Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

BUGA FIBRE PAVILION, UNIVERSITY OF STUTTGART, INSTITUTE OF COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION. IMAGE COURTESY OF KUKA GROUP
FROM BIM TO DfMA
The inevitable convergence of
AEC and manufacturing

Unreal everywhere Enscape 3.0 review Nvidia RTX A6000

Fuelling the rise of the real-time engine Real-time viz breaks free Profesional graphics on steroids

March / April 2021 >> Vol.113

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 Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

editorial

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42
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GREG CORKE
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MARTYN DAY
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STEPHEN HOLMES
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GROUP MEDIA DIRECTOR

Industry news 7 An Epic investment 42
TONY BAKSH In a period like no other in the AEC The success of Unreal Engine in the gaming
[email protected] industry, we’ve just seen a huge wave of sector continues to help fund the expansion
acquisitions. From Autodesk to Unity we of the real-time engine within AEC
ADVERTISING MANAGER
STEVE KING share our thoughts, plus lots, lots more
[email protected]
Testfit.io: optimised
U.S. SALES & MARKETING DIRECTOR Design for building modelling 48
DENISE GREAVES
[email protected] constructability 20 In CAD, the computer hardly aids the
subscriptions Are today’s design-centric BIM solutions design, but TestFit has a different take
MANAGER the right tools for digital construction / on design optimisation
ALAN CLEVELAND fabrication and is architecture the right
[email protected] discipline to take this on?
Three trends for BIM 53
accounts
What disruptive technologies will drive
CHARLOTTE TAIBI A parametric future 24 the industry’s toolsets in 2021?
[email protected]
Tal Friedman explores the rise of AI and
FINANCIAL CONTROLLER robotics and the fall of BIM
SAMANTHA TODESCATO-RUTLAND Oasys MassMotion 56
[email protected] With the ongoing pandemic, social
The drive to DfMA 28 distancing looks set to remain important
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PLM meets AEC 36 on site such as IoT and mixed reality
The role that Product Lifecycle
Management (PLM), a process that’s so
important for many manufacturing firms, Nvidia RTX A6000 62

FREE
could play in the evolving AEC industry One of the most eagerly anticipated
workstation GPUs in recent years has
arrived, and it’s been well worth the wait
Enscape 3.0 review 38
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 GET NEWS OF FUTURE
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Untitled-2 1 27/07/2020 18:27
 News

Unity acquires VisualLive to boost mixed

reality capabilities in construction
nity is expanding its
U capabilities in augmented
reality and mixed reality for
construction with the acquisition of
Arizona-based VisualLive.
The company’s AR/MR software,
which includes HoloLive for HoloLens,
will augment the capabilities of Unity’s
AEC-focused real-time 3D software,
Unity Reflect.
According to Julien Faure, GM of
verticals at Unity, the acquisition will
allow Unity to better connect the field
with the design office, bringing BIM data
via AR/MR to drive better quality
assurance and project tracking. “This will
fundamentally change how design
reviews, construction planning, field
inspections, and facilities management
are conducted,” he said.
Saeed Eslami, CEO and founder of
VisualLive added, “VisualLive has
excelled in creating a software solution
that works on multiple devices to enable
field workers to overlay CAD/BIM models
onto the jobsite in AR within a few
minutes to review the design, validate
against the existing conditions, verify
install completion, create reports, and
collaborate with the rest of the team in
real time. Together with Unity, we can
expand the platform’s capabilities and
scale globally.”
■ unity.com/unity-reflect ■ visuallive.com

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on Unity’s VisualLive acquisition

This is an interesting move AEC offering lacks the on VisualLive’s knowledge in The VisualLive software
from Unity, as it looks to construction-focused file optimisation for includes functionality for the
play catch up with functionality of its peers. HoloLens, Unity Reflect automatic placement of BIM
companies like Bentley And while we expect already has very tight models in their real-world
Systems and Trimble, who VisualLive will continue as a integration with Revit and context, plus QA/QC for
already have established product its own right for the Navisworks thanks to its construction verification,
solutions for mixed reality time being, we imagine the partnership with Autodesk. complete with tools for
in construction. longer term plan is to bolster The main value of the capturing and reporting
The Unity real-time engine the construction-focused MR acquisition will likely come on issues.
might already have built-in capabilities of Unity Reflect. from established workflows Of course, Unity will also
capabilities for mixed reality, VisualLive has plug-ins for for planning, inspection, get access to VisualLive’s
and there were plans to add Revit and Navisworks, but constructability, design/ AEC customer base, which
HoloLens support to Unity Unity is unlikely to use these review, design validation, is reported to be over
Reflect. However, Unity’s directly. While it may draw and facility management. 1,500 strong.

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 7

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 News

MSC Software partners with BIM plug-in

targets DfMA
Ingeciber to boost simulation for architecture
SC Software has partnered analysis, seismic design, geotechnics, soil- consortium of UK
M with Ingeciber on a new
software tool for advanced
structure interaction, and rock and soil
mechanic analyses. It can simulate the
A firms and universities
is working on a BIM
analysis in construction. ‘CivilFEM impact of various scenarios, including software plug-in that will
powered by Marc’ is earthquakes that affect the integrity of automatically generate Design
designed to make it structures, extreme loading, long-term for Manufacture and Assembly
easier for civil degradation and wear. (DfMA) concept designs based
engineers to apply According to MSC Software, the on key parameters from a
nonlinear Finite partnership also opens new avenues project brief, such as material
Element Analysis (FEA) for joint solution development, choice or building use.
to major infrastructure including modelling the effect The Automatic DfMA Design
projects without of wind flow on Generator (ADAGE) plug-in will
having to be a structures such as use a variety of technologies to
simulation ‘expert’. skyscrapers, achieve these goals, including
Engineers use using Cradle Internet of Things (IoT),
Ingeciber’s CivilFEM’s CFD. Blockchain, cloud computing,
interface to create the MSC artificial intelligence algorithms
analysis model then Software’s Marc is (AIA) and big data analytics.
apply MSC Software’s commonly used in ■ myadage.co.uk

Marc nonlinear solver to the automotive,

assess the feasibility, aerospace, marine,
safety and durability of naval, defence and consumer white goods
new structures and the
materials used to build them.
industries.
CivilFEM also offers an integration with
Tekla 2021
‘CivilFEM powered by Marc’ can be
used on a variety of structures including
Ansys, a simulation software which is also
popular in these sectors. CivilFEM for
structural BIM
foundations, tunnels, mines, power plants
and skyscrapers. The software covers
Ansys incorporates more than 400 civil
specific features.
tools launch
general construction, forensic structural ■ civilfem.com rimble has introduced
T 2021 versions of its
Tekla tools for
constructible BIM, structural
Archicad gets parametric object design tool engineering and steel
fabrication management. This
rchitects can now create the architect in mind. includes Tekla Structures, Tekla
A building component libraries
parametrically inside
First introduced as a technology preview
on Windows in July 2020 for Archicad 24,
Structural Designer, Tekla
Tedds and Tekla Power Fab.
Graphisoft Archicad 24 without the latest update makes PARAM-O The big news for Tekla
having to write a single line of GDL available for users on macOS as well. Structures 2021 is the
code or script. According to Graphisoft, large introduction of three subscription
With PARAM-O, a new parametric architectural practices will appreciate options: ‘Carbon’ for viewing
object design tool built into the BIM that they can develop custom, reusable, models and collaborating with
software, users can create custom objects manufacturer-specific object libraries project stakeholders; ‘Graphite’ for
and building elements using an ‘easy-to- that comply with their own offices’ design creating constructible, intelligent
use’ graphical interface developed with and documentation standards. BIM and structural
“The nodes make it so easy to work in documentation; and ‘Diamond’ for
PARAM-O,” said Peter Koncz, BIM design, detailing and fabrication.
Manager at Leroy Street Studio in New New features include
York. “Because we carefully design every simplified change management,
project down to the smallest detail, we with enhanced clash detection
need to build a lot of custom components. and cloning tools; better usability
Creating reusable parametric objects with in-product guidance; faster,
without writing code has made this more accurate modelling, with
process quick and easy for us.” drawing and object handling
PARAM-O is available in Archicad 24 improvements; and extensions
Update 3, which can be downloaded now. for various modelling tasks.
■ graphisoft.com ■ tekla.com/2021

8 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 Unreal Engine to get reality capture boost as
Epic Games acquires photogrammetry firm
nreal Engine is to get new
U reality modelling capabilities,
following the acquisition by
Epic Games of Slovakian
photogrammetry software developer,
Capturing Reality. The company’s
RealityCapture software can be used to
reconstruct objects and scenes of ‘any
size’ from images or laser scans.
By integrating the software into the
Unreal Engine ecosystem it will be easier
for developers – and AEC firms – to
upload a collection of photographs and
create photorealistic 3D models.
According to Epic Games, the software
can yield 3D scans with ‘unparalleled
accuracy and mesh quality at speeds many
times faster than competing software’.
Epic Games has stated that the
Capturing Reality team will continue to
grow and work closely with the Unreal
Engine team to make the technology
‘more accessible and affordable’.
In fact, in true Epic Games fashion,
pricing for all new and existing customers
will be immediately reduced. An
unlimited, perpetual enterprise licence is
available for $3,750 (down from €15,000)
and pay per use credits start at $10.
In addition, the company has stated that
RealityCapture will continue to be
supported outside of Unreal Engine.
■ unrealengine.com ■ capturingreality.com

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on Epic’s Capturing Reality acquisition

Unreal Engine is already variety of applications – not example, the software uses a suffer from performance
connected with CAD and just for design viz, but also for dynamic Level of Detail (LoD) issues with large data sets.
BIM models through capturing constantly system and a ‘point budget’ Of course, the big attraction
Datasmith and last year got changing site conditions or approach so users can of photogrammetry to AEC
native support for point even entire cities. With the maintain ‘steady performance firms is the cost and speed of
clouds (importing, right software partners, it levels regardless of how dense data acquisition. With the
visualising, and editing). could help smooth the path the overall point cloud is’. We RealityCapture software,
Now users will be able to for Unreal Engine to be used expect this same approach photos can be taken via
bring in 3D reality capture for emerging workflows in will apply to meshes derived drones, smart phones or from
data derived directly from AEC such as construction from photogrammetry. cameras attached to cranes,
photographs without having verification and digital twins. This will compare excavators or hard hats,
to go through third-party Unreal Engine’s ace card is favourably against handling which can make it more
software for processing. its large model performance. point clouds in BIM accessible than laser scanning
This could be useful for a With point clouds, for applications, which typically and / or SLAM.

10 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 News

Vectorworks partners with Autodesk

boosts
Epic Games for new release construction
utodesk Build, a new
A project and site
management solution
and part of Autodesk
Construction Cloud, is now
available to users globally.
Initially announced at
Autodesk University 2020,
Autodesk Build unifies features
from BIM 360 and PlanGrid. It is
designed to provide construction
teams with a ‘single solution’ for
project management, quality,
safety, cost and closeout by
connecting data, workflows and
teams in a single environment.
Autodesk Takeoff is another
ectorworks has teamed up with Vectorworks is one of the last major new cloud-based service which
V Epic Games to develop an
optimised workflow from
CAD/BIM tools to get tight integration with
Epic’s real-time viz tools. Direct link plug-
performs 2D and 3D
quantification from Autodesk’s
Vectorworks 2021 Service Pack 3 into ins for Twinmotion and Datasmith export ‘common data environment’.
Twinmotion and Unreal Engine. plug-ins for Unreal Engine have been ■ construction.autodesk.com

According to Vectorworks, its available for ArchiCAD, Revit, SketchUp

developers have utilised the Datasmith Pro and Rhino for some time.
SDK (software development kit) to ‘ensure Meanwhile, turn to page 42 to learn more
greater fidelity of the model export’ to
these real-time rendering applications.
about Epic Games’ software partnerships.
■ vectorworks.net ■ unrealengine.com
Aurecon
acquires BIM
BIM consultant posts YouTube Revit rant consultancy
lobal engineering and

R
evit BIM consultant, Gavin
Crump has released a vlog
He usually shares tips and tricks and how
to get the most out of the software, which
G design firm Aurecon
has acquired BIM and
complaining how he confesses he is a massive fan of. digital engineering consultancy,
incompatibility between Autodesk Revit However, in his latest post he highlights Digital Node, which is headed
releases impacts projects and the incompatibility problems between Revit up by ‘Women In BIM’ founder
general lack of updates releases and how this impacts multi-year and AEC Magazine contributor
Crump trades by the name of Aussie projects, together with issues on lack of Rebecca de Cicco.
BIMGuru and runs a community BIM development. View the video at Digital Node provides strategic
vlog covering all things to do with Revit. tinyurl.com/RevitRant and technical solutions to support
the built environment in its digital
transformation with extensive
project delivery experience.
Unreal used on digital twin platform De Cicco is an internationally
recognised BIM subject matter
D Repo is working on a new control cloud connects with Unreal, where expert with experience in
3 digital twin streaming solution
that will allow AEC users to
pre-optimised assets are dynamically
loaded directly into a ‘running game’
delivering, educating and
supporting clients in
share and dynamically view massive 3D giving users the ability to log-in via their developing strategies
engineering models straight from the 3D Repo credentials and ‘seamlessly around their digital
cloud using Epic Games Unreal Engine. retrieve’ any of their assets on the fly. future. At Aurecon,
The development of the ‘infinitely This is made possible through a she will take up the
scalable’ 3D rendering and data delivery persistent storage layer rather than position of principal
platform is being funded by an Epic parsing and baking assets into a new game for digital
MegaGrant from Epic Games. .exe each time an asset revision is created. operations.
Via open APIs, the 3D Repo version ■ 3drepo.com ■ digital-node.com

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 11

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 V-Ray 5 for Revit blurs real-
ROUND UP time / photoreal boundaries
From PIM to BIM
Project Information Management
(PIM) software specialist Newforma is
expanding its BIM capabilities
through the acquisition of Quebec-
based BIM One, which owns BIM One
Consulting and the cloud-based BIM
collaboration platform BIM Track
■ newforma.com ■ bimone.com

Allplan: Revit import

Allplan now has enhanced
interoperability so models and data
from various disciplines can be
brought together easier. Allplan 2021
features enhanced support for IFC,
direct import of several 3D CAD/BIM
formats including of Revit files
■ allplan.com/workflows/interoperability

Free BIM viewer haos has introduced V-Ray on’ viewer updates in real-time, offering a
Dalux has added new collaboration
and commenting features to its free
C Vision, a real-time
visualisation capability built
high-quality representation of a Revit
model as architects work, with a view to
BIM Viewer, Dalux BIM Viewer+.
into V-Ray 5 for Revit. helping users work through new ideas
Users can now create, track and
manage comments in the web-based The new feature allows architects to get and client feedback from start to finish.
viewer, mobile or desktop application immediate feedback on their designs, V-Ray 5 for Revit also marks the launch
(Android, iPhone, iPad or Windows) before moving on to full photorealism of new 3D content library Chaos Cosmos.
■ dalux.com/bim-viewer
with V-Ray’s final renderer. The ‘always- ■ chaosgroup.com/vray/revit

Revit data quality

DAQS.IO is a cloud service designed
to help AEC companies improve and
verify data quality in Revit models. It
TestFit integrates with Tomasetti Asterisk
also gives project managers insight enerative The firms have CORE studio. It uses
into the status of project models and
allows BIM Managers to explore
cross-project trends and statistics
G building / site
configuration
developed an API
connecting TestFit’s design
computational geometry
and artificial intelligence
■ daqs.io software developer and visualisation platform based on Tomasetti’s
TestFit has formed a with Thornton Tomasetti’s extensive structural
partnership with Asterisk structural engineering experience.
GBuilder targets UK structural engineering optioneering tool. Meanwhile, for more on
GBuilder has completed a €2M firm Thornton Tomasetti Tomasetti’s Asterisk is Testfit see page 48.
financing round to help expansion in
the UK and DACH regions. The Finnish
to improve data sharing. developed by the firm’s ■ core.thorntontomasetti.com

firm’s BIM-compatible software is

aimed at residential and commercial
developers and digitises the customer
journey, material selections and
modification, visualisation, inspection,
and communication processes
IoT used to track construction equipment
■ gbuilder.com ouygues network from Bouygues construction sites in France.
B Construction
Matériel is
Telecom, the expertise of
Objenious and intelligent
Omniscient designed a
turnkey solution using
Flood risk modelling implementing an Internet sensors from Actility. multi-technology trackers
Newcastle University is using of Things (IoT) asset Bouygues Construction from Abeeway, a subsidiary
computer modelling to assess the flood
risk of individual properties using
tracking solution for Matériel is in charge of of Actility that specialises
LiDAR data and aerial photography. Smart Construction managing the group’s entire in ultra-low power
The project will use AI to extract developed by Omniscient. fleet of equipment and must geolocation solutions, and
information from other datasets, This solution connects ensure that each site is Omniscient’s site
including old reports and flood asset
twenty thousand items of equipped with compliant operations optimisation
registers, and bring this together with
real time weather and traffic sensors equipment for remote real- equipment, in good working platform for data collection
■ bluesky-world.com/metrovista time management and order, and made available and analysis.
optimisation using an IoT on time across all ■ bouygues-construction.com

12 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 News

Autodesk acquires water infrastructure

modelling firm, Innovyze for $1 billion
n its first acquisition of the and analysis solutions, including
I year, Autodesk has spent
$1 billion cash on Portland,
Autodesk Civil 3D, Autodesk InfraWorks,
and the Autodesk Construction Cloud,
Oregon based developer Innovyze. The offers civil engineers, water utility
35 year-old software company is a companies and water experts the ability to
specialist in smart water infrastructure better respond to issues and to improve
modelling, simulation, and predictive planning.”
analyses technologies. “Nearly nine trillion gallons of water are
According to Autodesk, this lost each year worldwide due to prolonged
acquisition helps it “provide end-to-end leaks and pipe breaks, but we cannot
solutions for design, construction, and manage or fix what we cannot see,” said
now, operations of water infrastructure, Amy Bunszel, executive VP, AEC design
enabling them to accelerate sustainable solutions, Autodesk. “Innovyze’s portfolio
outcomes and help communities build of operational analytics, distribution
resilience for the future.” modelling, and asset management
Innovyze’s modelling, simulation, and solutions provides the insight needed to
predictive analyses solutions are designed identify this and other potential problems
to enable sustainable water distribution before they become a crisis.”
networks, water collection systems, water “For thirty-five years Innovyze has been
and wastewater treatment plants, and a hidden part of the daily lives of millions
flood protection systems. Further, of people around the world, helping to
Innovyze’s solutions centralise deliver fresh, clean water, managing
infrastructure asset visibility to optimise sewage and flooding in our communities,
capital and operational expenses. and turning wastewater into safe water,”
Autodesk stated that “combining said Colby Manwaring, CEO of Innovyze.
Innovyze’s portfolio with its own design ■ innovyze.com

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on the Innovyze acquisition

By any measurement, this is stamp of approval. The digital twin business. This However, to do this it has a
the biggest deal so far under company has 240 employees acquisition of Innovyze takes fight on its hands with the
CEO Andrew Anagnost. and is conveniently located in the company’s relevance incumbent competition to
Since 2017 Autodesk had Portland, Oregon, which is from design and construction win market share.
already spent $2.4 billion also the home of Autodesk’s all the way through to While Autodesk has now
acquiring firms and mechanical CAD division. operation and decommission. spent $3.4 billion acquiring
technologies predominantly To date, Autodesk’s While Autodesk has the firms in the last three years,
for its Construction Cloud presence in infrastructure potential to democratise we are not sure how this news
play. Innovyze appears to be and plant has tended to be digital twins in the building will be received by Revit
a much more strategic less than market dominating. space, its lack of dominance customers who have been
purchase, with regards to Autodesk feels it has the in the infrastructure market complaining of lack of
entering deeper into the building space, but has tough is an issue. development and increased
civils space, specifically competition in transport Autodesk’s digital twin cost of ownership. While
targeting water. roads, plant, rail and water, technologies are also still Autodesk has promised to
In Autodesk’s justification against players such as embryonic, with Autodesk re-double its efforts on
slide deck, it states that Hexagon, Trimble and Tandem in beta and yet to be delivering a broader three-
Innovyze lets it better address Bentley Systems. released (see page 16). Clearly year roadmap for Revit, it
the $1.7bn market — mainly Autodesk’s intentions now Autodesk is not going to stop seems to prefer to spend much
due to the fact that Innovyze go beyond competing in the at building digital twins of more money on acquiring
is the largest pure-play global design offering space, as the above-ground installations, firms for its construction
water infrastructure software company looks to build a but wants to also document cloud and now digital twin /
provider with regulatory compelling, cloud-based, what goes on under our feet. civil engineering play.

