IMAGINiT Technologies’ new Pulse Platform, available now, is designed to allow engineers and architects to share data between independent software on-premise or cloud products beginning with Autodesk Vault and Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle. Other integrations with other products are forthcoming, according to Matt Mason, software development team manager for IMAGINiT.
“It’s an initial release and a big new area for us,” said Mason. “We’ve always done system integration work, and the work tends to be custom and one-off. This is our attempt to build a platform to make the process of system integration easier, more packaged and less custom.”
Mason adds that previously system integration was primarily 90% custom and required high level software developer or consultant. “We want to see 85% -95% of system integration work as a part of the package. The rest would be what a midlevel consultant could do, set up relationships between systems, map one to the other, etc.”
IMAGINiT Pulse benefits include (according to company materials):
Connectors for Autodesk Vault, Autodesk Fusion Lifecycle, Autodesk BIM 360 Operations and BuildingLink and other systems, allow users to automatically flow information from one software program to another. For example, individuals involved in enterprise resource planning and PLM may need to seamlessly transfer certain data in a specific format from Fusion Lifecycle to Vault.
Real-time visibility of data, through an easy to read dashboard, allows users to understand exactly what information is being transferred, monitor each step in the transfer process and ensure the security and consistency of the data between the two systems.
Configurability gives users control over information being transferred, the systems it is being transferred between and the format in which it is being transferred – all without needing a dedicated development resource on staff. IMAGINiT technical professionals can assist Pulse users to define what data must move, in what direction, the format, and the reaction it triggers upon arrival at the destination software system.
Mason said that the connectors were built to do the heavy lifting of system integration, for working with specific products and getting data in or out of those products and doing updates.
“What’s left in the middle are workflow, rules and data mapping, and that’s modest, but doesn’t require the same level of development expertise that the actual deep integration to each system takes,” said Mason. “We’re trying to build something where we can have these pre-built connectors that do the hardest part of the work and separate the business logic and business rules into a separate part of the product.”
The first three connectors are built for Autodesk products currently since IMAGINiT’s consulting work largely revolves around those products. The fourth one was a non-Autodesk product called BuildingLink.
“We actually had a chance to build a product that made use of BIM 360 operations product with the BuildingLink product,” said Mason. “We expect to do more connectors over time, building our catalog of connectors. We’re expecting to do Bentley ProjectWise and other common integrations that we’ve done in the past such as Microsoft SharePoint.
People using the connectors need to be familiar with the workflows for the products involved. What is in the middle between the two is defining those workflows and some scripting is necessary, such as Microsoft.net scripting, as one product may refer to a part and another may refer to it as an item, etc.
An example, Mason said, are two Autodesk products that don’t communicate very well together such as Autodesk Vault to Fusion Lifecycle. They each have a separate language for how they describe parts and items and both are heavily customized for each customer to define the pieces of information they have. Someone has to build out the script of how to map data from this side to that side. To date, people have set up custom properties on their systems.
“We’re trying to build the connector out so it is visible to the user but not necessarily end user,” said Mason. “The person responsible for the integration wants to see what’s going on and see how integration flows from one side to the other. When you’re doing each one of these as a custom job, there wasn’t much time for polish. We wanted to invest more in the polish and see information flowing back and forth and have a way to visualize and trace. Since we were building it as a platform we could invest more than we could in a typical one off minimalist consulting project.”
In most cases IMAGINiT’s customers have already had their systems custom built for them. “We’re using the expertise of all the integrations we’ve done over the years and tried to build something so the next year’s integration will be much easier.”
Customers just want integration and want it to work, not cost too much. The Pulse Platform offers them “a nicer system that is less risk and less cost than something more custom, because so much of it is packaged,” said Mason.
Pulse will be separate from ongoing development, support and consulting, with annual use fee, including automatic updates for connectors for each company.
There will be one cost for the platform itself, and if you want two systems to connect, get a connector for each system, as each connector has a different amount of and specific complexity.
