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Industry News
Landscape Design for BIM, Highway Design and New Platform
By Susan Smith

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Eagle Point has been in the news lately with three announcements, namely the announcement of their LANDCADD integration with the Revit platform; LandSketch for Highways, the second product in its LandSketch series; and the announcement that Eagle Point is transitioning its Civil Design and Surveying solutions running on AutoCAD to the Autodesk Civil 3D development platform.

Luis Rojas, architectural product line manager for Eagle Point, spoke on LANDCADD for Revit that’s coming out shortly and Steve Biver, Civil product manager in charge of the LandSketch series spoke on LandSketch for Highways.

LANDCADD for Revit

LANDCADD is a 20-year-old product, which has put Eagle Point on the map for their landscape design series for the AutoCAD market. In recent years, a lot has changed, as more customers have sought integration with building information modeling (BIM) and most recently “integrated project delivery.” Eagle Point customers have been asking for landscape design integrated within the Revit platform, pushing for an integration of the civil design software company with architectural design.

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Rojas described the situation as a “gap” where work is done in AutoCAD Architecture and Civil 3D, but then it is difficult to bring that work into a BIM through Revit Architecture. “They are two different animals,” said Rojas. “The landscape design was literally disconnected from the Revit model, so there is this workflow where we’re talking about integrated project teams working together and that’s not happening with this particular segment.”

Eagle Point created a version of their landscape design software that runs inside of Revit, “we still have the LANDCADD for AutoCAD and we’re coming out with the LANDCADD for Revit,” said Rojas. Those organizations that have the landscape design group can now migrate into Revit, can do their design work in Revit, and work with the architects and engineers and reap the benefits of being in the same model.

Rojas said that the product will evolve very quickly after its initial release. In the first release, LANDCADD’s plant, hardscape and site components will be located directly in the building model. Most of the elements are to be focused outside the building, but green roof layout, patios and walkways will all be made possible and can take advantage of the 3D dynamic model.

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Autodesk products don’t offer any plant libraries. Civil 3D offers grading, but no subscaping and is limited on hardscaping, according to Rojas. Besides providing a lot of information, Eagle Point products locate components such as turf area, hedgerows, or grove areas. The plant library contains biological information on the plants, “We have some tools for locating and some reporting ability within Revit so we can enhance what you can get out of Revit,” said Rojas. “This is the first release that has a parking layout component. Revit does have a parking space component; we’re actually helping layout the parking lot.”

The AutoCAD version of LANDCADD also provides surface modeling features, that allow the creation contour lines and grading features. Eagle Point also has field software applications, and office survey applications. They begin by capturing the data and then processing that information to the 3D model of the site – “that’s very valid because we’re starting to address just the subscaping part of the hardscaping but that was the other part of the question from clients, how do we get into grading and really developing that site, and that’s something we’re already working on,” said Rojas. “It’s not what comes out in the first release of the product.”

Customers for LANDCADD for Revit are architecture firms that have a landscape design group, that implement architectural projects in Revit. There are also architectural firms who don’t do landscape design but who hire consultants, and LANDCADD for Revit will provide them with basic tools. LANDCADD for AutoCAD is geared toward those landscape architects and designers who are not interested in Revit and may never migrate to BIM.

LandSketch for Highways

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LandSketch for Highways was recently released as the second tool in Eagle Point’s LandSketch series, which to date has focused on subdivision conceptual preliminary design and highway preliminary design. Highway transportation planners will be able to use these simple route layout and selection tools along with the ability to visualize and report on GIS data.

Described in the press release, “with support for Google Earth, LandXML, and Shape files, LandSketch for Highways allows designers to begin their preliminary designs by leveraging numerous forms of electronic data. Once these existing features are established, highway segments including basic horizontal, vertical, and cross-sectional elements are simply sketched on the basemap complete with catchlines and proposed right-of-way. From here, multiple "what if" scenarios can quickly be scrutinized by utilizing built-in reports that immediately quantify environmental impacts, area takes, and rough earthwork volumes.”

