About this Issue….
Welcome to AECWeekly! One of the biggest risks on a design or construction project is the issue of change management and how the smallest change can critically impact cost and time spent on a project. This week Graphisoft announced their new Change Manager, which, according to the press release, is “a workflow application targeted for the needs of construction companies, subcontractors, and engineers in order to help them improve their understanding of project changes while minimizing risk of errors and saving time.” Read about Change Manager in this week's Industry news.
AECWeekly is a news magazine featuring important industry news profiles, a summary of recently published AEC product and company news, customer wins, and coming events. Brought to you by AECCafe.
AECWeekly examines select top news each week, picks out worthwhile reading from around the web, and special interest items you might not find elsewhere. This issue will feature Industry News, Announcements, Awards, Contract Awards, New Products, and Upcoming Events.
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Susan Smith, Managing Editor
Industry News
Managing Change in 5D
by Susan Smith
Both fundamental and hard-to-spot drawing changes are highlighted by Graphisoft Change Manager – in this case using the vertical slider function |
Graphisoft CEO Dominic Gallelo said that the product is born out of the Graphisoft Virtual Construction services team who saw Graphisoft in the role of the customer. “We've grown rapidly into the largest virtual construction company in the world,” declared Gallelo. As Graphisoft builds so many 5D models for large projects, “our services organization was living the life of the construction company, architects, consultants and construction design offices.” It seemed natural for the customer/software design company to come up with the idea of automating the process of automating document changes during the whole cycle of very large construction projects.
“On large building projects,” continued Gallelo, “we build 5D models for our customers who are contractors, at all different stages. It can be from the 'winning the business' stage, to schematic design to the detailed design stages - let's say 50% document complete. Sometimes our team would have three weeks to update the 5D model (at 85%) but it would have over 1,000 drawings and other related documents that they would have to check. It would take us one to two weeks to feel confident that we'd actually identified all the changes between different drawing sets, the 50% complete revision and the 85% complete. We decided to build Change Manager to solve the problem of identifying and responding to change.”
The product is designed to be simple to learn, according to Clay Freeman, VP of Graphisoft Construction Solutions. The help stream has twelve one minute movies that take you through the entire product, with only six steps involved:
- Define versions of drawings. This is nothing more than giving it a name: just point to where files are
- Define a specification for how you want to compare the files. It automatically matches files to compare and can compare the old directory to the new directory.
- Can tell it to ignore certain changes, such as between text as in a title block or to ignore a version number
- Run comparison results. It opens every individual file and compares each arch, line and circle to see if there are any changes.
- Some color coded changes, i.e. unchanged entities - black means deleted objects - red are new objects, etc.
There are a lot of new drawings in the sample. A changed hatch pattern, for example, could mean the difference between a non-load bearing wall that wasn't supporting the structure to a load bearing wall that was supporting the structure. It's very hard to detect that normally. The system here catches them every time.
- With the color coding it's easy to see areas that have been updated vs. areas that have not, but if you have a lot of overlap, deleted and new objects, it's a little hard to see what the design intent is. For this issue there is a mode called the slider. Both fundamental and hard-to-spot drawing changes are highlighted using the vertical slider function and pushing it back and forth to see the differences between files.
When a change is detected, it is “clouded” and then can be assigned to other users on the team. This is important when you need to see whether the work has been done or not, and especially in cases involving lawsuits where you likely will need an historical record.
Director of Business Development, Darrell Griffith, Control Air North, Inc., an HVAC Contractor in California, had this to say about the Change Manager: “The lack of time to identify change is a real problem for us, and yet overlooking a single change can be extremely costly! After running Change Manager on one project, we found that only 30% of the changes were clouded by the architects and engineers. Without Change Manager, this would have resulted in a dramatic cost escalation and of course, a lot of wasted management hours.”
Graphisoft's Change Manager is $895 for a single user license. Volume discount schedules are available. The full software will be available on the web for download trial which you can use for five times free .
