Digital twin technology has been talked about a great deal over the past few years, and is being worked on in various technology segments. At one time it was the province of manufacturing and now it is part of the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and data analytics. It is also being explored by numerous industries. The IDC recently noted that by the year 2020, 30% of global 2000 companies will be implementing data from digital twins to gain greater productivity.
Posts Tagged ‘Cloud’
AECCafe Digital Twin Questionnaire
Thursday, February 7th, 2019AECCafe Industry Predictions for 2019 – Part 4
Friday, February 1st, 2019In Part 4 of our AECCafe Industry Predictions, certain trends are further supported by submissions – support for and increased use of more cloud-based technologies, mobile technologies, the movement toward more efficiency in the construction business,virtual reality and augmented reality, the further integration of GIS and CAD, and Digital Twins.
AECCafe Industry Predictions for 2019 – Part 3
Thursday, January 24th, 2019Welcome to the third installment of the AECCafe Industry Predictions for 2019. As we have had great response to our request for predictions, we continue to bring you industry predictions from leading companies in the AEC industry for the month of January. This installment features topics such as metadata, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud as reality, increasing data needs, construction and operation, digitalization, simulation, indoor mapping and much more.
Companies’ viewpoints represented here include Panzura, Vectorworks, PlanGrid, and SimScale – each from a different perspective of the AEC industry.
AECCafe Industry Predictions for 2019 Part I
Thursday, January 10th, 2019Happy New Year!
It’s exciting to predict what may be the technologies of the new year. Many of you have a finger on the pulse of what is up and coming and can share valuable insights with our readers.
Call for AEC Industry Predictions for 2019!
Friday, January 4th, 2019Happy New Year!
Before the holidays I sent out a call for industry predictions for this year. So far, we have received a number of responses. This may mean that I need to extend this into a multiple part blog. Please get your submissions to me asap so they can be included.
Going 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.
Vancouver Fraser Port Authority Implements Autodesk Vault
Thursday, August 30th, 2018Responsibilities of the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority are vast, as they manage stewardship of federal port lands in and around Vancouver, British Columbia.
The port authority oversees and manages over 16,000 hectares of water, more than 1,000 hectares of land, and approximately 350 kilometers of shoreline, bordering 16 municipalities and intersecting the asserted and established territories and treaty lands of several Coast Salish First Nations.
The port authority’s mandate includes handling permits for all projects for proposed federal port lands use and is responsible for real estate management. It also manages infrastructure development designed to support growth and efficient operations.
In order to manage all this, the port authority maintains a repository of AutoCAD drawings. They have been AutoCAD Map 3D and Civil 3D users for a long time.
Maintaining source drawings from many systems such as water, communication, electrical, storm, sewer, and more is what the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority’s Spatial Data Group does on a daily basis. Team members create plans based in these systems and want to query features from each of them. One of the primary problems was that those features could be unintentionally removed from the source drawing if the user didn’t detach it before saving the working file. It could then be gone forever. The team really wanted a solution that could automatically create an audit trail displaying everyone who had modified a file.
Joe Hedrick, manager, Infrastructure Solutions for IMAGINiT, answered some questions for AECCafe Voice on how the port authority found a solution for tracking and safeguarding its CAD drawings in the form of Autodesk Vault.
AECCafe BIM Interoperability Questionnaire
Friday, August 10th, 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 models.
Document Management Meets Geo-Location, Real-Time MarkUp and Online Calculators
Wednesday, June 20th, 2018Searching, finding, collaboration and versioning of documents is a constant challenge for AEC organizations. How to organize and visualize documents and data has resulted in the development of some interesting engineering document management solutions. The following three document management solutions take a different approach to managing, visualizing and collaborating with AEC documents and data that further users’ ability to organize projects digitally.
Bluebeam, Inc., of Pasadena, California, part of the Nemetschek Group, announced recently that it has substantially acquired all of the assets of privately held Project Atlas, LLC.
Construction industry veterans Todd Wynne and Joe Williams founded Project Atlas in 2017. They created a digital mapping engine that uses geo-location instead of traditional folder structures to organize and visualize 2D plans and construction data. According to company materials, this location-based orientation allows design and construction professionals to create and search a seamless digital map of their project that contains plans, people, material, site photos and drone imagery, all within highly detailed, zoomable layers.
“Bluebeam was founded on the idea that powerful AEC solutions should also be easy to use, capable of delivering the right information at the right time while improving the ability of all project partners to collaborate throughout the lifecycle of an entire project,” says Bluebeam CEO Jon Elliott. “We are incredibly excited to add Project Atlas to our portfolio of solutions to continue delivering on this promise. Project Atlas provides users an entirely new way to visually organize and unify location-based documents and data. This location-based methodology dramatically reduces the time it takes to find critical plans and information, empowering owners, architects, engineers, contractors and specialty contractors to access data in an immediately understandable way that will be especially beneficial in the field.”
Bluebeam looks forward to demonstrating workflows incorporating Project Atlas at the Bluebeam Extreme Conference, taking place 17–19 September in Austin, Texas (USA).
Bluebeam’s markup and collaboration solutions are intuitive to those in the AEC industry who manage and collaborate on projects digitally.
eQuorum’s ImageSite Engineering CAD Drawing Markup Software is a product that provides markup capabilities in real time, so that multiple users can collaborate on drawing files and documents at the same time along with workflows. Videos and photos can be included. Drawings can be redlined and used in the office, field or production site.
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UK BIM Alliance Roadshow and Updates 2018
Friday, June 1st, 2018Coming 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.
They are also close working with the Centre for Digital Built Britain in Cambridge on the Level 2 and 3 agendas.
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:
Autodesk and UK BIM Level 2 Mandate
Other UK BIM Alliance Events
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.