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“We envision this to evolve several applications targeted right at certain design projects, and they’re all going to be in the preliminary stage,” Steve Biver, Civil product manager, said. “Customers for RoadCalc, or our Civil 3D clients were doing all their preliminary design work in these packages that were meant for detailed design. The majority of DOTs are using GEOPAK. We talked to about five or six DOTs and all of them consistently said that the preliminary design group would go through all the tools in GEOPAK to just come up with the preferred alternative, so they’re going through 10-20 different alternatives for a ten-mile highway to find out what the best alternative was and they were using a tool with thousands of commands to come up with the final design. Not only did you have those thousands of commands to do the work but the process was also completely disconnected from the GIS software. When you’re in your preliminary stages of design and looking at different alternatives, you get your highway footprint of your construction and compare that to your GIS data to see what you’re impacting and then compare costs and see what your best alternatives are.”

Traditionally, in a mid size or larger organization, one person would be doing the design work in Civil 3D or GEOPAK. They would go ahead and export a shapefile of the building footprint, hand that over to a different department or person and they would take that into an ESRI product or AutoCAD Map, then they’d run queries on what they’re impacting. They may find that they’re taking away a wetland, going through an endangered species area, this alternative obviously won’t work. The designer may not have known that right away. So it’s a back and forth process until they get to that alternative.

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“What LandSketch for Highways does is brings the two together, where you can bring in all that GIS data, bring in your wetlands, endangered species, properties, etc., then you have very simple to use tools to lay in that highway and targeted right at roadway design,” said Biver. “When you have that roadway put in there, with a click of a mouse it’s going to give you all your impacts.”

“When you get it down to two or three alternatives you can go into your Civil 3D or GEOPAK and go right into the detailed design of that as it gets approved,” said Biver.

The non-CAD dependent product was developed entirely in-house.

Biver said that shapefiles are the way 95% of their customers store geospatial data, so they have a way to bring in GIS data via shapefile. If the customer has data that isn’t in a file LandSketch has tools to sketch those features in there. “In this version, if you sketch it in, the report is shown onscreen, you can compare alternatives, and then there’s an export and it takes you right into a CSV file which can go right into Excel.”

LandSketch for Highways offers the big benefit of getting those alternatives done quickly. An environmental assessment or environmental impact study is an integral part of highway design, and this data that goes into the CSV file can be pasted right into the environmental assessment study.

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Biver said concurred that Autodesk is slimming down its geospatial side, and more civil is being seen generated from that company, with Civil 3D the leader in civil design. ESRI is of course, the leader in geospatial, and as aforementioned, Bentley’s GEOPAK holds the market share with the DOTs.

LandSketch for Highways is not built on top of AutoCAD or any other outside CAD platform, yet Eagle Point exports a LandXML file which any design software can read. They can also export shapefiles.

Transition to Civil 3D Platform

Eagle Point also announced they are standardizing on AutoCAD Civil 3D as their development platform. Together Eagle Point and Autodesk are jointly offering a transition program, so that customers can take advantage of the new capabilities of AutoCAD Civil and AutoCAD Civil 3D immediately. Traditional Eagle Point Civil Design modules will be available through November 2011. Eagle Point will also offer consulting and training to help customers move from Eagle Point products to AutoCAD Civil 3D..

Note that the announcement doesn't affect LANDCADD for Revit nor the LandSketch series, according to Rojas. It only affects Eagle Point Civil Design and Surveying solutions running on AutoCAD. On the architectural side, Eagle Point’s landscape design products will continue complementing and supporting AutoCAD, AutoCAD Civil 3D and Revit Architecture. On the Civil side, LandSketch is not CAD dependent. LandSketch is design as a tool for the very early stages or preliminary design work on subdivisions or road projects. The resulting model created in LandSketch can then be exported to Civil 3D for full engineering design. Again, in this case it also complements Civil 3D.

