BIM (Building Info Modeling) and the High-Performance Graphics Workstation_Part 1

AbstractMarket research indicates that more than 50% of the building and construction industry in North America is now using some form of building information modeling (BIM). Building professionals and owners benefit from the technology and associated collaborative processes in a wide range of applications, from design and clash detection to constructability analysis and construction, and more recently commissioning and facility management. Yet, one of the challenges to adoption, according to a recent McGraw-Hill SmartMarket Report, is the need for software and hardware upgrades to use the technology effectively. BIM is a CPU-intensive effort, particularly when project teams seek to create intelligent, highly animated and/or virtualized 3D models or merge multiple models developed by various project team members into a single model for clash detection.

BIM used effectively for design, collaboration and construction requires significant processing power, memory and storage with multi-processors, as well as a professional graphics card and network connections. Additionally, emerging advancements such as the shift to cloud computing and an increasingly mobile workforce depend on the power, flexibility and scalability of desktop and mobile workstations to maximize BIM for building sustainable structures with greater speed, quality and lower costs. The following summarizes emerging trends in BIM and developments in workstation solutions to better facilitate the demands of the architecture, engineering and construction community:

Technology ShiftIn less than five years, BIM technology and techniques have gone from a novelty to the most talked about technology in the industry, changing business processes and cultures of architecture, engineering and construction firms across the country. According to the McGraw-Hill 2009 SMARTMARkeT RePoRT: THe BUSINeSS VAlUe of BIM, more than 50% of the North American building and construction industry is now using BIM. Survey respondents confirmed that they are realizing business value and have put in place plans to increase its use in the coming years. At the time of the McGraw-Hill survey, one-third of all current BIM users used the technology and collaborative processes on 60% or more of their projects. Twice as many expect to be using it at that level by the end of 2011.

Much of the building community’s recent adoption of BIM has been driven by demand from federal agencies such as the General Services Administration and the U.S. Army Corps of engineers. These organizations see BIM as the framework to minimize errors and deliver quality, sustainable projects.

State agencies soon followed suit. The State of Wisconsin Department of Administration, Division of State facilities (DSf) implemented BIM Guidelines and Standards for architects and engineers, which requires the use of BIM on some state projects. Texas and Massachusetts followed suit with similar policies and procedures.

Jay Bhatt, senior vice president of Autodesk’s Architecture, engineering and Construction Solutions, says, “In today’s current economic climate, my expectation is that agencies around the world, which are controlling infrastructure money, will be more directive than they ever have been before in the ways projects are designed and built. Technology processes, such as BIM, provide the vehicle to demonstrate vision, transparency and accountability for infrastructure improvement.”

BIM at Work

Initially, BIM’s 3D design concept presentation and visualization capabilities helped architects and owners deliver conceptual designs while contractors found benefit in the constructability analysis. Since those early days, BIM has evolved into a more comprehensive platform for design and construction integration, driving major changes in the ways all the players interact.

BIM and the High-Performance Graphics Workstation

Calvin kam, director, Industry Programs, Center for Integrated facility engineering (CIfe) Stanford University, recently said, “We are seeing a broad adoption of BIM in the building and construction industry. owners, designers and builders around the world are realizing the value of mature BIM applications, such as design documentation, clash detection and model-based fabrication.”

Project teams now individually model the architectural, structural/mechanical, electrical and plumbing elements using BIM tools such as Autodesk Revit®, Tekla Structures, Graphisoft ArchiCAD, Bentley Architecture and Gehry’s Digital Project™. The individual virtual models are used to generate shop and spool drawings that drive the fabrication process.

Using design communication and collaboration software, such as Solibri, Autodesk Navisworks® or Bentley ProjectWise, project teams can bring models together for visualization, clash detection and constructability analysis. In many cases, project teams can construct a project in the virtual environment long before the first piece of equipment arrives at a site.

for instance, the San francisco County Transportation Authority recently used BIM and visualization tools to gather support and dollars for the much-needed Doyle Drive Replacement Project. Almost 60 years old, this critical transportation corridor has deteriorated structurally and cannot handle existing traffic volumes. Soon after the announcement of ARRA stimulus funds, the Authority put together a BIM model and movie to show the public and politicians how stimulus dollars could be used to renovate Doyle Drive. The community and policy makers agreed and the project engineering and environmental studies are now underway, with the first planned construction phase accelerated thanks to additional stimulus funding.

In another case, Sutter Health, The Boldt Company and Hammel, Green and Abrahamson, Inc. (HGA) designed and constructed the $22 million, 69,000 sq. ft. three-story fairfield Medical office Building in Northern California using BIM and integrated project delivery (IPD) techniques. Together, the project team delivered the fairfield facility for $18.9 million and on time, despite a three-month delay at the start of the project. The entire team logged in 50% fewer change orders and requests for information than a traditional project of similar scope.

