Industry 4.0 will revolutionize BIM and AEC

by HingePoint

An economist recently said that America has not had a technological revolution since the computer.

We at HingePoint were floored. Working as a BIM consultant in architecture, engineering, and construction, we know this is inaccurate.

Not to call him out,  but he is flat out wrong. Everything we have been seeing suggests we are in the middle of one of the biggest technological revolutions of our time and it is transforming how all of us do our work, especially in the AEC industry

Just listen to Autodesk’s Senior Vice President Amar Hanspal who recently spoke at the Forge Devcon 2016 conference.

“The future is here. We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution!”

Wow!

But he’s not the only one saying this.

So what the heck is the fourth?

Well… it’s not just one new technology. It’s a bunch of technology converging that will transform government, business and life as we know it.

“In this fourth revolution, we are facing a range of new technologies that combine the physical, digital and biological worlds. These new technologies will impact all disciplines, economies and industries, and even challenge our ideas about what it means to be human.”

Professor Klaus Schwab is the Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. He published a book The Fourth Industrial Revolution.

He wrote on the World Economic Forum’s blog:

“The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”

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So what will this revolution bring the AEC Industry?

Schwab from the World Economic Forum says that this will dramatically affect the AEC Industry.

“Engineers, designers, and architects are combining computational design, additive manufacturing, materials engineering, and synthetic biology to pioneer a symbiosis between microorganisms, our bodies, the products we consume, and even the buildings we inhabit.”

Let’s give you a practical example of what Schwab is saying.

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Right now we are able to make 3D designs of our buildings. We can look at these designs on our smartphones. It reduces mistakes because construction crews can see how the building should be built instead of guessing based on 2D-paper drawings.

What’s already happening is construction crews and architects are using augmented reality, virtual reality and computer-aided manufacturing.

Trimble Introduces New Android Application for Field Surveying and Data Collection

by Parul Dubey

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—Trimble (NASDAQ: TRMB) introduced today Trimble® Penmap® for Android™, a cloud-connected application for field surveying and high-accuracy Geographic Information System (GIS) data collection that works on mobile handhelds, smartphones and tablets.

Trimble Penmap for Android focuses on core survey and mapping tasks such as cadastral and boundary surveys, establishing local control, stake-outs, quality checks and asset management for utilities. It provides both professional surveyors and field workers with an intuitive, easy-to-use map-based interface to manage features and attributes for high-accuracy GIS and complete survey documentation. For example, the application is ideal for use in the energy distribution industry for locating infrastructure and recording critical information on encroachments, clearways and existing monuments. The application runs on a variety of Android devices, including the rugged Trimble TDC100 handheld, and supports full-featured Trimble Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers such as the Trimble R10, R8s and R2 receivers.

Trimble Penmap for Android is optimized to integrate with the new Trimble Catalyst™ service, a software-defined GNSS receiver that connects to the small, inexpensive plug-and-play DA1 antenna, and allows surveyors to choose an accuracy level from meter to centimeters to suit their application needs. Together, Penmap and Trimble Catalyst—both purchased through a fixed monthly subscription—offer an on-demand, lightweight and low-cost professional surveying system that provides value, convenience and flexibility.

“The addition of Penmap expands our portfolio to address the needs of organizations that require a value-packed, flexible survey system,” said Matt Delano, general manager of Trimble’s Land Administration solutions. “Surveyors using the Penmap application with Trimble Catalyst can easily manage seasonal shifts in survey activity by scaling up or down without a capital investment. Survey managers will find it an efficient way to carry out field checks without tying up expensive equipment used by their field crews. They can simply use a phone, the Penmap application, a Catalyst subscription and the DA1 antenna.”

Trimble Penmap for Android includes the Penmap Project Manager, which is used to set up projects, create templates and add team members. Penmap Project Manager works with the Trimble Connect™ platform for storing and transferring data between the field and office. Trimble Connect, which is also included in the Penmap subscription, is a collaborative cloud-based platform that enables organizations to set up and deploy projects to their field users. Information collected in the field is synced back to the office in real-time where it is stored, managed and communicated to team members. Data can also be exported from Penmap Project Manager into back-office systems in a variety of file formats for viewing and sharing.