Top News of the Week

Skire, Inc. and Vanir Construction Management, Inc., announced a partnership that will extend industry-leading services and Skire Unifier, a technology platform, to a wide array of industries. The partnership enables both companies to offer a unique combination of outstanding service with advanced, best practices-based program management and controls that extend from initial planning through construction to the entire facilities lifecycle.

Autodesk, Inc. has announced that its Autodesk Green Building Studio web-based service now provides more recently documented hourly weather data for 1.6 million virtual weather locations around the world. The previous version of the Autodesk Green Building Studio service supported 55,000 locations of weather data for North America and Northern Europe. The new version adds virtual weather locations for Central and Southern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Japan, Philippines and South Korea.

BLUERIDGE Analytics, Inc. announced a major update to SITEOPS Multi Pad 4.1, patented web-based land development software. Land developers, architects, and civil engineers who use SITEOPS Multi Pad 4.1 for conceptual site design now have an impressive array of intelligent auto-drawing tools to quickly create, revise, and optimize complex layouts.

“Beyond BIM: Excellence in the Creation and Protection of Capital Assets” will be the subject of a keynote presentation to be given by Frank T. MacInnis, Chairman and CEO of EMCOR Group, Inc. at The Construction Users Roundtable’s (CURT) 9th Annual National Conference of Construction Owners, to be held November 16-18, 2009 at Buena Vista Palace Hotel in Orlando, Florida (for registration information visit www.curt.org and follow the National Conference link).

Acquisitions, Alliances, Agreements

Intergraph has acquired the SIGRAPH business unit from Technische Computer Systeme Sussen GmbH (TCS), a computer-aided engineering and document management system (CAE/DMS) vendor headquartered in Sussen, Germany. The acquisition includes SIGRAPH.CAE, an innovative software application for electrical and process control engineering with a significant market presence in the global oil and gas, metals and power industries.

Hard Dollar Corporation announced a partnership with Verano, the largest Oracle Primavera representative in South America. Both Hard Dollar and Verano are industry leaders in Construction and Engineering with clients in Mining and Oil and Gas, making this an ideal partnership.

On Center Software, developer of construction-industry software, proudly announces its newest Integrated Business Partner Hard Dollar, Project Cost Management systems provider. This new development is expected to further the reach of construction technology within the industry.

BQE Software Inc., the provider of business management software for professional services organizations, announced the acquisition of Orange Loft LLC, the makers of ArchiOffice and EngineerOffice, which help architects and engineers manage their business more efficiently.

ArchiOffice and EngineerOffice are popular among architectural and engineering firms worldwide, helping them manage their workflow needs, including project management, contact management, document management and AIA-compliant billing. These functionalities extend BQE’s reach in the architecture and engineering business sector by delivering a complete solution.

Meridian Systems announced a new Value-added Reseller (VAR) agreement with Constructive Solutions for Business Inc. (Constructive Solutions). Concentrating on Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) clients in Canada, Constructive Solutions will provide comprehensive software sales and professional services for Meridian's Prolog solution in Western Canada.

IMSI/Design announced a co-marketing agreement with Corel Corporation, one of the world's top software companies.

The co-marketing agreement is for both companies to jointly market IMSI/Design's new DoubleCAD XT PRO with Corel DESIGNER Technical Suite X4, a CorelDRAW product, through an aggressively priced promotional bundle.

Autodesk, Inc. announced it has entered into a long-term OEM licensing agreement with Intergraph to embed Intergraph ISOGEN technology in Autodesk’s AutoCAD Plant 3D 2010 product. With tens of thousands of users worldwide, Intergraph ISOGEN is the software application for automatic production of piping isometrics and bills of materials.