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 13

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 Esri UK partners with Tetra
ROUND UP Tech on indoor mapping
Women in BIM
Women in BIM (WIB) has launched a
new website to better demonstrate the
aims of the global online community,
who it is for, and how it is playing an
important part in the digitalisation of
the global built environment
■ womeninbim.org

Dynamo scripts
NonicaTab is a free Revit add-on
designed to make it easier to run
Autodesk Dynamo scripts. The
software creates a Revit toolbar
with 12 buttons that can be fully
customised with any Dynamo script,
such as those designed to
automate repetitive tasks
■ nonica.io

Revit modelling book sri UK has teamed up with all types of fixed and handheld LiDAR
‘Practical Architectural Modelling with
Autodesk Revit’, is a new book
E global consulting and
engineering services company
scanning, from millimetre precision to
larger-scale centimetre resolution,
co-authored by Nigel Davies, Joseph
Tetra Tech to offer an ‘end-to-end’ depending on the application.
Frame and Daniel Heselwood of Evolve
Consultancy. The book features over 60 solution for indoor mapping designed For customers who have existing CAD
worked examples covering the critical to help support facilities management or BIM data, Tetra Tech offers data
aspects of modelling with Revit at large offices, campuses, or hospitals. preparation and cleansing services.
■ evolve-consultancy.com
Offering the ‘complete workflow’, Tetra Esri UK will be delivering its various
Tech will provide 3D terrestrial laser software applications for indoor
The Wild expands scanning, data analytics and CAD to GIS mapping, including ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS
AEC VR/AR collaboration platform
expertise, while Esri UK will offer its GIS Online and ArcGIS Indoors.
The Wild has acquired VR design system with indoor mapping capabilities, According to Esri, indoor mapping can
review and coordination software including interactive floorplans, indoor integrate and complement existing
Prospect by IrisVR. According to The positioning for wayfinding plus real-time facilities management software by giving
Wild, the move will expand
people and asset tracking. users a geographical visualisation of
opportunities for team collaboration in
VR/AR and help teams catch errors Services offered by Tetra Tech include their estates.
earlier and make decisions faster
■ thewild.com ■ irisvr.com/prospect

Bentley acquires E7 AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro set free

Bentley Systems has acquired E7, an
MD Ryzen 12-core 3945WX will of the Lenovo ThinkStation
A
Australia-based specialist in
construction delivery software for Threadripper remain exclusive to Lenovo. P620, which has a smaller
heavy civil projects. The acquisition Pro processors Several workstation mid-range chassis.
will extend the capabilities of Bentley are now available from system builders have There have been no
Synchro, the digital construction
global retailers and already announced Threadripper Pro
management software
■ bentley.com ■ e7.site workstation system Threadripper Pro announcements from HP,
builders. Previously the workstations, including Dell or Fujitsu but we
only way to get hold of Supermicro, Chillblast, expect at least one of these
4M targets UK the high-end workstation Workstation Specialists major workstation
4M has partnered with Mintronics to CPU was inside a Lenovo Scan and Velocity Micro. manufacturers will take on
bring its DWG-centric CAD and BIM ThinkStation P620 The Supermicro the AMD CPU this year.
software to the UK market.
Products include: IDEA Architecture,
which we reviewed in the SuperWorkstation 5014A- ■ amd.com

for 3D & 2D architectural design, Jan/Feb 2021 edition. TT and Workstation

rendering, animation, 4D scheduling AMD is making three Specialists WS-1640A-
and 5D costing; AutoCAD alternative AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO-G4 stand out
4M CAD; and FineMEP, a suite of
Pro models widely for their ability to
building services design software
with several different modules available – the 64-core support up to four
■ 4msa.com ■ mintronics.co.uk 3995WX, 32-core 3975WX, full-height, double-
and 16-core 3955WX. The width GPUs, double that

14 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 News

CAD-focused 11th Gen Intel Core S-series

launches but AMD Ryzen 5000 holds firm
However, Intel still faces very strong
competition from AMD and its AMD
Ryzen 5000 series processors, which are
available with high clock speeds and more
cores (6, 8, 12 or 16).
The 11th Gen Intel Core S-series is also
the first Intel desktop CPU to support the
PCIe 4.0 standard, which offers double
the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0.
Previously, PCIe 4.0 was only
supported by AMD CPUs, including the
AMD Ryzen 5000, 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen
Threadripper and AMD Ryzen
Threadripper Pro.
Support for PCIe 4.0 means users can
take advantage of PCIe 4.0 SSDs for much
faster read/write performance when
ntel has launched its 11th Gen All Rocket Lake-S CPUs have 6 or 8 working with large datasets, such as those
I Intel Core S-series desktop
processors (code-named Rocket
cores. The flagship Intel Core i9-11900K
can reach speeds of up to 5.3GHz.
used in simulation, visualisation and
point cloud processing.
Lake-S). Engineered on the new On paper, the low core count, high It also means data can be loaded into
Cypress Cove architecture, the new frequency and enhanced IPC should PCIe 4.0 GPUs much quicker. This
CPUs are said to offer a 19% gen-over- make the 11th Gen Intel Core S-series a includes the Nvidia RTX A6000, as
gen instructions per cycle (IPC) good CPU for CAD and BIM software reviewed on page 62.
performance improvement. tools, which are mostly single threaded. ■ intel.com

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on Intel’s new CPU

With 8 cores and high clock However, respected processing. More and more Ryzen Threadripper Pro (12
speeds the 11th Gen Intel technology website architects and engineers are to 64 cores).
Core S-series looks like an AnandTech has put these using multiple applications Another area where Intel
ideal CPU for CAD or BIM claims under the microscope in their workflows, so this does appear to have an
software. Applications in its review of the Intel Core could play a big part in any advantage is in terms of
such as AutoCAD and i7-11700K. It states that in a decision making. supply. AMD Ryzen 5000
Revit are largely single- core-for-core comparison, The success of the 11th Gen CPUs have been hard to come
threaded, so frequency is Intel is slightly slower and a Intel Core S-series in the by due to manufacturing
all that matters, and users lot more inefficient than AMD. workstation market will also delays. Because Intel
don’t need a substantial It remains to be seen how depend on the workstation manufactures its own chips
number of cores. this translates to real world manufacturers. Currently, there should be wide
The question is, how will it performance in CAD/BIM the only way to get hold of an availability when the 11th Gen
compare to older generation software, which is something AMD Ryzen 5000-based Intel Core S-series officially
Intel Core processors and we intend to test soon at AEC workstation is through launches at the end of March.
AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs? Magazine. specialist manufacturers
AMD Ryzen 5000 CPU
Intel’s claims of a 19% gen- It’s also important to note like BOXX and Scan. None is giving Intel a serious
over-gen IPC performance that because the AMD Ryzen of the big three – HP, Dell run for its money
improvement look 5000 series is available with or Lenovo – currently
impressive. It means that, if a more than 8 cores, it should offer AMD Ryzen 5000-
10th Gen and 11th Gen Intel have a big performance lead based workstations,
Core CPU ran at the same in multi-threaded workflows although Lenovo has
frequency, the 11th Gen would like ray trace rendering, the ThinkStation
be 19% faster. simulation and point cloud P620 with the AMD

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 15

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 News

Autodesk Tandem, the BIM-centric

digital twin platform, enters public beta
systems, and spaces in a facility.
Marin Pastar, global technology leader of
vertical information modelling at Jacobs, a
leading design, construction, and
consulting firm, was a contributor to the
development of Autodesk Tandem beta .
With approximately 80 percent of a
facility’s total lifecycle cost realised
during operations, Pastar says AEC
professionals have an enormous
opportunity to add value by helping
owners reduce costs through tools like
digital twins.
“Our ability to affect and reduce total
cost of ownership drops drastically the
farther we progress from design to
construction to completion,” said Pastar.
utodesk has announced the a comprehensive digital handover to “If we consider what an owner will need
A availability of the public beta
of Autodesk Tandem, its digital
owners of easily accessible and
insightful data, accelerating operational
at handover from the start, we can ensure
proper management of assets based on
twin solution to enable ‘ready-to-go’ readiness and empowering better their business goals and processes. We
operations to help owners get the most business decisions. have an obligation to maximize our
out of their investment. Without a digital twin at handover, clients’ investment.”
Autodesk Tandem is a digital twin mounds of disorganised data in varying Brian Melton, chief technologist of
platform that allows a building project to formats end up buried in electronic Black & Veatch, a globally renowned
start digital and stay digital, from design folders, rendering useless a treasure trove engineering and construction company,
to build to operations, and ‘transforms of valuable data insight. For an owner, sees Autodesk Tandem and digital twins
rich data into business intelligence’. that’s a lost opportunity and money that as part of the broader digital
Autodesk Tandem harnesses the BIM cannot be recovered. transformation, where every system
data created throughout the project Autodesk Tandem aims to unlock the becomes more and more connected as
lifecycle which is essential for creating a treasure by freeing, organising, and data is generated. In that future, systems
true digital twin of the asset. standardising data from design and learn from one another, share insights,
According to Autodesk, at the project’s construction, creating a simple, intuitive and optimise performance in real-time.
completion, the project team can deliver digital replica of all the components, ■ autodesk.com/solutions/digital-twin

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on Autodesk Tandem

Autodesk, as the volume customers’ existing design BIM customers will help drive industry open player with
BIM leader, is in a strong data vs incorporating the exploration of this new regards to Autodesk Tandem.
position to commoditise as-built condition. Laser business model for AEC It is a founding member of
the digital twin market. scans and real-time sensor firms. It will be interesting to the Digital Twin Consortium
With an inexorable drive feedback support are in the see if digital twin development and has signed up to the
to provide its solutions pipeline but not yet included. can make sense for small Open Design Alliance (ODA)
and services via the cloud, This puts Autodesk behind projects, other than the to access its IFC toolkit
the core framework for competitors like Bentley known key market of process (which also, by the way,
digital twins seems to be Systems, but for the whole plant, universities and firms saves Autodesk development
yet another possible segment it’s early days and with huge property portfolios. dollars on its own IFC
byproduct of Autodesk’s we are sure Autodesk is With the drive to deliver efforts). It will be interesting
BIM, civil modelling and providing the necessary digital twins, Autodesk to see if competitive digital
digital twin services. resources and development to recognises that data needs to twin developers get access
In its current guise, the team to rapidly expand flow between all constituent to Autodesk’s cloud APIs
Autodesk Tandem is initially the capabilities. applications and is claiming a and Forge to access users’
targeted at repurposing Autodesk’s sheer number of focus on being more of an Revit data.

16 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 News

Bentley Systems to acquire Seequent for

$1.05 billion to take digital twins undergound
3D earth modelling and geoscience data
management, GeoStudio for geotechnical
slope stability and de-formation
modelling, and Leapfrog for 3D geological
modelling and visualisation.
Leapfrog appears to have particular
relevance to infrastructure projects. The
software is designed to replace traditional
2D subsurface modelling and simulation
processes. According to Bentley, the usage
of the software, often in conjunction with
Bentley’s software offerings, has been
growing consistently in civil
infrastructure sectors.
Bentley has stated that its complementary
geotechnical engineering software portfolio,
including Plaxis, gINT, and OpenGround,
entley Systems is to acquire The company’s current offerings enable will be integrated in due course to support
B Seequent, a specialist in
geological and geophysical
digital twins to incorporate what’s
constructed “near surface,” including
‘open digital workflows’ from borehole and
drillhole data to geological models and
modelling and analysis software, in a foundations, drainage facilities, buried geotechnical analysis applications.
complicated deal worth $1.05 billion, utilities, tunnels, and subsea structures. Headquartered in Christchurch, New
made up of cash and shares. The addition of Seequent will now make Zealand, Seequent has more than 430 staff
The acquisition will help expand it possible for infrastructure digital twins to in 16 office locations, serving geologists,
Bentley’s infrastructure digital twin reach “full subsurface depths”, augmenting hydrogeologists, geophysicists,
offering, for better planning, delivery, environmental resilience against flood, geotechnical engineers, and civil engineers
operation, and maintenance of seismic, climate, and water security threats. in over 100 countries.
infrastructure assets, as well as mines. Seequent’s products include Geosoft for ■ bentley.com ■ seequent.com

AEC Magazine’s thoughts on the Seequent acquisition

The AEC industry has gone modelling capabilities and management, but the CEO, Greg Bentley, frequently
acquisition crazy this year strengthens Bentley’s integration of analysis did). Only a tiny proportion of
and there seems to be two position in mining and technologies is no easy task. stock is currently available,
core drivers: adding emerging countries. With Bentley is still figuring out and we expect the company to
revenue and fleshing out Autodesk’s recent acquisition how to properly integrate its go back to the market and
digital twin strategies. of water infrastructure structural analysis tools with raise some rather large sums
Bentley Systems has software firm Innovyze the geotechnical analysis over the next few years,
always been a dominant (page 13), the gold rush for the software it acquired from funding more acquisitions of
infrastructure player – digital twin market seems to Plaxis in 2018. The idea of an this size, as well as strategic
roads, rail, power and water be, perhaps fittingly, integrated analysis investments in start-ups and
– and in recent years has bet happening all underground. application that can handle additional R&D.
the farm on digital twins The huge challenge for both linear structures and Buying established
being the next big thing. Bentley will be how to non-linear soils at the same developers like Seequent
The kind of clients that integrate Seequent’s time is compelling. Now it with stable incomes and
Bentley tends to serve have technology into its already has a whole new suite of profitability makes sense, as
probably most to gain from diverse stack. Bentley’s open analysis tools to consider. this will also help drive
digital twins, having either approach to digital twins As Bentley is now a listed Bentley growth and return
expensive country-wide or should serve it well here and company it has given up its shareholder value.
global assets that need some Seequent tools already option to not report its For now the industry is
maintaining and monitoring. link with Bentley’s detailed financial underground, and as the
The acquisition of Seequent OpenGround platform for performance (although saying goes, ‘where there’s
builds on its underground geotechnical data historically the company muck there’s brass’.

18 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 Opinion

Design for
constructability
If digital construction is the future, we need to
understand modern fabrication methods. Richard
Harpham ponders if today’s design-centric BIM
solutions are the right tools and, indeed, if
architecture is the right discipline to take this on?
It looks like the industry needs a new process

H
ere we go again… I think we only hope, especially if you opt to brand
can all identify with sitting it with Artificial Intelligence (AI),
through investor decks or Machine Learning (ML) or ‘integrated
keynote presentations that supply chain’ next to it. It all feels a bit
still start with that McKinsey flat produc- like 16th century medicine… whatever the
tivity diagram, statements on how frag- ailment, a course of leaches will fix that!
mented the construction industry is, the When we actually lift the hood on pre-
ever-shrinking pool of talent and the rise fabrication, it is clear we don’t get to skip
in cost of labour and materi- all the steps other indus-

‘‘
als. It seems that we still tries had to make to benefit
feel the need to point this from mass customisation
out as a precursor to high- Design is the key and integrated delivery of
light the use of machinery, to unlocking products. We still need to
automation and robotics efficiency, not define and execute our con-
that we consistently sell as struction differently. That
the solution to bring the robots and is not a technology prob-
industry forward. manufacturing lem. If you are struggling
For us though, it’s no lon- automation. So to write that PowerPoint to
ger about identifying the
problems or highlighting
actually, yes, we present to your executive
team on how your firm can floor’. Imagine the factory manager at
that ‘Modern Methods of do need evolve to ‘industrialised Tesla telling Mr Musk that each square
Construction’ would better architects, but construction’, you will foot of his factory is only being utilised to
the manufacturing process the role of the already know that it’s not make something 3 or 4% of the time.
and will save the day. It’s
not about robots and
architect is being about buying software.
Let me give an example.
Identifying these types of opportunities,
where technology has already proven to
machinery, nor standardi- redefined A recent study at Stanford overcome issues in other industries may

’’
sation of elements to found that the utilisation of be a better starting point. If the whole life
achieve economies of scale usable space for executing of the build encompasses the whole pro-
and mass production. It is about software any activity across a construction proj- cess as if it were in a single factory, then
and collaboration and not just BIM ect’s duration can average out at 3.2%. creating a building production plan that
(Building Information Modelling). It is Let’s put that in perspective. That means can be systematically tuned for increased
about focusing on the before and not just for 96.8% of the time NOTHING is hap- productivity, may be possible.
the during. pening in each and every square foot of So, we are now talking about the pro-
Prefabrication itself shouldn’t be the real-estate on the ‘construction factory cess of how we can better build some-

20 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p20_21_22_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Harpham.indd 20 23/03/2021 07:18

 thing, not just the technology that will Industrial methods ETH Zurich has been exploring the desired outcomes.
change how we build. Even though So, what should Industrial- modern methods of robotic For many, Design for
assembly. The DFAB house is the
industrial scale building prefabrication ised Construction really culmination of many research Manufacture and Assembly
has existed for more than a century, con- mean? What has to happen projects to produce a functioning (DfMA) has become the def-
struction companies have only now before, during and after the digital fabricated structure inition of this opportunity.
Image courtesy of ETH Zurich
moved beyond thinking of it as a low-cost production of a building to In software, DfMA is a hot
solution for repetitive structures, better leverage industrial buzz term at the moment
towards opportunities for higher quality, methods? but from the very fact that general con-
more predictable, mass-customised It’s clear, we spend most of our time tractors are taking the lead in DfMA we
applications. focusing on the During (manufacturing, have to assume that something is maybe
Now all we need to do is figure out how construction methodology), but we are so fundamentally flawed here. We might
to not mess that up by insisting on using often missing the Before. The design is the argue that if it isn’t DfMA in the archi-
100-year-old contract structures and 20+ key and essential part to it all; if we do not tect’s office, then the architect’s work isn’t
year old design and collaboration tech- do a better job of designing for construc- a buildable design… it is design intent.
nologies to deliver it! tability, then we will never achieve any of This might de-position the current

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 21

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 Opinion

UK residential design and build

practice, Facit Homes, has
developed its own design to onsite
fabrication system. Models are
created in Revit and converted to
Gcode. Custom panels are cut on
site by a CNC router and assembled
into box sections and placed
Image courtesy of Facit Homes

design-centric BIM solutions from being loading and all the other outcomes we Design is the key to unlocking efficien-
at the core of the design for constructabil- want to deliver from building production. cy, not robots and manufacturing auto-
ity process. If we need to understand how At the very root of manufacturing is mation. So actually, yes, we do need
to construct a building during design, ‘design’, not design intent. In manufac- architects, but the role of the architect is
what technologies do we need to achieve turing, the product is not the replicable being redefined. The same will be true of
that? And is architecture the right disci- physical item, but the process and the IP. the technologies needed.
pline to take that on? The very makeup of how it is built. In Phil Bernstein’s book, ‘Architecture
What we have discovered is that the Design Data’, he states, “The newer tech-
Process vs design current ‘model-centric’ approach is solely nologies appearing in the second digital
In this magazine’s May 2019 article on focused to provide a mere graphical rep- turn are less transactional and more pro-
digital fabrication resentation which found, in that we are now reaching a time
(tinyurl.com/Dfab-AEC), just isn’t enough. We where the tools are rapidly approaching
Martyn Day asserted About the author need more consider- the real possibility of managing the com-
that, “there are few ation of the construc- plexities of making buildings”. He also
Richard Harpham
architects who fully tability. Less focus postulates, “The marketplace will press
has experienced
understand the digital most of the highs on drawings and the AEC industry as a whole to leverage
fabrication limita- and lows of bring- more on the process computation to improve the and meet the
tions of building fab- ing disruptive tech- and the actual design challenges of 21st century construction,”
rication systems. nology to develop- of the object and how pointing to how other industries that
Design for ers, designers and it is built. We have have already climbed the productivity
contractors. As an
Manufacture and spent so much effort ladder through digital transformation.
early hire at start-
Assembly (DfMA) is a up, Revit Inc. , he then spent nine years at and time focused on If you take a look at the semiconductor
separate discipline Autodesk bringing Revit and a ‘new’ con- the 3D digital twin industry, much of the industry’s prog-
within itself and cept called BIM to the US market, as well as generation and load- ress has come from advances in manu-
requires a holistic leading global marketing for AutoCAD and ing the BIM content facturing – the secret sauce of Moore’s
view of what is possi- all Autodesk AEC products. More recently that we have missed Law. Imagine the possibilities of
at Katerra, he led software strategy to sup-
ble, what’s available port transformational changes in how we
an opportunity to advanced manufacturing delivering the
and the cost implica- design, engineer, and deliver buildings. own and commodi- built environment.
tions of early design tise the process. The However, we don’t have the liberty of
decisions such as pro- real value is in the spending years and large amounts of
cesses, material use and serviceability.” process, not the static object. money resolving every detail like the
Combining this with the impact of con- The legacy of the era and evolution of automotive industry or the ‘Master
tract liabilities raises the question: are we BIM may be that we have had too much Architect’ once did. We need data flow
seeing the inevitable removal of the role focus on the design intent, drawing lay- between stakeholders at all times. We
of a ‘master-builder architect’? There outs and mitigating the overall responsi- need to do a better job of enabling the
would appear to be many general con- bility for how it is actually built. Rather design team to make the right decisions
tractors that already are operating from than tackling the problem at its roots, we and provide/produce the right data We
this assumption. But this seems in con- have focused on the during (MMC and need to leverage software, AI and ML to
flict with concept of design for construc- robotics) and after (digital twin) without do so, but the question is… what might
tability, manufacturing, assembly, carbon identifying the value of the before (DfMA). this look like?