 

The new age of engineering and construction technology

by Jose Luis Blanco, Andrew Mullin, Kaustubh Pandya, and Mukund Sridhar

New technologies are transforming all stages of the engineering and construction process. Here’s what companies need to know about the evolving landscape.

The engineering and construction (E&C) industry is at the cusp of a new era, with technology start-ups creating new applications and tools that are changing how companies design, plan, and execute projects. By providing advanced software, construction-focused hardware, and analytics capabilities, these innovative start-ups are eliminating many of the problems that have dogged the E&C sector for decades, including difficulties compiling and sharing project information. Such improvements could not come at a better time, since construction projects are becoming increasingly complex and expensive, putting managers under greater pressure to improve costs, timelines, and efficiency.

Many E&C companies have begun incorporating new construction technologies into their daily activities, but most of their efforts have focused on software tools for digital collaboration. The reasons for this narrow focus vary, but some players hesitate to expand into any other area because they have traditionally struggled to deploy new tools at scale, limiting their impact. The modest returns they’ve seen to date make these companies reluctant to explore additional productivity-enhancing technologies, especially those requiring substantial investment. Other companies are simply unfamiliar with tools and solutions in areas beyond digital collaboration.

To help E&C companies navigate the landscape and develop more effective deployment strategies, we analyzed more than 1,000 construction-software start-ups and their products. First we identified common use cases for which software tools are being developed across all project phases (design, preconstruction, construction, and operations and management). These include activities such as managing performance or monitoring safety. We then examined investment patterns to determine if solution providers are shifting their resources to different applications, since this could provide hints about tools that may soon hit the market.

This article focuses on current and future use cases related to the construction phase of projects because that is the most complex and time-consuming phase in the E&C process. As part of our analysis, we also reviewed data from McKinsey Global Institute’s Construction Productivity Survey, which received responses from more than 200 senior E&C executives. The survey data helped us understand common challenges that arise when companies deploy and scale up digital solutions, as well as possible mitigation strategies.

 

EXPLORING THE TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP: BIM FOR LIFE

by AEC-ST News

The many ways in which technology has changed the approach AEC professionals can take to a given task or project is a theme that we’ve explored, but the people at BIMStorm are tackling the issue in far more complete manner. Their BIMStorm AEC Game Changers series is taking an in-depth look at how various advancements in technology are impacting the Design and Building industry and dramatically altering the way everyone lives and works.

Their upcoming webinar is titled: “BIM for Life: Total Cost of Ownership”. It will be focused on the disruptive changes AEC professionals are dealing with to help them reconsider how they can and should tackle certain problems and issues. To get a sense of what’s going to be shared and showcased during the webinar, we caught up with Kimon Onuma, creator of BIMStorm and the ONUMA System. We talked about some of the technologies that have created disruption, how professionals can ensure they’re not being negatively disrupted by new technology and plenty more.

Jeremiah Karpowicz: Have the technology changes that are disputing the AEC industry made more of an impact on a technical level or on a conceptual one? That is to say, are these disruptions more about using a new/updated tool, or are they about needing to adopt a completely new approach?

Kimon Onuma: A better hammer is still just a hunk of steel until it is placed in the hands of a person ready to do work with it. Implementing technology is always going to be about adopting new approaches because ultimately the tools do not work alone, but need to be used by people. The users need to understand how to properly apply the new tools to improve their everyday workflows. BIMStorm brings the people and tools together to challenge and create faster disruptions for AEC.

 

RHINO/SKETCHUP/REVIT SEAMLESS WORKFLOWS

by Scott Deisher

This week I’m giving a quick introduction to Flux, an app for interoperability between various design software like Rhino, Revit, Sketchup, Dynamo, Grasshopper, and other programs like Google Sheets and Excel. Much like Doodlebug, Flux can drastically cut down on time and effort wasted on getting digital models and drawings from one program to the next. It also allows users to collaborate on projects through the cloud using any of its supported apps. I’ve been using it this summer on a small project during my internship at HKS, and Flux has allowed the project team to divide up modeling tasks between users using both Rhino and Sketchup (some users prefer one software over the other) but still have changes reflected in both programs, since all data is hosted online through the Flux cloud.