Graphisoft Change Manager features include:
- Easily define document sets & analyze changes.
- Assign changed documents to project team members.
- Review changes on a document-by-document basis:
- Adjustable contrast with color-coded identification of new, deleted, and changed entities.
- Slider: overlay of new and old documents with a slider control to shift the display.
- Shift: mouse control that shifts the position of the new document relative to the old to make it easy to understand the changes.
- Cloud annotation with logging.
- Project Log: Stores the list of changed documents, action assignments, change descriptions, and action completions for each document set.
- Adjustable contrast with color-coded identification of new, deleted, and changed entities.
- Ignore Change - Stylistic changes such as fonts and repetitive changes such as revision numbers on title blocks can be identified once and then ignored in all future documents.
- AutoCAD(R) Release 14 DWG format and above.
Announcements
The National Institute of Building Standards (NIBS) through its Facility Information Council (FIC) has formed a committee to create the National Building Information Model Standard (NBIMS). The Standard is considered to be a critical element in reforming business practices in the capital facilities industry and recapturing at least $15B annually lost due to inefficiencies. The NBIMS team is actively soliciting participation from public and private organizations and individuals and, to date, 26 organizations representing most aspects of the facility lifecycle and many types of associated businesses have signed the Committee charter and over 80 individuals, overseen by an executive committee, are actively participating on NBIM working groups.
Representatives from seven Shaker clients plus recognized project management experts met on December 13-14, 2005 to review the new COINS Ti Project Management Module (PMM) and make recommendations for its continuing development. During this successful meeting, the Focus Group validated Shaker's design goals for PMM and made many suggestions to enhance its usability, performance, and overall appearance.
Citadon, a provider of integrated Web-based collaboration, announced it will offer a special migration program designed to satisfy the needs of businesses that currently use Constructware collaboration solutions. The migration program was developed to help Constructware customers and partners respond to business challenges resulting from Autodesk, Inc.'s recently announced plan to acquire Constructware.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has granted a patent to HNTB for portions of its TrueViz(R) Transport software system. This milestone marks the first time HNTB has secured exclusive rights to technology developed in support of its architecture and engineering clients' projects.
DATACAD LLC has donated a site license of its 3D architectural design software, DataCAD, to Milford High School (Milford, Massachusetts) for use in its occupational education program. The donation will enable Milford students to acquire 3D design and drafting skills utilizing the same software that is used by over 2,000 professional architectural design and building firms in the area, and by more than 250,000 designers worldwide.
Autodesk, Inc. announced that it has been named by Institutional Investor magazine as one of "America's Most Shareholder-Friendly Companies" in their first annual survey. Ranked as one of the top four technology companies in the software sector, Autodesk was selected by more than a thousand portfolio managers and analysts worldwide for the high quality of the company's corporate governance and investor relations practice.
Awards
Autodesk, Inc. announced that Jos Stam, principal scientist at Autodesk, was honored with a Technical Achievement Award (Academy certificate) by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The award acknowledges Stam's research on subdivision surfaces and contributions to the motion picture industry. Stam accepted the award at a ceremony held Saturday, February 18 in Beverly Hills, California. Technical Achievement Awards are granted to individuals who have developed solutions with a proven track record in the film industry.
Contract Awards
Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that the Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) has selected Bentley as its primary provider of software for engineering and surveying practices.
New Products
Epicor Software Corporation, a provider of integrated enterprise software solutions for the midmarket, announced Epicor Service Connect, a Web services-based business integration platform that functions as the central integration point for implementing secure workflow orchestrations within Epicor applications and with third-party applications to enhance collaboration and automate business processes.
Rasterex Software, a provider visualization and collaboration technology, announced the release of version R7.3 - a maintenance release of their popular family of viewing products for Windows. RxView allows users to view & print more than 250 different file formats (2D & 3D CAD, plot-files, PDF files, Office documents, raster images etc.), without having the design software installed on the machine.
