Large Project Tips and Tricks From Consultant Stephan Langella

Stephan Langella consultant presented a webinar recently entitled: Large Projects using Open BIM and ARCHICAD.

Langella makes his home in Brisbane, Australia and has worked for a number of organizations, including Graphisoft  and Woods Bagot. He has worked on numerous large projects delivered in Australia and elsewhere in the world, including the Queen’s Wharf Project in Brisbane. He loves hearing “we can’t do that,” and seeing how things can be done.

A quick look at the Queen’s Wharf Project in Brisbane

Queens Wharf is a AU$ 3 billion casino, hotel, wharf and residential construction project. Langella said they have been using ARCHICAD for a number of years.

“There are about 20 design consultants on the project at the moment, many using Revit, using IFC,” said Langella. “There are a lot of requirements from clients for data in IFC. My role is with architects looking at the type of information in the file, where it needs to be and processes by which they need to do them. We’re on the right platform; no one is thinking of changing to something else. The project goes to tender shortly.”

Techniques for working with large files

Langella offers some techniques for how you deal with projects of size. These are things that he has developed over the years from experience. ARCHICAD has the ability to take on larger file sizes.

Breaking down projects before starting work

“I like to break building down into parts – structure, façade, and fit-out,” he said.

Then look at identifying what repeatable elements looking at the cores – circulation, floors, wet areas, standard rooms (health). Keep all file projects within a single file. The only reason I might split up a project of that size is that you might have different floor heights if one tower is residential and one is hotel or health.”

Working with multiple repeating room layouts

One of the processes Langella said is important is looking at creating room layouts – room types and how you integrate that across the model and general arrangement. He used health as an example as a room is repeated a number of times in a hospital. You would model the room; add walls and the annotation you require and then documentation. Once you have the general arrangement, you can publish a modified layout from there.

“In the file I would have a room per story,” Langella said. “Set up a whole bunch of stories and a single room on each story. Publish a .mod file, which only takes out elements I need. I may want unique files in master building. I used this process on the AU$ 2 billion hospital; it worked great on that scale project.”

What you’re always looking for in a software, Langella noted, is for a single action that will give you multiple consequences.

IFC and Open BIM

IFC is a container that is an open file specification to describe building and construction data. There have been improvements that have been made. The file description job is not to manage 2D data, but it is good for 3D geometry and data.

“Whenever you’re collaborating with others on other platforms, generally are not used to having to collaborate and they may say IFC is flaky,” Langella said. “I hear this from Autodesk resellers and engineers. Think they are losing data. One time I saw data loss and that was in Revit MEP and there was a problem in the text file supplied with the software about cable trays. In the text file they used the wrong terms for the IFC entity, so it just didn’t convert them.

IFC is a container. We build models in ARCHICAD and they get translated into another platform. Certain things will translate in certain ways, software will deal or not deal with it. I’ve been using IFC for file transfer for many years, for many size projects.”

Using Solibri in the workflow

Langella said they use Solibri a lot, which is similar to Navisworks and used a lot in Australia. Solibri is good at model comparisons, and shows what has been modified and deleted: class detection, proximity detection, deficiency detection. You can overview problems within your model and issues. “We use Solibri for that which Navisworks can’t do. Navisworks picks up every single clash. If you want to group those clashes into an issue it’s not that easy. Solibri overviews problems so you can use them as a discussion point.”

2D versus 3D documentation

From the 3D model you can create traditional documentation.  It shows a lot of information, reduces risk onsite and people note that your documentation it is done in 3D.

Langella said they use schedules and graphic schedules. Door schedules or equipment schedules graphics are easy to use in ARCHICAD.

A lot of hospital projects are looking at joinery and need to look at size and arrangement of joinery units. “I would do 1-20 strategy drawings. I could use GDL to do both. All the 1-50 drawings are a graphic schedule coming directly from the model, on title blocks and the rest of data automatically is generated. Drop it in a worksheet at 110, scripted and backgrounded with GDL.”

Whatever your practice is – think big, said Langella. “I’ve been working in ARCHICAD since 1998. We’ve challenged the software.  There have often been programs that have thought about a problem to solve before I need to solve it.”

Tags: 3D, AEC, Archicad, architects, architecture, Autodesk, Autodesk Revit, BIM, building design, building information modeling, collaboration, construction, design, engineering, engineers, Graphisoft, infrastructure, laser scanning, Open BIM, Revit, Solibri

Categories: 2D, 3D, 3D PDF, AEC, AEC training, AECCafe, Archicad, architecture, Autodesk, BIM, building information modeling, Civil 3D, civil information modeling, collaboration, construction, construction project management, engineering, file sharing, IFC, infrastructure, integrated project delivery, managed services, project management, site planning

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