As part of its Virtual Design & Construction Initiative (VD&C), Swinerton, Inc. has become a national leader in the application

of building information modeling (BIM) and 3D object-based modeling, estimating, simulation and scheduling practices. The firm has applied VD&C technologies such as these on 162 projects totaling more than 49.9 million square feet and a combined construction value of over $11 billion. VD&C has been used extensively for coordination during the planning and design stages of a project, gaining particular value from collaboration with MeP subcontractors during these early phases to resolve clashes and constructability concerns. The firm’s strategic goal is to take advantage of full VD&C technologies and principles to manage a project from concept through operations.

According to a spokesperson at Swinerton, “We believe BIM is going to be the industry standard in a few years. We’ve adopted BIM technology and techniques extensively in the planning and design phase. Now, we’re looking to realize the same value in the estimating, construction management and operational aspects to minimize duplication of effort and increase efficiency and accuracy between the office and the jobsite.”

Swinerton’s sentiments are echoed throughout the industry as BIM adopters seek to move beyond just design documentation and clash detection, as BIM transitions performance validation, energy simulation, code checking and facility management.

Barton Malow is one of the first to use BIM to drive the commissioning and project turnover process of a new facility. The firm used its intelligent 3D model of the $57 million five-story Maryland General Hospital (MGH) Central Care expansion in Baltimore, Maryland, as a basis for a comprehensive digital documentation, maintenance and preventive care system.

The technology is also well-suited to help owners deliver sustainable value. NASA, lawrence Berkeley National laboratory (lBNl) and Swinerton are working together to create a facility management system that can perform real-time energy analysis to manage day-to-day building operations for the new $20.6 million, 50,000-sq. ft. steel-frame Sustainability Base research facility at the Ames Research Center at Moffett field in Mountain View, California. The system combines BIM and the U.S. Department of energy’s energyPlus energy simulation software.

The San francisco Transbay Transit Center, with a $1.6 billion cost for Phase 1, is also one of the first implementations of a multi-dimensional BIM process that allows Webcor/obayashi Joint Venture and the rest of the project team to produce a cost- and resource-loaded schedule directly from the model.

BIM is the hub that brings together other capabilities, such as model-based scheduling and estimating, and even material tracking with radio frequency identifications (RfID). Add in the detailed as-built conditions data gathered by high-definition laser scanners for rehabilitation and reconstruction projects and model sizes start to become very large and unwieldy without the right hardware.

“Mobile workstations such as the Dell Precision M6500 have the same performance, more memory, improved displays and better graphics than most standard desktops —starting at a little over 8 pounds.”

— Mano Gialusis, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Dell

Overcoming HurdlesBIM technology is not for the standard PC. The CPU-intensive technology, used effectively for design, collaboration and construction, requires significant processing power, memory and storage with multi-processors and a professional graphics card. The hardware should also facilitate network connections, allowing users to share and store models using both lAN and WAN.

faster hardware allows for a faster, more productive user experience when dealing with large datasets. This is particularly true when undertaking ‘real time’ review/visualization of large datasets, or undertaking analysis that requires considerable processing power. Design applications have become more sophisticated as the expertise of users has increased. As well, the volume of data generated has multiplied.

According to Navisworks officials, “The expectation of our users is that we should be able to provide a high level of user experience in this more demanding environment.”

Introduction of 64-bit support has had a significant positive impact on Autodesk’s Revit and Navisworks users that are working with large projects, due to the vast amounts of memory that can be made available to the applications. As compared to earlier versions, Revit 2010 and 2011 take advantage of advances in video hardware and the addition of multiple CPUs to a typical desktop to improve the user experience. In particular, Autodesk recommends 64-bit Quad-Core CPUs, higher-end graphics cards and increased memory in our “Performance” configuration, in addition to Windows 7.

for desktop systems, Autodesk recommends the following for Revit users:

•Morememoryforgoodperformanceonlargermodels—Revit uses a “model in memory” approach where as much of the model as possible is kept in RAM

•AfasterCPUwithmultiplecoresformanykeyoperations, including building performance analysis

•Avideocardfromthelistofrecommendedhardwarecan substantially improve the quality and performance of the visual display, as well as making features like visual materials available in the editor: www.autodesk.com/us/revit/revit_graphics_hardware_list_June02.html

As far as the network, Autodesk recommends a gigabit network between the Revit local file on the desktop and the work-shared central file on a data server. In the case of Revit Server, the firm recommends the following hardware:Revit has moved to a tiered series of system recommendations found here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=12431819

The increased use of remote processing on dedicated server farms decreases the need for local processing power on targeted workflows, such as building analysis. far more importance is placed on connectivity and download/upload speeds as well as minimal latency. Autodesk is moving towards a model of taking advantage of computing capabilities wherever they’re available. The firm foresees intelligent applications that can allocate tasks to available hardware on the desktop, cloud, or mobile device, whichever is appropriate.