22 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p20_21_22_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Harpham.indd 22 23/03/2021 07:18

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 Opinion

Towards a parametric future:

on the rise of AI and robotics a
The digital transformation has created a disruption in almost every
field imaginable. From Google to Amazon, through Uber and
Airbnb, it seems like our world is quickly adopting new models of
automation and lean digital supply chains. But what does this
mean for the buildings we design and tomorrow’s cities?

by Tal Friedman

24 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p24_25_26_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Tal V2.indd 24 24/03/2021 10:50

e:
s and the fall of B
I
.
M .
.
I
n the AEC world, the digital age has With millions of new buildings and reno-
Design for a parametric
brought with it a complete shift in vations worldwide expected in coming
tower making use of how we design. In just 30 years we’ve years, it’s time to talk about the real poten-
Foldstruct technology gone from paper to screen, from pen- tial of digital construction - the one that will
for sheet metals cil to mouse, from 2D to 3D and from local actually change how and what we build!
combining a hybrid
curtain wall facade to cloud. In fact, it is fair to say that AEC Robots that think like humans instead of
has become a branch of IT and that the humans that think like robots.
planner has become a user. It is commonly agreed that robotics and
BIM, parametric design and automation industrial automation hold the key to
allow planners to sketch out their dream achieving the goals of the construction
projects and even generate new ones using industry – those being: time and cost reduc-
Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the click of a tion, sustainability and architectural
button. Yes - the digital world tolerates design. It all starts with a mind shift into a
anything we can imagine and it’s literally new era of designing, not just for humans,
at our fingertips. but also for the robots that build for them.
So how does all that look down here on For this to happen, automation must be
Earth? Has digitising the AEC industry embedded within the planning process
lived up to its promise and created the from initial stages and allow us to design
desired effect in our built environment? especially for robotic fabrication. Rather
Unfortunately, today’s mainstream con- than thinking from the total design and
struction is a far cry from reaching goals “componentising” shelf-products later on,
like zero energy, architectural well-being we must take a reverse approach and
and affordability. Just ask governments and design from the inside out and the screw
regulators worldwide, who continue to level. Understanding the possibilities and
pour billions of dollars into funding pro- restraints of robotic manufacturing will
grams to help bridge these gaps every year. allow a new era in BIM which goes far
Looking at the urban landscape, aside beyond geometry documentation.
from seemingly budget-less ‘starchitecture’ Looking at the automotive world, robot-
springing up from time to time on maga- ic industrialisation has brought down the
zine covers, in the last 50 years 99% of price of a car to one tenth of its relative price
buildings have barely seen any change in back in the 1930s. All of this while improv-
how they are actually built. Indeed, the ing safety, performance and becoming
planning is all digital, but the product has affordable for all. This was done not only
remained all the same. So, when we speak by creating automated assembly lines but,
about building faster, massively and global- most importantly, by optimising and link-
ly, we must first stop and ask: are we so ing CAD files with the means of manufac-
happy with the buildings we are seeing turing and machine code. Robotic compa-
around us that we want to make more and nies like Kuka and others have reached pre-
more of them? It’s not enough to talk about cision levels and speed that allow drastically
IFC standards and cloud collaboration. lowering costs and improving productivity.

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 25

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 Opinion

Manufacturing ain’t like it used to be:

robotic industrialisation has brought
2
down the price of cars considerably
1 1957 - Workers on a Volkswagen Beetle
Image courtesy of Austrian National Library
2 2020 - Volkswagen Group orders more
than 2,200 new robots for the planned
production of electric cars
Image courtesy of Volkswagen Group

In construction, however, relative this ‘domino effect’. But perhaps the most combine design, performance optimisa-
building costs are on a constant rise troubling thing about the current work- tion and digital fabrication in a one-stop
while productivity goes down as it gets flow is that it does not help us talk to the shop. Using smart algorithms to capture
harder and harder to find skilled on-site factory floor in design stages and leaves the DNA of the fabrication system and
workers in Western countries. Can we way too many blind spots and unknowns. building the designated tools with which
adapt those same mechanisms that It is a mere graphic representation, not designers can plan without them having
worked for the automotive world for con- very different in essence from ink on paper. to go into detail.
struction? Yes and no! 3D mass model- Tomorrow’s BIM is not a blank page but
As opposed to the ling, BIM, structural rather an adaptable, dynamic template. It
automotive world About the author analysis, shop draw- requires opening the platform and invit-
where a car is manu- Tal Friedman is an ings, electricity, ing any software, hardware or service
factured tens or even architect and con- HVAC, rendering, along that can add value to the process.
hundreds of thou- struction-tech graphics, tendering I believe that the boundaries will
sands of times, the entrepreneur active and many more top- quickly blur between software produc-
building world is all in automated algo- ics are simultane- ers, system suppliers and fabricators and
rithm-based design-
about customisation ously addressed, that business models in AEC will become
to-fabrication. His
and adaptation. In work explores new each requiring their value-based and not subscription-based.
fact, no two buildings possibilities for own specialists for I envisage a world of expert systems
are completely alike. transforming the built environment operation. which create optimised, fabrication-
through innovative use of materials and ready facades or AI which ‘lightweights’
From SaaS to DaaS creating new typologies for architecture Construction 4.0 buildings to make savings on foundation
and structural purposes. (foldstruct.com)
Maybe we need to The days of software work, perhaps a system which can deliv-
Tal has also presented at NXT BLD
think differently and (nxtbld.com/videos/tal-friedman) as a ‘blank page’ plat- er a design in different materials making
consider moving from form are soon to be structural mod-
Software as a Service gone. The fact is that Kuka KR Iontec robot ifications with
to Design as a Service? Despite the big over 5 million architects and engineers Image courtesy of each option. If
Kuka Group
promise of BIM, today’s AEC world is suf- worldwide are looking for tools to help we can cap-
fering from an over complication of soft- them design and build better buildings. ture and codify
ware. Often requiring a BIM specialist just They are not impressed with production knowl-
to run, it is no surprise that only around vaulted cloud packages, smart edge, these services could be
20% of firms harness full usage of BIM at subscription models and closed used within the design of a build-
all scales while the rest are picking up the APIs. To put it simply, they are ing or in post rationalisation.
bits with ‘hybrid’ solutions. looking for the shortest path to get Given that the most expensive mate-
According to internal studies at from an initial concept to an opti- rial in construction is knowledge, we
Foldstruct, there are on average 15 differ- mised building. We have to break are living in exciting times where
ent software tools that planning teams will free of the old supply chains and think that knowledge can be replicated
use throughout the project lifecycle. With of the leanest possible process to see by algorithms to spread across
very limited interoperability and hun- the building as a unified product. industries at the click of a
dreds of design loops, it is not hard to see There are many ways of doing this button. It is now in our
why it so difficult to build ‘outside the box’. and they all require an open-ended hands as an industry to col-
We have identified an exponential rise in approach and multidisciplinary col- laborate and bring construc-
costs in almost all sectors of AEC due to laboration. At Foldstruct, we try to tion to the next level.

26 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p24_25_26_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Tal V2.indd 26 24/03/2021 10:50

Are you getting the most out of
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 Feature

Autodesk’s
drive to DfMA
Everybody’s talking about Design for
Manufacturing and Assembly. While very
few firms are actually doing it, the concept is
attracting advanced BIM users, fabricators
and software firms to try it out. Martyn Day
looks at Autodesk’s efforts and future vision

W
hen it comes down to dig- rally fed into the digitisation of produc- primarily designed to model buildings
itisation, it might seem tion, where volume of production is key. and output drawings, the lingua franca of
that manufacturing has 3D models didn’t kill 2D drawing as a the AEC industry - because construction,
nearly always been ahead valid communication format but the 1:1 by and large, was (and still is) a manual
of building and construction. However, scale product definition model typically process and the contractual system firms
this is not strictly true. In the late 70s drives the process. operate in is based on drawings as a key
and 80s, while high-end manufacturing We have become used to being sur- deliverable.
was starting to rapidly adopt 3D model- rounded by beautifully engineered prod- By moving to a BIM / model-centric
ling, high-end architecture firms were ucts. From cars and aeroplanes to Apple approach to design, unfortunately the
also using mini-computer-based 3D mod- devices, we have become a society that is AEC industry cannot easily segue into a
elling programs such as aware of engineering design digital fabrication future as easily as
RUCAPS, Sonata and GDS.
The future looked to be 3D for
all design systems.
‘‘
feel that
and assembly. Anyone who is
I’ve come to into cars will know how
Nissan, Volkswagen, Audi,
manufacturing has. Firstly, BIM models
are not detailed enough for manufactur-
ing and all BIM systems available today
With the advent of Renault, Peugeot and many were developed for drawing production.
PC-based desktop 2D CAD in today’s BIM others share common plat- Then there’s the process itself; Boeing
the late 80s, for some reason systems are forms for their cars, saving owns the plane design and assembly and
development of 3D modelling already development time and money will use sub-contractors to create parts.
software for manufacturing
exploded with small to-medi-
feeding space- but allowing competition on
their differentials which they
It’s top down, while AEC projects have
structures that are typically flatter, more
um-size engineering firms age data into add on top. nebulous, are siloed and go through
quickly adopting Pro/ a stone age many more phases.
Engineer, Unigraphics and process BIM barriers A digital fabrication change in AEC
SDRC I-DEAS and then BIM was not evenly spread in will also require substantial changes in
Solidworks. Unfortunately,
’’ its adoption and took a long
the AEC industry opted for the dark ages, time to infiltrate traditional 2D practices.
mainly regressing to desktop 2D CAD or We had Graphisoft ArchiCAD, then three
workflow, process and the upskilling of
production knowledge. On the face of it,
this will be a considerable challenge for
making low detail 3D models to make 2D attempts from Autodesk - AutoCAD AEC the industry to digest, as it will impact
drawings. (a UK variant), Architectural Desktop everything from the tools to the very fab-
Meanwhile manufacturing went on to (ADT) (acquired from Softdesk) and then ric of the building.
drive the development of G-code, com- Autodesk bought the developer of Revit, I’ve come to feel that today’s BIM sys-
puter numerical control (CNC), 3D print- Autodesk’s first AEC design code-base tems are already feeding space-age data
ing and robotic assembly and manufac- free from AutoCAD. into a stone age process, but the under-
ture, as well as driving quality, tolerance Meanwhile, Bentley Systems had whelming expectation of the contracted
controls and supply chain management. MicroStation-based TriForma and there output (2D), often questions the effort
In the manufacturing space, 3D mod- was SketchUp, pre-Google/Trimble, to required to produce the input. Many of
elling of products and assemblies natu- popularise 3D. All these systems were those that have taken the trouble to get to

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 ZHA’s sustainable timber designs for
Roatán Próspera, a modular housing
project for an island near Honduras, are
assembled off-site in a ‘kit of parts’,
enabling up to 15,000 variations

Level 2 BIM are undoubtedly producing most from prefabrication, designers need Autodesk can see how that industry has
COBie files that will sit on a USB stick to think about how the building is con- progressed to digital fabrication and
gathering dust in a drawer. However, my structed from very early on in the process. apply some of that technology to AEC.
pet issue, is how today’s BIM tools will In fact, designers need to be fully aware of Digital construction has been a topic
impede the industry in its efforts to digit- just how these components are produced addressed on the main stage of Autodesk
ise building manufacturing. It’s like put- and the limitations of each process. It University for the last few years. Company
ting a fish on a bicycle. helps if designers and fabricators speak CEO Andrew Anagnost has been very
the same language. And, after realising vocal about the opportunity in construc-
Process the people, skills and knowledge problem tion to radically improve productivity and
The AEC industry is perfectly aware that comes the software tools problem, BIM outcomes by changing the way buildings
it is re-designing the wheel time and time models are rarely detailed enough to are designed, made and assembled.
again. With every building being a proto- direct manufacture from, and fabricators Under his tenure, Autodesk has even
type and a one off, it’s hard to see the ben- are using solid modelling tools specifically made strategic investments in offsite / pre-
efit of pre-manufacture. And while many designed for engineering fabrication and fabricated construction firms (FactoryOS -
firms will point out that modular can lead assembly. AEC and engineering tools factoryos.com) to help understand their chal-
to non-descript rectangular buildings, were developed in separate silos for differ- lenges and also carry out R&D in defining
star practices like Zaha Hadid Architects ent audiences and deliverables. digital processes and best practices.
(ZHA) have embraced prefabrication and Looking at the Autodesk product suite,
modularisation for their clients. Autodesk on DfMA the first challenge is one of integration.
The global firm’s sustainable timber Out of all the major AEC software firms While Autodesk owns both Revit and
designs for Roatán Próspera, a modular that we cover, Autodesk has been the only Inventor, they historically were never
housing project for an island near developer to highlight digital fabrication developed to play nicely together; they
Honduras, are assembled off-site in a ‘kit in the construction market as being one of didn’t need to as they had evolved to exist
of parts’, enabling up to 15,000 variations. its key research and development goals. in very different environments and solve
As a practice, ZHA is perfectly capable of It has the benefit of being a software very different problems.
modelling buildings and building compo- company which caters to both mechanical The first I came across Autodesk
nents and creating the G-code to drive the engineers (through Inventor and Fusion admitting the two products needed to
machines at its remote fabricator. 360) and building professionals. With work better together was very early on,
To embrace modular design, and get the decades of experience in manufacturing, during the design phase of the Freedom

The world’s first fully 3D CAD modelled digital mock-up of the entire plane, with
aircraft was the Boeing 777. The design all the thousands of parts modelled,
was started in 1990, the first aircraft so they could be virtually tested with
was assembled in 1993, and it entered simulation software. It was the first
service in 1995. Boeing used Catia from Boeing to be built that didn’t need a full
Dassault Systèmes to create a 2D and 3D physical prototype to iron out the kinks.

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 29

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 Feature

Tower in New York. Back in the early maintains the logic and process, external offsite as mainly being about lower costs,
2000s, SOM was at the vanguard, trial- to the applications. AEC Magazine will be Marks identifies silos as a problem and
ling Revit on a massive national project. visiting the company this summer to have project outcome ‘certainty’ as the goal of
The team started the trial on the base- a deep dive into its bespoke development. DfMA. She says, “We all recognise that
ment and quickly decided to try model- So, I guess what I’m saying here is that there’s a skilled labour gap and we’re all
ling the whole building in, the then very there is no single system you can buy to fighting for the little amount of labour
formative, Revit. On top of the building have a ‘DfMA’ process. At the moment it’s that’s on this planet right now. We’ve also
was a mast containing a television anten- down to those who have the time, money been a little slow to digitise within our
na which was modelled in high detail in and effort to define their own processes ecosystem. But I think the worst thing for
Inventor which then proved to be a prob- and develop an in-house system, using us is that we’ve had a ‘cash for chaos’
lem to get into Revit at the time and need- tools that are available today and mentality. What do I mean by that? I
ed to be worked on. Application Programming Interfaces mean - we’ve had a disconnect between
When Autodesk came to package up (APIs). However, it is clear that Autodesk the silos of the different phases from
its offerings in Suites, some more effort is committed to opening up the space and design to construction.
was put into getting Revit and Inventor to making this process easier. “To operate, and we have to close those
play nicer, but this still left a lot to be This could be seen at virtual Autodesk gaps, because that’s where waste really
desired. With Adobe’s common UI and University 2020, where there were a few lives. The disconnect between design and
data fluidity as inspiration, Autodesk’s sessions on Inventor and Revit and it construction is why we don’t have certain-
plethora of design tools was always going was obvious that there had been a lot ty of cost and schedule prefabrication…. it
to be a challenge and it more work done to build can eventually drive down costs, and save
won’t be until all workflows between them time for us, but we’re really looking for
Autodesk products can be than we had seen in a certainty. If you look at some of the stud-
delivered on the cloud, long time. ies that have been done, especially from
through Forge, that there the Lean Construction Institute, most of
will be a common data Amy Marks the typical projects, and even the best pro-
environment and a stand- Autodesk’s relatively new jects are over budget, or they’ve been late.
ard set of user interfaces. Head of Industrialised We have to create certainty. That is the
While this incompatibil- Construction Strategy & number one thing we’re looking for in
ity is there, it hasn’t com- Evangelism, Amy Marks, industrialised construction.”
pletely ruled out Revit as a is an industry veteran
source for enabling digital who has owned a number Industrialised Construction
fabrication. Companies of prefab / modular Autodesk is creating a new cloud plat-
like Strucsoft (see page 32) firms, Xsite Modular and form for Industrialised Construction,
have developed an impres- Kullman Buildings. which will be a collaborative ecosystem
sive array of framing, At virtual Autodesk where Autodesk’s product portfolio and
panel, truss and floor sys- University she had a num- products from other vendors will be able
tem design tools, along ber of video presentations. to integrate. While the demos given con-
with CNC post processors While some were reality cern Inventor and Revit, the reality is
for Revit workflows. Also, TV style visits to fabrica- many firms in fabrication are using prod-

‘‘
in the UK, Bruce Bell of tors getting to grips with ucts like Solidworks to model their parts.
Facit Homes, seen here DfMA, the most useful However, Autodesk is in charge of
speaking at NXT BLD I think the worst one gave an overview of Inventor and Revit development and can
( t i ny u r l . c o m / N X T B L D - thing for us is that Autodesk’s Industrialised work towards them playing better togeth-
Bruce), developed his own
closely guarded system for
we’ve had a ‘cash Construction vision. This
presentation wasn’t pre-
er, in this case through a technology layer
in the cloud.
generating G-code from for chaos’ dominantly about push- Here, Marks explained the need to
custom parametric Revit mentality - we’ve ing product. Instead, it standardise design and ‘productise’, “We
families of wood-box parts had a disconnect really started at the base have to change from a project centric mind-
to be cut daily onsite.
Berkeley Modular is one
between the silos level, as an introduction to
what the industry is try-
set to a product lead mindset. We need to
not just take drawings and modularise
of the new breed of volu- of the different ing to achieve. them and cut them into pieces and parts
metric, offsite manufac- phases from design Marks kicks off her that we can prefabricate (just) once or
turers of homes in the UK. to construction talk, explaining the maybe like ‘the thing we did last time’. We
It uses Revit and Inventor industry has a language need to define products so that we can
to define and drive its Amy Marks problem - and she is spot achieve transformational change. We need
manufacturing process. Autodesk on. She breaks down the to have certainty around that product. Just

’’
This would not be possible terminology, the mean- like a generator manufacturer makes a
had the company instigat- ings and the task at hand. 200 or 250 or 300 horsepower generator,
ed its own software development and cre- This is a great 101 for those that want to they won’t make you a 247 or a 252.5 horse-
ated custom applications to link the data understand the basic terminology and power generator. We have to productise.”
from BIM to BoM (Bill of Materials). principles, especially about breaking In the latter half of her presentation,
This method uses each application for down designs to assemblies. Marks gives visual examples of
the elements Berkeley modular needs, but While many see pre-fabrication and Autodesk’s unreleased ‘Integrated

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 Balcony – values from the
Autodesk Revit family parameters
1
(1) drive the configuration of
Autodesk Inventor assemblies (2)

Construction’ platform. This is particu-

larly fascinating as it shows how the
industrialised construction web service,
takes in an Autodesk Revit model, allows
the production engineer to pick the parts
to be manufactured (termed Scope) from
the Revit model viewer, enables easy con-
figuration of those components through
templates and automates the creation of
fabrication-ready Inventor model, draw-
ings and Bill of Materials (BoM) (this was
a feature in Inventor 2021).
Marks commented that the drawing
often takes longer than the fabrication of
the part, automation of shop drawings. 2
This is a very streamlined process: set
inputs, define the job, get automated out-
puts. However, I assume it’s made easier
through ‘productisation’, where an equiv-
alent component is already parametrical-
ly modelled in Inventor. This would per-
haps not work so well for unique or
bespoke manufactured parts.
Watch the talk at tinyurl.com/Autodesk-IC.

