AIA 2010 Virtual Convention and Expo

The AIA 2010 National Convention and Expo was held in Miami from June 10 to 12. While I had registered for the convention well in advance, unforeseen conflicts prevented me from actually traveling to Miami this year, making this the first AIA Convention I wasn’t able to attend in person since I started covering the AEC technology industry. Fortunately, my AIA Convention registration provided me with an option to attend the conference virtually, giving me a great opportunity to explore the experience of an event like this entirely online. While it is, of course, not an adequate substitute for being there in person, I was impressed with how well the virtual event was organized and how much information was available to virtual attendees. In addition to the information available through the AIA Virtual Convention and Expo website, I was also separately briefed by many of the technology vendors who exhibited at the AIA this year on what they were showcasing at the event, enabling me to get a good overview of the show despite not being able to attend in person. The highlights of these technology solutions as well as my experience as a virtual attendee are captured in this issue of the AECbytes newsletter. Additional aspects of this year’s AIA show, including a dedicated look at the new solutions that were exhibited, will be covered in separate articles in the following weeks.

The Virtual Experience

In contrast to the 17,047 in-person registrants who attended the AIA show this year, the option to sign up for the virtual convention attracted an additional 11,625 attendees who could not attend in person but took advantage of many events of the convention available online (see Figure 1). These included the three keynote presentations along with 33 education seminars, which could be seen live via webcast at the actual time they were taking place in Miami, or archived for on-demand viewing later. The registration fees for attending the conference virtually were very affordable ($160 for AIA members and $275 for non-members), making it an efficient and cost-effective way to participate without requiring to travel.

All those who registered in-person for the convention were provided access to the virtual convention for free, enabling them to view sessions later that they may have missed at the live event. All of the presentations and seminars that were available as part of the virtual convention have been archived for 12 months. This provides registrants—both in-person and virtual—with the flexibility of viewing them on-demand when it is most convenient to them. The interface for viewing the presentations is well designed and easy to use, showing the actual recording along with the corresponding PowerPoint slide that the speaker is referencing at each step. Figure 2 shows snapshots of the recordings of one of the keynote presentations as well as a seminar on Integrated Project Delivery (IPD).

In addition to the keynotes and seminars, a Virtual Expo was also available to simulate the experience of the actual Expo. Only about 30 exhibitors, however, participated in the Virtual Expo. Of the technology vendors, this included a few such as Autodesk, Graphisoft, BSD, Avatech, and Arcom, as shown in Figure 3. Each virtual booth had vendor representations available to introduce the virtual visitors to their products and answer any questions they might have. This Q&A was being done using a chat window, as shown in the image of the Autodesk virtual booth in Figure 3.

Technology Product Highlights

Moving on to the details of what was actually exhibited at the AIA, Autodesk used the event to showcase many of the solutions from its recent 2011 product release and held a number of presentations at its booth that focused on showing how its BIM solutions could help tackle new challenges and create sustainable designs for building renovations or energy retrofits projects. The recordings of these presentations are available online and can be seen here.  A detailed overview of the 2011 versions of Autodesk’s AEC solutions, including Revit Architecture, AutoCAD Architecture 2011, and Navisworks, was already provided a few months ago in the article on Autodesk AEC Technology Day.  In addition, Autodesk also showcased a new technology preview available on Autodesk Labs that helps architects working with Revit 2011 to understand and quantify solar radiation on various surfaces of conceptual building models directly inside Revit. Available as a plug-in, the tool uses a new API feature in Revit 2011 that allows users to set up an initial solar analysis on a model and then receive live feedback on the building’s performance as the model is manipulated. The calculation of solar radiation is based on the geometry of the conceptual massing elements and the location and weather data for the project. Using the tool during the conceptual design stage of a project can help architects to make better informed design decisions about building shape, orientation, and shading strategies early on when changes are least expensive. It is also possible to display the distribution and availability of solar radiation over an entire building or even a city block, which can be particularly useful when considering shading requirements or assessing the best areas to place photovoltaics for maximum collection.

Bentley used the AIA show to demonstrate several new and critical product capabilities in the recently released V8i SELECTseries 2 of its software portfolio serving the building and other infrastructure industries. (For an overview of Bentley’s original V8i portfolio, see AECbytes Newsletter #37). The new release allows users to take advantage of new computing environments with support for Windows 7 and SharePoint 2010, and is “Citrix Ready” for application virtualization. It also incorporates licensed technologies including the Pointools Vortex engine for referencing point clouds, significant Luxology visualization enhancements, and RealDWG 2010 libraries for increased interoperability. A key focus for Bentley was to show how its ProjectWise collaboration solution now supports applications from multiple vendors, allowing it to be used, for example, for data and standards management of Revit models as well. The Delta File Transfer (DFT) technology of ProjectWise also works with Revit, enabling better team collaboration across a WAN despite Revit’s large file sizes. This makes ProjectWise a compelling collaboration solution for large firms with distributed project teams, even if they are not using Bentley’s BIM solutions. Another Bentley solution that works with applications from multiple vendors is its ProjectWise Navigator for design coordination and review in a game-like environment—it works with “i-models” that can be published from Bentley’s solutions as well as from applications like Revit through the use of plug-ins. (For more information on the i-model concept, please refer to AECbytes Newsletter #41). Bentley also showed an innovative new feature in its modeling solutions called “model documentation,” which leverages its “dynamic views” introduced in the original V8i release to place annotated drawings in real-world locations within models for interactive navigation (see Figure 4). When this is used in a Windows 7 multi-touch environment, it can deliver a much more immersive project review experience. Another significant announcement from Bentley at the AIA show was its appointment of Dr. Dru Crawley, renowned for leading the development of the U.S. DOE’s EnergyPlus simulation engine, as Director of its Building Energy Performance Products division.

