Beyond Design: the Construction and BIM blog

AEC Excellence Awards Winners Embrace the Future of Making Things

This year, Autodesk University in Las Vegas brought us the first ever AEC Excellence Awards, showcasing project success stories across the industries to help customers celebrate and promote their achievements.

With 162 submissions from 29 countries, a very compelling competition was formed around state-of-the-art projects that are embracing the future of making things for AEC and civil infrastructure by utilising BIM technology.  With the highest number of submissions from Chinese projects, we also had a great showing from the USA and India. After a tough evaluation process by our panel of experts, Mortenson, BIAD and Rambøll Sweco ANS were awarded 1st Place Awards for Construction, Building and Infrastructure respectively. Tianjin Architecture Design Institute (TADI) and Nina Maritz Architects were also honoured as winners in the philanthropic categories.

Mortenson received top honours in the construction category with U.S. Bank Stadium project, home of the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings. They teamed up with HKS Architects for creating this architectural wonder which utilized BIM technology from design through final construction.

BIAD (Beijing Institute of Architecture Design) captured first place in the Building category for one of the most visually astounding new buildings in Beijing, the Phoenix International Media Center, inspired by the endlessly curving form of a Möbius strip. To bring this striking design into existence, BIAD worked exclusively with BIM tools and used paperless processes, making this project among the first in China to rely solely on BIM.

The Phoenix International Media Center by BIAD - Image Courtesy of BIAD

There are many more winners in additional categories including design and fabrication, communication and collaboration, computational design, and small and large building construction projects. HFB is one of these celebrated winners. 

With their work on Project Summertime in Amsterdam, HFB was awarded 1st Place in the featured Small Building Construction Collaboration category. HFB partnered with BAM to construct this project which will be one of the city’s architectural landmarks. With its irregular façade with very little design repetition, Project Summertime includes 197 apartments that at times, seemed challenging to build. HFB utilized BIM technology by using 3D Models in their design phase and since then, they continue to count on BIM as their main tool during every phase of the project lifecycle. 

Project Summertime by HFB - Image Courtesy of HFB

For more information about all of the winners of this year’s AEC Excellence Awards, check out how you can achieve construction success with BIM technology. 

 

Rendering for Construction, how to improve Health and Safety

You only need to do fancy renderings to win bids right? Show off to the client how their shiny new project is going to look?

A common misconception about rendering is that it's a way to get a computer generated model as close to the real thing as possible, and it takes a really long time, so therefore it's only for the most important people, the clients. Well it can do, I know several releases of Navisworks ago our standard advice for getting a high quality render out was set it up then go home for the night, and hope for the best that it would all be ready in the morning and you wouldn't run out of memory or find your hardware blue screened on you.

Now I know a few of you are nodding your head at this and many of you have probably already started to embrace A360 Cloud Rendering, a way to send your model to us, get on with other work, then receive a link to a nice shiny render in your email. Once you have done a render it's pretty easy to change settings and re-render it bigger or a different type of render such as a panorama, and even easier to download it or share it with your company or the wider world. You can also send up to cloud rendering directly from within AutoCAD, Revit, Navisworks, Fusion 360 and 3DS Max or upload AutoCAD and Fusion 360 files to the Rendering in A360 website.

So what has all this got to do with Health and Safety? Well one of the biggest challenges with implementing a health and safety policy is ensuring everyone understands what is being asked of them, this could be due to terminology, interpretation of documents, or simple language barriers as we see on projects around the world. Visual communication is essential to getting a point across, so using renderings, visualisations and anything to back up potential dangers or ensure that workers understand their restrictions before they go on site is something that should be embraced.

In the example below we have a model that includes a terrain and site plan from Infraworks exported as an FBX, alongside a bridge created with Civil 3D, Revit and Dynamo, all imported into Navisworks. Then I simply moved to the cabin of the crane and press Render in Cloud, you can then decide to export still images, panoramas or stereo panoramas (for use with Oculus Rift and Google Cardboard). This can be a much easier way to get the site team to understand what they need to do or what the site may look like than using 2D drawings or upskilling them in navigating 3D models.

Have a look at the Building and Infrastructure examples in the A360 Gallery

So give it a try today and let us know how you get on, why not share your construction projects in the comments?

Autodesk University 2016 – just around the corner

I can't believe #AU2016 is just around the corner! Partly because it's a couple of weeks earlier, partly just because construction at Autodesk has exploded this year and we haven't had much time to stop! To give you an idea of how important construction is to us here, here's a summary of just some of the events this year: -

Firstly, make sure you attend the Construction Launchpad (Tuesday 8:00 a.m.- 9:30 a.m). If you want to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry, this is your session. You'll hear from some of the industry's brightest stars as your peers showcase their iconic projects. And you'll get a glimpse of the next big thing for construction, and learn about how last year's "big things" have evolved. Key topics will focus on how technology can help reduce risk and improve safety on the job site, regardless of your company's size.