Below is a quick demo showing how a project can send data from Rhino to Sketchup. This workflow is valuable because it lets users take advantage of the differences in each program; I prefer the ease and speed of the geolocation and shadows in Sketchup, though I’d rather model everything in Rhino. I’ve created a new “Project,” and each project contains data called “Connections” that users set up to upload different parts of the model to the cloud.

In the animation above, I’m drawing new geometry in Rhino and creating a new connection through Flux, then sending that geometry using the “Upload” (up arrow) once the modifications are made. In Sketchup, I navigate to that same connection, switch the arrow to “Download” (down arrow), and the geometry downloads and places itself in the Sketchup model. All scaling happens through the app, meaning that I can draw in inches in Rhino and feet in Sketchup, and not worry about scaling the geometry.

 

Modifying the geometry and updating the connection will automatically delete the previous iteration of the geometry when you download from Flux. The extra lines in the Sketchup view are edges from the Rhino loft, which can be removed (actually just hidden) by using “Soften Edges” which I did in the previous animation.

Structure complete on World’s tallest wood building

by Peter Lister, MASc, PEng. Vice President, Commercial Services at Seaspan ULC

The mass wood structure and façade has been completed for UBC’s Brock Commons student residence—the world’s tallest wood building at 18 storeys (53 metres, about 174 feet)—four months ahead of schedule, showcasing the advantages of building with wood.

The structure was completed less than 70 days after the prefabricated components were first delivered to the site. Construction will now focus on interior elements, with completion expected in early May 2017—18 per cent (or four months) faster than a typical project. The building is expected to welcome more than 400 students in September 2017.

“This remarkable building, the first of its kind in the world, is another shining example of Canadian ingenuity and innovation, an apt demonstration of how Canada’s forest industry is finding new opportunities through technology and innovation — opening up a world of possibilities for our forest and construction industries,” said Jim Carr, Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources.

Brock Commons is the first mass wood, steel and concrete hybrid project taller than 14 storeys in the world. The building has a concrete podium and two concrete cores, with 17 storeys of cross-laminated-timber floors supported on glue-laminated wood columns. The cladding for the façade is made with 70 per cent wood fibre.

“Brock Commons is living proof that advanced wood products are a terrific material to build with and support efficient assembly. It also showcases new applications for B.C. lumber, leading to new job opportunities in B.C.’s forest industry,” said Steve Thomson, Minister of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations.

Other wood structure buildings on UBC’s Vancouver campus include the AMS Student Nest, the Engineering Student Centre, the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability, the Bioenergy Research and Demonstration Facility, and the Earth Sciences building.

“Wood is increasingly recognized as an important, innovative and safe building material choice. This new tall wood building reflects UBC’s leadership in sustainable construction and our commitment to providing our students with more on-campus housing,” said UBC President Santa J. Ono.

As a “living laboratory,” Brock Commons will also be a source of learning through interdisciplinary research and educational projects undertaken by UBC faculty, staff and students.

The project is expected to cost approximately $51.5 million, with $47.07 million financed by UBC. Being the first of its kind, it entailed an initial innovation cost and received funding from Natural Resources Canada ($2.34 million), the Province of B.C. ($1.65 million), and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council ($467,000).

Seminario de Introducción a BIM

In a Robot Economy, All Humans Will Be Marketers

Here’s one way the technological revolution isn’t very inspiring.

By Tyler Cowen

 

No, I can’t recommend a wine.

Photographer: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

The fear that robots, or more generally smart software, will put us all out of work is one of dominant economic memes of our time. But that fear is misplaced. We’re unlikely to see mass unemployment; rather, workers will shift into new economic sectors — albeit with transition pains — as has always been the case. The real risk is that the robots will push too many of us into less socially productive jobs — especially those in marketing.

Let’s consider the ATM. Contrary to what many people think, the widespread adoption of automated teller machines in the 1990s didn’t significantly diminish the demand for bank tellers. ATMs made bank branches easier and cheaper to operate, and that led banks to hire more staff, including tellers.

