AIA 2007 National Convention and Expo

The AIA 2007 National Convention and Expo took place in San Antonio last week from May 3 to 5, and was a special one as it marks the 150th anniversary of the AIA. According to AIA history, 13 architects came together in 1857 to create this professional organization, which has now grown to over 80,000 members. The theme of this year's Convention was "Going Beyond Green," and it featured theme presentations on this topic over each of the three days of the Convention with well-known experts and advocates in sustainable design including David Suzuki, noted author and scientist; Chrisna du Plessis, a South Africa Architect; William Reed, founding board member of the US Green Building Council; Raymond Cole, director of the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia; and former Vice President Al Gore, with his amazingly successful book and Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

The attendance numbers for this year's convention were somewhat lower than the preceding years, with the unofficial count being 21,680, compared to 24,860 attendees in 2006 and 24,444 attendees in 2005. It is not clear whether this had to do with the location of San Antonio, as opposed to Los Angeles last year and Las Vegas the year before, or with the theme of the conference, or with some other factor. While there were relatively few sessions related to technology and BIM as part of the main Convention, there was plenty of activity in the Technology section of the AIA Expo, with lots of new and recent releases being showcased. The main highlights from the Expo floor are captured in this AECbytes newsletter; a more detailed look at some of the technologies will be published in a separate article later this month.

BIM and Related Applications

With sustainable design being the theme of the AIA Convention this year, both Autodesk and Graphisoft sought to emphasize the link between BIM and sustainable design in addition to showcasing the latest releases of their applications. Autodesk sees BIM as the "tipping point of sustainable design" and outlined several initiatives in this area, including sponsorship of research work at Carnegie-Mellon University that would make the Revit model more supportive of sustainable design; collaboration with the US Green Building Council to work on semi-automated LEED validation, which would be the precursor to fully automated validation in the future; and developing Revit for better product simulation and enhancing its analysis capabilities, both by building them within Revit as well as partnering with analysis software vendors, similar to the partnership with IES that integrates Revit MEP with IES' advanced building performance software suite. Autodesk seems poised to create a new buzzword in the AEC industry—"digital prototyping"—which is the term it is using to describe the virtual mock-up of the building that can be created with BIM and analyzed for various performance criteria. While the idea is hardly new—an entire AECbytes Viewpoint article in October 2005 was devoted to exploring the concept of digital design and digital building simulation—it will be interesting to see if the Autodesk marketing machinery can make the buzzword catch on.

Autodesk also announced that the Revit seat count has crossed the 200,000 mark, representing a doubling of adoption over the past year. But AutoCAD Architecture (the new name for Autodesk Architectural Desktop) is still way ahead at 500,000 seats, although its growth rate is nowhere close to that of Revit. Autodesk indicated that it will continue to invest very heavily in Revit as its "purpose-built solution for BIM"; at the same time, it will continue to develop and support AutoCAD Architecture for those architects who still prefer to work with an AutoCAD-based solution. The new 2008 versions of both these applications were demonstrated at the show. Revit Architecture 2008 (formerly known as Revit Building) features improvements such as easier organization of groups, better management of linked models, ability to publish models to Google Earth, new graphical override control by element and better control over color fills (see Figure 1-a), improved interoperability with 3ds Max, and enhanced gbXML (green building XML) for better performance analysis with tools from Green Building Studio and IES. AutoCAD Architecture 2008 features all the general improvements in AutoCAD 2008 described in my recent review of it, along with AEC-specific enhancements including automatic generation of spaces that can also update when boundaries change, detail components and keynote databases configured for CSI's MasterFormat 2004, native support for IFC import and export, improved interoperability with AutoCAD MEP (formerly Autodesk Building Systems), and a new Drawing Compare tool that allows users to visually compare versions of drawings as well as compare by object properties (see Figure 1-b).

Graphisoft used the AIA show as the launching pad for the next release of ArchiCAD, version 11, which features a slew of drawing-related enhancements. A key new feature is Virtual Trace (see Figure 2-a), which allows live model views such as floor plans, sections and elevations, etc., to be used as "reference Views" beneath an active drawing view as a temporary editing aid, allowing better coordination of drawing sets, both internally and with external consultants. Other enhancements are the Visual Compare feature that allows users to find the differences between model and drawing views; a Worksheet Tool that provides a dedicated environment for editing 2D drawings generated from the model as well as for creating and editing drawings that are generated entirely in 2D; improved cross-referencing between traditional architectural views and detail drawings; and the ability to quickly create unfolded interior elevations of spaces. Modeling-related enhancements include the ability to curve slanted walls; multi-story hotlink modules for more efficiently creating and maintaining multi-story building parts; and bidirectional connectivity with the Google 3D Warehouse, allowing 3D models to be dragged and dropped into ArchiCAD as well as uploaded from ArchiCAD into the 3D Warehouse.