Productivity SolutionsDell™ Precision™ workstations are Dell’s highest-performing and most scalable systems, specifically designed for compute-intensive environments like 3D modeling, simulation and visualization. Designed for performance, reliability, and scalability in environments where space is at a premium, the Dell Precision T5500 fixed workstation incorporates a lightning-fast 64-bit multi-core Intel® Xeon® processors, impressive graphics, and exceptional memory capacity that work together in a compact chassis.

for instance, the 32nm 6-core Intel Xeon Processor X5600 Series with Intel Quick Path Interconnect Technology provides high-speed interconnect between independent processing cores and increased performance with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology.

Don Maynard, senior product manager of the Dell Precision Workstations group, explains, “This is a performance-oriented system with high clock speed processors (up to 6 processor cores) and on-chip cache memory that provides an added edge even for those who run single-threaded applications, e.g.,

Good Better Best

Light server load (<100 concurrent users)

2+ CPU cores, 2.0GHz+ 4GB Memory 7200rpm+ hard drive

4+ CPU cores, 2.4GHz+ 8GB Memory 10000rpm+ hard drive

4+ CPU cores, 2.6GHz+ 16GB Memory 15000rpm+ hard drive

Heavy server load (100+ concurrent users)

4+ CPU cores, 2.6GHz+ 8GB Memory 10000rpm+ hard drive

6+ CPU cores, 2.6GHz+ 16GB Memory 15000rpm+ hard drive

6+ CPU cores, 3.0GHz+ 32GB Memory High speed RAID array

•ForRevitServer,thebestuserexperiencewillbeonaWANwith a latency <= 140ms.

Autodesk Revit and other BIM applications. With turbo-scaling, the processor will automatically and dynamically shut down unused cores, which increases the speed of the core that is in use, delivering maximum performance for the user.”

Adding a second processor to the Precision T5500 creates additional DIMM memory slots, which expands memory capacity up to 72GB. further, the integrated memory controller on the processor delivers improved user performance on memory-intensive applications. Rounding out the performance features on the Precision T5500 are dual-native PCIe x16 Gen 2 graphics slots for outstanding graphics performance and cost-effective quad-monitor support.

The Precision T5500 workstation is available as a mini-tower or the optical drive bays can be rotated 90 degrees to support operation in a desktop (horizontal) orientation.

Maynard adds, “for workstations, 2011 is a year of expanding capabilities. expect to see continuing advancements in processor core counts and faster memory that will further improve performance and user productivity. Also, we’ll introduce a highly scalable 2U rack-mounted version of the Precision T5500 solution.”

Mobile FlexibilityThe Dell Precision M6500 is the only 17” mobile workstation with Intel® Core™ i7 processor extreme edition, Nvidia Quadro 5000M graphics solution, and 1600MHz system memory* options. Designed for people who work in 3D Design and animation, engineering, CAD/CAM, oil & gas and similar computation intensive professions, the mobile workstation is ideal for those organizations working with large data files.

Mano Gialusis, senior product marketing manager with Dell, says, “The building and construction community is increasingly called upon to make use of large amounts of data to facilitate new construction as well as renovations and rehabilitations. for instance, a high-definition laser scanner used to gather as-built data on an existing structure produces gigabytes, or more of data. Managing this amount of data in a mobile environment requires horsepower and memory.”

With unparalleled performance for a mobile platform, the Dell Precision M6500 has the ability to manage huge amounts of data. The Precision M6500 offers four DIMM slots,

which enables memory scalability up to 32 GB double data rate 3 (DDR3) memory for handling large data sets. With two dedicated hard-drive bays and an additional SSD mini-card, the storage capacity of the M6500 can scale up to over 1 terabyte, and can be configured in RAID0 or RAID1 mode to operate with high performance or redundancy.

The Dell Precision M6500 offers creative power with optional Intel® Core i7-940XM Quad Core extreme edition processor and Genuine Windows® 7 Professional 64-Bit, which work in harmony with 1333MHz or 1600MHz DDR3 memory and graphics cards such as Nvidia Quadro & ATI® firePro®.

Gialusis says, “The system can be built with solid state technology as compared to more traditional spinning drives. Therefore, mobile workstations like the Precision M6500, are more durable and can access the user’s data with greater speed.

Designed as a desktop replacement workstation, the Precision M6500 has the performance headroom to deliver the Independent Software Vendor (ISV)-certified application interactivity.

like the Dell fixed workstations, the Precision M6500 mobile workstation incorporates Intel® Turbo Boost Technology for maximum performance. Through rigorous testing, Dell targets guaranteed compatibility and optimized performance in demanding work environments such as 3D CAD.

A user running a single-thread application would want a dual core processor with higher frequency rates to speed data analysis. As well, the latest generation of graphics cards incorporates hundreds of additional processor cores allowing users to offload intense computational to a graphic card core if needed.

Gialusis concludes, “Bottom line, mobile workstations such as the Precision M6500 have the same performance, more memory, improved displays and better graphics than most standard desktops—starting at a little over 8 pounds. With new materials and manufacturing techniques, we expect to deliver even greater performance for even less weight within the next year.”

* Significant system memory may be used to support graphics, depending on system memory size and other factors.