Announcements

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) announced the release of the new C191-2009, Standard Form Multi-Party Agreement for Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), which provides for a collaborative working relationship among parties involved in a design and construction project and utilizing the IPD delivery model. With this new agreement the parties execute one coordinated and integrated agreement that clearly sets forth the parties’ roles and responsibilities in delivering a project consistent with the principles of IPD. Unlike the C195-2008, the parties do not form an LLC under the C191-2009 framework.

Deltek, Inc. announced that it will host an event – Clarity ‘09 – to reveal the findings from one of the industry’s largest surveys of the Government contracting marketplace. Clarity ‘09, to be held on November 17th at the Tysons Corner Marriott near Washington, DC, will feature thought leaders from both Deltek and INPUT who will present the study results across 50 industry benchmarks.

Autodesk, Inc. announced the results of a new study that found productivity gains of up to 63 percent when engineers and designers use AutoCAD 2010 software for common design and documentation tasks. The study, conducted by Cambashi Limited, an independent consulting and analyst firm, compares the time it takes to complete specific tasks using AutoCAD 2010 and AutoCAD 2007 software.

Autodesk, Inc. has developed a new and more rigorous methodology for corporate greenhouse gas (GHG) target setting. Autodesk developed the Corporate Finance Approach to Climate-Stabilizing Targets (C-FACT) to align its own GHG reduction targets with global scientific and policy climate stabilization targets.

For the first time, a 3D animated series is part of the “Sesame Street” television program. The program’s 40th anniversary season debuted , including computer-generated (CG) segments delivered by SpeakeasyFX and made with Autodesk Softimage software from Autodesk, Inc. The series features a digital version of the favorite Muppet fairy-in-training, Abby Cadabby. “Sesame Street” is the longest running children’s program on television.

The newly released animated film “Astro Boy” brings the iconic Japanese manga character to movie theaters. Filmmaker Imagi International Holdings Limited (HKEx: 585) created “Astro Boy” with Autodesk Maya software from Autodesk, Inc. Maya was at the core of Imagi Studios’ around-the-clock production pipeline spanning Hong Kong and Hollywood.

The Sustainable Sites Initiative released the nation’s first rating system for the design, construction and maintenance of sustainable landscapes, with or without buildings. A partnership of the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA), the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the U.S. Botanic Garden, the Initiative’s rating system represents four years of work by dozens of the country’s leading sustainability experts, scientists and design professionals, as well as public input from hundreds of individuals and dozens of organizations to create this essential missing link in green design. The announcement took place at the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington .

Awards

Autodesk, Inc. announced that the interior of its architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) solutions division headquarters in Waltham, Mass., was recently certified LEED-CI Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council. The official certificate of recognition will be presented to Autodesk at the Greenbuild International Conference and Expo 2009.

Deltek, Inc. congratulated the finalists and winners of the recently announced 7th Annual Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards. Most of the companies recognized are Deltek customers, including 30 of the 37 finalists and 5 of the 7 winners. The prestigious awards were presented in partnership by the Fairfax County Chamber of Commerce, the Professional Services Council, and Washington Technology.

Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) announced that its wholly owned design-build subsidiary Benham has received the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) 2009 National Excellence Award for the design and construction of the Boral Bricks manufacturing plant in Terre Haute, Ind.

New Products

Bentley Systems, Incorporated announced that it has added Green Building XML (gbXML) 0.37 schema support to its Hevacomp products for building energy design, analysis, and simulation. The Hevacomp software joins a growing number of gbXML-enabled Bentley products, which also include Bentley Architecture V8i, Bentley Building Mechanical Systems V8i, Bentley speedikon Architectural V8i, and Bentley Tas Simulator V8i. The latest gbXML schema promotes the design of better-performing, more resource-efficient buildings by providing interoperability among gbXML-enabled Building Information Models (BIMs) and engineering analysis tools.