The AIA show was well timed for Graphisoft as it had recently released the new version 14 of its BIM application, ArchiCAD, which continues to build upon the revolutionary model-based collaboration capability that had been introduced in ArchiCAD 13. ArchiCAD 14 opens up the collaboration capability further to the extended design team by using the IFC to enable what Graphisoft refers to as “open design collaboration” between architects and engineers. It includes IFC translators optimized for exporting model data to leading structural and MEP applications including Revit Structure, Revit MEP, and Tekla Structures, allowing architects using ArchiCAD to improve their coordination workflow with engineers using these applications. New properties such as "IFC Element Type" and "Structural Function" have been added to building elements to provide the foundation for model mapping with engineering BIM models. ArchiCAD 14 also allows architects to compare IFC model versions and to import only the differences, displaying design changes with color codes in the architectural model context as shown in Figure 5. There are additional enhancements to the BIM server capabilities that were introduced in ArchiCAD 13, as well as several productivity enhancements including shadow casting in 3D OpenGL views, increased control over model-based sections and details of doors and windows, inclusion of standard spreadsheet editing techniques to improve handling of schedules, direct import of site survey data from theodolites, the ability to add custom prefixes and suffixes to associative dimensions while retaining their real measured values, and several performance optimizations including support of 64-bit computing on the Mac OS X platform. We will take a detailed look at ArchiCAD 14 later on this summer.

Nemetschek North America (NNA), developer of the Vectorworks family of applications including the architectural BIM application, Vectorworks Architect, had a specific theme for their AIA presence this year: openBIM, or the use of open, international, non-proprietary standards such as IFC and PDF to exchange BIM data between building design participants in their applications. The Vectorworks booth featured presentations on openBIM as well as on topics such as evolving from CAD to BIM. There was also a special presentation from NNA’s sister company, Nemetschek Scia, on the topic of integrating architecture and engineering. It showed how Vectorworks Architect can be used by architects to collaborate with structural engineers using Scia Engineer, a leading 3D structural design and analysis tool. NNA also focused on showing the new features and improvements in the 2010 release of Vectorworks Architect, including new wall sculpting capabilities that allow features like projections and recesses to be added walls while maintaining wall intelligence and behavior (see Figure 6), the ability to add associated relationships and constraints between walls, improved drawing coordination with automatic synchronization of sheet numbers and drawing numbers, easy placement of corner windows, a new fully parametric Stair tool, and several other enhancements.

Integrated Environmental Solutions (IES), a leading provider of integrated performance analysis software and consulting services for sustainable building design unveiled a number of enhancements to its applications at the AIA show. These include the addition of Bio-Climatic analysis features to the VE-Gaia application it launched at last year’s AIA 2009 show (see Sustainable Design Tools Exhibited at AIA 2009 for a brief overview of VE-Gaia). Bio-Climatic analysis uses an understanding of climate and environment to inform building design strategy. Focused on low-energy and passive strategies, it extends the automated analysis of a user selected weather file (that was already a feature of VE-Gaia) and comes up with a set of design suggestions for urban layout and built form (see Figure 7). This rapid automated Bio-Climatic analysis can provide designers with early guidance on what form a building should take in order to respond to fundamental climatic demands. IES also showed its recently released Revit 2011 plug-in, which allows Revit users to export models into any IES Virtual Environment analysis tool with improved accuracy and more options for choosing geometry detail and shading, as well as an enhanced version of its SketchUp plug-in, which allows SketchUp users to easily identify Groups or Components in the model for analysis as well as enables SketchUp’s “thick walls” to be analyzed.

Another regular exhibitor, Trelligence, used the AIA show to formally launch the next major release of its architectural programming, spatial design and analysis application, Trelligence Affinity 6.0. This continues to be the only dedicated tool that provides architects and designers with sophisticated spatial analysis capability to assist in the early planning and design phases of complex building projects. Affinity integrates bi-directionally with key design applications such as Revit Architecture, ArchiCAD, and SketchUp, enabling design-to-program compliance to continue to be evaluated even after the design has moved from the planning stage in Affinity to design development using any of these modeling applications. The enhancements and new features in Trelligence Affinity 6.0 include 2D vertical stacking  with an interactive, color-coded drag & drop interface; a dynamic work sharing environment via central repository for online or offline collaboration; a new Layout view for conceptual design, process diagramming, and space planning (see Figure 8); expanded schematic design tools including graphical overlays, curved walls, dimension pop-up for resizing, and improved snap alignment; improved reporting and presentation tools; and an updated interface for a new look and feel with improved organization of menus, views, item details, tools, and settings. We will take a more detailed look at the new release of Trelligence Affinity next month.