These tellers play a smaller role in counting cash and handling deposits than before, so what are they doing instead? Economist James Bessen explained: “Their ability to market and their interpersonal skills in terms of dealing with bank clients has become more important. So the transition — what the ATM machine did was effectively change the job of the bank teller into one where they are more of a marketing person. They are part of what banks call the ‘customer relationship team.’”

This shift toward marketing, in the broad sense of that term, isn’t just about bank tellers. More legal work is done by smart software, but cultivating client relationships has never been more important. Some functions of medical assistants are being automated, but hospitals and doctors are still trying to improve the patient experience and reach new customers. Amazon Inc. warehouses use robots to pull goods down off the shelves, but someone has to persuade consumers to buy the stuff.

Above and beyond these specific examples, consider the general logic of labor substitution. Machines and software are often very good at “making stuff” and, increasingly, at delivering well-defined services, such as when Alexa arranges a package for you. But machines are not effective at persuading, at developing advertising campaigns, at branding products or corporations, or at greeting you at the door in a charming manner, as is done so often in restaurants, even if you order on an iPad. Those activities will remain the province of human beings for a long time to come.

How much is this shift of labor into marketing a step forward? To be sure, a lot of commercial persuasion is useful. Marketing informs consumers about new products and their properties, or convinces them that one product is better for them than another. It was marketing that got me to stop watching baseball and switch to the more exciting NBA. Sometimes the very existence of an ad — even apart from any direct informational value — makes a product more enjoyable. If a particular basketball sneaker is associated with LeBron James, through an endorsement and TV commercials, some people will enjoy wearing that sneaker more.

That all said, a lot of marketing is a zero- or negative-sum game. Each business tries to pull customers away from the other brands, and while the final matching of customers to products is usually closely attuned to what people want, more is spent on these business battles than is ideal for social efficiency. My bank might make me feel better about being a customer there, but its services just aren’t much superior to those of the nearest competitor, if at all. Maybe Coke really is better than Pepsi, or vice versa, but it’s not that much better — and billions are spent trying to persuade consumers to make one switch or the other. By one estimate, the Coca-Cola Co. spent about $4 billion last year on global advertising.

The more a sector exhibits economies of scale, and thus some monopoly profits, the higher wasteful advertising spending can rise. Although consumers enjoy these panderings to some degree, there’s a limit on value added. As workers shift from serving tables to greeting customers, many diners will feel just a little more welcome. Going to the bank will also be a more fun experience, as tellers who used to count cash are now trained to sell us on how the bank is managing our savings. Still, that’s an uninspiring vision of what we will do with the human labor freed up by robots. There’s a darker vision too: Some of those marketers may look toward fraud, such as the Wells Fargo employees who signed up unknowing customers for new accounts.

Top 3 Issues Facing Architecture

by Akio. Guest post by A. Zahner Company (Originally published on the Zahner blog)

1. Collaborative processes leave much to be desired.

IMAGE © A. ZAHNER COMPANY.

We saw a number of responses describing how the collaborative systems in place are not yet fully there — and that they need to be.

Here at Zahner, our engineers are constantly investigating the latest tools. We’ve also discovered that there are some big missing pieces to achieving streamlined collaboration. From our survey, you feel the same way.

94% of responders were not completely satisfied with the tools available. Several participants expressed the need to include owners, contractors, and key fabricators at the beginning of project, calling for “Bold leadership to combine multiple disciplines.”

“Design-assist is needed almost more now than at any time in history, given the complexity and disparate groups that it takes to get a building constructed.”

2. Tools for BIM creation and sharing need improvement.

ZAHNER ENGINEER DYLAN BARR WORKS IN A DASSAULT SYSTÈMES ENVIRONMENT ON THE BROAD ART MUSEUM. IMAGE © A. ZAHNER COMPANY.

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“We need better real-time coordination across platforms.”

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“Need to harness design for fabrication…straight out of the model.”

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Respondents expressed significant frustration with current BIM practices. One participant was awake at 2:05 am due to downstream workflow issues!

Among solutions offered were several apps, BIM, and CAD software you currently use. Others recognized and knew about Zahner’s use of Dassault Systèmes’ 3DEXPERIENCE platform. A number of designers mentioned other well-established tools of the trade.

