This article discusses the main AEC-specific technology updates that were shared at the recent Autodesk University, including:
Integration of construction applications into a new Autodesk Connected Cloud
Expanded integration of Revit and Civil 3D with ArcGIS online
Launch of Project Refinery as a public beta for generative design
Integrating Revit with IoT in BIM 360 Ops to create “smart spaces”
It also provides a brief overview of some of the third-party products that were exhibited at the event, including IdeateApps, ElumTools, The Wild, and Newforma.
Layer is a new AEC application that was launched close to six months ago to address what seems to be an obvious need in the industry—organizing and integrating the vast amount of disparate data that is typically collected on site during the retrofit or construction of a building project.
You would think that with all the applications we have for BIM, design coordination, model checking, project information management, construction management, document management, and project collaboration, there would be an application that could be used to easily connect notes, images, videos, task lists, etc., to their related building element. Surprisingly, there wasn’t, as the architectural firm, BVH Architecture, discovered while working on a multi-year, multi-phase rehabilitation project of the Nebraska State Capitol, which required the team to document more than 1,300 rooms with nearly 60 data points in each room. They looked hard but could not find a good solution for organizing and coordinating the vast amount of building data that they had collected—the number of photos alone was over 40,000. There was also no way to view the captured data efficiently in Revit, the BIM application they were using. They ended up developing a software solution in-house and, given that the need for such a solution was so compelling but still unmet in the marketplace, they spun it off as a separate company, Layer.
Bentley’s signature annual event, The Year in Infrastructure (YII) conference, was held a few weeks ago in Singapore. While I did not attend the event in person this year, the main updates from the event can be distilled from the comprehensive resources about it that Bentley has made available online, including technology and business keynotes from Bentley executives and guest speakers, press releases, product briefings, and project summaries of all the finalists and winners from Bentley’s annual YII awards competition. This article presents a summary of the key technology updates, followed by some additional details about what was shared.
The “Beehive Bridge” is a 265-foot-long highway overpass in the city of New Britain, Connecticut, connecting the two parts of the city that are divided by a highway. Svigals + Partner created a design scheme for a pedestrian-friendly streetscape with an abstract take on the “beehive” theme that has long been associated with New Britain—it features colorful translucent panels in an abstract honeycomb pattern that separate the overpass visually from the highway below
In this profile, Svigals + Partners describes the implementation of AEC technology on this project.
This review explores the new features for improved modeling, coordination, productivity, and performance in ARCHICAD 23, including revamped Beam and Column tools that makes these elements faster to model and fine-tune for all types of structures, a new Opening tool for modeling mechanical voids to improve coordination between architects and engineers, and an initiative to open up the application to more custom development by significantly expanding its APIs.
Since the explosion of professional GIS products in the mid
90s, ArcGIS by Esri has seen a steady rise. The company began in the 1960s as a
land use consulting firm and now enjoys the largest share of the GIS market.
Notably, the use of ArcGIS in educational settings has been steadily climbing, especially
in fields like environmental sciences and history. In the past few years, there
has also been a call for architects to further embrace the possibilities of
ArcGIS, and especially to begin incorporating it into architecture classrooms.
After all, GIS is useful for analyzing any project with a spatial component,
making architectural projects a natural fit.
This article describes the use of the online version of ArcGIS for a historical research project exploring the spatial component to revolution in the city of Paris, and how the memory of political conflict helps to inspire and initiate similar actions in new generations.
As the adoption of BIM continues to grow in the AEC industry, slowing but surely phasing out CAD, the importance of applications that can check BIM models for quality assurance and control also increases. Earlier this summer, Solibri, the leading model-checking application, dramatically extended its scope and reach by introducing four different versions of its product, bringing its powerful model-checking, quality control, and quality assurance capabilities to different types of users across the AEC spectrum.
Jewel Changi Airport is a
new, 1.4 million-square-foot mixed-use hub and lifestyle destination at
Singapore’s Changi Airport, one of the world’s busiest aviation facilities. The
project opened this spring and has drawn acclaim for its unique design,
highlighted by the world’s tallest indoor waterfall and a translucent,
ovoid-shaped gridshell roof spanning 650 feet (200 meters) across. The building
combines retail, restaurants, a hotel, and expansive indoor garden and
leisure facilities, all publicly accessible and linked to airport
terminals and Singapore’s public transit.
Cristobal Correa, Principal of Structures at BuroHappold, who is the project director of Jewel Changi Airport describes the implementation of AEC technology on this project.
In this article, Michael Tobias, founder and principal of New York Engineers, lists the many benefits of BIM for MEP engineers in addition to the primary advantages of saving time and money, reducing errors, improving productivity and quality, and being able to work as a key part of a multi-disciplinary team.
The pace of innovation is continuing to ramp up in the AEC Technology industry, as evidenced by this annual collection of updates, which go all the way from design to construction, not just of buildings but of larger neighborhoods as well as infrastructure. There are updates related to BIM from Ideate, Xinaps, and IMSI Design; developments in laser scanning from Paracosm and Pointfuse; preconstruction and construction updates from Join and Autodesk; a move to apply sustainability principles to larger communities in addition to individual buildings from IES; the start of integrating GIS with BIM from ArcGIS; and the expansion of Transoft’s transportation engineering portfolio with a key acquisition, Keysoft. There is also a simple but important productivity tool launched by 28Hands, a spin-off from Arup.