Apart from demonstrating the new functionality in ArchiCAD 11, Graphisoft highlighted its integration and interoperability with various other applications to show how a BIM model created in ArchiCAD could be leveraged in different ways. These include sustainable design analysis with ECOTECT (see Figure 2-b); constructability analysis, cost planning, project planning and control with Graphisoft's Virtual Construction Solutions that have now been spun off as a separate venture, VICO Software; lifecycle cost analysis with the Onuma Planning System, a web-enabled tool for working with BIM and GIS data; and clash detection and model communication with NavisWorks. Graphisoft will continue its strong focus on such partnerships going forward, using IFC-based interoperability of which it is a strong supporter, as well as closer integration and direct connections to certain applications such as ECOTECT and EnergyPlus using native file exchange. It is advocating ECOTECT as an energy analysis tool that can be used by architects to get early feedback on design ideas, as opposed to sophisticated tools such as those by IES that are more suitable for use by energy consultants and MEP engineers. Graphisoft is also expanding its scope to provide consulting solutions for firms to implement ArchiCAD as opposed to simply providing the tool.

While Bentley did not have anything new to share with regard to enabling sustainable design with its BIM solutions, having recently organized an event on this topic (see the recent article, Bentley's "BIM for Green Buildings" Executive Summit), it focused on showing the current release of Bentley Architecture, the V8 XM Edition, which was reviewed in AECbytes last October. It also gave a sneak peak of some of the new features in the next release of the product such as associative dimension display and live extractions, which are targeted towards reducing complexity and enhancing ease of use. These look promising but they might still be close to a year away. Bentley was unfortunately not able to share any illustrations of these features in time for this article.

Nemetschek North America, which is now a sister company to Graphisoft by virtue of having the same parent company, Nemetschek AG, continued to demonstrate the latest release of VectorWorks ARCHITECT, version 12.5, which was described in my article on Macworld 2007. The company has been a somewhat reluctant entrant into the BIM arena and still sits on the fence with regard to calling VectorWorks ARCHITECT a CAD or a BIM application, using both terms somewhat interchangeably in its product literature. It did, however, highlight a significant development in its BIM effort—the availability of beta versions of its upcoming IFC v.2x3 plug-ins, which will allow interoperability between VectorWorks ARCHITECT and other IFC-compliant applications, and a new GSA-compliant Space object, which will be useful to those users doing work for the GSA. Nemetschek North America also used the AIA show to highlight the award-winning work of some of its users, including Leers Weinzapfel Associates, which won the 2007 AIA Architecture Firm Award, and Rios Clementi Hale Studios, which won the 2007 Firm Award from the AIA, California Council (see Figure 3).

As I emphasized in my article on last year's AIA Convention, BIM is not the be-all and end-all of AEC technology. It will serve as the platform on top of which a whole new generation of "supporting technologies" will be built, which will extend its capabilities to cover many different aspects of building planning, design, and construction. We will look more closely at some of the supporting technologies that were being showcased in this year's Convention in a separate article next week.

Other Design and Visualization Solutions

Google continued with its strong presence at the AIA show, demonstrating the latest release of SketchUp, version 6, which was recently reviewed in AECbytes, along with its 3D Warehouse service and Google Earth application. A partnership between the AIA and Google Earth in celebration of the AIA's 150th anniversary has resulted in two new layers with which to explore architecture's most popular structures in Google Earth. The first is America's Favorite Architecture, which features 150 architectural icons voted as the American public's favorite architecture through a national poll that was held earlier this year (see Figure 4). User can not only view the 3D models of these structures in the context of Google Earth but can also add comments to discuss the impact of architecture on their lives. The second layer is Blueprint for America, a community service effort in which AIA members are donating their time and expertise to collaborate with community leaders and local citizens to enhance the quality of life in their community. Both these efforts are part of the AIA150 initiative entitled "Celebrating the Past, Designing the Future," that has been established to commemorate 150 years of the AIA and serve as a nationwide platform to unite architects and citizens to collaborate on their communities' design priorities.

auto•des•sys Inc. used the AIA Convention to announce the introduction of a new form•Z based product, form•Z RenderZone Plus, version 6.5, which becomes the all inclusive and the highest level of built-in rendering form•Z offers. The earlier form•Z RadioZity will now be retired as a separate product, but all its features are incorporated in the new rendering software. It also includes Global Illumination based on two advanced lighting techniques: Ambient Occlusion, which assumes that all scenes have omni-directional ambient light of uniform intensity; and Final Gather, which calculates, in addition to the direct lighting, a one bounce indirect illumination that occurs at rendering time. Both these techniques can also be supported by traditional radiosity methods. They are offered through simple interfaces that allow the user to produce high-quality rendered images with accurate simulations of light more easily and quickly compared to the earlier RadioZity product (see Figure 5). Version 6.5 of form•Z also includes additional rendering enhancements include new methods for exposure correction and new shaders for supporting architectural renderings, improvements in the OpenGL-based Interactive Shaded renderer, and a STEP (Standard for the Exchange of Product Data) translator.

