After years of chugging along, the development of the nation's first consensus-based standard for the use of building information modeling is finally picking up steam. The buildingSMART alliance, which is releasing the National BIM Standard-United States, or NBIMS-US, says a version of the standard will be out by year's end. Beginning on Aug. 3, the 30-day public-comment period will broach the 45 topics that form the core of the standard.“We're out of the back room,” says Deke Smith, executive director of the alliance, which is a council of the National Institute of Building Sciences, Washington, D.C.Smith and his colleagues have
Three recent app releases aim to raise the bar on roof-estimating tools. Two of them are free and modest in function, although one reaches for the stars. The other is pricey and complex by app standards. Photo by Tom Sawyer PITCH PERFECT Pitch Gauge 2.0 has a calculator that converts measurements into estimates of materials. One roofing contractor calls it a must-have. At the modest end of the spectrum is a roof-pitch-measuring app called Pitch Gauge 2.0, which came out this month for Android smart phones. The app, also available for the iPhone, uses the smart phone's gyroscope to read
A first-of-its-kind automatic, multisensor system for finding the safest escape routes in buildings is slated for installation in three Iowa campus structures this fall.
Inspired by the need to prevent employees who are working on far-flung project teams from entering inaccurate time and deficient information, the developer of a punch-clock application has linked its newest version to an evolving security feature. “The biometric fingerprint technology is our most important update. It adds the security of knowing an employee must be present to log their own hours,” says Michael Fullerton, president of CyberMatrix Corp., Vernon, British Columbia, Canada. “A lot of mobile tablets already have this fingerprint hardware built into the device.”The seventh version of CyberMatrix's Employee Project Clock, which has been out for two
U.S. Dept. of Energy laboratories are finishing up work on hundreds of millions of dollars worth of stimulus-funded infrastructure work that could accelerate research for breakthroughs in energy, medicine and other areas. However, transferring that research and development to the marketplace poses challenges. Image courtesy Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Electrical upgrades will help power accelerated magnetic fusion experiments at DOE's plasma physics laboratory in Princeton, N.J. The Princeton lab received nearly $14 million in stimulus funding. Photo courtesy of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Construction is nearly complete on a research building at DOEs Fermi lab in Illinois that expands R&D
Of all professional groups, architects and engineering and construction firms spend the least on marketing (3.1 percent), according to a 2008 study by Hinge, a marketing services firm. While the building professions are loathe to print brochures, nearly all have websites. And nearly all operate on a local or regional level. Given how easy and inexpensive it is to optimize a website for local search to help prospective clients find you, it's hard to understand why engineers and builders wouldn't take advantage of local search engine optimization. As far back as 2004, local search accounted for up to 25 percent of
In the last (and first) issue of ENR’s FutureTech newsletter (which went out June 14), I discussed key pricing and compatibility issues to consider when buying new design software. But there are other issues to consider, which can include the usability of your drawings. Related Links: Before You Upgrade CAD: Questions to Ask (Pt. 1 of 2) A key test is a simple one: print out a detailed set of drawings for a job, in different sizes, on paper and in PDF or other format you might use for portable tablets and laptops. Is everything there? In the second half
Recent rendering of one of LightSquared's satellites Related Links: GPS Industry Groups Reject LightSquared's Network Fix FCC Announces Comment Period for TWG GPS Industry Groups Reject LightSquared's Network Fix The gloves are off in a standoff between the U.S. Global Positioning System industry and a satellite communications vendor seeking to light up a broadband satellite and terrestrial network to blanket the country.GPS interests say plans for the satellite and terrestrial voice and data network with 40,000 base stations will operate too close to GPS on the spectrum and cause damaging interference to the entire system. They accuse the vendor of
Construction industry players and other major users of precision Global Position Systems (GPS) say a new report released by an industry working group today confirms that a wireless broadband network proposed by LightSquared would cause major harm to most GPS equipment in use around the globe. Rendering of LightSquared's latest satellite. Related Links: FCC Announces Comment Period for TWG Report Save Our GPS Coalition Press Releases LightSquared's Press Release Efforts 'To Save Our GPS' Heat up in Congress The group also rejected a three-pronged proposal put forth by Reston, Va-based LightSquared, which it says would mitigate any interference the company's
Engineers who need to integrate river-flow analysis data with 3D civil design models recently got a boost with the release of a new extension that ties them together. Until the end of the year, Autodesk Labs is offering Project River Analysis Extension software for free as a sort of trial balloon. The software integrates with AutoCAD Civil 3D and AutoCAD Map 3D for 2012. Photo courtesy of Autodesk, Inc. A screen shot of Autodesk's new River Analysis Extension, which is on Autodesk Labs' site and free until the end of this year. The latest extension can overlay one-dimensional data from
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