Future cloud Quantum/Forge

Over the last four years, Autodesk has
occasionally talked about a higher-level
approach to digitising the AEC process.
With Project Quantum and Project
Plasma, which AEC Magazine has covered
in these articles (tinyurl.com/quantum-aec
and tinyurl.com/plasma-aec), Autodesk
promised a cloud-based system which
could act as a data ‘arbitrageur’ between something at AU 2020. While there were facturing development to deliver an inte-
project team members, allowing data to go no obvious announcements, this demon- grated cloud service.
from low defined architectural models, to stration of Industrialised Construction
fully defined fabrication models. platform could certainly be seen to deliv- Conclusion
The core issue was allowing each disci- er on some of the principles the software In this edition of AEC Magazine, you’ll
pline to model in the appropriate level of architects told us about, although this is find a number of voices from the industry,
detail, with their perhaps being multiple very much at a file level with existing giving their interpretation and visions for
models of, for example, building facades desktop products. a future fully digitised AEC industry. I
within the system. While the architect Perhaps there has been a change of plan feel it’s becoming clear where we want to
defined the basic space and elements, the and Autodesk is focusing more on better be; the issue is how do we get there?
fabricator, using a different tool, could connectivity between Revit and Inventor The current generation of BIM tools was
create a manufacturable version. and is using its cloud platform to help just the start of the journey. Software,
The system would allow the architect smooth the data flow between project par- company roles, individual roles, process,
to view this detailed model too. A model ticipants in a DfMA process? But ulti- data and contracts will all have to change
would have interface points, where man- mately Autodesk’s destination is the and adapt. Firms that are early in, and
ufactured elements could be hand off cloud, for both design apps and services individuals who are willing to invest their
points to engineering applications. and here it would be much easier to imple- time understanding the intricacies of off-
The trail of this elusive R&D develop- ment a common design environment, or at site production, will be the winners.
ment had gone somewhat cold. CEO least hide all the hoops that early DfMA
Andrew Anagnost told Wall Street ana- firms are having to jump through. AEC Magazine will be running regular cover-
lysts back early in 2020 that Plasma had The demonstration given at AU age of this topic, as well as it being a key discus-
a new name, the data backbone work had showed how Autodesk planned to lever- sion issue at our NXT BLD conference.
been done, and the team would show age the Forge components from its manu- ■ autodesk.com

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 Software

Strucsoft - linking
Revit to fabrication
Revit has predominantly occupied the design /
documentation space of BIM. Strucsoft extends its
capabilities to driving fabrication through several
applications covering timber/steel framing, floors,
trusses and CNC fabrication. Martyn Day reports

M
ontreal-based Strucsoft cer- nections such as bracing straps and steel frame, are still non-standard con-
tainly falls into the category hangers (as well as ceiling, roof layouts struction formats for residential housing,
of developing expert sys- frame trusses, soffits and floors) and pro- especially in the UK, the move to mass
tems. Its flagship applica- duces full BoMs (Bill of Materials). timber and pre-fabricated modular
tions have typically worked inside Revit, There’s also an MWF module for SIPS design is already driving increased use of
turning low-fidelity models into highly- (Structural Insulated Panel) including these methodologies into the next genera-
detailed frame-based designs. Called placement and numbering. tion of construction.
Metal Wood Framer (MWF), the platform While Revit was never intended to Strucsoft’s latest product is called
offers, as you would suspect, a structural drive CNC (Computer Numerical Onyx, a cloud-based production manage-
system for automatically producing Control) machines, Strucsoft’s MWF ment tool which manages all the jobs,
wood or metal framed designs. CNC module can send wall, floor and panel data, shop drawings, CNC code etc.
North American residential is very truss fabrication information to light Designs that started in Revit are taken
much based around timber frame, while gauge roll formers, wall panel machines, into the cloud and Revit is no longer
metal framed construction has been as well as automated wood saws. required to edit, view, update or sequence.
increasingly popular in the last decade. There is also a module to import from The aim of Onyx is to manage the whole
The drive to ‘mass timber’ has also seen DXF and AutoCAD, as well as popular downstream manufacturing process.
an increase in timber frame to meet low MCAD tools Solidworks and Autodesk While Strucsoft still relies on Revit for
carbon building needs. Inventor. Alternatively convert design the initial design the move to the cloud
Strucsoft predominantly sells to engi- data to DSTV CNC format, which can liberates it from the limitations of Revit
neering firms, contractors, sub-contrac- drive drills and plasma cutters. Strucsoft file size and speed and low utilisation of
tors, design build firms and component also has a free viewer for DSTV files. GPU. In many respects Onyx is the next
manufacturers (off-the shelf building While timber frame and, to a degree, generation platform for the company.
products). With the move to off-site con-
struction, frame-based design is spread-
ing globally as it’s easily digitally cut
1
and fabricated.

Extending Revit
Being based in Revit, the advanced fla-
vours of Strucsoft’s framing tools pro-
vide a lot of deep fabrication detail, auto-
matically converting Revit components
to frames.
With all disciplines included, Strucsoft
does clash detection between elements
and automates the production of framing
components. This benefits co-ordination
and saves clients’ money by minimising
alterations on site.
The MWF comes pre-loaded with
libraries of standard components from
manufacturers, accurately models con-

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 1 Metal Wood Framer (MWF) generates
detailed frame-based designs inside Revit
2 ONYX allows users to upload their framed Revit project to
a cloud server for sequencing, scheduling, editing and CNC output

Strucsoft’s view Starnes agreed, “I think it’s a two- heavy development. Onyx takes a framed
AEC Magazine talked with Byron pronged problem. The architects are model up into the cloud and from there,
Starnes, EMEA & VDC director at kind of out of the loop and, for the manu- you can then start to sequence the steel
Strucsoft Solutions. facturers, their vision is narrow. The best that that’s going to be rolled, or wood to
We asked Starnes what types of com- scenario I’ve seen, is where you involve be cut. You can then start creating your
panies Strucsoft usually sells to. He the manufacturing team, the detailing panel bundles, you can assign specific
explained, “On top of our actual software team early on in the coordination pro- machines to certain parts of the construc-
and the products we offer, we also offer cess. We can’t expect architects to tion process. You can examine each and
our services for construction, usually account for the precision and accuracy every connection.
principal contractors or, as they say in that a model built for manufacturing “Onyx allows us to better focus on the
the US, general contractors, in creating would have. I think that would be unrea- process. With MWF, we produce our fab-
the digital designs for offsite construc- sonable, except for very, very select cir- rication drawings, we produce manufac-
tion - essentially creating framing sys- cumstances.” turing outputs. But where does it go from
tems from the architect’s work, produc- While Strucsoft relies heavily on Revit there? How do you control your factory?
ing the fabrication drawings, manufac- early in the process, the level of detail What goes where? What steel gets
turing outputs and coordination as well.” and file size creep make it too cumber- placed? How do you track it when it goes
As we are seeing, DfMA (Design for some downstream for a manufacturing off site? How do you know that panel has
Manufacturing and Assembly) is being model. We asked Starnes about the capa- been delivered?
picked up by fabricators and modular / bilities of the new Onyx system. “All of this ties into what we do. With
offsite firms, not by architects, which cre- “This is our cloud-based solution that Onyx, now we can start to tie those loose
ates a problem if there is to be a ‘design’ we’re developing. It is commercially ends. Our future is a lot of focus and
for manufacture process. available now, although it’s still under energy on the cloud, and on our onyx
platform, and just a better overall manu-
2 facturing solution for our clients.”

Conclusion
It’s interesting that from having an initial
North American focus, and catering to
North American building styles,
Strucsoft’s knowledge is actually going to
be ideally applicable to offsite digital pre-
construction pretty much everywhere.
Strucsoft operates in the grey zone
between BIM and fabrication, having to
take low detail architectural drawings
and produce detailed fabrication models
and CNC code. The move to the cloud
gives the company the opportunity to
connect design and fabrication teams, as
well as overcome some of the limitations
of our current generation of design tools.
■ strucsoftsolutions.co.uk

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 Sponsored content

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I
t’s fair to say that 2020 was a challenging year where you can sit down and chat face to face and as he recalls one firm that came in for training and
for everyone. But, in the words of CAD training go through all the niggly bits of stuff that you just were amazed by how slow their machines were
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Bryant, an Autodesk® Certified Instructor, Bryant has seen his fair share of poorly configured their local retail store and got the cheapest laptops
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Expert Elite, is extremely active in the world of impact on productivity, but it’s not always obvious AutoCAD on them. And then they told me ‘that was
Autodesk. For many years he’s offered AutoCAD to the user that it’s their hardware that’s holding what our boss told us to get.’
and Revit training through a combination of them back, as he explains. “Of course, with those machines they were
classroom, on-premise, and online delivery. “One of the things I offer is a hand holding struggling from a workflow perspective, so I advised
But with the Covid-19 pandemic things started facility, so you might get somebody who’s done them to talk to their boss and explain it to him from
to change dramatically in March 2020, as Bryant their three day Revit course, and then I’ll follow up an overall, almost profit and loss kind of perspective,
explains, “I was literally in London training the week by coming into their office so I can be on hand to that they’re losing so much time because the
before the first UK lockdown, but that was the last answer questions. machines are so slow and any money they saved
bit of classroom, face-to-face training that I did.” “Sometimes people will say ‘I’ve got this massive on hardware just disappeared into the ether.
Since then, Bryant has seen a sharp rise in demand Revit model and it just doesn’t work.’ You realise “The funny thing is, I kept in touch with one of the
for online, including custom training programs, that it’s not their fault, it’s not the software’s fault, guys, and he told me that when he explained it to his
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However, like many others in the industry, Integrated graphics – when the Graphics To give CAD and BIM software the level of
Bryant is really looking forward to meeting people Processing Unit (GPU) is built into the graphics performance it demands, Bryant always
in person again. workstation’s CPU – is something that Bryant recommends using a discrete (or standalone)
“I don’t think classroom training will ever go often sees causing bottlenecks with larger graphics card.
away. One of the big topics that came out of CAD files. He puts their use down to a lack of Bryant’s preferred GPU for CAD software like
[virtual] Autodesk University was how so many understanding and, of course, companies trying AutoCAD and Revit is the AMD Radeon™ PRO WX
people miss that interaction, that networking to save money. But it’s a false economy, he says, 3200, an affordable sub $200 USD / £200 GBP
professional graphics card with 4GB of memory
that can power multiple UHD monitors. “It’s almost
like a standard piece of kit that you need for CAD,”
he says. “It has twice the amount of RAM as the
competition at that price1 and includes substantially
more TFLOPs2 for faster viewport drawing. You don’t
have to spend a lot to get good performance.”
The GPU is tested and certified for AutoCAD,
Revit and many other professional applications.
In Bryant’s view, CAD software certification is
absolutely essential, recalling one time where
he used a non-certified card in AutoCAD and got
horrible ghosting and jagged edges when moving
a line across the screen.
“Autodesk has done exhaustive testing on those
cards,” he says. “They certified those cards with
Bryant’s preferred GPU for CAD software like AutoCAD the products you use, whether that be AutoCAD,
and Revit (pictured) is the AMD Radeon™ PRO WX 3200 Revit, 3ds Max, whatever. And if they’ve done all
that rigorous testing, it means that they’re happy

pXX_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Advertorial.indd 2 17/03/2021 06:55

 For generating movies, walkthroughs and rendered views in
Unreal Engine, Bryant recomends a high-end Radeon PRO GPU

with it, and they want you to use that particular ‘OK, I didn’t even blink’. It just eats things for
card with the software. breakfast, it just swallows it up,” he says. “I can do
According to
“And one of the benefits you have with all the a render in Revit in about two minutes, whereas on
Bryant, the sub $200 1
Autodesk software is it will alert you if it’s a non- the laptop that would take probably up to about 15 AMD Radeon PRO WX 3200
certified card,” he adds. to 20 minutes. GPU is almost like a standard
“If you’re an architect, you don’t want to be piece of kit that you need for CAD
Beyond CAD on your laptop waiting for a render to finish and
While AutoCAD and Revit remain bread and saying, ‘I’ve got nothing to do,’ as you sit there
butter applications for many AEC firms, design twiddling your thumbs.” training, is you’ll go to the powers that be
visualisation and Virtual Reality (VR) are becoming and say, ‘I need a training budget’ and
more and more prevalent. But, as Bryant explains, Education, education the immediate counter to that is, ‘oh, why are we
it’s important to understand that, from a hardware Bringing the conversation back to education, spending all this money on training when they’re
perspective, what’s good for CAD isn’t usually Bryant believes there’s often a huge knowledge potentially going to leave anyway?’ My argument
powerful enough for these demanding applications. gap about the need for hardware - graphics back is ‘what happens if we don’t train them
“I worked with a company a few years back, and cards, in particular - to be matched to different though and they stay?’
they were a spin-off of an architectural firm, but workflows. Having too little graphics performance “And you see the management guys, the C
they were purely doing architectural visualisation,” is one thing, but it’s also important not to level guys say, ‘he’s got a point.’ And it’s true, if
he says. “Weirdly enough, they thought it would overspend unnecessarily. you train people and invest in them, they’ll stay
be OK to use the same graphics cards they were Minimum and recommended specs are a good anyway. You’re helping them expand, you’re
using for CAD. place to start, says Bryant, and this information empowering them to be better at what they do.”
“The GPU was great for your optimum CAD can be found on the websites of software Good software performance is a balance of all
models, and everything else, but as soon as you developers. AMD also has an online interactive GPU the hardware components. So make sure you don’t
start rendering, lighting, materials and so on, recommendation tool (tinyurl.com/ProGPU-AMD) overpay for the GPU. Choose the right tool for the job.
plus animation, walkthroughs – all that kind of that provides guidance for its certified applications,
© 2021 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. All rights reserved. AMD, the AMD
thing – they said, ‘ah, this is a bit slow, this is a bit including Autodesk Revit®, AutoCAD®, 3ds Max®, Arrow logo, Radeon, Ryzen, Threadripper, and combinations thereof are
jerky’. Also, their RAM wasn’t up to the job. And I Epic Unreal Engine and others. trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Autodesk, AutoCAD, Revit
and 3ds Max are registered trademarks or trademarks of Autodesk, Inc.,
said, ‘well, you’re going to have to upgrade your “You don’t have to have the all-singing, all- and/or its subsidiaries and/or affiliates in the USA and/or other countries.
hardware’.” dancing GPU, unless you are doing the all-singing, Other product names used in this publication are for identification
purposes only and may be trademarks of their respective companies.
Bryant himself is already well along this design all-dancing kind of work - the architectural
visualisation path. He uses 3ds Max, Maya, Unreal visualisation, the VR, the AR,” says Bryant. Here’s the Legal Bit. If you want additional details, you can find it below
for added peace of mind:
Engine and Unity and has developed a LinkedIn “Two of the things I love about AMD is, one,
Learning course that shows architects how to take a their price banding isn’t massively high, and 1. RPW-254: Based on workstation GPUs priced under $200 USD.
Radeon™ PRO WX 3200 graphics with 4GB VRAM vs the NVIDIA®
Revit model into Unreal Engine to generate movies, two, they’ve got a fantastically diverse range of QUADRO® P620 with 2GB VRAM.
walkthroughs and rendered views. graphics cards. 2. RPW-255: Based on workstation GPUs priced under $200 USD.
Radeon™ PRO WX 3200 graphics with 1.66 TFLOPS vs the NVIDIA®
Bryant also uses a system powered by AMD “If you can get users into the tech and educated QUADRO® P620 with 1.386 TFLOPS. 1.66 / 1.386 = 20%.
graphics for his CAD and BIM work, but for his more to a level so they can understand that a Radeon
demanding design viz workflows, including VR, he PRO WX 3200 graphic card does this, whereas
has a powerful 32-core AMD Ryzen Threadripper Radeon PRO VII graphics does that, they can then Learn more
workstation with a high end AMD Radeon PRO GPU realise how much they need to spend on that
with 8GB of fast onboard memory. technology, and they might have a residual amount For more information information about
“I’ve tried to run Unreal Engine on my system, left over for improving other components, or which Bryant’s LinkedIn training courses, visit
and it runs to a point, but you start to see a little bit could go into training.” linkedin.com/in/cadfmconsult
of lag here and there and especially when you’re Ultimately it all comes back to education. Having For more information about
doing things like lighting, rendering, and so on. But the right hardware can have an immediate impact on AMD professional graphics, visit
when you run it on a high end Radeon PRO GPU it’s productivity, but software training is still one of the amd.com/RadeonPRO
seamless, everything’s moving in real time. most important investments any AEC firm can make.
“The speed it does stuff sometimes, I’m like, “One of the quotes I always use when I talk about

pXX_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Advertorial.indd 3 17/03/2021 06:55

 Opinion

Why digital transformation

brings AEC and PLM together
Oleg Shilovitsky, CEO of OpenBOM and owner of Beyond PLM, explores the
role that Product Lifecycle Management (PLM), a process that’s so important for
many manufacturing firms, could play in the evolving AEC industry

F
or years of developing Product construction and manufacturing started two main reasons for this – company
Lifecycle Management (PLM) to blur. There are a few interesting trajec- organisations and tools. As such, you can
systems for startups and compa- tories on both sides. First, in manufactur- see how general contractors are operating
nies like Autodesk and Dassault ing, companies have started to look more with BIM models, documents and project
Systèmes, I’ve always been curious about distributed, and the growing number of workflow. At the same time, contractors
how the manufacturing and AEC indus- contractors and suppliers create similar are using mechanical, electrical, electron-
try would collide. A few years ago, I problems of data ownership and collabo- ic CAD tools in processes managed by
wrote the article PLM vs BIM - Common ration. Second, construction companies PLM and ERP tools. Each suite of design
or Different (tinyurl.com/BIM-PLM) in have emerged which have started to look tools comes with their own product data
which I made some assessments of how very similar to manufacturing compa- management and collaboration process-
the trajectory of PLM and BIM can be nies, by developing prefabricated meth- es. As a result, we can see not only a dis-
developed in the future. ods and industrialisation of processes. connect between organisations, but also
Back then, I identified common ele- Technology is the main factor that the disconnect between the tools and
ments, such as model, visualisation, pro- brings changes in both industries, but the technologies serving both domains.
ject management and data sharing, as well construction industry is starting to resem- This made me think about the opportu-
as what makes AEC different – a single ble a type of manufacturing process. You nity to connect these digital workflows
model, terminology, tools and processes. can think about super complex construc- for an entire construction project value
Nevertheless, con- tion projects for chain. What will be the essential func-
struction projects buildings, as if you tions of these platforms? Will construc-
always reminded me What is PLM? were building big tion platforms expand to manufacturing
of early PLM devel- ships or aeroplanes. workflows or PLM tools expand into BIM
Product Lifecycle
opment. The problem Buildings are now and construction workflows?
Management
of silos, discussions smart and include a None of these scenarios seems to be a
TECH
(PLM) is used by
about standardisa- manufacturing lot of technologies realistic at this point. Each of these tools
tion of data model EXPLAINER firms to manage and equipment. are too locked into their own bubbles and
and the development the entire lifecycle Prefabricated con- technological legacy. Existing AEC ven-
of shared under- of a product from struction projects dors are interested to expand, but they are
concept, through
standing between engineering design and manufacture, to
are seriously similar very much busy updating and integrating
project and data service and disposal. It is widely used in to a supply chain of with existing systems. At the same time,
stakeholders. the automotive, aerospace, heavy machin- manufacturing com- existing PLM companies are not rushing
Construction compa- ery, white goods and other industries. panies. A variety of to jump into AEC opportunities because
nies were afraid to contractors in the of technological reasons – most Product
implement PLM building industry Data Management (PDM) and PLM tools
technologies, mostly because data owner- working on sub-systems for buildings are not fit to work in the environments
ship in the AEC process is not very clear are often using the same technologies with multiple organisations.
when compared to how manufacturing and tools used by suppliers in manufac- The status quo creates an opportunity
companies operate. Every department in a turing projects. for new types of digital tools. What can be
manufacturing company is a separate Thinking about the digital transforma- the value of such a tool or platform and
company in construction! tion in construction brought me to the how can it be used? The two main chal-
The technologies of PLM and BIM have point when I questioned how existing man- lenges on construction projects are (1) to
always had different industry contexts ufacturing technologies and digital tools integrate and collaborate across an entire
and applications. The separation was too can be used to build a unified digital work- value chain; (2) maximize the use of digital
obvious – one was focusing on building flow, mixing tools that before were consid- assets and models. Let me talk about both.
aeroplanes, complex machinery and ered strictly either AEC or PLM tools.
high-tech products, while the other was Before jumping to the software tools, I Integrate and collaborate
focusing on buildings and construction want to discuss typical value chains in across an entire value chain
projects. And it was true… until recently. construction projects. The value chain contains architects,
For the last few years, working on We can learn from the diagram right designers, engineers, material suppliers,
OpenBOM (openbom.com), I started to see that an entire value chain in construction contractors, maintenance and operation
many projects in which the lines between projects is very fragmented. There are companies. Each of these players is focus-

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 Construction project value chain

Construction Architect Owner operator Land Money

Digital Platforms
Project Cost GC

Autodesk
BIM models
Revit

Takeoffs Takeoffs Takeoffs Takeoffs Takeoffs

HVAC Fire Equip Electrical Glazing ...