Coming up is the UK BIM Alliance Roadshow 2018, a tour entitled “Facilitating the Digital Transformation Of the Built Environment.” This event will offer information about how the UK BIM Alliance is making this possible for and with the industry. The news from the Alliance will include buildingSMART news and actual examples and case studies and begins June 21s in Birmingham, with the focus on the use of BIM in Facilities Management.
According to John Eynon, Founding Board Member, UKBIMA now has projects on the go, praise and patrons, some profit, and recognition on the global stage, particularly through their recent merger with buildingSMART UK+I.
A little history: In October of 2016, buildingSMART UK launched the UK BIM Alliance, which was the UK government’s strategy for driving improvements across construction strategy, and by 2017, all public funded projects would be requiring BIM Level 2. This has been the evolution of the UK BIM Alliance.
Dr. Anne Kemp, Atkins, chair of BuildingSMART UK, Chair of ICE’s BIM Action Group, who spoke on the utility topic, “Out of Sight and Out of Mind” at the Bentley Year in Infrastructure Conference in London, asking at that time: “Did all projects transfer to BIM Level 2? Actually, we are a bit further from that in reality. Three million people must be reached. The guys who are being affected by utility strikes are those who we need to reach.”
Her focus was on knowing what’s underground in the way of utilities and using BIM and GIS tools to track outcomes.
“We need to be transforming our utilities through intelligent use of BIM, digital, long overdue collaboration, and common sense,” Kemp said.
Kemp said that the launch of the UK BIM Alliance was going to help their progress at the BuildingSMART UK for feeding data about their buried utilities.
In 2017, the GCS transition of Task Group to L3 (BIM Level) was predicted. There is a need for industry focus and stewardship of Level 2 and to achieve 2020 “Business as usual”. “We need the foundations of BIM Level 2 to be able to realize the ambitions of Level 3,” Kemp explained. “We are providing that industry focus of moving through analog into that digital transformation, through 3D modeling and integrated real time modeling. We are working at the structured controlled data in BIM Level 2. We’ve also got to control that uncontrolled dirty data, and how do we do that?”
There is a need to think about outcomes rather than just output, said Kemp, and not just discussing 2D drawings or data (or 3D). How does data need to be delivered in order for us to do our jobs?
“We have a convergence of what is needed with BIM, and that’s where the UK BIM Alliance comes in,” said Kemp. “BIM for rail, water, survey, hospitals, has a lot of interest around this area. The UK BIM Alliance grew out of government initiatives, and we are moving to BIM level 3. We need industry to step up and demonstrate BIM Level 2.”
The initiative really had to embrace the entire industry. By setting the mandate that they must achieve BIM Level 2 by 2020, they are challenging themselves. They are being innovative and inclusive and transparent.
“We target people who need to know about this stuff,” said Kemp. “BIM Level 2 has been defined. Bimlevel2.org is available and we’re here to help industry implement.”
There is BIM for infrastructure and there needs to be BIM for utilities.
What can we do from a buried utilities point of view?
What is complementary for ISOs and smart cities is working on an evolving landscape. The UK BIM Alliance is developing a taskforce on convergence with smart cities.
“Disruptive technology changes the face of industries, but we are also in an age of disruptive data,” Kemp concluded. “You have to have your people work through, understand and tailor themselves to the new processes.”
COBie to IFC processes
The BuildingSMART chair UK chapter is supporting the BIM Level 2
BIM enabled through to operations and maintenance
Not just about design and construction
TOTEX and total expenditure instead of operational expenditure.
The government is looking at procurement methods. The background to BIM is asset management.
Key decisions have to be made through the life of a project. You also have projects running simultaneously at different stages, so you need to be sure you have the right information, and data fed into a system users can trust.
She is looking forward to better information and management through BIM.
Autodesk BIM 360 Docs is designed to help government clients comply with the BIM Level 2 mandate in the UK. Process described here:
The Product Data Working Group Alliance Product Data Working Group which is consulting on the state of the nation on product data has published two interim reports. Meeting 1 Interim Report
Meeting 2 Interim Report
Join the conversation on the dedicated #product_data slack channel or email us.
