014.html

This review explores in detail Newforma’s new Model Viewer for viewing and navigating model files published from Revit in Newforma Project Center. It is part of the Newforma Building Information Management module, and is a dramatic development for Newforma Project Center, integrating it with Revit much more closely than in previous versions. It adds a toolbar to the Revit ribbon that allows Revit files to be easily published to the Viewer, and is closely integrated with Newforma Project Center as well as Newforma Info Exchange, allowing the extended project team to link the relevant model views to action items, change orders, RFIs, etc .

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2013/NewformaModelViewer.html

This review explores the latest release of ArchiCAD, version 17, from Graphisoft, whose key enhancements are the ability to automatically clean up junctions between construction elements in the entire model based on the intersection priority value specified for different building materials; real-time 3D cutaways that can be created by multiple cutting planes, providing very specific interior views of the model; background processing support for faster generation of complex model details; the ability to link vertical building elements to a specific story, allowing them to be automatically adjusted when the story height is changed; expanded IFC support; and several additional productivity enhancements.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2013/ArchiCAD17.html