Andrew Anagnost, President and CEO of Autodesk gave the keynote at the general session of the second Autodesk University 2021 Virtual in October. He spoke of how customers and employees had to experience a decade of change in 18 months that some were not ready for. “Even before social distancing and remote – platforms were connecting consumers and producers, and mobile devices were bringing everyone together,” said Anagnost. “Sometimes it’s felt like technology has kept us apart. We saw human ingenuity at a greater pace and scale. We face uncertainty. You make things that make tomorrow a better place. Everyone here are innovators and solve big and small problems, and technology is a force multiplier of your ingenuity.
IMAGINiT Technologies has recently released Clarity 2022, an enterprise level suite of products that improves building information model (BIM) integrity and collaboration via access to business insights, metrics and time saving automation. New functionality inIMAGINiT Clarity’s 2022 release has added Autodesk AutoCAD task processing, extending to Autodesk Revit teams as well as AutoCAD and Autodesk Civil 3D users in AEC Firms.
Trimble (SketchUp) has integrated V-Ray, a leading rendering application for architectural visualization from Chaos, into SketchUp Studio. SketchUp software is a popularly used 3D modeling software and design platform for architects, engineers and construction (AEC) professionals. The integration makes it possible for users to generate high-quality renderings directly within Trimble’s SketchUp Studio.
An interesting by-product of the Covid-19 pandemic has been the reworking of technologies to fulfill requirements presented by the need to work remotely, as well as address the way we will work on face-to-face projects that are essential to the AEC industry. The need to visualize large amounts of data will propel the expansion from data acquisition to data analytics and business and operational insights. Office spaces of the future may be repurposed for additive manufacturing as the maker community takes off with more entry-level machines, making it more accessible to more people. Drones are becoming smarter, and more field personnel are able to make use of them.
Eduardo Lazzarotto, Bentley Systems, Director, Product Management and Susanne Trierscheid, Bentley Systems, Senior Director, Facilities Engineering spoke with AECCafe Voice regarding their new releases in the latter part of this year. Their biggest product is OpenBuildings, within the Buildings and Campuses portfolio of Bentley.
Francois Valois, vice president, Civil Engineering with Bentley Systems spoke at Bentley’s recent Civil Design Virtual Press Briefing about the current state of civil engineering and how we now need to do things differently. Civil infrastructure will continue to need to accelerate, according to Valois. “There has been an enormous infrastructure deficit over the years. Any time we stop accelerating we make the problem worse. Now we have social distancing, and funding challenges. Projects may be funded by a special tax on gas, for example. In addition to this, we have to stay home and when we’re onsite we must have less people onsite and find new ways to work. Our answer is the digital twin, and helping our users to go digital.”
In a conversation this week with Bob Mayer, president of IMSI Design, he spoke about the recent release of their TurboCAD 2020 line, including Platinum, Professional, Deluxe and Designer versions for Windows® desktop PCs. The new release sports added functionality for 2D and 3D for all users with over 40 new and improved features.
“This year’s 2020 release, puts a greater emphasis of 3D modeling and manufacturing enhancements,” stated Mayer. “There are powerful enhancements to our Facet Editor, new 3D Covering functionality, 3D Printing improvement, an updated solid modeling engine, and other productivity enhancements. We are particularly pleased with how much faster TurboCAD handles complex objects and files, constraint animation, and with the new support of advanced mechanical CAD file formats in our Platinum edition.”
In March, Trimble announced at ConExpo 2020, the Trimble Platform as a Service (TPaaS), an offering giving contractors the ability to purchase select civil construction hardware and software solutions and continually upgrade those solutions with the latest innovations from Trimble. The bundled solutions within the offering include the Trimble Earthworks Grade Control Platform, Trimble Siteworks Positioning Systems, Trimble Correction Services and select office software.
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.
2018 brought with it the realization and development of various technologies that will serve to move the AEC industry forward and in some cases, serve the concept of digital cities more widely. Digital Twin technology has emerged as a force to be reckoned with in the coming years.