BIMovation – Faro are hosting an event on June 5th where Anne Kemp, UKBIMAlliance Chair will be speaking – register here
Facilitating the digital transformation of the Built Environment– The first of our roadshow events takes place in Birmingham on June 21st where John Eynon will be presenting the latest news alongside other guest speakers. Register here
CSIC Distinguished Lecture – Anne Kemp is delivering the distinguished lecture on June 29 where she takes A glimpse into the future….By considering the past. The challenges, the opportunities – and our consciences. Register here
GDPR
The UK BIM Alliance has updated their privacy policy inline with the new GDPR regulations. Please visit this page for more information.
Autodesk holds some informative webcasts for the civil community entitled “Civil Community Webcasts.” One recent one was entitled “What’s New in Civil 3D and InfraWorks.”
Bay Bridge East Span Seismic Safety Project To prove the project was viable, the California Department of Transportation shared detailed 3D designs with potential contracting firms.
Eric Chappell, Civil Community Evangelist for Autodesk, hosted this webinar with Dan Philbrick, director of Civil Infrastructure Products, Dave Simeone, Civil 3D project manager, and Sarah Cunningham, InfraWorks product manager.
Chappell recommends the InfraWorks tool for doing preliminary design and decisions. “This year we’re focusing on continuing to drive detailed design in both InfraWorks and the platform for BIM.”
The use of Civil 3D with or without InfraWorks is valuable and both are in the same civil collection.
What’s new in InfraWorks 2018.0
Sarah Cunningham noted that they changed the name of the product and took “360” out of the name.
An InfraWorks Customer Council meets with Autodesk once a month. “They tell us about challenges,” said Cunningham. “They bounce ideas off one another. Many people aren’t sure how to implement InfraWorks yet. This group has been able to talk about how they’re using it. We’re starting to hear some interesting things: 1. Continues to be used for road and highway design 2. CAD managers are hearing from designers that they want more engineering data from the InfraWorks model, increasing in frequency. They want it to be more than a pretty picture in visualization, more toward engineering design. The Corridor project in Norway, winner of the Infrastructure in Excellence Awards 2016, was about planning a corridor and using InfraWorks for large scale planning projects. They want to use InfraWorks for more preliminary design now that planning phase is done.”
In recent years we have seen an explosion of the use of reality capture by traditional CAD and building information modeling companies. Its ability to capture existing conditions and create 3D models out of photographs or laser scans, without seams makes it a great fit for the AEC industry. Technologies used include 3D laser scanning, mobile and aerial LiDAR, and photogrammetry. This resulting point data is reconstructed into a 3D model. While accurate, LiDAR only captures 3D data leaving color out. Photogrammetry uses photographs to reconstruct a 3D image.
Reality Capture has taken the AEC world by storm in recent years with its ability to capture existing conditions and create 3D models out of photographs or laser scans, without seams. Technologies used include 3D laser scanning, mobile and aerial LiDAR, and photogrammetry. This resulting point data is reconstructed into a 3D model. While accurate, LiDAR only captures 3D data leaving color out. Photogrammetry is another method by which Reality Capture is achieved. This type of Reality Capture uses photographs to reconstruct a 3D image.
An image in Bentley’s ContextCapture photo planning that shows operation (gray), target (yellow), and forbidden (red) zones.
Anand Mecheri, CEO and Founder of Invicara, spoke with AECCafe Voice about the company’s recent news of Kingspan Group plc’s $10 million investment in Invicara. Invicara is a provider of transformative cloud-based software solutions for the entire ecosystem of the built environment.
Invicara’s platform helps building owners and their design and construction partners create a data-rich, digital twin of a building.
There have been some changes to Autodesk recently. Perhaps most importantly for the users and owners, changes to the subscription program, that has been promoted by Autodesk as an “my way or the highway” approach to selling software, or cloud services as it were. As some people were not happy with being expected to purchase a subscription and give up their perpetual licenses, a new promotion has been initiated. This new promotion offers a “switch-back” option, meaning that if you own a perpetual license and you switch to a subscription, “If you’re not satisfied, you can switch back to your perpetual license.” This is the promise.
