With the theme of "Optimizing Design with BIM," the BIMForum carried into its Spring gathering in Boston a goal of "shining a light on design and engineering and showcase the best examples of collaboration, optimization and sustainability."
Courtesy UC Berkeley Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley create a wearable device that maps a building's geometry and energy heat map. What began as a reconnaissance project for the military, developed into a new, wearable device, scheduled for field testing this summer, which quickly maps the three-dimensional geometry and energy efficiency of buildings.“Our focus was to recover the floor plans of a building in one walkthrough,” says Avideh Zakhor, professor of electrical engineering at the University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif., whose research began as a Department of Defense project in 2007, with the goal of creating a
The AEC industry today has widely adopted 3D technologies and “building information models” to improve communication and coordination during the designing and building of projects. The models are used before construction starts and early on in the project to extract more accurate cost estimates, resolve major trade conflicts and eliminate rework. This is supposed to help the industry optimize resources, reduce waste and gain efficiency.The reality is that the coordination process is complicated, requires a seemingly endless number of coordination meetings “to run clash detections” and monopolizes important resources as the many participants work to produce weekly coordination materials. What
Photo Courtesy of Wilson and Company Ceremony Wilson and Co. and Kansas State University christened their UAV before its very first flight. Photo Courtesy of Wilson and Company While mapping a nearby landfill, Wilson and Co. officials used their UAV to document winter conditions surrounding a spillway at Tuttle Creek Dam, north of Manhattan, Kan. Related Links: Drones Find Their Way to Southeast Construction Sites Research Ramping Up For More Drones on Jobsites The Federal Aviation Administration is pressing its effort to restrict use of unmanned aerial vehicles after it lost a legal ruling regarding regulatory authority over smaller drones.
+ Image Related Links: American Institute of Steel Construction buildingSMARTalliance The American Institute of Steel Construction is ramping up efforts—at least on the technical side—to ease data exchange among all entities in the structural-steel supply chain. The move is part of AISC's push to help building teams save time and increase efficiency, productivity and accuracy in structural-steel production.AISC reports headway in building- information-modeling-based automated fabrication and automated steel purchasing and limited progress in steel BIM review, instead of shop-drawing review. But the sharing of steel BIMs between the engineer of record and the steel fabricator—to eliminate duplicate BIM-building efforts—is still
Photo Courtesy of Sumitomo Mitsui Construction With digital, high-definition cameras and LED lightsevery one blinking in a unique, identifiable patternresearchers can achieve automated, highly accurate, 3D positioning data day and night. Related Links: Haruyama and Nagamoto's White Paper Details the System Video: LED Technology Today Six years after a Japanese construction company deployed a light-emitting-diode surveying system to collect continuous, three-dimensional positioning readings, researchers say the technology is now cheaper, easy-to-operate and an automated version of total station systems. It also performs in the dark or light 24 hours a day.The work is the brainchild of Shinichiro Haruyama, professor at
courtesy of Autodesk Pick Up Autodesk-Revit integration of detailing package is latest in BIM development. Related Links: U.K.s BIM Mandate Driving Major Shift in Digital Tools Adoption BIM Adoption Spreads Globally The annual release of software updates from the dominant provider of building design software in the U.S. includes integration with an acquisition that gives the suite a new dimension: steel detailing and fabrication.Autodesk Inc. inked, in October, a deal with GRAITEC SA to acquire GRAITEC's Advance Steel and Advance Concrete software and R&D teams. The products are used in Europe primarily for automated production of fabrication documents for steel
Parametric modeling is best known as the technology empowering the nimble geometric feats of many contemporary architects. This new generation of architecture is so reliant upon parametric modeling that designers like Patrik Schumacher, the director of Zaha Hadid Architects, argues that it constitutes “the great new style after modernism.” By his reasoning, and the reasoning of others, parametric modeling is enabling an entirely new type of architecture.Despite the exuberance, the building industry has been quietly struggling with parametric modeling. In practice, the models are difficult to produce and they often break. The breakages most commonly occur when the project’s design
By Tom Sawyer Attendees at ENR's FutureTech conference gained a deeper appreciation of the technology shifts that are changing the character of the built world as the needs of the occupants change. Related Links: Construction Tech Companies Forecast a Cloudy Future Exploring the Future of Construction Through Science-Fiction Stories It is axiomatic that accurate forecasting should build on an understanding of the past and, particularly, of the economic drivers that shape the way we live, work and produce, said Paul D. Saffo, a technology forecaster, in a keynote presentation at ENR's FutureTech conference in San Francisco on March 19. "As
Related Links: Robots on the Jobsite Advancing in Construction Can a Robot Do Your Job? It Depends Within five to 10 years, a majority of construction workers will be interacting with real-time data on projects and deploying wearable, pervasive computing devices on jobsites, according to a survey of ENR readers.But readers are split on how much of a difference in productivity will result from all that real-time data and gadgetry.The survey went out to about 54,000 subscribers of ENR's FutureTech newsletter in early March and garnered 317 replies, three-quarters of which completed all the questions. (The results were unveiled on
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