Beyond Design is your one-stop blog for the construction industry, BIM & technology. Stay ahead on the latest industry trends, receive tips & tricks and receive updates on what is happening with Autodesk construction workflows. From preconstruction to field management, Beyond Design has you covered.
It's always better when someone else tells your story for you right? Well recently BAM Construction UK shared how they worked with the team at Autodesk to do just that. Their story tells how they used Navisworks Quantification as part of their BIM workflows to make things better, so we thought it would be good to share that with you here.
"Reporting quantities using Navisworks means there are no surprises. And no surprises translates into more cost certainty and reduced risk for our client."
Mark Taylor, Digital Construction Manager at BAM Construction UK, tells us how they quickly develop cost plans and eliminate the need for external estimating parties using Navisworks.
After BAM started using Navisworks in 2012, they quickly realised how to collaborate more efficiently with clients, helping manage costs in a more productive and proactive manner. One of BAM's first uses of Navisworks for quantification was for the construction of a new school building for Royds Hall Community School in Huddersfield. The £6M project provides space for an additional 420 primary school children in West Yorkshire, England. BAM was responsible for both the design and construction of the building, using BIM (including Revit) for its design in combination with Navisworks for quantification, project coordination, clash detection, and construction planning. This collaboration allowed the team to react very quickly to their client's needs. As revisions and change orders could be quickly incorporated into the design model, the combination created "a win-win situation all around.
BAM Construct UK is a leading construction and property company in the U.K., providing a range of services including design, services engineering, construction, facilities management, and property development. For more about BAM, visit their website to learn about how to create and maintain better buildings.
It's been 25 years this summer since I was first turned on to the idea of Virtual Reality (VR) as the "holy grail" of design visualization in architecture, thumbing through inspirational musings and essays published in magazines like Cadence and Cadalyst (yes, they were printed on real paper in 1991!). Indeed, VR took hold of many an imagination about that time, as popular media glimpsed into bleeding-edge work by pioneers in research labs like MIT's Media Lab and the Human Interface Technology Lab ("HIT Lab") at the University of Washington. Sadly, VR failed to live up to the hype as it rarely breached the Ivory Tower and into common industry use, and interest in VR largely waned after the 90's like so many Beanie Babies.
That's not to say there weren't valiant attempts to embrace VR in architecture and construction: for decades, VR has captured the imagination of creative professionals seeking the ultimate experience for design and creation. Unfortunately, those visionaries were saddled with limitations like prohibitively expensive technology, strained workflows for content development, clunky interfaces, an infantile internet, and the lack of clear business cases – keeping a lid on any industry enthusiasm for VR for far too long.
Until now. Or, more precisely, until about two years ago, when practically out of nowhere, Virtual Reality – and the hype that comes with it – came storming back into popular view. This time, fueled by a ubiquitous internet, wifi, and mobile/wearable devices with cheap GPUs, VR (and it's cousin, Augmented Reality) caught the attention of Facebook, Google, Samsung, and practically every other big name in computing media. And this time around, architects and contractors are not immune to the visions that VR inspires. We have amassed untold amounts VR-ready content with Building Information Models (BIM), bolstered by a widespread industry ecosystem of BIM tools, processes, and culture.
Indeed, VR can be thought of as a natural extension or evolution of BIM: immersing designers, creators, and their customers into an environment as the ultimate medium for conveying a concept as spatial experience. While BIM and other media can represent the characteristics of a space, VR can convey the experience of a place. To paraphrase Michael Abrash of Oculus, the immersion, interaction, and intuitive interfaces offered by VR will ultimately require participants to suspend belief, reminding themselves that they are not, in fact, experiencing reality.
With traditional BIM tools, users are on the outside, looking in to a scaled representation of a space. With VR tools, participants are immersed in a full-scale experience of a place.