Solidworks
Autodesk CAD/PLM models CAD/PLM models CAD/PLM models CAD/PLM models
Inventor
Order Order Order Order Order Order

Manufacturing
Digital Platforms Mfg 1 Mfg 2 Mfg 3 Mfg 4 Mfg 5 Mfg 6 ...

ing on their own workflow and not consid- provide access to design models, equip- platforms, PLM and ERP tools. How to
ering how their work affects others in the ment information, operational parameters. make them mix together and what is the
entire value chain. The disconnect creates The digital platform capable of sup- value proposition? Here are three steps
tons of inefficiencies. What is demanded porting integration and collaboration to make it happen:
is to have a better orchestration and con- across the value chain of construction
trol over a large portion of value chain, and manufacturing companies would 1. Go beyond documents and traditional
connecting all stakeholders together. enable the creation of integrated con- document workflow.
The opportunity is to create a vertically tracts, integrated product deliveries and 2. Adopt granular product information
integrated value chain, simi- expand from processes that objects (product relationships and
lar to how manufacturing
companies do it. These tools
would be managing the
‘‘
Some of the
are purely built on project-
based function to integrat-
most visionary ed and connected activities.
digital assets).
3. Use modern open and multi-tenant
cloud-services capable of connecting
activities based on the data Cloud technologies, SaaS companies involved in the value chain
and moving the process from and advanced applications and new mul- of construction projects.
upstream to downstream, to companies in ti-tenant network-based
connect data, process and the construction data platforms can be a new Conclusion
activities. The connected way for construction pro- The construction market has a golden
value chain would bring sig-
industry are jects to connect both exist- opportunity to adopt manufacturing tech-
nificant benefits to all play- experimenting ing construction workflows nologies. Can existing digital manufactur-
ers. One of the most impor- with the mix of and manufacturing work- ing paradigms and PLM products be used
tant issues is to move from construction flows downstream. The to integrate AEC value chains? Yes, verti-
document-oriented work-
flow to a granular data flow
platforms, PLM important step is to create a
seamless mechanism to
cal integration is a very powerful process,
but many existing PLM single-tenant sys-
– it can improve decision and ERP tools connect data from both of tems are too old to be used as-is, to be

’’
making, sustainability and these worlds together This powerhouses for construction projects.
performance of the projects. data will become a factor to These PLM technologies were built for a
stitch processes together. single company (top down) paradigm.
Maximize the use of digital assets What is needed is a new network plat-
Data is a new oil. But to take advantage of How to mix construction form capable of connecting multiple com-
data, there is a need to build data models and manufacturing platforms? panies and team members together and, at
capable of reflecting the data needed for This is a really a question that construc- the same time, managing product informa-
integrated processes across the value tion firms are facing. There are already a tion on a granular level, connecting silos.
chain and create mechanisms to bring in mixed set of tools used by players in the There is an opportunity for modern cloud-
the needed data. This would be from 3D value chain, provided by software ven- based services used in manufacturing to
models, business data, project informa- dors. It starts from CAD tools used by also connect value chain data in construc-
tion, operational information, sensor infor- architects and engineers (e.g. Autodesk tion projects. These tools could bridge the
mation and data from many other places. Revit) and tools used by contractors and gap and connect construction workflows
The important aspect of adopting digital fabricators (e.g. Solidworks and and platforms used by general contractors
models is to create a granular and open Autodesk Inventor). Some of the most in their workflows with downstream pro-
data framework with tools allowing the visionary and advanced companies in cesses used by trade contractors and man-
information to be shared. The data frame- the construction industry are experi- ufacturers. Just my thoughts…
work would include digital objects and menting with the mix of construction ■ openBOM.com ■ beyondplm.com

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 37

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 Software

Enscape 3.0
review
With usability now driving its development,
the popular real time visualisation tool has
finally broken the shackles of the BIM
plug-in that originally brought it success
by Greg Corke

F
or regular readers of AEC in Revit, be that moving objects or chang-
Magazine, Enscape needs little ing materials, automatically updated in
introduction. We’ve been big fans Enscape moments later.
of the real-time rendering and At a time when other real-time viz
VR software since the 1.8 release when we applications were still grappling with file-
tested it out for our ‘Revit to VR’ feature. based transfer, this was truly ground-
Back then, the software was incredibly breaking. Design visualisation really had
easy to use, and that’s what made it so become part of the design process.
2
appealing. With very little effort you In the years that followed the product
could go from Revit to Enscape and grew massively in terms of capability. It tionality was layered onto the software,
explore the nicely rendered model on a added support for ArchiCAD, Rhino, the workflow became somewhat frag-
desktop display and inside VR. SketchUp and Vectorworks. And, as the mented. As most of the functions contin-
The Enscape application was essential- visual quality increased dramatically, ued to be driven through Revit, users had
ly a real-time window into your BIM including support for Nvidia RTX real to continually swap between applications.
model. Everything was driven from with- time ray tracing, a much stronger empha- The good news is, with Enscape 3.0
in Revit. Simply push a but- sis was placed on deliver- released this week, everything has
ton on the Revit plug-in and 1 In Enscape 3.0 the video ables. This included videos, changed. In a significant re-write of the
editor UI has been revamped
seconds later the model high quality stills, 360 pan- software, the new version offers users a
appeared in Enscape. Most 2 The new Visual settings oramas and standalones more fluid and intuitive design experi-
dialogue in Enscape 3.0
impressively, it maintained a makes it much easier to (rendered .EXE file or web). ence by reducing the reliance on the
live link, so any edits made manage presets However, as more func- plug-in and pushing more functionality
into the application itself.

1 The new UI
The first thing you’ll notice about Enscape
3.0 is the brand new user interface. Only
critical controls, such as the asset library,
have remained inside the CAD/BIM plug-
in. Everything else has moved to the
standalone Enscape application.
Even so, the new interface is incredibly
clean. A single toolbar at the top of the
window can be toggled on and off. It
includes a dozen or so icons for things like
visual settings, view management, collab-
oration, and BIM information – and for
generating viz assets such as videos,
screenshots and deliverables.
To guide new and old users alike, a
context sensitive help window gives tips

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 on every selected command. Most of the improved. Previously, this was done Video editing
controls have keyboard shortcuts, handi- inside the CAD/BIM application, so the The video editor UI has been revamped
ly highlighted by tool tips. workflow was fragmented. Now it’s han- and it’s now easier to add keyframes at
dled directly inside Enscape. Views can the beginning or end of a path, or any-
Visual settings / view management be modified in Enscape, regardless of where in between.
The Visual Settings dialogue, which con- where they were originally created For each keyframe, you can punch in
trols the look and feel of the scene, is now
(CAD/BIM or Enscape). values for focal point, field of view or
found inside Enscape itself. It’s also had More impressively, individual 3D views time of day, so you can create some nice
an overhaul, specifically in terms of how can now be easily linked to custom Visual video animations or time lapses with
presets are managed. Settings presets. This could be particular-
transitions from day to night.
Through a single dialogue box, users ly useful for client presentations, making It’s also now possible to view these
have control over render style, render it easy to switch between views and ren- keyed in values on the timeline itself,

‘‘
quality, camera projection, rather than just on the
field of view, depth of field camera path, which gives
and various Photoshop- By moving many of the commands into the a much better overall
style adjustments. There Enscape environment and reducing the reliance view of the video during
are also effects such as
motion blur, vignette and
on the CAD/BIM plug-ins, Enscape has delivered production. Once you’re happy with
bloom, as well as atmo- a much more user friendly and efficient tool the results, simply hit

’’
sphere for fog, illumina- export, choose resolution,
tion and wind (which con- and frames per seconds,
trols the animation of grass and trees). der styles at the click of a button. all from within the same video editor.
Once you’ve had a good play around With batch rendering you can then Previously these settings had to be
with the settings and are happy with the render all of the views you have set up. defined in advance in a separate dialogue
results, you can save it as a preset. Clicking the new ‘safe frame’ button box.
In previous releases, presets had to be shows you the exact frame that’s going to
loaded in individually. Now they can be be rendered according to pre-defined set- Materials and 3D assets
picked from a list inside Enscape, so you tings for resolution / aspect ratio. For data consistency, all materials and 3D
can quickly cycle through the options and Previously, you’d have had to do a quick assets continue to be applied within the
see them instantly applied to the scene. test render to check it was framing the BIM authoring tool. In Revit, for exam-
View management has also been shot correctly. ple, you use the Revit Material Editor to

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 Software

3 Enscape creates a live link to the CAD/BIM

application. In Enscape 3.0 the options
3
within the plug-in are significantly reduced
4 The exact same view mirrored in Enscape,
rendered in real time

define the appearance of surfaces. To

increase realism you can work with cus-
tom textures, bump maps and displace-
ment maps, as well as video textures.
Enscape also comes with a large collec-
tion of 3D assets including furniture, light-
ing, vegetation, people and vehicles, all of
which can be accessed via the plug-in.
Assets are created in house by
Enscape, some of which are adapted from
Evermotion assets, but optimised for
real-time rendering. In Enscape 3.0 there
are several new assets for specific regions 4
and cultures. You can also create custom
assets from OBJ or FBX files – either
download from a library like TurboSquid
or model yourself.
In Revit, Revit families can be linked to
an Enscape asset. So, in your plan view
for example, when you’re printing or
scheduling, the Revit family will show
up, but it’ll still display as a high quality
asset in Enscape.

BIM workflows
When we first looked at Enscape, you
could only bring across geometry and
materials from Revit – not BIM informa-
tion. This changed last year, when users
of both Revit and ArchiCAD could finally
take advantage of the “I” in BIM.
Enscape 3.0 doesn’t add any new BIM the design application project file and can Since the release of Enscape 2.0 in 2017,
functionality per se, but it’s worth spend- also be exported as a BIM Collaboration there have been a series of point releases,
ing a little time here to explain what it Format (BCF) file. However, to really beef delivering hugely significant updates. In
can do, as the software starts to blur the up the capabilities for team collaboration, that time we’ve seen the introduction of
boundaries between real time visualisa- Enscape also offers an integration with BIM information and BIM collaboration,
tion and design review. the cloud-based issue tracking platform as well as huge advancements in visual
Since Enscape 2.7 objects BIM Track. Once synced to quality and realism, including support for
can be selected in Enscape

information displayed, such

UI has been
‘‘ BIM Track, issues can be
and their associated BIM The video editor managed, added to RFIs,
assigned to specific users
Nvidia RTX real time ray tracing.
But what Enscape 3.0 brings to the
table shouldn’t be underestimated. By
as dimensions, manufactur- and tracked for full moving many of the commands into the
er details, or prices. This is revamped and accountability. Enscape environment and reducing the
great for team meetings and it’s now easier to Users can access all the reliance on the CAD/BIM plug-ins,
client presentations, as add keyframes issue data through BIM Enscape has delivered a much more user
object data can be viewed Track’s web viewer as friendly and efficient tool. Having to con-
immediately without having
at the beginning well as Revit, Navisworks, tinually move between applications
to reference back to the BIM or end of a path, Tekla Structures, Solibri broke the workflow and the feeling of
authoring tool. or anywhere in or AutoCAD. immersion within the scene.
Enscape 2.8 built on this, between Conclusion
However, the Enscape community is
adding basic issue manage- known to be very demanding. And while
ment capabilities. To create
’’ For a product that’s taken
an issue simply right click in the Enscape six years to go from version 1 to version 3,
window. This places an Issue Marker, to Enscape 3.0 doesn’t deliver the headline
some might initially feel underwhelmed
by the new release, once the new work-
flow benefits have been experienced, we
which you can add comments and a grabbing features that one might have expect a positive reception. We’re already
thumbnail for a quick visual reference. expected. But Enscape, as a company, looking forward to version 3.1.
Issues automatically become part of isn’t like most software developers. ■ enscape3d.com

40 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 AUGMENTED | VIRTUAL REALITY

courtesy of Daniele Barone

RHINO | UNREAL LIVE LINK

Free 15 days trial on mindeskvr.com

Reach us at [email protected]
Mindesk is a platform of Featured in Work with
 An Epic investment
Epic Games is a giant in the entertainment sector: over 350 million gamers alone
play Fortnite. This success helps fund the development of its real-time Unreal
Engine, a platform which has become widely used within AEC, writes Martyn Day

T
o date, Unreal Engine has pre- Development Kit), as well as a platform (lighting analysis), Shop Architects (VR
dominantly been seen as a visu- with which to integrate. in construction / component assembly),
alisation tool for architectural With customers now looking to create Zaha Hadid Architects (VR), Allford Hall
viz or multi-platform immer- their own tools and bespoke BIM work- Monaghan Morris (AHMM) (modelling
sive experiences. The concentration on flows (tinyurl.com/bespoke-BIM), Unreal within a city scale), City of Gothenburg
real-time, and ever higher quality output, Engine has also become a popular choice (City Modelling), CallisonRTKL (mass
as well as strategic acquisitions, has as a start point, as it offers a capable stack VR analysis of shoppers’ movements and
placed it in competition with dedicated of visualisation and big data integration eyelines), ÅF Infrastructure (multi-hun-
arch viz rendering engines. tools, unencumbered by the weight of BIM. dred kilometre train track visualisation)
While this is certainly the case, it’s not At events in London prior to the pan- Ramirent (Europe’s largest construction
the whole story. Unreal Engine is also demic, several Unreal Engine customers rental company) (safety training).
becoming a common development plat- have presented their developments using Other customer applications supported
form as the foundation for new commer- the engine in their design processes. by Unreal Engine are more altruistic,
cial products using its SDK (Software These have included the likes of KPF such as Buro Happold’s, collective experi-

42 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 WELLINGTON CITY IMAGE COURTESY OF BUILDMEDIA
ment, BHoM (Buildings and Habitats side, Epic acquired Datasmith (formerly ‘Capturing Realty’ adds photogrammetry
object Model) (bhom.xyz) which aims to called Motiva Unreal Scene) from Motiva, to 3D modelling to the Unreal environ-
provide a single common language to enable optimised and geometrically ment (see page 10 of the news). From a
between AEC applications. clean architectural models from Revit, collection of photographs of a building,
Instead of creating translators Rhino, SketchUp and others, to be street block or city captured by drone, it
between every possible tool, the idea is brought into the Unreal Engine environ- will be possible to rapidly create a 3D
to just have to write one single link per ment. Datasmith is now free for all users model showing as-built conditions in
application to connect to all the others, and is an alternative to Autodesk’s FBX. Unreal. Reality capture is increasingly
such as Grasshopper, Excel, Dynamo Epic then acquired ‘Twinmotion’ from popular in AEC projects, from refurbish-
and Visual Studio Abvent in 2019. Twinmotion is a mature ment to monitoring construction (5D),
architectural viz tool which comes with a architecture to civil engineering.
Acquisitions for AEC huge library of dynamic vegetation, vehi- Epic’s appetite for new data formats
Epic’s focus on AEC as a market segment cles, people, street furniture and lights. which benefit from fast visualisation is
has been a multi-year progression through This made Unreal Engine a hub for early getting into some very cutting-edge, AEC-
in-house development, partnerships and stage viz by architects, all the way up to specific workflows. It has also forged part-
acquisition. When Epic acquires, it also high-end real-time virtual environments. nerships with key industry players for
has a modus operandi to either make the The software also features direct one- integrations and deeper development.
technology free, free for a long time or click synchronisation with Revit, Rhino,
drastically reduce the cost to users. ArchiCAD and others. Twinmotion cur- Partnerships
With data portability and repurposing rently costs £348 for a perpetual licence. No man is an island and software compa-
being a constant thorn in the industry’s The latest purchase, Slovakian-based nies in the AEC space need to play well

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 Feature

together for the good of their customers. allows data to flow between proprietary this list is, of course, Autodesk. In 2017,
Epic has formed tight integrations with systems and pop-up inside a wide range of Autodesk picked Unity as a specialised
Nemetschek’s Graphisoft ArchiCAD and environments. It should be possible to be partner to address the viz, VR/AR market,
Vectorworks BIM platforms, including modelling in Revit or BricsCAD, Blender co-developing FBX and collaborative
Unreal Engine and Twinmotion. or ACCA and get that data fed into Unreal workflows with data round-tripping with
This is in addition to Nemetschek hav- Engine via Rhino Inside. Revit, Maya and 3ds Max. This move kind
ing its own rendering brand (Maxon Esri has integrated with Unreal of handicapped most of the competition in
Cinema4D). Italy-based Acca with its Engine with its ArcGIS ARVR and this area for the timebeing.
Edificius BIM tool has also used Unreal CityEngine products and has its own It was also an interesting decision at the
Engine to create its VRiBIM extension. ‘game engine’ development team. The time, as Autodesk has its own Media and
McNeel’s Rhinocerous and its Rhino company recently demonstrated analy- Entertainment division that had a dedicat-
Inside extension is now supported with sis of wildfires, at a country level, using ed VR team with products. It was as if
Unreal Engine. Rhino Inside operates like the particle system in Unreal. Autodesk opted out of real-time. We have
a data bus between AEC applications. It The major CAD developer missing from heard rumours that Autodesk has now

3D Repo AECOM Bentley Systems Synchro

3D Repo is a SaaS platform for BIM coordi- To prove MegaGrants go to even the biggest Pennsylvania-based Bentley Systems, the
nation in the cloud. The collaborative soft- of customers wishing to carry out research creator of MicroStation, ProjectWise and
ware, accessible from a browser, allows and development (R&D), industry iTwin cloud services, was included in Epic
users to manage 3D model revisions, add infrastructure giant AECOM was included Games’ November 2020 update on the
comments, perform data validation, clash in November 2020 in Epic Games’ MegaGrant recipients. This is for work to
check, identify model changes, track health MegaGrant list of recipients. be done in integrating its Synchro digital
and safety, visualise 4D planning and host Turning over approximately $13.2 billion construction management platform with
live collaboration sessions. The company last year, the global firm is very active in Unreal Engine. Synchro tracks cost,
gained its MegaGrant to work on a new visualisation and virtual reality (VR) sequencing (4D) and field submittals and
cloud-based digital twins service based on research and usage. No specific project was uses very visual displays to show the state
Unreal Engine (more on page 11). listed against the grant. of projects.
■ 3drepo.com ■ aecom.com ■ bentley.com/synchro

Hassell Mindesk Speckle

IMAGE COURTESY OF KUKA GROUP MINDESK. 3D MODEL COURTESY OF TURBOSQUID AND ARTIST KRISTIJAN ILIC, KASIOPY STUDIOS

Global multi-disciplinary architectural, design Forget 3D model conversion and export, Speckle is a cloud-based collaboration envi-
and urban planning practice Hassell teamed Mindesk is a live link between designs in ronment designed for CAD and BIM data, to
up with structural engineers Eckersley Solidworks and Rhino (Grasshopper) to provide ‘seamless data exchange’ of geometry
O’Callaghan to enter Nasa’s Martian 3D print- Unreal Engine, supporting a number of between design and analysis tools. At its
ed habitat challenge and was shortlisted in the immersive headsets. The software offers mul- heart is an expanding library of connectors
top 10. The design featured a shell structure ti-user VR, with VR-based editing, support- which embed in commonly used design tools,
made of fused Martian soil and 3D printed by ing NURBS and 3D Bézier curves, with a bi- allowing geometry to flow without files.
robots. The grant will be used to develop a VR directional link taking the 3D VR sketches Through its APIs and SDKs users can auto-
experience of the Mars Habitat, currently on back to CAD. For Grasshopper users, sliders mate very complex workflows. The grant
display at The Design Museum in London. The can be used to directly edit the script in VR, went towards creating interoperability trans-
project was presented at NXTBLD 2019. to evaluate and compare parametric designs. port schema for Unreal Engine.
■ nxtbld.com/videos/xavier-de-kestelier ■ mindeskvr.com ■ speckle.systems

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 restarted some in-house VR development. Unreal Engine - point clouds, BIM mod- Unreal Engine. These could come from a
But partnerships are not all about work- els, 2D shapefiles, GIS. HOK used FME wide range of areas: game developers,
ing with the major vendors. It’s also about automate much of the modelling of 130 media + entertainment, tool developers,
teaming up with innovative small firms square miles with 2 million auto-generat- open source projects and AEC customer /
who are looking to make a difference. ed buildings from an existing data set, as professionals. By November 2020 the
Trezi, for example, is the world’s first well as integrate a GIS dataset. company had handed out $60 million in
immersive platform which connects There are many more – see box outs financial support to more than 1,000
designers with building product manufac- below and on page 46. developers. Some firms opt to not make
turers in collaborative sessions. This is the their funded developments public.
Zoom of the VR AEC space. From the Epic MegaGrants MegaGrants typically range from about
reverse angle it also allows AEC product Launched in 2019, Epic dedicated $100 $5,000 to $500,000 and can cover a wide
manufacturers to showcase their designs. million to what it calls MegaGrants, a variety of development, from in house
Safe Software’s FME creates a space fund which it endows on valid firms or projects to full blown new products, using
where you can collate assets quickly in people looking to develop using the Unreal Engine as their foundation layer.
The biggest MegaGrant to date was sub-
stantially larger than the average. Coming
in at $1.2 million dollars, it will be paid to
Cintoo Cesium open-source modelling tool Blender over a
three-year period. For the AEC market
this is of special interest, as Blender has
seen a rapid rise in usage in the industry
especially as a modelling tool for archi-
tects – and for a free tool it’s very capable.
Blender has spawned its own open-
source BIM tool, called BlenderBIM
(blenderbim.org), which has a thriving com-
munity of global developers. By funding
French developer Cintoo has created a cloud- Cesium is a developer of 3D geospatial Blender, Epic has also enabled down-
based collaborative, scan & BIM platform to solutions, specialising in the cloud-streaming stream developments like this to flourish.
manage and distribute scan data. The Cintoo of big geospatial content for global scale As a side note, in July last year Microsoft
cloud platform enables virtual coordination, terrain and city models. Cesium for Unreal
project reviews, issue tracking and progress also gave Blender funding and backing,
will be the first ‘high precision globe’ in the
monitoring on meshed point clouds. The Epic engine, bringing real-world detail and lending it even more industry credibility.
MegaGrant was awarded to expand the use of accuracy to simulated environments. The The MegaGrant program is not just
Cintoo Cloud with Unreal Engine, getting company is developing this as a free and open about money, as Epic also encourages
faster streaming and removing the need for source plug-in. There will be an optional hardware providers to join the scheme
creating photo textured models and allowing subscription for access to global 3D content and offer limited numbers of units for
the integration of BIM geometry. via the company’s Cesium ion service.
grant winners, such as AMD last year
■ cintoo.com ■ cesium.com
and Magic Leap the year before.

