AECCafe will focus on specific editorial for 2019, so be sure to check in with our Editorial Calendar to find out when might be a good time for your story to be shown. Throughout the year, we provide space for Current Events, as the technology industry is evolving, and we can’t know at the time of this writing just what will be new, groundbreaking and/or disruptive in the coming year.
Archive for the ‘rendering’ Category
AECCafe Editorial Calendar 2019
Thursday, November 1st, 2018Going Open and Digital Twin Cloud Services Shape Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2018
Thursday, October 25th, 2018The Bentley Year In Infrastructure Conference held in London this year at the Hilton London Metropole attracted over 1,200 attendees, a record number for that location and event. The company advanced its theme of “Going Digital” with the inauguration of Digital Twins and iTwin Services. iTwin Services are digital twin cloud services for infrastructure projects and assets, that can be transparently provisioned within Bentley’s Connected Data Environment (CDE) for ProjectWise and AssetWise users.
Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2018 Conference Features Year in Infrastructure Finalists’ Best Practices, Real-World Implementations, and State-of-the-Art Technologies
Monday, October 15th, 2018Every year the Bentley Systems’ Year in Infrastructure conference showcases finalists in their Year in Infrastructure competition. The event highlights the company’s prestigious Year in Infrastructure Awards, where finalists in 19 categories present their most innovative projects of the past year and describe how they were able to solve real-world challenges using Bentley applications. The winners will be announced at a special ceremony and gala on Oct. 18.
AECCafe Voice Special Report: What Makes for BIM Interoperability?
Thursday, September 27th, 2018The built environment is increasingly more digitized, relying heavily on large building models to hold all aspects of a building project. Thus, the need for BIM Interoperability is greater as the necessity grows for stakeholders to be able to access the information inside these complex and huge models.
For AEC firms, it is very common to use multiple software products within the same organization, as well as outside the organization. No single BIM software solution or integrated system can fulfill the requirements of the AEC industry. All these products throughout the design process need to be able to communicate with one another.
Standards organizations have come forward to suggest that they have the answer to interoperability in the BIM world. But currently what most vendors are able to achieve is perhaps an increase in interoperability. Does anyone offer total interoperability?
Some of our respondents define BIM interoperability in this way:
“Interoperability is about handing over the right amount of information, to the right people at the right time,” says David Lash, product manager, Trimble, Tekla Structures Division. “It’s about hitting milestones for people who want to stay up to date with the wider project, even on a daily basis.”
“Communication, communication, communication,” says Joe Eichenseer, director, Building Lifecycle Solutions, North America IMAGINiT. “Interoperability allows us to communicate better and reduce or eliminate the chance of translation errors between systems.”
Vectorworks 2019 Packs a Punch with Increased Design Efficiency
Wednesday, September 19th, 2018Last week Vectorworks released the 2019 versions of Vectorworks Architect, Landmark, Spotlight, Fundamentals and Designer, as well as BraceworksTM and Vision. Significant improvements have been made in increased design efficiency through overall performance and quality, plus innovations to greatly improve the 3D and BIM modeling, 2D documentation and presentation workflows for architectural, landscape, interior design and entertainment designers.
In an interview with Vectorworks CEO Biplab Sarkar, he talked about the importance of the new release, including 3D site model sculpting; the unique ability to have BIM objects display with varying levels of detail in plan, elevation and section drawings; enhanced openBIM interoperability; and a new partnership integration with AutoTURN online for analyzing vehicle swept paths.
“We improved and streamlined the creation of drawings from the models,” said Sarkar. “The primary reason BIM models are used is for people to drive presentation drawings from the models. When you have an object, a kitchen sink or an appliance and you want to present in different views: side, front and back view, for example, you really need a simplified presentation depending upon the scale of the drawing. So, what we introduced is 2D from 3D components for hybrid objects. If you look at the object from the top plan, it will give you a simplified top plan view and if you look at it from any other view it will show a 3D presentation of the object.”
The 2019 version extends the view from the top plan to other views. You can have a left view, front view, bottom view, and all these views can be stored in the object. You can choose low, high or medium view selection and specify so details can be changed depending on the view. You simplify the view depending on the scale. For very small scale and everything close together, you don’t want to show all the details of the object, and for a large scale you want to display all the details of a complicated object.
Computer Graphics Goes Back to the Future at SIGGRAPH 2018
Thursday, August 16th, 2018Vancouver, British Columbia is the venue for the 45th SIGGRAPH 2018 conference, this week, August 12-16, where technology vendors and aficionados gather to view the latest and greatest in virtual reality, artificial intelligence (AI), computer graphics and interactive techniques.
New Features of Autodesk’s Civil 3D and InfraWorks
Thursday, May 3rd, 2018Autodesk 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.”
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.”
AECCafe Special Coverage: Reality Capture Fast-Tracks Infrastructure Design
Wednesday, April 18th, 2018In 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.
AECCafe Voice’s Reality Capture Questionnaire
Wednesday, February 28th, 2018Reality 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.
AECCafe Predictions for 2018
Thursday, January 4th, 2018Happy New Year!
Approaching a new year, the technologies that we saw growing during 2017 may unfold into 2018 to become realized with deeper understanding.