Now the structural engineer comes in and links into the architect's model, which is a 3D model rich with data upon which to do structural design.

The structural engineer can control the visibility of the model and see load bearing information. He will go to the visibility dialog, into worksets, turn off the furniture in order to view just the core and shell. It is also easier to make curved beams or columns in this process. At this point, the structural engineer may want to take the BIM model out to Robot Structural Analysis.

Architects generally want their sheets to look a certain way, and there a custom guide grids which allow users to snap information right in a model viewport, to achieve a custom view. With the custom elevation tag, users can switch between various graphics and control views referenced on a given tag. Tags can be placed on a host model or on a shell model.

Users can also achieve increased productivity in Revit with the removal of the full core rendering engine. It has customized procedural textures. The tool allows users to place models from any source inside the model, and in the demo a building was plopped into Boston Commons.

In the past, in order to share these files it was necessary for designers to export the entire Navisworks, but now they can just export a wfc Navisworks file. This is packaged in a standalone utility distributed to the whole team at no cost so as designers change their file, they can export the wfc which automatically goes to Navisworks.

Navisworks platform

Navisworks is used to look at information from various other sources. The new Navisworks interface is similar to Revit in that it is more intuitive and seamless. Viewpoints are a great way to record different areas of building and be able to share them with project members. User workflows can also be analyzed and users can walk through models and experience the building before it is built.

Sarah Hodges, industry marketing manager, BIM for Energy Efficiency, quoted Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute in saying, “Buildings are no more efficient today than they were 20 years ago.”

There is $5.6 billion spent in energy research, according to Pike Research.

Four specific areas that are causing the energy industry to boom: energy security, seeing building mandates around the need to look at building efficiency, vacancies - much retail space vacated, stimulus funding - stimulus funding is flowing from design into construction.

Autodesk developed the Rapid Energy Modeling workflow which starts with reality capture, and a digital photo or cloud point data that is used to create a 3D wireframe, that can be used for faster in-depth energy analysis. This makes it possible to understand how a building is performing, and the user can look at different design scenarios to see what would work best.

Armundo Darling talked about using Revit MEP to create this workflow for simple BIM models. Architects and engineers could use this information for gbXML to use in energy analysis. He also said that Google Earth is now in GBS, and weather data can also be used in GBS.

Lighting information can also be brought into Revit MEP. A new feature this year is the ability to edit conduit and cable tray and model conduit.

In Navisworks clashes can be grouped together for approval, and individual items with the group can be audited.

Speed

One of the recurring requests from users is for greater speed of Revit and compaction of file sizes. Nothing has been done on file size compaction.

However, Revit zoom, pan, orbit, refresh, navigation, once data is cached, is 30-70% faster. The model opening is said to be 2-3 times faster depending upon what types of systems are being used. Obviously 64 bit is faster. Curtain wall performance is 2x faster.

Plant

Autodesk's entry into the Plant & Process market five years ago, was a big undertaking but answered a need for  easier to use Plant tools that are compatible with AutoCAD.

Director, Industry Relations for Plant Robert Shear said a lot of offshore platforms are located in politically charged locations, and there are major challenges trying to complete capital projects there. The choice is a prefabricated workflow that doesn't have to be built onsite. Plants require constant rework, “it's a large facility but also a large machine, and this has been a model based workflow for twenty five years,” said Shear.

The reason for this is that it was imperative that parts fit. P&IDs are the most important document for the plant, numbering in the hundreds of thousands. 3D support is available for deliverables in mostly in AutoCAD orthographic and isometric.

2010 Worldwide active plant project count:
2,909 Greenfield, 5,135 Brownfield
8,000 projects $2.8 trillion investment

Facts:

 

• $40% of 2009 ENR 500 revenue is plant relevant
• 23% was directly related to buildings almost as much as in building space.
• 1 million AutoCAD plant designers
• AutoCAD in use by roughly 90% of EPCs worldwide
• Most are using plain AutoCAD and Excel.
• 75,000 users of AVEVA, Intergraph, Bentley
• 57% of respondents view 3D as critical to company competitiveness (Daratech 2D/3D Plant Study 2008)
• 73% of respondents view 3D as critical to their career.
• 200 days to learn PDS
• AutoPlant 140 days to learn
• Keeps people back in 2D workflows
• AutoCAD products addressing the Plant industry include:
• AutoCAD, P&ID 2011, Plant 3D 2011, Navisworks Manage 2011
• 2/3 of projects are modifications to existing plants.

A case in point is StatoilHydro in Norway, with 30-40 offshore plants, constantly being modified. Navisworks has brought in a simple viewing tool that allows the company to view information they have had for years. The company has over 1,000 Navisworks users accessing information in AVEVA for which there are eight users.

Geospatial Underground

At AU it appeared that geospatial had an uncertain future at Autodesk. Senior director, Infrastructure Modeling Product Line Paul McRoberts stated at AEC Technology Day that geospatial is the underlying component for all of Autodesk products. The FDO platform is extensible open source software that can be noted in transportation, water and waste water, land development power and energy.

McRoberts said that 24% of the gross revenue collected by AEC firms is for planning, according to an American Council of Engineering Companies (ACEC) study. It might appear that the role of geospatial at Autodesk is visual in nature: modeling and visualization for water, transportation, energy and water and wastewater, where getting public approval is primary to getting projects off the ground. What is needed here is a way to show a workflow including location and geospatial data. The technologies spoken most about - 3ds Max for visualization and Dynamite VSP are for showing how problems can be solved, and being interoperable, and being able to migrate information to others.

The laser scanning environment and lidar data play a part in this. McRoberts said that surveying may become a thing of the past. With the need in many places for ground truth data, particularly in areas that aren't readily accessible with laser scanning equipment or lidar, it may be a long time before this is realized.

“Digital cities,” a hot buzz term of a year or two ago, will now go by the name “sustainable cities” as one part of a greater vision including extension of assets such as transmission lines into rural communities. It is part of the scope of LandXplorer, in its quest to address large scale projects and visualization. McRoberts said LandXplorer holds a GIS layer underneath that contains real data.

Roads and Highways

Karen Weiss, P.E. technical marketing manager, AEC, formerly with the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, said that in her time there, “We gathered information and stored it and when we needed it we couldn't find it or it was in a format we couldn't use.”