Who is eligible?
Epic is looking to give grants for innova-
Theia Interactive Tridify tive enterprise projects in visualisation,
simulation, design or VR/MR/AR projects
for architecture, automotive, manufactur-
ing - specifically non-game industry pro-
jects. Also, if you are a commercial soft-
ware developer creating a tool that inte-
grates with Unreal, or working on open-
source tools that benefit the 3D graphics
community. By our estimates there’s about
$40 million left on the table for projects,
Founded in 2014, Theia Interactive is a long- Finnish developer Tridify has created a apply at unrealengine.com/en-US/megagrants
time Unreal Engine developer, working on browser-based, multi-platform, multi-format
immersive and XR environments for AEC, BIM publishing and viewing tool. Once data Epic view
retail, aerospace and automotive. The compa- is published and shared, it’s possible to meas- We talked with Marc Petit VP, general
ny won an Epic MegaGrant to help it develop ure, comment, add cutting planes and inter-
manager, Unreal Engine at Epic Games on
an online meeting room product called ‘Big rogate the BIM component data. The Epic
Room’. The software, which is currently in MegaGrant was given to develop a new IFC
the topic of MegaGrants allocation. On the
beta, will provide a virtual design planning format BIM streaming service to improve scale of the grants awarded, Petit explained
room where distributed teams can collabo- existing workflows and increase the quality that “Most grants fall between the $50k to
rate on project data. It’s aimed at architects, of the viewing experience. Learn more in this $150k range, which is a lot of “free”, “no
designers, project managers and contractors. AEC Magazine article (tinyurl.com/Tridify). strings attached” money. We prefer to give
■ theia.io/bigroom ■ tridify.com several smaller grants than bigger ones, as
the governance around it is so light.”

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 45

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 Feature

More places to find Unreal Engine

a range of tools covering landscape drawings. Buildings are laid out
Beyond CAD Vision
(VizTerra) and deck design, by drawing spaces, as a ‘massing
swimming pool design (Pool Studio), graph’. Then separators, such as
outdoor design (VIP3D) and Yard walls, floors, roofs, doors windows,
for augmented reality designing stairs and railings are defined from
and viewing. a library. Finishes, trim and cabinets
■ structurestudios.com are then added. This promises to be
a very rapid form of modelling and
Project Anywhere was a proof of the software still provides instant
concept demo for exploring high- renderings and walk-throughs
resolution 3D terrain and building using Unreal Engine. Users can
data in real time from ‘any device’. cut the model anywhere and get
It’s hosted on Microsoft Azure, accurate DWGs.
powered by Nvidia GPUs and gives ■ modumate.com
an amazingly fast world view,
running a cloud-based, high-
Beyond CAD Vision is a visualisation cars accelerate, decelerate and stop at precision World Geodetic System
Modumate
tool for civil engineering projects. traffic lights. It will also be possible (WGSS) through Unreal Engine.
The software is currently in to make still images or video in real It’s both interactive and scalable
development and is the recipient of time. The software is due out in 2021. for real-world simulation.
an Epic MegaGrant. It is a standalone ■ beyondcad.com/vision ■ tinyurl.com/ProjectAW-Unreal
application for transportation or
other civil projects and provides Structure Studios formed in 2001 Modumate is a new design
3D file import, a 3D library and and is a long-time user of Unreal tool designed to bypass
advanced traffic movement, where Engine. The company has developed traditional CAD

It’s important to remember that these design to prop tech! There are lots of (a world-scale simulation based on
are grants, not loans and do not include innovative uses of Unreal Engine.” Microsoft Azure instance, powered by
any loss of ownership. In qualifying With Unreal Engine adding serious Nvidia GPU) and a few more who are
development circumstances it’s also pos- layers of capability, which AEC develop- not public yet.”
sible to use Unreal Engine royalty free. ers can utilise, and with today’s popular With so much money going to so many
The traditional way that software BIM systems often slowing down with projects and companies, we wondered
companies connect with developers has large models, we asked Petit how he saw how Epic defined success. Petit replied,
been through SDKs (Software the gamification of AEC and Epic’s role “We view the Epic MegaGrant program
Development Kits). The availability of within it. “We’re building a platform so as very successful and for us, success is a
these can be free but it’s become the that you can capture and display the vibrant ecosystem where stakeholders
standard that developers join a network word as-is (and as-built) and integrate feel empowered, supported and achieve
and pay for membership to your design data in it - their goals with our technology. And we
receive software, support
and the SDK. We asked Petit
if the old way of attracting
Just being a
great
‘‘ building,
etc...
of
With the
Unreal
infrastructure
combination
Engine,
want to do this in a way that is fair and
transparent. And if, in the process, we get
goodwill, that’s all upside!”
developers was dead? “SDKs Twinmotion, MegaScans
are still valid, but I do visualisation and Reality Capture, we’re Conclusion
believe that the days of mak- and display providing a set of tools to Epic is building its own ecosystem. With
ing money with SDKs are
over,” he replied, “It is a
engine is really achieve the fundamentals of
putting the data together
the ‘gamification’ of the AEC market, it’s
clear that the intention is to flesh out
wise investment to incentiv- not where Epic and offering high perfor- Unreal Engine’s modelling capabilities to
ise people to develop for plans to remain mance, yet easy-to-use visu- include more of the standard data for-

’’
your platform. Just look at alisation in a platform that mats and capabilities which AEC tools
how the cloud guys seed the is extensible. and customers rely on.
market, offering free credits for this.” “We are building a digital twin plat- Just being a great visualisation and
As to the kind of projects that Epic has form that is truly open and accessible display engine is really not where Epic
funded, Petit explained, “It’s been a wide and that spans multiple industries (e.g. plans to remain. The core capability to
range, we provide seed funding for indie AEC, MFG, GIS). We see our role as ena- display billions of polys and render in
games, we fund open source projects bling application developers. real time, is potentially a great place to
(Blender, Godot, AliceVision, Speckle, “There are already many companies start designing in-situ, unencumbered,
Cesium, USD (Pixar’s Universal Scene starting to build solutions for the AEC and now at a city scale and rendered
Description) to name a few. In addition, space on top of Unreal Engine, from in real time. Performance at this scale
many education curricula projects, many Structure Studios (architecture) to with BIM data is beguiling and Unreal
tools development projects. We’ve done a Modumate (architecture), to Vision (civ- Engine 5 is coming out soon too.
lot across the whole spectrum from ils) or something like Project Anywhere ■ unrealengine.com/megagrants

46 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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THEIA-AD.indd 1 23/03/2021 07:22
 Testfit.io: optimised
building modelling
We have all been using Computer Aided Design for decades but, the fact is, the
computer has hardly aided in the design so far. The last few years have seen a
number of interesting design optimisation tools appear, one of which is Testfit.io
by Martyn Day

A
s an industry we like to label
things. The problem comes
when marketing gets
involved, tailors a label to the
capabilities of a product, and it ends up
that everyone has a different definition of
what those labels mean.
We already have many phrases in com-
mon use: generative design, computa-
tional design, design optimisation, rules-
based design, algorithmic design, para-
metric design, data-driven design,
AI-based design, the list goes on... There
will undoubtedly be more.
The basic fact is the act of design is
always a compromise, a trade-off to
achieve buildings or infrastructure that
works best, conforms to regulation and
can be fabricated in a budget.
Unfortunately, the industry has a rep- This is probably hardly sur- TestFit’s generative design building developers. This has
utation of delays, budget overruns and prising given the conceptual platform can be used primarily been because of the
to prototype building,
sometimes compromised design – there phase as being the most over- parking, site and urban slow adoption of this type of
are a slew of reasons for this. BIM has looked in the workflow. configurations based on technology by architects, and
not necessarily been a panacea and, in Massing rectangles in a BIM real-world variables the hard fact that the develop-
fact, might contribute to overloading tool was never much of an ers’ superfast evaluation of
design teams with detail too early on in upgrade from pen and paper. sites, linked to business metrics like rent-
the process. Wading through this market, one com- able value etc., is easier to justify.
With so many competing variables, soft- pany that has stood out to us is Testfit.io, This bias towards development has
ware developers are now attempting to based in Texas and headed up by Clifton meant the architectural design communi-
take some of these burdens off the design- Harness. As a straight-talking architect, ty is the loser. Testfit.io is very much
er’s shoulders. The areas that every devel- Harness is building on his vision of a catering to architects and early phase
oper has focused on are feasibility and con- lightning-fast tool that offers a wide design. You don’t need to be able to code
cept design; it’s at this point that funda- range of capabilities to prototype build- to use it and the results are delivered
mental errors can be made and the problem ing, site and urban configurations based graphically in seconds.
of solving multiple variables is most raw. on real-world variables, solving geome- Testfit.io could be seen as a straightfor-
There are many formative tools in the try based on competing variables and ward proposition of productivity benefit.
space already: Hypar, Digital Blue Foam, constraints such as building codes. Save time doing the tasks of sheer drudg-
Spacemaker.ai (bought by Autodesk), In the space, where applications are ery, evaluate multiple design options rap-
Blox (Gensler internal development), targeting early-stage design, there has idly, and let it assist you in making the
Kreo modular, Blokable, Modelur, been a tendency for most of the software right decisions early on, rather than hav-
Vitruvio, Envelope.city to name but a few. development to be skewed towards ing to alter those designs later.

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 Interview

Interview with Clifton Harness, CEO of Testfit.io

Martyn Day: Where did Testfit come from? terminal application that you’d type in tation. If you have an organising princi-
parameters like corridors length, specify ple, like a dwelling unit, that is a static
Clifton Harness: I started out in archi- the units, hit enter and then it would just dimension, that means that construction
tecture school, got a BArch at the do it. It was slow, but it would eventually downstream knows how much rent they
University of Texas. Before I could, you spit out spreadsheets and a tonne of other can get for that. An architect knows
know, become licensed, I started working things. Then we decided to do create a exactly what’s in the construction docu-
in project development, managing archi- graphical interface. He built all this soft- ments for that. That’s how we’re trying to
tects, doing test fits myself. I then real- ware to make me more effective at my job pick up speed, multifamily units, using a
ised that our current system for doing and it just kind of grew from there. kit of parts approach for documentation.
feasibility was quite shit! While everybody’s crazy about the
I was working till 11 o’clock at night, Martyn Day: How long have you been DfMA [design for manufacturing and
several days a week. One night I was going now? assembly] there’s enough innovation to be
counting out a parking garage, which had for design for documentation. It sets
involved printing out your whole draw- Clifton Harness: October of 2017 is when projects up for success. For some people,
ing set and I had to go through and count, we really got started and then we raised success is the drawing output. For others,
and make sure all the numbers were money in January of 2020. We built a suc- it’s the fact they looked at 13 options on a
accurate, because the development guys cessful small business first. I mean, this is site in 20 minutes, and none of them
need the numbers, the construction guys probably the difference worked. Everybody’s try-
need the numbers. Everybody’s basing between us and some of the ing to cram these deals
their real estate deal off of the architect’s other start-ups out there, is down the pipeline that
numbers. At 11 o’clock at night I was we had to bootstrap. don’t work and that causes
counting these parking stalls and I just We had no idea what the a lot of opportunity costs
sort of stopped and looked at the wall and venture world was. We had within architecture.
I asked myself, ‘do I want a career draw- no idea how to sell soft-
ing parking stalls?’ ware. We had no idea how Martyn Day: Commercial
I would finish the set and then tabulate to build a company. We set developers always seem to
everything and put it on my boss’s desk. out with our minimum via- push the boundaries of
He would have gone through and count- ble products and by day 20 what’s viable.
ed everything himself to make sure that made our first sale, day 21
my numbers were accurate. He had been we made our second sale. Clifton Harness: It’s a
doing this for 30 years, he saw no issue combination of a couple of
with the wasted human effort of counting
this crap all day.
So that’s where the innovation is born,
Martyn Day: So how
much of your development
has been from you pushing
‘‘
An architect, in
any market, that
things. The developers are
trying to achieve profita-
bility in a deal, and they’ve
out of frustration. I felt like all the archi- what you think you can got a lot of levers at their
tects we worked with were dealing with develop to solve vs your undervalues what disposal, but the building
the same issue, just not having good data. customers saying what they think their itself as a deal-making tool
And nobody trusts each other. It’s a prob- they need? time is worth, is only one of those levers.
lem. I don’t think we’re here to solve that They’re going to squeeze
problem, but maybe we can have more Clifton Harness: The orig-
means that the architect to get more.
trust with an algorithm that can be con- inal roadmap that was in everybody else Even if the architect only
sistent. Algorithms tabulate the building my head is basically done, has to compete has a 10 pound bag, you
the same way every single time. Humans everything that we’re doing with that lower know, the developers like
can’t do that, we tried, but we’re a little now is customer feedback to fit 16 pounds worth of
bit imperfect! driven. I was just trying to threshold stuff in there!”
The initial program was a pretty pow-
erful Excel spreadsheet in which I could
plan out a building to scale. Then it got to
get a building generated
with parking counts and
stuff, but our customers have taken it to
’’ Martyn Day: There are
many architectural firms that do this
a point where I didn’t understand the the next level. All their ideas are excellent. early phase almost for free, just to get the
math that I had to create to solve the unit Some wanted to mix in dimensional job on the detail stage. The result of suc-
mixes and everything automatically, so constraints, which basically meant rip- cessive economy crashes perhaps?
that’s when I brought Ryan in (Ryan ping out all of the unit generation code, fill
Griege, Testfit.io CTO). the whole constrained environment for Clifton Harness: I don’t know why they
Ryan, my college roommate, was work- what we call them ‘kit of parts’ and embed don’t bill for this time. In the US, they
ing in game development at the time. I’d that into the logic. Now people can do their essentially will do it for free to get the job.
call him after work and ask him how I own custom units inside the app. It’s a race to the bottom. You should have a
could solve this specific math problem! He That’s really probably our most popu- threshold for what you value your time at.
eventually replied, ‘You don’t, I’ll build lar feature today; it certainly is the most An architect, in any market, that under-
you an app that does it’. He created a little valuable feature for design for documen- values what they think their time is

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 Interview

worth, means that everybody else has to Everybody is looking way downstream going to want to be that spider, they’re
compete with that lower threshold. And when we’ve got a dumpster fire right here going to want to be the thing connecting
the problem is, that the output of architec- in front of us that we should focus on! everything. We’re seeing developers all
ture is not heterogeneous, it’s kind of How the architect and the contractor, across the country build out their own
homogeneous in the eyes of developers. the developer, the broker, the land seller, contracting company. So what’s the next
Architecture is a very hard business to the city, the bank, the investors - how all Domino to fall? Are they going to grab
be profitable and to compete in. These these people communicate with each architects too? If there’s not an existential
firms are not going to have the kind of other. It’s absolutely archaic. It’s with crisis at the AIA [American Institute of
money to develop custom solutions that spreadsheets and PDFs and there’s very Architects] over what the future of this
would be useful for their own company, or little tech-enabled firms in the commodity industry looks like, it’s going to be bad.
afford the expense of a computational architecture space.
designer, maybe $100k a year. If they In order to address that market of pri- Martyn Day: Looking at the market
want to pick up speed and efficiency, using vate development in the United States, today there are many players emerging
something like [Autodesk] Dynamo, it’s we can’t just do one building type, we and then you’ve got the mass domination
hard and expensive to get implemented. have to do 15 different building types. We of companies like Autodesk, who bought
have to do garden apartments, we’ve got Spacemaker.ai Architects’ budgets are
Martyn Day: Everybody is looking for the to do modular facilities, for hotels modu- tight and the cost of Revit seems to be
technology that will give the industry a lar for a long time and hotel ever upward.
productivity boost. There are high hopes
for design for manufacturing and assem-
bly, the problem is the architects aren’t
design. By the way, these
can be converted into DfMA
pretty easily.
‘‘
While
everybody’s
Clifton Harness: We wel-
come the challenge. Like
engaging with production and the firm is Then there’s structured everybody says, BIM is a
most likely to adopt the software that is parking, rectangular parking crazy about the mindset, it’s not a software.
already in fabrication or construction. garages are excellent, DfMA there’s Well, it’s because the soft-
because they’re precast. Our enough ware is so bad that you can’t
Clifton Harness: In the US, 0.3% of new whole country is obsessed make BIM very easy. There
multifamily buildings are modular, with parking. We had to innovation to is yet to be a software that
DfMA, unit ready. That’s not very many build a more fluid parking be had for will accomplish BIM in my
buildings - more than it used to be 10 solution for the cast-in-place design for mind, just right out the box.
years ago (around 0.1%) but the current stuff to address crazy shaped
issue with innovation that I see isn’t ‘how sites. I don’t want to have to
documentation. And that’s where I’m head-
ed. This is where Testfit is
do we get to DfMA’? It’s how do we get to build out the whole structur- It sets projects headed, and what we’re
just generating better construction draw- al engineering component, up for success going to disrupt. We’re

’’
ings, more quickly? That’s the practical but my customers don’t trust going to do it with commod-
innovation, it’s not glamorous. I’m not the garage layouts, because ity buildings. We’re going to
going to raise, whatever Blokable, or one they didn’t see the columns. We partnered do it with architects at the centre, we’re
of these guys that gets millions of dollars with Thornton Tomasetti to get columns going to get as much detail as we can pos-
to ‘radically change how we do housing’. (tinyurl.com/testfit-col). sibly get, right from the get go, and build
Unfortunately, the most good that we a coalition. We have a laser focus on pro-
can do for housing today is to enable Martyn Day: How can architects be viding specific value.
architects to make better CDs [contract more relevant to today’s process?
drawings] more quickly for the tradition- Conclusion
al construction types. Clifton Harness: I think if architects Harness’ Testfit.io has big aspirations
I’m probably a stick in the mud, when it want to really own the process, they and intends to deliver algorithmic design
comes to wanting to hop on the innovation need to look at themselves, like a spider functionality that is usable and delivers
train and challenge the industry. on a web. How do we connect value. Find a common problem that eats
meaningfully with our data? time and slows evaluation and they will
How do we connect data pipe- create a solution for it.
lines meaningfully to our Whilst some systems auto generate
contractor, to our owner, to hundreds or thousands of design options,
the developer? How do we Testfit cuts to the chase. The system cur-
actually put ourselves in the rently evaluates against 160 different
centre of this process? variables but still remains lightning fast.
They don’t have construction Harness is refreshingly honest and keen
delivery risk, like the to add more building types and test con-
contractor does, they figurations. While the firm has quite a
don’t have financial strong US-centric focus regarding build-
risk like the developer ing types, Harness has expressed interest
does. And both in firms opening a dialogue to explore
those groups generic design problems. They are cer-
are going to want tainly up for the challenge.
to control the risk, they’re ■ testfit.io

50 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p48_49_50_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Testfit.indd 50 23/03/2021 08:48

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 Opinion

Three trends for BIM tools

With many feeling that BIM development is stagnating, AEC Magazine asked
Bricsys’ BricsCAD BIM product manager, Tiemen Strobbe, what disruptive
technologies he thought will drive the industry’s toolsets

T
he construction industry — tion and digitalisation, and low customer towards off-site manufacturing, techno-
which encompasses real estate, satisfaction, as detailed in McKinsey’s logical progress in Artificial Intelligence
infrastructure and industrial 2020 report: The next normal in and increased collaboration possibilities.
structures — is one of the larg- construction. (tinyurl.com/Con-Normal)
est industries in the global economy. It Design for manufacturing:
has a favourable growth outlook driven The promise of BIM from projects to products
by global population growth, ongoing Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a
Modular construction has the potential to
urbanisation and increased spending on process for using a shared digital repre-
offer a more standardised, consolidated,
infrastructure. sentation of a built asset to ease design,
and integrated construction process.
However, despite being one of the larg- construction, and operation processes to
Modular construction involves produc-
est industries in the world, the construc- form a reliable basis for decisions.
ing standardised components of a struc-
tion industry has some unfavourable Although the first BIM applications
ture in an off-site factory, and then
market characteristics: assembling them on-site.

‘‘
This approach can speed
• A project-based up construction by as
building approach Artificial Intelligence has the potential to improve much as 50%, whilst cut-
and bespoke projects the BIM design process through task automation, ting costs by 20% in the
with unique features recognition of design intent and auto-completion of right environment.
have a limited degree Whilst the concept of
of repeatability and
repetitive tasks, to name a few examples modular construction
standardisation.
• A highly fragmented ’’ has been around for
many decades, it is cur-
ecosystem, in which construction have existed since the 1990s, BIM adop- rently experiencing a new wave of atten-
relies on coordination among special- tion rates worldwide have reached just tion due to changing customer percep-
ised groups (including owners, con- 60 to 70 percent in 35 years. tions, and advances in digital design,
tractors, architects, and engineers), Nevertheless, the promise of BIM for planning, and production technologies.
resulting in limited economies of scale. improving performance across the con- In several countries, including the
struction industry is high. We believe United Kingdom, the United States and
These market characteristics have that the following emerging disruptions Japan, there is a renewed surge of modu-
caused the construction industry to his- and future industry dynamics are expect- lar projects, and it is expected that modu-
torically underperform, typified by lag- ed to accelerate the adoption of BIM and lar construction will increase in popular-
ging productivity growth, slow innova- the digitalisation of the industry: a shift ity in more countries soon.

Lagging productivity growth Slow digititalisation Low customer satisfaction

Less than 1.0% per year over the past Construction is among the least 72% of projects are completed over
20 years, compared to 2.8% for the digitised industries in the budget. 70% of projects are
total economy. total economy. completed behind schedule.
Source: McKinsey Global Institute, “Reinventing Source: McKinsey & Company, “The next Source: R. Agarwal, S. Chandrasekaran and M. Shidhar,
Construction: A Route to Higher Productivity,” 2017. normal in construction,” 2020. “Imagining construction’s digital future,” 2016.