Autodesk, Inc. announced that its Autodesk Green Building Studio web-based service now provides more recently documented hourly weather data for 1.6 million virtual weather locations around the world. The previous version of the Autodesk Green Building Studio service supported 55,000 locations of weather data for North America and Northern Europe. The new version adds virtual weather locations for Central and Southern Europe, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Japan, Philippines and South Korea.

Quantapoint announced the release of PRISM 3D / QuantaCAD 10.0. PRISM 3D enables a Digitized Facility™ of 3D laser scan data to be accessed directly as photo-realistic Laser Images™ of individual 3D laser scans and high-definition Laser Models™ (not fuzzy “point clouds”) of integrated laser data . QuantaCAD enables the same Digitized Facility™ to be accessed directly within design and review software such as Autodesk AutoCAD, AVEVA PDMS, AVEVA Review, Bentley AutoPlant, Bentley Microstation V8 XM, Intergraph PDS, Intergraph SmartPlant Review, Intergraph SmartPlant 3D / SmartMarine 3D and more.

Rafter+ application for Revit Architecture and Revit Structure provides a set of tools for roof wood framing. Rafter+ application provides the set of tools for roof wood framing and elements scheduling. Work is based on final 3D roof model. Common rafter systems (including jack rafters) for selected roof are automatically generated on all slopes.

Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES) announced the creation of an innovative Climate Energy Index system for its software. This unique new index provides designers with a simple intuitive tool to assess the character of any climate and the potential it has to affect building energy usage. A world first, this addition to the software allows designers and architects to easily analyze climate data for any location during concept design stages in a building independent manner, helping to identify the theoretical energy needed to maintain occupant comfort, and inform strategy direction.

Oce Business Services announced it has integrated several new advanced features into its CaseData ASP document review system. Designed by attorneys for law firm and corporate legal professionals, CaseData is a scalable online system that addresses what clients consider most important in the collaborative production, search, and review of electronic data and scanned paper files for litigation and regulatory matters.

Contex announced a new update to Nextimage software – version 1.6.1 . This new update provides support for Microsoft Windows 7, in both 32 and 64 bit versions. Nextimage is Contex’s wide-format scan and copy software. It enables scan-to-file, scan-to-email, copy, edit and print and it supports scanning and copying in color, grayscale and black/white.

AutoField 2.7 for AutoCAD Released -- You can download AutoField 2.7 for AutoCAD by visiting Cadiq download.

Continuing with the goal of providing innovative products to an ever changing marketing, AEC Design Group has released CADPIPE 10.1 which incorporates many new features for most products.

CADVault 6, the latest version of AutoCAD drawing security software from CADLock, Inc., is now available for download at Cadlock, Inc. download.

CADVault 6 is a free upgrade for CADVault 5 users who purchased their license within the past year. Licenses between one and two years old receive an upgrade discount of 50% off the price of a new license, while licenses older than two years receive a discount of 25% off the retail price of a new license. CADVault 5 users can use the software's Update Check feature to determine their upgrade eligibility.

Rasterex Software announces the new release of their software for raster editing and raster to vector conversion inside AutoCAD - compatible with versions up to 2010.

Matrox Graphics announced the launch of the Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 Octal graphics card, capable of supporting eight DisplayPort or DVI Single-Link outputs from a single workstation. The Matrox M9188 PCIe x16 offers 2GB of memory, resolutions up to 2560x1600 per output, and advanced desktop management features -- such as independent or stretched desktop modes.

Around the Web

Autodesk, AEC Headquarters by Joann Goncher, AIA, Architectural Record - When software vendor Autodesk decided to move the headquarters for its architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) operations from subleased space to a just-completed speculative office building, division executives knew the fit-out would not be a routine corporate interiors project. The design and construction process would have to demonstrate the company’s own building information modeling (BIM) software and its industry strategies, explains Phil Bernstein, FAIA, Autodesk vice president. “It needed to be 100 percent BIM and pure IPD,” he says, referring to the collaborative practice model known as integrated project delivery.

Events

 


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