Julie from this blog is hosting the first Autodesk Women in Construction reception (Tuesday 4.30pm – 6.30pm), there's still a little space if you hurry. The exhibit hall will again be a focus area and you can look forward to seeing the 'Construction Site of the Future' in a way you've never experienced it at AU before! If you arrive early and are interested in MEP or Structural fabrication you can still register for the Fabricator's Forum on the Monday back on the registration page.

And make sure you're ready for this joint Leica and Autodesk announcement, so mysterious and secret that even I don't know what it is!

This year we have over 80 construction focussed sessions at AU and another 40 with a construction connection, that's compared to just short of 60 last year! This year I have three classes at Autodesk University, I would strongly advise anyone thinking about a similar feat for next year, don't!! Anyway both my beginners and advanced Navisworks classes, CS21178-L - Introduction to Navisworks (Tuesday 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM) and CS21184 - Beyond Design—Advanced Navisworks Workflows for Your Project (Wednesday 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM) are full, however add them to your favourites and keep an eye on the app, sometimes spaces become available nearer the time as people make their last minute selections. Alternatively, you can head to the room and cross your fingers that there's space in the back of the room. For those of you that use Navisworks day in day out, I'm looking forward to seeing you in the 'Beyond Design' Class and I hope you bring some of your top tips along too, we'll give you a chance to share them!

My third class, CS21174 - What Is the U.K. BIM Mandate—and How Might It Affect You, Wherever You Are? (Thursday 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM) has space which took me a bit by surprise with the increase in standards and mandates across the world. Although I think a few people were put off by the idea of a class after the big Party at the Promenade the night before. Well this is a great chance to learn more about how you might be impacted by the UK way of doing things even if you live on the other side of the world, well worth powering through that hangover!

Other classes I'll recommend, my teammate Dieter Vermeulen has a great class on Dynamo for Construction, a screenshot below showing how new technologies are supporting construction processes like crane placement. Fellow 'Beyond Designers' Lejla and Julien (in the picture above) are talking about Infraworks in Architecture, MEP design to fabrication (Fabricators Forum) and scanning and layout workflows respectively. Leica and Topcon will both be presenting how their hardware is supporting scanning and layout workflows

And to finish on my top tips every year

• Eye Drops
• Lip Balm
• Headache tablets
• Go for a run
• Read Shaan Hurley's Survival tips (essential!)
• Bring your crazy socks!

And as always, feel free to say hi to any of us at Autodesk, make new friends and try to learn something outside of your day to day work and break a comfort zone!

See you in Vegas!

Dynamo for Construction

Dynamo is a visual way of doing complex tasks, it has been around for a couple of years now and it is certainly better known for geometry manipulation and form finding processes -

did you know that it can be of great help also in the construction as well?

Dynamo is an open source visual programming platform supported by Autodesk and available as a free Revit plugin. Dynamo is shipped along with Revit since version 2016 R2, but you can always download the latest version from dynamobim.org as well, where you will also find a plenty of tutorials, videos as well as a user forum.

Basically, Dynamo provides a direct access to the Revit programming interface for non-programmers among us. It is based on a library containing pre-scripted elements  which can be connected together visually in order to accomplish a certain task.

Collision management is one of the main benefits for the construction industry to move from 2D to 3D and BIM, and Navisworks offers some very powerful tools for tracking and managing these, which is surely nothing new for you. Dynamo can help you to create a very smooth workflow between Navisworks and Revit, as you can see in the following video:

This is a great use case that demonstrates the real power of Dynamo by giving you the full access to the Revit API without the need for programming skills. You can download the datasets used in the video above here.

In the future posts we will discuss collision management and other usecases for the Dynamo in the construction process in more detail.

If you are attending the AU Las Vegas in 2 weeks, make sure to attend CS21553 - Construction Dynam(o)ite—Explode Productivity with Dynamo (Nov. 16, 1:00-2:30 PM) by our colleague Dieter Vermeulen.  There is a more detailed workflow about the clash management with Dynamo on his Youtube Channel.

Class description:

The step from detailed design to construction in a Building Information Modeling (BIM)-enabled workflow is a challenge for many design offices and construction companies. In many situations, designs need to be changed after contractors have reviewed the models on constructability. In this class, you will discover how you can involve computational design in this process. You will learn how to use the Dynamo extension to automate all kinds of custom tasks in Revit software to make your design constructible. You will get inspired by the wide range of possibilities the Dynamo extension offers to create your own model check and to automate the creation of construction elements.This session features Revit, Dynamo Studio and Navisworks Manage

By the way, this year there will be 50(!) Dynamo sessions at the AU – which shows that this topic is getting more and more important for all areas.