DRCAUTO SOFTWARE announced the completion and release of LT Toolkit Max with support for Fast-Load AutoLISP (.fas), Visual LISP (.vlx) files and more for AutoCAD LT(r) 2004, 2005 and 2006. This newly enhanced FAS and VLX enabled version of the popular LISP and productivity software for AutoCAD LT(r) - marks the first time this level of customization has been available to AutoCAD LT(r) 2004-6 users.
CMiC, provider of enterprise and project management software for the architectural, engineering and construction (AEC) industries, will showcase its CMiC I/O technology in concert with Granger Construction Company at the AGC Jobsite Mobile Computing Showcase on March 20, 2006.
The showcase is part of the AGC's 87th Annual Convention and Constructor Expo in Palm Springs, California and will demonstrate how Granger Construction has realized productivity improvements using CMIC I/O
Upcoming Events
| 2006 International Conference on Health Facility Planning, Design and Construction (PDC) | |
| Date: | February 26 - March 1, 2006 |
| Place: | San Diego Convention Center and San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina
San Diego, CA USA |
| Sponsored by the American Society for Healthcare Engineering (ASHE) of the American Hospital Association (AHA) in conjunction with the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health (AIA/AAH)
Developed through the combined efforts of ASHE and the AIA/AAH, the PDC provides practical and realistic information that can be used to resolve challenges that you face during the planning, design, and construction/renovation process. ASHE and AIA/AAH have been working together over the past year to put together this unique program.Topics and speakers were carefully chosen to provide timely information and solutions you can bring back to your job. Join us along with architects, contractors, facility managers, nurses, and CEOs to share and learn new ideas and processes in the planning, design and construction field. The PDC has been recognized by Tradeshow Week as one of the "50 Fastest-Growing Shows" for two consecutive years! The 2005 PDC consisted of more than 2,500 professionals, more than 60 educational sessions covering eight different tracks, an exhibit hall with more than 200 companies, and an array of networking opportunities. This show is the largest meeting of its kind, offering you the chance to network and learn.
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| EXPOCOMFORT ~ International Biennial Fair for Domestic and Industrial Systems in the sectors of Energy, Heating, Cooling and Water | |
| Date: | February 28 - March 4, 2006 |
| Place: | Milan, Italy |
| Design Technology Expo 2006 | |
| Date: | March 3 - 4, 2006 |
| Place: | JW Marriott Hotel Miami
Miami , FL USA |
| 2006 National Green Building Conference | |
| Date: | March 12 - 14, 2006 |
| Place: | Albuquerque, NM USA |
| Plan to attend the National Green Building Conference to be held in March of 2006 in Albquerque, NM to find out why a growing number of home builders are "Greening the American Dream" by making cost-effective business decisions that also help the environment.
The goal at this conference is to provide all attendees, exhibitors, presenters and sponsors with an outstanding opportunity to improve their knowledge, increase their contacts, and generate productive networking. The high caliber education programs will give you a chance to meet other green-minded builders from all around the country as well as meet with exhibitors with products to help you build a better home. Expect to have fun while you learn. Albuquerque is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States, and it offers a myriad of attractions and activities for everyone.
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| No Bill Left Behind: Ajera is the solution to your unique billing needs | |
| Date: | March 16, 2006 |
| Place: |
Internet, CA USA |
| There is a gap in financial and accounting software commonly found between growing architectural and engineering (A/E) firms and more established A/E firms. Often, these growing firms get lost in the search for a new solution and don't get the advice and direction they need when investing in financial and accounting software. Client's Bill of RightsAxium recognized this gap and initiated an effort to help these firms; providing them with Ajera - an innovative, easy-to-use software that empowers them to grow and succeed. Each year, the number of Ajera clients grows as firms continue to see the benefit of using our software. At Axium we believe the key to bridging the gap between generic software and enterprise software is letting firms know what they should expect from their software; a Client's Bill of Rights.