So VR is back, and promising that it has changed, and really means it this time. But, will VR last? Maybe so, at least in B2B and professionally, if not for consumers. This time around, the tools are better, the processes and workflows are in place, and popular culture has never seemed more ready to accept wearing computing devices and displays (That said, with apologies to Mark Zuckerberg, grandmothers on Facebook may not be willing to strap a phone on their face to interact with their grandchildren for another 25 years). And with the one-button export from Revit BIM content to VR experience enabled by Autodesk LIVE and Autodesk Stingray, the barrier of entry low enough that every architect, engineer, contractor, and owner can harness the power of VR as easily as they can watch a YouTube video.
The use cases are there for VR as well. No doubt, VR can differentiate you from your competition today. VR can accelerate your design process. VR can inspire confidence in your vision. VR can help communicate your plan. VR can help train your labor force. VR can help you understand what you are buying.
But more importantly than a disappearing technology threshold and interesting use cases; are the business cases there to justify an investment in VR tools and processes? I think so. The use cases, combined with the democratization of the VR technology, alters the equation for business justification and should offer a meaningful return on investment. Professionals in the AEC industry face sufficient pain trying to accelerate design thinking, communicate design ideas, and inspire confidence and comprehension in design and preconstruction visualization. There seems to be just enough disjoint between AEC professionals and visualization specialists, just enough disconnect between documentation-friendly BIM and real-time rendering, just enough disillusionment by owners who expect to experience their projects in order to understand them, just enough dissatisfaction to train craft labor in the field to operate safely and flawlessly, to explore and invest in VR for real this time.
As an industry of professionals specializing in the design and construction of a physical, spatial environment, we are uniquely suited to master this new(ish) virtual, spatial environment. VR and AEC go together like hand-in-Data-Glove. What are you waiting for?
Today we launch Industry Collections, it's a new way of thinking about how to access software and is a perfect fit for construction. Based on a term license they allow you to easily scale up and down during the course of a construction project and include contingent employees in software planning.
So what does the new AEC Collection include? And what advantages do each of these offerings bring to my construction project?
AutoCAD, verticals, and AutoCAD 360 Pro – As a common platform used throughout the industry, this suite of AutoCAD products allows you to access and create documentation and share detailing with all partners on the project team
Revit – The leading BIM tool to create construction parts, access schedules and convert designs to fabrication parts for coordination
AutoCAD Civil 3D – The best tool for road, rail and earthworks detailing, cut and fills, landscaping and getting to machine control
Navisworks Manage – Create federated models from over 50 file formats and run Clash Detection, Construction Simulation, Quantification, Design Review and Rendering
Vehicle Tracking – For analysing site movements in advance and ensuring trucks, cranes and large vehicles can move around site
3DS Max – For those high end visualisations to help with winning planning, buy in from stakeholders, or winning tender bids
Formit 360 Pro – A conceptual design tool for buildings that links to Revit that allows you to create site layouts on the PC or mobile device
Infraworks 360 – A conceptual design tool for infrastructure that links to Civil 3D that allows you to create construction site layouts, traffic simulations and visualisations
Insight 360 – Run sustainability analysis and verify that any significant changes in materials you make won't affect the end result
Recap 360 Pro – Use reality capture laser scanning and photogrammetry to better understand existing conditions and verify as built conditions
Rendering in A360 – Create quick and easy high quality renders and panoramas from Revit and Navisworks
Structural Analysis – Do easy structural analysis to help with foundation design decisions
Online Storage – As we work in an 'always connected' world, being able to access models, drawings from office or site
So with an AEC Collection, does my team have everything we need?
Not included in the package but worth considering for construction needs are:
BIM 360 – A full suite of products built around the needs of a contractor, covering cloud enabled coordination, 3D layout, quality checks, safety programs, commissioning and production planning
Point Layout – To get coordinate information to total stations seamlessly from the design and review packages and bring back for as built analysis to speed up and reduce rework
Stingray – To 'gamify' 3D construction project data to improve understanding and health and safety on site
Want to know more? Read this FAQ and contact your reseller for more information about Industry Collections, how to get hold of them, and introduce new workflows to your firm.
Support Forums