You can find out more about what this might mean for those who would like to continue with their perpetual licenses or revert to a perpetual license after finding the subscription program doesn’t work for them here.
How do I get this offer? (The first of the FAQs)
Simply trade in your qualifying old perpetual license(s) and purchase a new 1- or 3-year subscription to any eligible collection or individual product of your choice via one of the methods outlined.
Once you submit your perpetual license(s), you agree to discontinue use of the traded-in license(s). This offer ends April 20, 2018.
Which products qualify for the offer?
Most Autodesk perpetual licenses of releases R14 (release year 1998) through 2018 version product not on an active maintenance plan (as of December 31, 2017) qualify to get the offer discount.
When you trade in your qualifying perpetual license(s), you can get the offer discount on most Autodesk product subscriptions, including industry collections, AutoCAD, Revit, Inventor, 3ds Max, Civil 3D, Maya, and much more.
View list of all eligible products and full offer details here.
Can I get a different product than I have now?
You do not need to purchase the same product as the perpetual trade-in license. For example, you can trade in an old, eligible perpetual license of AutoCAD and subscribe to a collection at the promotional price.
(Eds note: This might work if you wanted to buy a subscription to a collection that contains AutoCAD, thereby seeming to get more for your money.)
What does “switch-back” option mean?
We’re confident that you will be satisfied with your subscription, but if for any reason that is not the case, you are eligible to switch back to your perpetual license at the end of either the 3-year term, or the end of the second year of an annual term (1 year plus 1 year renewal). See full details here.
In those full details, note this information:
Note that customers are only able to switch back to the versions set out below.
Version submitted
Switch back: within “eligible term”*
Customer obligations
2017, 2018
• 2016 version
• same product
• same deployment (e.g. SLM or NLM)
Contact Autodesk for details of how to switch-back
1998 – 2016
• Same version as submitted
• same product
• same deployment (e.g. SLM or NLM)
Retain media kits, download and/or activation details, and any other item necessary for operation of legacy license
Do I have to be connected to the internet to use my software?
No. After initial activation, your software will work offline for 30 days. At that point, you will need to reconnect. Don’t worry, we’ll remind you 7 days prior.
Will all of my work automatically go into the cloud?
Desktop applications and all associated user data are stored on your local machine. When you use cloud service applications, you can choose to either store data in the cloud or on your local machine. You retain all of your local data even if you decide to end your subscription.
Will I have updates whether I want to or not?
As a subscriber, you can access the latest updates anytime, but you decide if and when to install them.
What else can I do with subscription that I don’t have with my old software?
The subscription offerings provide you greater value and enable you to:
Always access the latest software, updates and previous versions
Use your software anywhere you need to be – at home, at work or on the road
Share 2D or 3D views of your work online and see comments directly in your product
Try out new tools without making a big up-front investment
Easily scale up or down to fit your organization’s changing needs
Instantly grant users access to products you have purchased by deploying them directly on devices or allowing users to install them on their own from the Autodesk desktop app
Get technical support – Choose phone, online chat, email or remote desktop assistance to resolve your issues more quickly
Eds. note: Nowhere is there any mention of continued support, upgrades or maintenance if you do choose to “switch-back” to your old version of Autodesk software after dipping your toes into the subscription pool. What this offer offers: 1) the owner or user, gains the opportunity to try out the subscription-based arrangement with an option of turning back if he/she wants to. 2) Additionally, the subscription price is 25% less than it would be without this offer, so it might be a worthwhile incentive to move forward. 3) You may really save money on signing up for the Industry Collections.
You must make your decision within 30 days, if you want to “switch-back.” If you do switch back, you don’t get to pick up your perpetual license maintenance plan. You will also be sent back (kind of like in a game of Monopoly) to your perpetual license version you had before.
Extraordinary as it may seem, if you had purchased a 2017 or 2018 perpetual license, it appears (see above chart) that if you were not happy with your subscription plan, you would be switched back to a 2016 perpetual license. I’m hoping this is a typo, but so far that is what is stated on the website. Stay tuned; I have contacted Autodesk to find out further information.
