The Momentary: Project Profile

Wheeler Kearns Architects (WKA) describes the implementation of AEC technology on its “The Momentary” project, a new art space satellite to Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.

WKA employed technologies that would help us to maintain a presence on site virtually, allowing a higher precision of coordination for existing building elements as they related to new work. The workflow of “laser scanning > BIM modeling of existing > selective demo coordination > Photoscanning > iterative design modeling in BIM > selective performance modeling > construction informed by BIM > remote CA presence” enabled efficient responses to a complex series of conditions from a distance.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/profile/2020/ProjectProfile-TheMomentary.html

Merging Digital Transformation with Information Management in AEC

This article by Nick Nieder of Deltek discusses how AEC businesses can make the necessary operational changes required to adapt to the current changing conditions and stay profitable by merging digital transformation with information management. When done right, this can help businesses navigate the pandemic, empower project teams to work more efficiently, and help them identify key trends that inform decision making.

URL: http://aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2020/issue_93.html

GRAPHISOFT 2020 Product Updates

GRAPHISOFT unveiled the latest versions of its products at a virtual “Building Together” event held last week, including its flagship BIM application, ARCHICAD; its cloud collaboration solution, BIMcloud; and its mobile and web model viewing app, BIMx. Additionally, the event featured several presentations by customers using GRAPHISOFT’s solutions, most notably, the Australian firm, Fender Katsalidis, which used ARCHICAD to design Merdeka 118, a 118-storey skyscraper—the tallest building as of May 2020—currently under construction in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. We also learnt more about Nemetschek’s vision of integrated multi-disciplinary building design connecting ARCHICAD with two other products in its portfolio, SCIA and RISA, using OpenBIM.

This article summarizes the key product updates that were shared by GRAPHISOFT at the event.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2020/issue_104.html

Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel: Firm Profile

Antonio Citterio Patricia Viel, an International architecture and cross-disciplinary design firm headquartered in Milan, Italy, shares its perspective on AEC technology in this Firm Profile.

There is a shift from the traditional design to a data driven design. There will be a moment in the future when we will no longer be sharing models but data. We can already collect data from our past projects – we can learn lessons now by extracting information from our models while, not long ago, we learned these lessons by looking at drawings.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/profile/2020/FirmProfile-ACPV.html

FINE MEP: BIM for MEP Engineering

FINE MEP is a complete set of BIM applications for MEP design. It is part of 4M’s multi-disciplinary BIM suite, which also includes IDEA for architectural design and FineGREEN for sustainable design and analysis. The objective of 4M, which was started in 1986 and is headquartered in Greece, continues to be to provide the design and engineering community with powerful yet low-cost applications, as with IDEA for architectural design, which I reviewed last year.

4M’s applications were initially built on top of the open-source IntelliCAD format, the low-cost alternative to AutoCAD that is compatible with the DWG file format. 4M is now also using the ODA (Open Design Alliance) Drawing Toolkit, and this, along with a 64bit architecture, has made its applications faster and more powerful. Even with these changes, their cost remains a fraction of BIM applications such as Autodesk Revit and Bentley OpenDesigner, making 4M’s applications extremely popular in many countries all over the world where cost is a key deciding factor.

Continue Reading: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2020/FINE-FIRE.html

IES Intelligent Communities Lifecycle (ICL)

The ICL is a relatively new technology platform for developing sustainable communities that was launched by the leading performance analysis solutions vendor, IES, last year. Up until now, IES has been best known for its powerful IESVE suite of solutions focused on the in-depth performance analysis of individual buildings, allowing new buildings as well as retrofits to be designed to consume significantly less energy without sacrificing occupant comfort. With the ICL, short for “Intelligent Communities Lifecycle,” IES has expanded its expertise to larger groups of buildings such as campuses and neighborhoods. The idea is the same—to apply sustainable design concepts—but now to entire communities and not just individual buildings.

This review explores the individual components of the ICL for modeling, monitoring, and analysis, and how they can be integrated into a digital twin into a digital twin for sustainable design.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2020/IES-ICL.html

AEC (Technology) in the Time of Coronavirus

In the wake of the current coronavirus pandemic, it has been difficult to find something meaningful and relevant to write about in the area of AEC technology, the focus area of AECbytes. The best I have been able to come up with is to highlight the impact of the crisis on the AEC industry so far and the response to it from AEC technology. A pandemic like this also behooves us to look into the future and ask how this might change—if at all—the nature of our industry in terms of what gets built, how it will be designed and constructed, and the technology that will be required to support it.

URL: http://www.aecbytes.com/newsletter/2020/issue_103.html