In 2006, Axium will highlight and explain 10 rights you have and should be aware of in purchasing a financial and project management software. We will focus and discuss in detail your rights in a series of webinars throughout the year. So, watch for our next mailer, register for our upcoming webinars and learn what to look for in a financial and project management software.
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| 2006 AGC Annual Convention | |
| Date: | March 19 - 22, 2006 |
| Place: | Palm Springs, CA USA |
| This year’s Convention offers valuable opportunities for you to learn how to better your business, build useful connections and utilize helpful tools from AGC, while focusing on how AGC members build a stronger economy and the nation’s current economic state relating to construction.
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| Management Models for Capital Projects and Facilities Management conference | |
| Date: | March 20 - 21, 2006 |
| Place: | Hilton Head, SC USA |
| Management models for facilities and corporate real estate are getting leaner, more leveraged, more highly automated, lower cost, and increasingly data-driven. At this conference you'll learn where leading companies and institutions are headed in terms of their performance metrics, processes for space management and service requests, data collection and data management systems, technology use, organizational models, staffing skill-sets, outsourcing strategies and methods, and "total spend" strategies. Here, you'll pick up the latest tools, innovative ideas, and metrics that are shaping the new integrated FM and CRE management models.
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| International Congress on Industrial Heritage | |
| Date: | March 21 - 23, 2006 |
| Place: | Santiago, Chile |
| West Virginia Equipment & Design Exposition | |
| Date: | March 22 - 23, 2006 |
| Place: | Charleston, WV USA |
| What type of people attend or exhibit at EXPO?
EXPO is the only West Virginia trade show for the Construction, Engineering, and Architectural industries.
How many people attend? EXPO 2005 had nearly 6,000 attendees from 27 states. What is the admission charge? EXPO charges no admission fee to qualified attendees. What is the price of a booth? EXPO 2006 Booths are available in 10'x10' increments at the following rates.
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| The 2006 International Conference on Biocontainment Facilities | |
| Date: | March 27 - 28, 2006 |
| Place: | St. Petersburg, FL USA |
The major world-wide push to fund more research, vaccine development, and clinical capacity for addressing infectious diseases and pathogens is driving a new round of cost-effective solutions for BSL-rated facilities.
Attend this conference to learn what the new plans look like and make project decisions about:
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| SPAR 2006: Capturing and Documenting Existing-Conditions Data for Design, Construction and Operations | |
| Date: | March 27 - 28, 2006 |
| Place: | Sugar Land Marriott Town Square, Houston, TX USA |
| The industry's only conference focused on the business and technology of advanced 3D laser scanning
The aim of SPAR 2006 is threefold. First the conference will illuminate the business case for using 3D laser scanning and other dimensional control technologies to improve the efficiency and reduce the risk of capital project execution for process manufacturing, civil infrastructure, transportation, fossil and nuclear power generation, offshore construction and architectural projects through improved existing-conditions capture. Second, SPAR 2006 will help practitioners from survey firms, laser scanning service providers, engineering/construction firms as well as asset owners and operators discover and exchange information about best practices to deploy these technologies. Third, SPAR 2006 showcases the newest technology from the world’s leading suppliers of laser scanning hardware, software and services.
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| 2nd International Conference of Frontier Cities | |
| Date: | March 28 - 30, 2006 |
| Place: | Foz de Iguacu, Brazil |
| The 2006 Architectural Engineering Institute National Conference | |
| Date: | March 30 - April 2, 2006 |
| Place: | Omaha, NE USA |
Conference TopicsDevelopment Processes
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| A.R.E. Design and Site Graphics Seminar | |
| Date: | March 31 - April 2, 2006 |
| Place: | Paul Cejas School of Architecture at FIU Tamiami Campus
11200 SW 8th Street, PCA 175, Miami, FL 33199 USA |