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 53

p53_55_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Bricsys.indd 53 24/03/2021 10:00

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 Opinion

Technology growth Machine

learning 250%
potential Artificial
Intelligence 243%
(2018-19)
Virtual
Reality 172%

Augmented
Reality 143%

Cloud-based
CAD 138%

Generative
Design 100%
Source:
Business Advantage
CAD Trends Mobile
Access 87%
2018-2019 report

0 50 100 150 200 250

As McKinsey wrote in its 2019 report: Artificial Intelligence (and its subdo- 19 pandemic has caused a shift in atti-
Modular construction: From projects to main of Machine Learning) the tudes to cloud technology in the con-
products, “Modular has had its moments BIM trend with the highest growth struction industry, and working with
before, but there is reason to believe its potential, according to the Business models in the cloud while working from
momentum is sustainable this time.” Advantage CAD Trends 2018-2019 home has had a positive effect on general
(tinyurl.com/modular-AEC) report (tinyurl.com/CAD-report). work performance.
This trend will have a significant Artificial Intelligence has the poten- The most important aspects of working
impact on how BIM tools are used dur- tial to improve the BIM design process with BIM in the cloud are design collabo-
ing the design phase. Design decisions through task automation, recognition of ration, design review, and construction
will need to be made more upfront, and design intent and auto-completion of collaboration. According to the Business
designers will need to align their proj- repetitive tasks, to name a few examples. Advantage CAD Trends 2018-2019 report
ects to the manufacturing process whilst It is important that the AI tools act only over half of the CAD professionals use
focusing on the efficiency as an assistant to the the cloud for exchanging or collaboration
of manufacturing and designer, and the design- with files and models, and half of them
assembly. er can still reverse, over- use the cloud for storing and reviewing
This design approach is rule, or simply neglect files and models.
often referred to as Design any design suggestion as It is expected that BIM tools for collab-
for Manufacture and they wish. Some of the oration can reduce the time and cost of
Assembly (DfMA). BIM most interesting applica- the design period: These tools:
tools that allow designers to tions of AI in BIM
bridge the gap between con- include: • Enable the possibility to trace back
ceptual BIM design and design changes.
manufacturing and assem- • Automatic classifica- • Avoid conflicts and assign
bly can significantly reduce tion of BIM elements. ownership.
the time and cost of the
design period. Through
automation and the devel-
‘‘
The Covid-19
pandemic has
• Auto-completion
connection details.
• Maintaining
of

data
• Allow prompt and seamless commu-
nication during the design process
• Coordinate work across teams.
opment of libraries of mod- integrity of models and • Support non-linear design flows,
ules for the manufacturing caused a shift in drawings. keeping track of multiple
process as assemblies, attitudes to cloud • Automatic annotation design options.
the design process can
be accelerated to an even
technology in the of construction drawings
(including tags, dimen-
• Facilitate last minute design changes.

larger extent. construction sions, etc.) A good example of collaboration work-

industry • Model and drawing flow can be found in the software devel-

’’
Automation of manual clean-up. opment industry. In software develop-
work through AI • Assistance in planning. ment, many developers are cooperating
The interest in Artificial Intelligence (AI) on source code whilst using version-
for computer-aided design can be traced Collaboration in the cloud control systems for tracking changes in
back to the 1970s. The architect and tech- A shift from desktop to cloud-based ser- files and coordinating work among
nologist Nicholas Negroponte envisioned vices has taken place in many industries. programmers.
a dynamic between human and machine However, cloud-based services for CAD It is expected that such technologies
that “would bring about ideas unrealis- and BIM are not yet widely adopted in will gradually find their way in BIM
able by either conversant alone.” the AEC industry. Nevertheless, there are tools, if they are built for non-technical
More than 50 years later, the advent of strong future growth indicators for users, built for project workflows, and
big data, increased computing power, cloud-based BIM services, especially in built for design change chaos.
and cloud computing have made addition to desktop BIM tools. The Covid- ■ bricsys.com

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 55

p53_55_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Bricsys.indd 55 24/03/2021 10:01

 Software

MassMotion evolution
With the ongoing pandemic, work, travel and public social distancing look set to
remain important for months to come. Crowd simulation software, such as Oasys
MassMotion, has really come in to its own, writes Martyn Day

A
EC magazine typically looks However, the demands for help with is a once in a generation shock.
at software and hardware social distancing and managing with the Miles explained that while some cus-
which can assist in the digital new limitations quickly initiated new tomers would identify new features, such
design of building projects. feature development. as the ability to better simulate accessi-
Typically, these are forward-looking Also, because the way that people were bility for wheelchairs or adding elevators
design assessments to help shape and working with MassMotion changed, for high rise, from Oasys’ perspective the
improve the quality of any proposed pro- Oasys had to make some changes to the most important development has been
ject. In our strange new Coronavirus licensing of the software, because the aim the creation of MassMotion’s Software
world of lockdowns and limited capaci- is to get people back on their feet and this Development Kit (SDK).
ties, these design simulation and analysis
tools are providing essential feedback on
how we can bring existing buildings safe-
ly back to use.
As you might expect, one of the key
developments added to Oasys’ pedestrian
and crowd simulator, MassMotion, this
year has been proximity-based tools, to
help its customers respond to proximity-
fears and disease spread.
This functionality has enabled users to
carry out urgent simulations to help
facility and transit authorities to respond
to the variable regulations imposed
throughout the Covid-19 pandemic.
The software can model physical dis-
tances between each agent, mapping
exposure times and interactions and ulti-
mately identifying the maximum capaci-
ty of any given space, with various mini-
mum distances. Of course, MassMotion
can also be used to simulate queue spac-
ing, one-way systems and other strate-
gies, which, once proven, can be deployed
to bring public buildings back to use
within Government Covid-19 guidelines
which should hopefully evolve as we
head to a post-corona world.

In conversation
Lachlan Miles, is product director of
MassMotion at Oasys and is the driving
force behind its development. He started
as an engineer and moved into the soft-
ware world. We discussed MassMotion’s
development and what’s coming next.
Miles first explained that initially he
thought Covid-19 was not going to be Theme Park: crowd simulation and
heat-maps to identify queue times
great news for crowd simulation as gov- at ticketing and main entrance
ernments didn’t want the public to use
mass transit, theme parks and stadiums.

56 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p56_57_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_MassMotion.indd 56 24/03/2021 10:14

 While the SDK can be used to automate mation and feed it into any system the time, we’ve decided to offer tools for real-
simple things, it actually puts client chooses. ly big customers, who are able to dedicate
MassMotion into new dynamic conceptu- MassMotion is a desktop application, someone who knows C sharp and can
al workflows that large practices are cur- while the software world seems to be spend two weeks reading documentation
rently developing (see our Bespoke BIM going cloud. “Cloud is the next big thing and developing something really unique
software workflows story from earlier that we’re doing with MassMotion”, and useful. But we are also going to make
this year - tinyurl.com/Bespoke-BIM). explained Miles, “…and we are not just it accessible for someone at an engineer-
In the software world, Miles explained throwing up the existing code on ing firm who’s learning Python maybe in
that, for both desktop and cloud, “If soft- Amazon Web Services and changing the their spare time.
ware doesn’t have decent APIs or open UI. The development team has almost “Of course, we will also include fea-
input / outputs, software will become tripled in size in the last year. The main tures that users have asked for like fly
increasingly isolated.” thing that we’re doing is basically taking through cameras, different avatars and
He added that Oasys gets requests to the engine out of the car and refactoring visual tweaks.”
take the simulation data from customers it for the cloud.” But the research never stops. Miles
and use it in Autodesk 3ds max or Unreal “When we released the SDK a little explained that because buildings are
Engine and historically software players while ago, the aim was always to get to smarter and smarter, there is more
said no because they want to keep cus- feature parity. So, anything you can do in understanding of not just the occupants,
tomers within their application. Moving the UI, you can script, from placing por- but also how things are being used. Large
forwards this isn’t going to work. tals for agent generation to a full infrastructure like airports or train sta-
The MassMotion SDK shares the Grasshopper plug-in system - and so we tions are now sensor-rich spaces. Oasys
agent database and offers other develop- have started writing that. is funding an ambitious research pro-
ers a direct pipeline. This means plug-in “For us, in terms of what’s coming next gramme into how you take this Internet
developers can factor MassMotion infor- in version 11, due out around summer- of Things (IoT) data and construct data
pipelines directly into future releases of
MassMotion.

Conclusion
While the industry has had to adapt to a
year of distancing and remote working,
applications like MassMotion have prov-
en invaluable when considering pandem-
ic regulations. As we look forward to
hopefully a summer of the easing and
perhaps some sense of normality, it’s
clear that simulation and analysis of pub-
lic spaces will become increasingly
important both for future developments,
as well as for emergency planning.
MassMotion is undergoing an incredi-
ble amount of development work, both on
the desktop and in the cloud, where data
needs to be accessible to everybody in the
project, through to digital twins. Oasys is
looking to cater to all levels of clients,
from those who just want basic simula-
tions, to those who want to embed and
build on top of it within their new digital
workflows. We find this latter develop-
ment exceptionally interesting and it is
exactly the kind of capability that large
practices are currently looking for.
We will certainly be catching up with
Lachlan Miles again later this year as we
carry on exploring how software devel-
opers and architectural practices are now
working together to customise their own
workflows and processes, to tailor-make
their design technology stacks.
Increasingly software should not be
just considered on feature sets alone, but
on connectivity and how the data it cre-
ates can be refactored and used within
the design and lifecycle of AEC assets.
■ oasys-software.com

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 57

p56_57_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_MassMotion.indd 57 24/03/2021 10:14

 Case study

A problem shared...
How an optimised cloud-based digital construction workflow helped the
ECC Group keep its largest projects on track, improve site productivity,
cut contractor’s unseen costs and reduce the impact of Covid-19.

R
ecognised as one of Ireland’s However, with the potential delays that which could result in all parties crowd-
foremost engineering compa- Covid-19 could cause and the need for ing around a paper plan or single screen.
nies, the award winning ECC remote working, McGoey felt that a fresh
Group operates out of the UK look at how he collected, processed and The living document
and Ireland. Current live projects shared each project’s survey data would Following a consultation with Korec and
include the construction of numerous bring enduring benefits to both existing Trimble, McGoey turned to Trimble’s
data centres for one of the world’s largest and future contracts. Cloud Engine software (TCE). The soft-
social media platforms, often up to ware creates a ‘living’ document of the
400m in length, along with other vast Straight to the point scanned point cloud data, ideal for moni-
structures for pharmaceutical and life As a curious and committed supporter of toring the construction process and
science companies. technology and a long-term user of detecting clashes etc. in a format that
With 2020 throwing up innumerable Trimble instruments, McGoey contacted could be easily understood by technical
challenges, ECC Group CEO, John Trimble’s UK and Irish distributor, and non-technical stakeholders.
McGoey, was intent on delivering an Korec, to talk through some possible TCE allows each scan dataset to be
enhanced service for his clients that approaches on how to get better use out shared as a simple URL link (identical to
would keep their large infrastructure of the data he was collecting. inserting a web link in an email) added
projects on track. Required to provide In particular, how he could ensure as a note to a 2D drawing which is then
structural and layout information to the that all the project’s stakeholders - shared with the client and contractors
contractors on these projects, McGoey including the QC team, senior manage- by email.
was using 3D laser scanning as the best ment and package management - could From the client perspective, this allows
option for the fast collection of accurate have access to this rich and up to date them to view the 2D plans and addition-
point cloud information that would information whilst avoiding site visits ally, via one simple click, to be transport-
record every detail. and overcoming the issue of files being ed into an interactive 3D model of the
The existing workflow would then see too big to email. build, complete with imagery. Here, they
this scan data sent to the office based ECC By better sharing the latest site data, can zoom, pan, check coordinates, tag ele-
BIM team where it would be processed in McGoey felt that it would vastly reduce ments, add notes and PDFs and of course
Trimble RealWorks software and then the risk of delays and rework and also view the scan, all whilst discussing the
stored, ready to be retrieved when prog- keep people fully informed, all from the project plan with the ECC team.
ress meetings etc. were scheduled. safety of the office rather than on site
Clear communication
Following the implementation of the new
1 workflow, McGoey reports that the bene-
fits have been diverse. For a start, as
opposed to basic 2D plans, the software is
making full use of the rich 3-dimensional
point cloud data and shares it in a format
that is both intuitive and quick to learn.
This has greatly increased client engage-
ment and the overall understanding of a
project’s progression.
As well as fostering trust between the
parties, this increased engagement

1 Trimble software was used to create a ‘living’

document of the scanned point cloud data
2 Tripods with wheels were used to manoeuvre
the laser scanners around the vast floor areas

58 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p58_59_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_korec.indd 58 18/03/2021 11:46

 2

1 Quick
activa

‘‘
i
2C
The early morning Vec
(
scan team arrives on
site and the data is 3V

processed, with the

URL link emailed to
stakeholders by the
close of play that day,
ensuring that all
relevant parties have
access to the most up
to date data

’’
ing scan density etc. Additionally, in
order to speed up operations, the tripods
were often placed on wheels for easy
manoeuvring around the vast floor areas.
However, it is the functionality of the
Trimble X7 that has had the most impact.
The X7 automatically registers scans on
site and the size of the data files are
smaller and more manageable reducing
processing time in the office. So much so
that McGoey can now offer clients a ‘one
day’ service.
The early morning scan team arrives
on site and the data is processed, with the
URL link emailed to stakeholders by the
close of play that day, ensuring that all
relevant parties have access to the most
up to date data.
McGoey is already looking at the next
reduces misinterpretation and misunder- such as travel. QA teams can be manag- step in this new workflow recently sup-
standing, as it allows the most realistic ing multiple global projects and there- plying two sub-contractors with
view possible of the project. fore having access to this quality of data Trimble’s XR10 HoloLens System, a
From a safety and site management from wherever they may be significantly mixed reality headset purpose-built to
perspective, this workflow reduces on- reduces unseen costs through remote fit into an industry-standard hardhat.
site personnel to the bare minimum with inspections, QA and sign offs etc. This technology allows ECC or the sub-
just one operative required to collect the contractors to bring models of their cli-
3D data and the accompanying imagery. Same day turnaround ent’s construction projects out of the
Less bodies on site means less accidents, With a highly effective workflow tried screen and onto the site so that they
less person-to-person contact (vital at and tested, McGoey further enhanced his appear lifelike and can be moved and
this time), and frees up staff for other, scanning operations to increase efficien- changed depending on how the user
safer, more valuable office-based tasks. cy. Already using Trimble’s highest spec interacts with them.
The TCE software is also free to use for laser scanner, the TX8, which was per- Models are given context when overlaid
all nominated stakeholders and the sim- fect for long range scans, he supplement- onto the real world hugely assisting the on-
ple, intuitive layout ensures that very lit- ed it with the addition of a Trimble X7. site team. They can also be used for remote
tle (if any) training is required from the With a schedule of up to 50 scans per sessions and progress reporting – ideal for
client side. This means that contractors day he ensured that the programme was keeping people apart during Covid-19.
can considerably reduce unseen costs planned at least a week in advance detail- ■ korecgroup.com ■ eccgroup.ie

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 59

p58_59_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_korec.indd 59 18/03/2021 11:46

 Feature

5G: powering tomorrow’s construction sites

By delivering real-time
data, 5G can help
construction firms deploy
onsite innovations such as
IoT structural sensing and
holographic building
visualisation, writes James
Bristow of Cradlepoint

F
rom real-time 3D modelling to Looking further ahead, 5G will also ments of the construction process,
GPS tracking equipment and prove key in accelerating the industry such as structural steel, framing, or
tools, construction sites are toward autonomous and remote opera- electrical schematics.
often hotbeds of the latest in cut- tions – in other words, completing proj- • 360-degree 8K streaming and QR code
ting edge technology. Getting devices to ects by machine alone, without the need scanning from wireless video cameras –
talk to one another, on the other hand, of having people on site. Even though enabling site workers to deploy digital
can be a challenge. After all, plugging a remote-control technology exists at pres- induction tracking, which is said to
laptop into a wall is tough when the wall ent, 5G’s ultra-low latency eliminates any improve risk management by automat-
hasn’t been built yet. delay in connectivity and ensure work is ing the process of ensuring every person
This presents a clear use case for wire- completed with adequate speed and pre- on-site has completed safety training.
less as the primary method of network cision. This could also unlock the capa- • Internet of things (IoT) structural sens-
connectivity in the industry, an area which bilities of self-driving machines, which ing – using smart sensors fixed to
is proving just as transformational as the will be able to accurately map areas, rec- rebar and embedded in concrete aggre-
physical devices it connects. From gigabit ognise signals and communicate with gate to send data to the cloud where it
speeds over LTE to the millisecond latency other machines more efficiently. can be subject to rapid and in-depth
of 5G, the power of the wireless WAN analysis. As a result, Taylor
(WWAN) is allowing sites to achieve an Taylor Construction Construction can determine whether
ethernet-like quality of connection but A demonstration of the power of 5G in concrete is poured correctly and track
without the need to lay a single cable. the transformation of the construction any shifting of concrete over time.
5G is expected to provide 10 to 100 industry was recently brought to light in • Real-time design displays – allowing
times faster speeds. It could also unlock 10 Australia, where one of the first real- staff on site to make changes to digital
to 100 times more capacity than current world deployment of 5G connectivity was blueprints in real time on tablets and
long-term evolution (LTE) networks. This rolled out by visionary company Taylor display on large monitors in trailers.
will give those working in construction Construction.
almost instantaneous access to data-inten- Driven by a need for more advanced and Scratching the surface
sive edge and cloud applications, enabling agile software platforms to power every- While 5G is making technological leaps
multiple users to interact with each other thing from blueprint design to site securi- forward at an accelerated rate, the con-
in real-time, from anywhere in the world. ty, Taylor Construction noted that such struction industry is still only scratching
Given that construction sites are complex applications require real-time data, which at the surface of its full potential. Like the
and constantly-evolving environments, is only possible with immense bandwidth, innovations which were helped along by
this will be a huge step forward. low latency and constant uptime at the the power of 4G LTE, we won’t know how
With a higher data crunching capacity edge of the network with 5G. 5G will manifest in exciting new use
combined with more efficient connectivi- Using an enterprise-grade WWAN cases in the future. But what we do know,
ty channels through network slicing, 5G edge solution provided by Cradlepoint, is that this future is bright.
is also key to unlocking the power of the company has successfully deployed a It’s clear that 5G will improve produc-
massive machine-type communications number of new onsite innovations pow- tivity, safety and compliance for construc-
in the construction industry. This tech- ered by 5G: tion and engineering. But this is by no
nology will provide highly scalable and means the end-goal. Instead, 5G will be a
broad geographical coverage to help with • Holographic building visualisation – catalyst of continuous improvement and
complex construction and infrastructural comprising mixed-reality smart glass- innovation, helping to accelerate firms in
projects such as smart cities, where the es that Taylor’s employees and cus- the construction industry and beyond
number of nodes will be considerably tomers can wear on-site to render a toward the use cases of tomorrow.
higher than on a normal project. virtual model of the building or ele- ■ cradlepoint.com

60 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p60_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_5Ga.indd 60 18/03/2021 11:56

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 Nvidia RTX A6000 review
One of the most eagerly anticipated workstation GPUs in recent years
has finally arrived, and it’s certainly been worth the wait, writes Greg Corke

N
vidia first announced its new ray tracing, it promises to deliver more PCIe Gen 4 is currently only available in
Nvidia RTX A6000 worksta- than double the GPU rendering perfor- workstations with the latest AMD CPUs,
tion GPU back in October mance of its predecessor, the Turing- such as the Ryzen 5000 series and 3rd
2020. But with delays, we’ve based Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000. And, of Gen Ryzen Threadripper. However, it will
been eagerly awaiting its arrival. Now it’s course, it also offers a significant boost soon be supported on the forthcoming 11th
finally here and UK firm Scan sent us a for 3D graphics, VR, and AI workflows. Gen Intel Core S-series CPU.
sample of the PNY Nvidia RTX A6000 And all for £3,730 + VAT.
inside its new 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T The Nvidia RTX A6000 is the first What no Quadro?
AMD Ryzen Threadripper workstation, workstation GPU to be built on the Nvidia You may have noticed that the Nvidia
which we take a closer look at below. Ampere architecture, and also the first to RTX A6000 is missing something. Yes,
Tuned for visualisation workflows, the support PCIe Gen 4. With double the after 17 years, it appears that Nvidia is
Nvidia RTX A6000 (A for Ampere) is bandwidth of PCIe Gen 3, it should mean retiring its Quadro brand.
Nvidia’s second generation RTX GPU. data can move in and out of the GPU For someone who has written about
With an emphasis on hardware-based quicker, but it won’t benefit all workflows. Nvidia professional GPUs since the early