Each discipline should determine what works best, of course, but the key seems to be choosing, and sticking to, a workflow.

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“We need better ‘translation’ of meaningful data from the designer directly into fabrication.”

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3. Trust is imperative.

ZAHNER CUSTOM-FABRICATED SCULPTURES ARE LIFTED INTO PLACE AT BARTLE HALL. IMAGE © A. ZAHNER COMPANY.

“There is no greater joy for me than to have an owner that trusts me and believes in me.”

Much like the process of designing and constructing a building, establishing and maintaining trust takes time and energy. Putting forth efforts to do this, however, pays off. As schedules and budgets are pressed further, knowing all parties will follow through on obligations is enormously important.

Creating a relationship of mutual respect will ensure a much smoother design and building process and more projects awarded down the road. To help navigate these relational nuances, we came across The architect, the client, and effective communication in architectural design practice an abstract from the Global Conference on Business & Social Science.

“It doesn’t matter what project type — the major issue is always money and how it is spent, and it’s all about trust. It seems to me that there’s more trust between the developer/contractors and owner, while architects struggle to gain the trust of the owner… How do we get this relationship back and earn owner’s trust?”

The challenges our industry faces effects each of us in different ways. At Zahner, we strive to provide open communication and education, regardless of client status. Through continuing to engage you, our clients and partners, we hope to improve upon the issues that frustrate you.

Artificial intelligence is not as smart as you (or Elon Musk) think

by Ron Miller

In March 2016, DeepMind’s AlphaGo beat Lee Sedol, who at the time was the best human Go player in the world. It represented one of those defining technological moments like IBM’s Deep Blue beating chess champion Garry Kasparov, or even IBM Watson beating the world’s greatest Jeopardy! champions in 2011.

Yet these victories, as mind-blowing as they seemed to be, were more about training algorithms and using brute-force computational strength than any real intelligence. Former MIT robotics professor Rodney Brooks, who was one of the founders of iRobot and later Rethink Robotics, reminded us at the TechCrunch Robotics Session at MIT last week that training an algorithm to play a difficult strategy game isn’t intelligence, at least as we think about it with humans.

He explained that as strong as AlphaGo was at its given task, it actually couldn’t do anything else but play Go on a standard 19 x 19 board. He relayed a story that while speaking to the DeepMind team in London recently, he asked them what would have happened if they had changed the size of the board to 29 x 29, and the AlphaGo team admitted to him that had there been even a slight change to the size of the board, “we would have been dead.”

“I think people see how well [an algorithm] performs at one task and they think it can do all the things around that, and it can’t,” Brooks explained.

Brute-force intelligence

As Kasparov pointed out in an interview with Devin Coldewey at TechCrunch Disrupt in May, it’s one thing to design a computer to play chess at Grand Master level, but it’s another to call it intelligence in the pure sense. It’s simply throwing computer power at a problem and letting a machine do what it does best.

“In chess, machines dominate the game because of the brute force of calculation and they [could] crunch chess once the databases got big enough and hardware got fast enough and algorithms got smart enough, but there are still many things that humans understand. Machines don’t have understanding. They don’t recognize strategical patterns. Machines don’t have purpose,” Kasparov explained.

Gil Pratt, CEO at the Toyota Institute, a group inside Toyota working on artificial intelligence projects including household robots and autonomous cars, was interviewed at the TechCrunch Robotics Session, said that the fear we are hearing about from a wide range of people, including Elon Musk, who most recently called AI “an existential threat to humanity,” could stem from science-fiction dystopian descriptions of artificial intelligence run amok.

I think it’s important to keep in context how good these systems are, and actually how bad they are too, and how long we have to go until these systems actually pose that kind of a threat [that Elon Musk and others talk about]

— Gil Pratt, CEO, Toyota Institute

“The deep learning systems we have, which is what sort of spurred all this stuff, are remarkable in how well we do given the particular tasks that we give them, but they are actually quite narrow and brittle in their scope. So I think it’s important to keep in context how good these systems are, and actually how bad they are too, and how long we have to go until these systems actually pose that kind of a threat [that Elon Musk and others talk about].”