I spent this week in the beautiful city of Ghent, Belgium for a series of company and product overviews at Bricsys at an event the company called Bricsys Insights.
For me, this was an introduction to and company and product line I had heard about, but didn’t have much knowledge about. This week that all changed for the better.
As a company, Bricsys has taken on several iterations over the years since it was founded in 2002, and has emerged today as a real player in the CAD markets for both architectural and mechanical design applications. The company currently has 130-140 employees, the majority being developers, so it is efficiently run and product focused. (more…)
As we said a little over a month ago, we have witnessed the ongoing and perpetual consolidation of the CAD/CAM industry as companies continue to get swallowed up by others.
We’ve witnessed CAD companies acquiring CAD/CAM companies, simulation companies acquiring CAD companies, and other types of technical software and service companies acquiring CAD/CAM companies. With all the attention seemingly focused on the CAD/CAM side, it’s sometimes easy to forget that there also has been a significant consolidation through acquisition on other sides of technical software as well over the past several years. In other words, with these other acquisitions technical software circles of all types continue to get smaller.
This time around its 3D scanning giant, FARO Technologies, and its recent acquisitions of kubit (AEC point cloud processing software) and ARAS 360 (crime reconstruction/forensic software). Founded in 1981, FARO Technologies Inc. develops and markets portable 3D measurement systems for computer-aided manufacturing measurement.
Coming about six months after its major Windows releases, Autodesk, Inc. announced today the releases of AutoCAD 2015 for Mac and AutoCAD LT 2015 for Mac.
Although Autodesk estimates that only 1-3% of all Macs run CAD software, this is still a significant milestone for AutoCAD for the Mac platform, now in its fifth release. Significant because in the five years since the first release of AutoCAD for Mac, the Mac platform base and presence has expanded from about 15 million to today’s approximately 80+ million. A nice increase in potential market.
According to a study conducted by McGraw-Hill Construction, around 71 percent of the AEC companies in North America are using building information modeling (BIM) technology, as of 2012. Among the companies using BIM, nearly 50 percent have been using it for more than five years, while around 40 percent are implementing it in more than 60 percent of their projects.
Another survey, conducted by Design Master Software Inc. in 2012, among 74 engineers and designers from the US, Canada, and several other countries, revealed that around 62 percent of the respondents are already using 3D-BIM. Moreover, around 75 percent of those who are not using this technology said that they expect to use it on more than half of their projects during 2013, 2014 and 2015, while another 30 percent said that they will use 3D-BIM in all their upcoming projects in the next three years.
According to the report “The Business Value of BIM” by McGraw Hill Construction, around 58 percent of the architecture firms in the United States were using Building Information Modeling (BIM), as of 2009. With more and more construction firms using BIM to their advantage, it is always a good idea to be more informed about the benefits offered by BIM. Contrary to common misconceptions, BIM is not just a technology, but a better approach towards designing, construction, and management of a construction project. Here, we will take a look at some major benefits of using BIM, so as to understand why this is a better approach towards building.
Benefits of Using BIM in Construction Projects
Effective utilization of BIM helps reduce manual errors, decrease costs, increase productivity, and improve quality of a construction project. Be it designing, construction, and management, BIM contributes to each and every phase a project in order to make the process easier, error-free and more effective. Following are the three major benefits of using BIM.
Did you know that designers of the very first automobile dubbed the invention as “horseless carriages” since they were reluctant to change their mindset and accept a revolutionary technology? Similarly, designers of steel frames covered them in masonry so that they looked like already-known bearing wall structures. It took them years to utilize the expressive capability of steel that is quite prevalent in designing buildings today. There are scores of other examples where almost every industry has tried to dismiss an innovative solution and attempted to shape it according to familiar practices. But eventually, true innovation conquers all. The AEC industry is also undergoing a similar phase with BIM technology. Nevertheless, scope and future of BIM services is resplendent with opportunities galore. Let us get a sneak peek at what the future holds for Building Information Modeling.
Building Information Modeling – The Future Ahead
The increased awareness about green energy efficient homes has led to an amplified interest in Building Information Modeling services as the means to achieve this. The drivers of adopting green technology include energy efficiency, environmental health and generating less waste. With BIM technology, AEC firms can build facilities with Green House Gases (GHG) control, carbon regulation and zero emissions.
This video is a recording of the AEC Building Design press session staged on 27 March 2012 to support a Media Summit to launch Autodesk’s 2013 portfolio of software and services.
This video shows the new features that have been added to the latest release of the AutoCAD WS for mobile app, AutoCAD WS 1.3. AutoCAD WS for mobile is available now for iOS on the App Store and for Android in the Android Market.
The Corridor Solids Technology Preview for AutoCAD® Civil 3D® 2012 software provides functionality to create AutoCAD® solids from AutoCAD Civil 3D Subassembly shapes that are contained in an AutoCAD Civil 3D Corridor Model. By creating solids from subassembly shapes, representative real-world objects such as tunnels, retaining walls, and pavement layers can be more easily used for visual analysis, design verification, and construction coordination through enhanced model sharing between various project team members who are using applications such as Autodesk® Navisworks® 2012 products, Autodesk® Revit® Structure 2012, Autodesk® 3ds® Max Design 2012, and the new Autodesk® Infrastructure Modeler 2012 software.
Tags: AutoCAD Civil Comments Off on Autodesk Labs: Civil model – integrated BIM workflow