Scan 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T review

With the new Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU and AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU, this beast of a
workstation has the power to deliver in a whole range of design viz workflows, writes Greg Corke
In the world of design viz, 64-core CPU and spend workflows including recom- Lock for viz clusters and Threadripper 3970X, but
there’s an ongoing debate what’s left on a half decent piling shaders and building GPU virtualisation. other Ryzen Threadripper
about CPU / GPU rendering GPU for real time 3D? lighting. In V-Ray you can The most notable feature, CPUs are also available,
and where to best allocate The reality is, for those that choose to render on GPU or however, is that is comes with including 64-core and
your workstation budget. take design viz seriously, and CPU depending on what you 48 GB of on-board GDDR6 24-core models.
Do you place an emphasis rely on multiple applications, want to achieve. The good memory. This is colossal At just under £1,500 + VAT
on GPU, with one or more it’s never really that black news is, with Scan’s latest amount for any GPU, and for the CPU, the 32-core AMD
high-end graphics cards for and white. workstation users don’t have plenty for handling complex Ryzen Threadripper 3970X
rendering, coupled with a Unreal Engine, for example, to make that decision. scenes in GPU renderers, gives you a huge amount of
high GHz, low core count thrives on a powerful multi- Equipped with an AMD both in terms of high-poly multi-threaded processing
CPU, or go large with a core CPU for many of its Ryzen Threadripper CPU and models and high-res textures. power for your money.
the brand new high-end On test, the Nvidia RTX In KeyShot, for example, it
Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU A6000 didn’t disappoint. In completed our 4K test scene
there’s buckets of processing GPU renderers V-Ray GPU in an impressive 66 secs, sec-
power for all different types and KeyShot 10 we saw dou- ond only to the Armari
of workflows. ble (in some cases more than Magnetar X64T-G3 FWL (38
double) the render perfor- secs) (tinyurl.com/armari-AEC)
Nvidia RTX A6000 GPU mance of the previous gener- and Lenovo ThinkStation
In workstation reviews like ation ‘Turing’ Nvidia Quadro P620 (47 secs) (tinyurl.com/
this, the CPU normally gets RTX 6000 (24GB). TRPRO-AEC), both of which
top billing – after all it’s the In real time 3D applications, had 64-core Threadripper /
heart of the machine – but including Enscape and Threadripper Pro) CPUs.
when you have a component Autodesk VRED Professional, In the V-Ray 5.0 bench-
as impressive as Nvidia’s the leap wasn’t as big, but still mark it delivered a score of
new high-end workstation gave a performance increase 34,902 vsamples. As this
GPU, the Nvidia RTX of between 1.40 and 1.50. In benchmark is new we have
A6000, it’s impossible not to short, the Nvidia RTX very little historical data at
break protocol. A6000 looks to be an amaz- AEC Magazine, but you can
The Nvidia RTX A6000 is ing GPU for rendering, real see comparative scores at
Nvidia’s first professional time 3D and VR. We cover tinyurl.com/V-ray-bench.
desktop GPU based on its this in far more detail in our Changing tack to point
‘Ampere’ architecture. It’s a in-depth Nvidia RTX A6000 cloud processing, the Scan
Quadro in everything but review above. 3XS GWP-ME N1-32T set a
name, with all the features new record in our Leica
you’d expect from a pro class AMD Ryzen Threadripper Cyclone Register 360 bench-
GPU, such as support for Our test machine came with mark, registering our 100 GB
ECC memory, stereo, Frame the 32-core AMD Ryzen dataset in an incredible 2,119

62 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p62_63_64_65_66_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Nvidia.indd 62 18/03/2021 11:35

 Workstations

secs. As this application is maintained an impressive 4.0 The workstation may need a more powerful
only lightly threaded, the GHz when rendering in For a machine of this class, power supply. Product spec
workstation’s fast memory KeyShot for over an hour, 0.3 it’s not surprising that Scan Our test machine’s 128 GB is
(128 GB of DDR4 3600MHz) GHz above its base clock of has gone for a substantial split across four super-fast 32 ■ AMD Ryzen
and fast storage (PCIe 4.0 3.70 GHz. chassis. The Fractal Design GB 3600MHz Corsair Threadripper 3970X
NVMe) will also have played In CAD software Solidworks Define 7 measures 547 x 240 Vengeance DIMMs, making CPU (32C/64T) (3.7GHz
a very important role. it hovered around 4.30 x 475 mm and weighs 13.45 the most of Threadripper’s – 4.5GHz)
The beauty of Threadripper GHz under single threaded kg (before you add any com- four channel architecture,
■ Nvidia RTX A6000
is you also get good single loads and in Lecia Cyclone, ponents). and leaving four slots free for
GPU (48 GB GDDR6 ECC)
threaded performance, which is lightly multi-thread- Our review machine came future upgrades.
(461.09 driver)
which is essential for CAD ed, 4.15 GHz. with a tempered glass win-
and BIM workflows. dow side panel, so you can Conclusion ■ 128 GB Corsair
Amazingly, it completed our Superfast storage gaze admiringly at the com- With a 32-core Threadripper Vengeance LPX
Solidworks IGES export test For storage, Scan has done ponents inside – if that’s CPU, and the most powerful 3600MHz DDR4 memory
in 81 secs, just 6 secs slower something we don’t see very your thing. workstation GPU money can
■ 2TB WD Black SN850
than the current record often – an M.2 NVMe SSD for Joking aside, Scan has done buy, the Scan 3XS GWP-ME
PCIe 4.0 NVMe M.2 SSD
holder, an Intel Core-i9- the main system drive and a a nice job of the interior, set- N1-32T is a powerhouse for
+ 4TB Samsung 860 EVO
10900K (10 core) clocked to 2.5-inch SATA SSD for data. ting the RGB lighting system multi-application design viz SATA SSD
5.0 GHz. The 2TB WD Black SN850 to all-white. And when you workflows — CPU-centric
M.2 SSD is based on the new have a GPU as beautiful as or GPU-centric, it really ■ Asus ROG STRIX
Cool runnings PCIe Gen 4.0 standard, which the Nvidia RTX A6000, then doesn’t matter. TRX40-E mainboard
The substantial 280W CPU is is fully supported on the why not show it off to your And with 128 GB of fast
■ Fractal Design
cooled by an all-in-one Hydro Threadripper platform cour- colleagues? If you don’t want DDR4 memory (with capaci-
Define 7 case (547 x 240
CPU cooler, the Cooler tesy of the Asus RoG STRIX to brag, then a solid side ty for 256 GB) there plenty of x 475 mm)
Master MasterLiquid ML360 TRX40-E motherboard. panel is an option. scope for multi-tasking,
TR4 Edition. It features a It means you get vastly Thanks to the Asus moth- allowing you to chop and ■ Cooler Master
plate / pump that bolts direct- superior sequential read/ erboard there’s a whopping change between applications MasterLiquid ML360
ly onto the processor, with write performance (up to number of ports: 8 x USB with ease. CPU cooler
tubes leading to a substantial 5,839 MB/s read and 4,827 3.2 Gen 2 (1 Type-C) and 4 x As with most Scan work-
■ Corsair RM1000i –
three fan radiator attached to MB/s write, according to the USB 2.0 on the rear; 2 x USB stations, this one is very well 80PLUS Gold PSU
the roof of the case. AS SSD benchmark). This 3.2 Gen 2 Type A and 2 x built and generally quiet in
For a CPU of this power, it’s may go some way to explain- USB 2.0 front top. There’s operation. However, in ■ Microsoft Windows 10
relatively quiet in operation, ing the leading scores in our support for fast 2.5GbE NIC workflows where CPU load Pro 64-bit
but fan noise is noticeable. Leica Cyclone point cloud Ethernet, plus built in Intel varies, some may find the
■ 3 year warranty - 1st
The pitch of the fans also processing test which reads Wi-Fi 6-AX 200. fan noise distracting.
Year Onsite, 2nd and 3rd
goes up and down, depending and writes hundreds of giga- The system is powered by a Of course, at £7,500 (Ex
Year RTB
on what’s being processed, bytes of data. 1,000W version of the VAT) the Scan 3XS GWP-
although this was mostly With 4TB on the Samsung Corsair RMi power supply, ME N1-32T doesn’t come
apparent when processing 860 Evo SATA SSD, there’s which is 80PLUS Gold rated. cheap, but if you’re looking £7,500 (Ex VAT)
point clouds in Cyclone plenty of capacity as well, but However, even though the for machine to make light scan.co.uk/3xs
Register 360 where the CPU the machine can also be motherboard can take a sec- work of any CPU or GPU
load comes in waves. kitted out two more M.2 ond Nvidia RTX A6000, if centric design viz workflow
Acoustics aside, it does an NVMe SSDs and multiple you do want to double up you throw at it, then you’ll
excellent job keeping the CPU SATA Hard Disk Drives with NVlink and get a GPU know this would be money
running at top speeds. It (HDDs) if required. memory pool of 96 GB, you well spent. .

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 63

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 Workstations

Enscape 2.6 Autodesk VRED Professional 2021 Autodesk VRED Professional 2021
4K Automotive model (Anti Aliasing - Medium)
4K Automotive model (Anti Aliasing - Ultra-high)
4K
Museum model
Frames Per Second Frames Per Second Frames Per Second
4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution) 1.23 4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution) 1.23 4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution) 1.23
(FPS) (bigger is better) (FPS) (bigger is better) (FPS) (bigger is better)

Nvidia RTX A6000 1 53 Nvidia RTX A6000 1 64.3 Nvidia RTX A6000 1 25.15

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 2 38 Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 2 43.75 Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 2 16.75

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 1 19 Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 1 22.05 Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 1 8.45

0 10 20 30 40 50 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 5 10 15 20 25
1
AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver) 2
AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver) 1
AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver) 2
AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver) 1
AMD Threadripper 3790X (461.09 driver) 2
AMD Threadripper Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

Chaos Group V-Ray 5.0 benchmark Chaos Group V-Ray 5.0 benchmark Luxion KeyShot 10 benchmark (GPU)
V-Ray GPU CUDA V-Ray GPU RTX

Relative performance to reference system (bigger is better)

123 vpaths (calculations per minute) (bigger is better) 123 vrays (calculations per minute) (bigger is better) 123
(Intel Core i7-6900K CPU (3.20GHz, 8 Cores)

Nvidia RTX A6000 1 1,531 Nvidia RTX A6000 1 2,490 Nvidia RTX A6000 1 99.62

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 2

659 Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 2
1,346 Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 2
50.48

AMD Threadripper
1
Nvidia Quadro RTX3790X (461.09
4000 1 driver) 2
AMD Threadripper
634Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver) AMD Threadripper
1
Nvidia Quadro RTX3790X (461.09
4000 1 driver) 2
AMD Threadripper
923 Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)
1
AMD Threadripper
Nvidia Quadro RTX3790X (461.09
4000 1 driver)
2
AMD Threadripper
33.83 Pro 3995WX (457.09 driver)

0 500 1000 1500 2000 0 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 0 20 40 60 80 100

2000s, it’s hard to get used to this change. RTX 6000. This is particularly relevant 300W, so you’ll need a fairly hefty PSU
And, it would seem, Nvidia is struggling for those working with high poly count in your workstation. It gets its power
too. For the October launch, product pho- models and very high resolution textures from a special 8-pin connector, that is
tos were sent out with ‘Nvidia Quadro in GPU renderers or real time visualisa- connected to two standard 8-pin PSU
RTX A6000’ in the file name, which sug- tion / VR. But more on this later. connectors via an adapter. It is cooled by
gests a last minute re-branding. What’s more, two Nvidia RTX A6000s two fans, top and bottom. There are four
But the Nvidia RTX A6000 is certainly can be bridged together with an NVLink DisplayPort 1.4a connectors nestled
a Quadro card in everything but name. It adapter to create a memory pool of 96 below a heat sink.
has certified drivers for pro applications, GB. However, sharing geometry between
renowned reliability, ECC memory and two GPUs can come with a significant Testing the Nvidia RTX A6000
plenty of specialist features for pro visuali- performance hit. AEC Magazine put the PNY Nvidia RTX
sation, such as stereo and Frame Lock for A6000 through a series of real-world
viz clusters. There’s also support for Nvidia Beauty and the beast application benchmarks, both GPU ren-
virtual GPU (vGPU) software, which Nvidia’s product design team has dering and real time visualisation.
allows a workstation to be repurposed into really gone to town on the Nvidia RTX The GPU is simply overkill for current
multiple high-performance A6000 and the card is a generation CAD and BIM software, so we
virtual workstation instances. 1 KeyShot 10: RealCloth 2.0 thing of beauty, with a mini- didn’t do any testing in that regard.
with coarse weave
With 48 GB of VRAM, the malist angular design and However, it’s important to note that it will
(uses 6.8 / 48 GB VRAM)
Nvidia RTX A6000 has the black mirror finish. NVLink, still be certified for the likes of Revit and
2 KeyShot 10: RealCloth 2.0
most memory of any profes- with a much finer weave Stereo and Sync connectors ArchiCAD, which is useful if you plan to
sional GPU – on a par with (uses 38.2 / 48 GB VRAM) are all hidden away behind use those kinds of applications alongside
the Quadro RTX 8000, and 3 Enscape real time discrete panels. more viz focused tools like Enscape,
double that of the Quadro rendering test model The board is rated at V-Ray and Lumion.

1 2

64 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

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 3

For comparison, we used a Quadro RTX Chaos Group V-Ray GPU memory – why 48 GB?
4000 and historic data from the Quadro V-Ray is arguably the No. 1 physically- One aspect of technology that has long
RTX 6000 GPU (457.09 driver), tested in based rendering tool for arch viz. We put held back GPU rendering is the limited
a Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation the Nvidia RTX A6000 through its paces amount of GPU memory available on
with AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro using the new, freely downloadable, each card. When a scene, including
3995WX processor and 128 GB RAM. V-Ray 5 benchmark, which has dedicated geometry, materials and lighting, doesn’t
tests for Nvidia CUDA GPUs, Nvidia fit entirely into GPU memory, the render
GPU rendering RTX GPUs, as well as CPUs. can fail, slow down (if it runs ‘out of core’
GPU rendering has now reached a stage The results were extremely compelling, using system memory), or simply fall
where it is becoming ubiquitous. While with the Nvidia RTX A6000 showing back to the CPU.
renderers built into CAD and BIM appli- itself to be 2.32 faster than the Nvidia There are many established worka-
cations still tend to rely on the CPU, most Quadro RTX 6000 in the CUDA test and rounds to help users ensure a dataset fits
of the major design viz focused renderers 1.85 times faster in the RTX test. entirely within GPU memory — such as
now offer a GPU rendering capability. Considering this is just a generation on resizing or optimising textures, simplify-
This includes traditional ray trace ren- generation comparison, it’s a phenome- ing or stripping out geometry, or render-
derers such as Chaos Group V-Ray, nal leap in performance. ing in separate passes — but all of this
Luxion KeyShot and Solidworks takes time to prep. What the user really
Visualize, all of which can take full Luxion KeyShot wants is not to have to worry about GPU
advantage of Nvidia RTX technology, KeyShot, a CPU rendering stalwart, is a memory at all.
including the dedicated Ray Tracing relative newcomer to the world of GPU With 48 GB, the Nvidia RTX A6000 is
cores and Tensor cores arguably the GPU that

‘‘
for AI denoising. will enable this. And
Then there are real while it’s not the first to
time ray tracing tools like It’s quite incredible to think it has managed to offer that much memory
Unreal Engine and the double the GPU rendering performance, generation (the Quadro RTX 8000
new Chaos Vantage (for- on generation. And, it’s hardly dragging its heels in also came with 48 GB) it’s
merly known as Project the first to do so at a sub
Lavina), which works
real time 3D either, with a 1.4 to 1.5 boost £4,000 price point.
with V-Ray scenes. (N.B.
you can currently pick ’’ Of course, for some
workflows 48 GB will be
up a free one year licence if you register rendering. But it’s one of the slickest overkill. However, for those pushing the
before June 2021). implementations we’ve seen, allowing boundaries of realism, using very hi-
As a side note, it’s important to check users to switch between CPU and GPU fidelity textures (such as those captured
that your chosen GPU rendering tool rendering at the click of a button. from real-life scans) or colossal engineer-
supports the new Nvidia RTX A6000. In the Keyshot 10 benchmark, part of ing accurate datasets, it should open up a
Users of Solidworks Visualize 2021, for the free KeyShot Viewer, we saw similar wealth of opportunities.
example, will have to wait until Service results to V-Ray. The Nvidia RTX A6000 Luxion, for example, has in the past
Pack 3 in April 2021 before they can take outperformed the Quadro RTX 6000 by reported ray tracing a KeyShot scene with
advantage of any ‘Ampere’ GPU. a factor of 1.97. 1.37 billion unique triangles using two

www.AECmag.com March / April 2021 65

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 Workstations

Quadro RTX 5000 cards and NVLink for ing TwinMotion, Lumion, Enscape, the viewport. It offers several levels of real
a combined 32 GB of memory. Unreal Engine and others. And, of time anti-aliasing (AA), which is impor-
Indeed, despite its designer-friendly course, the boundaries between real time tant for automotive styling, as it smooths
workflows, KeyShot is doing a lot to break 3D and ray tracing continue to blur. the edges of body panels. However, AA
new ground. A new feature in KeyShot 10 To test frame rates we used FRAPS in calculations use a lot of GPU resources,
called RealCloth 2.0 allows users to gener- combination with a 3DConnexion both in terms of processing and memory.
ate visually accurate woven materials SpaceMouse to ensure the models moved We tested our automotive model with AA
using thread geometry. However, this can in a consistent way every time. We only set to ‘off’, ‘medium’ and ‘ultra-high’.
be incredibly memory hungry when using tested at 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution. At The Nvidia RTX A6000 was signifi-
the option to represent each individual FHD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution this level cantly faster than the Quadro RTX 6000
thread as a geometric entity, even with rel- of GPU simply isn’t stressed enough. delivering between 1.46 and 1.50 more
atively small scenes. frames per second in all of our tests. Most
Previously, we’ve explored this feature Enscape notably, the card delivered a very smooth
in our sister publication DEVELOP3D Enscape is a real-time viz and VR tool for 25.15 FPS when AA set to ‘ultra high’,
(tinyurl.com/KeyShot10). Using a 16 GB architects that uses OpenGL and delivers which is unheard for a model of this com-
Quadro RTX 5000, however, we quickly very high-quality graphics in the view- plexity. This is 2.97 times faster than a
ran out of memory, with the scene falling port. Enscape has used elements of ray Quadro RTX 4000.
back to the CPU to render. However, tracing in its software for some time.
things were entirely different with the Newer versions of the software are RTX- Conclusion
Nvidia RTX A6000. enabled, so full ray tracing can be toggled Nvidia has put a huge effort into develop-
With 48 GB to play with we were able on and off. ing its hardware-based ray tracing tech-
to much better match the scale of the For our tests, Enscape provided a large nology and it’s now really starting to see
weave in KeyShot to that of the physical architectural scene of a museum and its the fruits.
fabric. As you will see from the images on surrounding area. At 7.5GB, the GPU It’s quite incredible to think it has man-
the previous page, the difference in accu- memory requirements of this model are aged to double the GPU rendering perfor-
racy, in terms of how the material is rep- relatively high, but Enscape models can mance, generation on generation. And,
resented, is quite incredible. take up much more and this is a drop in it’s hardly dragging its heels in real time
Of course, RealCloth 2.0 is quite a the ocean for the Quadro RTX A6000. 3D either, with a 1.4 to 1.5 boost.
niche example. However, there will cer- In terms of performance, the Nvidia Rendering has become the big battle-
tainly be some architectural or automo- RTX A6000 delivered a phenomenal 53 ground for hardware manufacturers and,
tive visualisers out there that would ben- frames per second (FPS) for an incredibly with the 64-core AMD Ryzen
efit from 48 GB (or even 96 GB with two smooth experience. This is around 1.39 Threadripper CPU, competition between
RTX A6000s over NVlink) now or in the times faster than the Nvidia Quadro RTX GPU and CPU has never been so fierce.
future. You’ll know who you are. 6000 and 2.79 times faster than the CPUs have always had the lead when it
Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000. comes to addressable memory and there’s
Real time 3D an ongoing debate about rendering per-
While GPU rendering is a major play for Autodesk VRED Professional formance vs accuracy. But with 48 GB
the Nvidia RTX A6000, real time 3D Autodesk VRED Professional is an auto- per GPU, and the ability to scale up cards
using OpenGL and DirectX continues to motive-focused 3D visualisation, virtual as and when required (the new
be a very important part of architectural prototyping and VR tool. It uses OpenGL Supermicro SuperWorkstation 5014A-TT
visualisation, with applications includ- and delivers very high-quality visuals in can support up to four Nvidia RTX
A6000s), the argument for GPU render-
4 5 ing has never been more compelling.
In many ways the biggest competition
for the Nvidia RTX A6000 is from Nvidia
itself. The consumer-focused Nvidia
GeForce RTX 3090 should offer roughly
the same performance for one third of the
price. It does have half the memory (24GB)
but with support for NVLink, two can be
linked together to create a virtual 48 GB
render resource. The downside is — it’s
currently nigh on impossible to get hold of
a board and prices are inflated.
Of course, for some firms it will always
need to be Quadro all the way. Or should
we say Quadro in features, warranty, reli-
ability and certification, but not in name?
It’s going to take some time to get used to
the rebranding.

4 Four DisplayPorts 5 Top fan

6 7 6 Bottom fan 7 Hidden connectors

66 March / April 2021 www.AECmag.com

p62_63_64_65_66_AEC_MARCHAPRIL21_Nvidia.indd 66 18/03/2021 11:35

 SOLIBRI PUTS
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For architects
and engineers
Award-winning workstations and rendering solutions
from Scan 3XS Systems

• Powered by the latest Ampere GPUs

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