Photo by Tom Sawyer / ENR Autodesk CEO Carl Bass tells users he wants a to bridge the gap between real and virtual. Related Links: Autodesk Software for Education Autodesk A360 Responding to an industry changing "more radically than at any time since the Industrial Revolution," Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that, in the coming months, the company will roll out new offerings to improve software availability, collaboration, fabrication, production and—through free distribution of design software to students, teachers and academic institutions worldwide—workforce development, as well.In an address and in comments to media during Autodesk University in Las Vegas in
Photos Courtesy of Eric Reslock An OSHPD senior structural engineer demonstrates real-time virtual plan review. Photos Courtesy of Klas Berghede HerreroBOLDT conducts a coordination session. California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development is piloting real-time electronic plan review and submittal for two San Francisco hospital projects, which have a combined price tag of $2.7 billion and are scheduled for completion in 2018.Sutter Health, the owner, asked "us to pilot some tech they had, and it was new to us, so we jumped on it," says Eric Reslock, OSHPD's assistant director for legislative and public affairs. "The idea is to
Even as other process industries realize significant benefits when they move from primarily document-centric asset management systems to data-centric systems, the nuclear power industry has yet to make the change. At least one study suggests it is time to do so.Managing and maintaining all of the diverse pieces of information that relate to the physical configuration of a large industrial facility like a nuclear power plant is no simple task. Implementation of an advanced configuration management information system (CMIS) provides significant operational and economic benefits. An integrated CMIS encompasses data and information for all phases of the plant life cycle,
Enlarge Related Links: Collaboration Technology for Construction Sees Rapid Improvements Julian Clayton: Apps for Smaller Guys That Make a Big Difference Massive Gigaprograms Come with Layers of New Risk It wasn't that long ago when AEC firms relied on messengers and overnight delivery to exchange voluminous documents with clients and collaborators. The advent of high-bandwidth electronic data transfers and cloud storage has made the process largely a secure, point- and-click process, helping to expedite reviews and updates while saving money and more than a few trees.A number of file-sharing/storage services have emerged to serve firms of all sizes and needs.
Photo courtesy of Google Fiber Demand for gigabit internet across the U.S. and Canada is stirring up the need for thousands of construction jobs, such as this boring crew clearing a path for Google Fiber in Austin. Related Links: American-French Venture Starts Construction of First US-Brazil Undersea Cable Link Google Fiber contractors are laying thousands of miles of cable in Austin, Texas, to support the broadband company's second major gigabit build-out. Customers there will start to sign up for the ultra-fast internet service in early December. Meanwhile, AT&T is busy preparing contractors in Cupertino, Calif., for what will be the
Related Links: Collaboration Technology for Construction Sees Rapid Improvements Arid Lands Institute In drought-wracked California, efforts to conserve every bit of available water are prompting ambitious solutions. But while the state looks to major infrastructure projects to meet future demand, researchers at the Arid Lands Institute are working on a software mapping tool, Divining LA, to give urban planners, architects and engineers a better view of a region's water profile to maximize use.Combining information gleaned from digital terrain models, geotechnical data sets, multi-spectral satellite imagery and historical surveys, Divining LA may one day provide a model of a region's stormwater
Related Links: Water-Mapping Tool May Lead to More Informed Design Decisions Online Options Abound for Electronic File Sharing Yau Lee Group Hong Kong Housing Authority Center for Integrated Facility Engineering Trimble Vico RIB iTwo 5D software Bluescape interactive displays NVIDIA graphical processing units Nasuni storage as a service Panzura cloud storage system Supercharging Structural Design & Construction Productivity Design and construction professionals are seeing a rapid expansion in the hardware, software and services available for collecting and sharing information with distributed teams. The market has exploded with a wide range of effective tools and systems for gathering digital data, exchanging
Related Links: http://kodakpixpro.com/Americas/# http://www.thermal.com/see_the_unseen.html http://www.vsnmobil.com/wearables/v-alrt/ Every fall, electronics manufacturers introduce a flock of new devices to entice consumers. ENR likes to root through the offerings to look for items that might serve the needs of construction. Click the image to begin the slide show.
Aqua AMRSR-E, MetOp ASCAT A computer visualization of the monthly average soil moisture in Australia. Related Links: Surface Soil Moisture Data Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity Data The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is scheduled to launch this January a new satellite to gather soil-moisture data to help predict floods and droughts.NASA’s soil-moisture active-passive (SMAP) satellite joins the recently launched Sentinel-1 satellite, which collects data for the European Space Agency’s soil-moisture and ocean-salinity (SMOS) mission. The SMOS project measures the level of water saturation in the top layers of soil and the concentration of salt in the surface layer of
Image Courtesy of UrbaWind Related Links: Energy Plus DataBase Free Envi-Met CFD Tool Acomputational-fluid-dynamics software update helps architects to avoid building designs that are too blustery for the comfort of pedestrians walking through urban areas."The main benefit of UrbaWind is the graphical display of results," says Shannon Testart, CAD technician for microclimate at Novus Environmental Inc., Ontario, Canada, who uses the software. "The graphics of wind comfort are an efficient way to display results and are easily understood by our clients."UrbaWind 2.2 by Meteodyn, Nantes, France, accounts for the angles of buildings, trees and other cityscape features to calculate pedestrian-level
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