On the illustration and image compositing front, Adobe was demonstrating the new 3D capabilities in Photoshop CS3 Extended, and Autodesk was showing the benefits of using Autodesk Impression to quickly illustrate 2D CAD drawings. Both of these products were just reviewed in AECbytes. Piranesi, a competing application that I often referred to in these reviews, was also on display with a new release (see Figure 6). I had reviewed version 4 of Piranesi all the way back in October 2004, so it was interesting to check out the new version that was coming after a gap of over 2 years. It features a reorganized user interface that makes the application easier to learn and use, a new Style Selector that makes accessing and working with styles more convenient, a Multiple Cutout placement tool that lets you place multiple cutouts chosen randomly from a set to quickly populate a scene with entourage, many new cutouts, a Light tool that makes it easier to re-light a scene, a Stamp tool allows you to paint with one or more raster images, and several other enhancements. We will take a more detailed look at Piranesi 5 later on in the summer.

Printing, Publishing, and Collaboration Solutions

HP was at hand at the AIA show to showcase its two new large-format printer series—HP Designjet T610 and T1100—which are three times faster than the previous HP Designjet 800 series and use Three-black ink set and HP Vivera inks for better print quality with enhanced detail, wider range of colors, true neutral grays, and improved tone reproduction. Despite the availability of electronic publishing solutions that can reduce the need for paper prints and the increasing emphasis on going green, the printing business seems to be flourishing, according to HP! However, the company did acknowledge that printing in professional practice has moved from high-quantity to high-quality. In other words, users are more carefully to print only what they will actually use, as opposed to reams of printouts that may never even be looked at, as in the past before the call to reduce waste and conserve energy became so strident.

HP also used the AIA show to announce a new partnership with Autodesk, which will include distributing the latest version of Autodesk Design Review with its new printer series. This might not seem like such a big deal, considering that Autodesk Design Review is now free and can be downloaded from the Autodesk website at no cost. But according to HP, including a copy of the software along with the printer should make adoption easier, as users could simply install it while installing the printer software. To make the case for using Design Review even more compelling, it includes a feature called HP Instant Printing, which further simplifies the printing experience by providing users with the ability to save frequently used settings and print drawings or entire batches of DWF files with one click. HP Instant Printing also offers automatic media selection so that Design Review can automatically detect what media is loaded on the printer.

At its booth, Autodesk was separately also showcasing the capabilities of Design Review. The product was formerly known as Autodesk DWF Composer, and I had reviewed its first version three years ago. The product has come a long way since then, with the new 2008 version incorporating several new features such as the ability to compare versions of drawings with automatic tracking of all modifications, mark ups and annotations that can be applied directly on the 3D design (see Figure 7), more accurate measurement of models with user-defined 3D coordinate systems, improved 3D navigation, more shadow and lighting options for visualization, and the ability to publish DWF files to the XPS specification—Microsoft's attempt to provide a competitor to Adobe's ubiquitous PDF format—which can then be automatically opened and viewed directly in Windows Vista using the XPS Viewer.

On the PDF front, Adobe demonstrated both Adobe Acrobat 8.0 Professional, which was reviewed in AECbytes a couple of months ago, and the upcoming new version of Adobe Acrobat 3D, which I reviewed shortly after it was first introduced last year. In the new Acrobat 3D Version 8, Adobe has incorporated key technologies it gained from its acquisition of TTF, a small, privately held company based in France, including a highly compressed file format called PRC. This allows Acrobat 3D to provide precise and highly compressed conversion of native CAD formats to PDF as well as enhanced capabilities for viewing and navigating 3D models, as shown in Figure 8. The TTF technology also included a set of CAD translators that now enable Acrobat 3D 8 users to convert CAD files to PDF without having a CAD application resident on their computer. Other AEC-specific enhancements in Acrobat 3D 8 include better 3D capture from Revit, improved DWF import that includes attribute data of building components, displaying of object metadata in the model tree, and a Sectioning tool that allows walking through a model with the cutting plane moving incrementally. Acrobat 3D 8 also includes all of the enhancements from Acrobat 8 Professional that were described in my review.

Conclusions

In addition to the products highlighted in this article, there were several additional technology products and services at the AIA show that I did not get a chance to check out or include in this article, including business, accounting, and project management applications targeted towards AEC, and outsourcing service providers, some of which are also starting to provide more value-added BIM services. While the "Going Beyond Green" theme of the conference was reflected in several "green" building products that were showcased in the Expo floor, it wasn't much in evidence in the Technology section except for some presentations at the Graphisoft and Autodesk booths showing energy analysis tools working in conjunction with their BIM applications. This didn't come as such a big surprise, as the recent Bentley "BIM for Green Buildings" event also indicated that technological aids for designing more energy-efficient and sustainable buildings are still few and far between. With the environment being pretty much at the top of every political and economic agenda at the moment, the theme of green design can be expected to continue to dominate professional discourse in AEC and conventions like the AIA in the years to come. Hopefully, the Technology section of the Expo in the next AIA Convention in Boston in 2008 will have a lot more to show in terms of "green tools" for designing green buildings.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.

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