Sustainable Design Tools at AIA 2009, and A Look at Some Innovative and Immersive Technologies for Design

The area of sustainable design tools showed a lot of momentum at this year’s AIA Expo with the introduction of several new products. Graphisoft finally made the vision of “one-click evaluation” a reality with its new EcoDesigner application that is fully integrated within ArchiCAD. Bentley used the show to highlight its new detailed building analysis tools, Hevacomp and Tas. IES introduced a new application, VE-Gaia, to add to its already substantial product repertoire. Another new analysis product was DesignBuilder, originally developed in the UK and just starting to be marketed in the US. Last but not the least, Autodesk showed the 2010 version of its re-branded Ecotect Analysis application, following up on its Ecotect acquisition last year. AECbytes provides an overview of all these applications in the article, "Sustainable Design Tools Exhibited at AIA 2009", which follows up on the earlier articles on the technology product highlights from the AIA 2009 Convention and the separate overview of the financial and business management applications, published last month.

Up next is a Building the Future article, "Incorporating Innovative and Immersive Technologies: Changing the Art of Design." Authored by James J. Balding, Associate Vice President and Director of WimberlyLabs at WATG, this article highlights a number of tools and technologies in addition to BIM that can help to better position the AEC industry when the economy rebounds and presents it with new opportunities. They include a wide array of new immersive environments, parametric modeling and 3D printing, new ways of communicating with a computer, more multi-media and interactive tools for design presentations, and various others including digital note-taking and measurement of design quality.

The Tips and Tricks section this month features two Revit tutorials: one showing how to look for missing items in Revit, and the second on how to relocate the insertion point in a Revit MEP family.

Last but not least, we have a Viewpoint article by Andrew Hollomon, Principal and Director of Information Technology at Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Architects LLP, who describes how he implemented a five-point plan to improve operational efficiency in his firm in less time and lower cost than anticipated. As a result, the firm’s entire 500-person staff now has more time and higher-quality project information to devote to projects and clients.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani, Ph.D.
Founder and Editor, AECbytes

June 2009