AutoDesSys Inc., developer of form•Z as well as bonzai3d, focused on showing the latest releases of both applications. Work on the next major release of form•Z, version 7, is still in progress, so it was not demonstrated, but it must be eagerly awaited by form•Z users. The new bonzai3d application that is focused more on the conceptual design stage seems to be making a lot of progress, judging from the sophistication and maturity of the application, even though it was released barely a year ago and is only in version 2.0. It has added a large number of new features and enhancements including 3D dimensions, non-destructive dynamic dimensioning, a number of NURBS blending operations, view matching, clipping planes to show interior views, enhanced components capability for creating and managing 3D content, and many more. A key new development from AutoDesSys is the reconfiguring of RenderZone as an independent rendering plug-in, and it plugs into both bonzai3D and form.Z to provide them with photorealistic rendering and lighting capabilities.  In addition, both bonzai3D and form.Z have many additional built-in display techniques such as wireframes, hidden-line, doodle, OpenGL, sketch rendering, etc., enabling different types of visualizations. AutoDesSys also demonstrated the ease with which bonzai3D could be used to generate different types of 3D models, interactively reshape them, and ultimately export them to a 3D printer without any post-processing requirements (see Figure 9).

Z Corporation was also at hand, with its local channel partner EMS Inc., to show its ZPrinter line of 3D printing solutions, which includes the 350 (monochromatic), 450 (advanced color with 180,000 unique colors per part), and 650 (top of the line color with 390,000 unique colors per part) models of automated 3D printers.  The 350/450 printers offer a build size of 8 x 10 x 8 inches, with a resolution of 300 x 450 dpi and layer thickness of 0.0035-0.004 inches.  The 650 printer offers a 15 x 10 x 8 inch build chamber with 600 x 540 dpi and 0.0035-0.004 layer thickness. Architects tend to gravitate toward the 650 printer due to its large build size that allows printing of larger scale models. All these printers use Z Corp’s zp150 advanced composite material, which yields bright whites and bold color models, as well as strong parts. Several architectural models printed with ZPrinters were on display in the Z Corp booth, as well as in the Autodesk, AutoDesSys and Bentley booths. The bonzai3D model shown in Figure 9 above was printed on a ZPrinter model 650.  Figure 10 shows additional 3D models created with ZPrinters, including an Autodesk Ecotect Analysis 24-hour solar study, and a conceptual design created in Bentley’s GenerativeComponents. EMS and Z Corp also demonstrated the Z Corp line of hand-held laser scanners and the new ZBuilder Ultra rapid prototyping system for thin-walled plastic parts, which attracted a lot of interest from building product manufacturers at the AIA show.

Other Technology-Related Developments

In a significant boost for interoperability, the AIA used the convention to issue a call for the ongoing development of open standards for design software. Based on a 2009 survey of firm characteristics conducted by the AIA, the share of firms that are using BIM software has doubled in period from 2006-2009 and now represents about 50% of AIA architects. At the same time, studies showing the high cost of the lack of adequate interoperability—including the oft-quoted NIST study from 2004 which estimates the cost to be $15.8 billion per year for the US capital facilities industry, as well as the more recent 2007 McGraw Hill SmartMarket Report on Interoperability that estimates the waste to be 3.1% of the cost of every project—have motivated the AIA to assume a leadership role in seeking a solution to this costly problem. The AIA’s Interoperability Position Statement can be seen at: http://www.aia.org/aiaucmp/groups/aia/documents/pdf/aiab082297.pdf. It is interesting to note that it does not specifically reference or endorse the IFC file format for interoperability; however, given that this is the only open standard available for BIM at the moment, the AIA’s call can be seen as strongly supportive of the IFC and the BuildingSMART organization that manages and monitors IFC development and deployment. While the AIA cannot force software vendors to support open standards, its newly issued position statement can certainly help to make architects more aware of interoperability as an issue when selecting software and why they need to care about it.

In another technology-related development, the AIA also announced a new tool that can help architecture firms track predicted energy use in building projects. It is designed to assist the voluntary 2030 commitment program where architecture firms and other entities in the built environment have pledged to develop multi-year action plans and implement steps that can advance the AIA’s goal of carbon neutral buildings by the year 2030. The tool was specifically developed to be simple to use and to be used by firms of all sizes on a variety of building types, both large or small. Based on Excel, it will only require the user to enter project use type (from a drop down menu), gross square footage, and respond to some simple yes/no questions relevant to energy use. Based on that information, the tool will automatically calculate the national average site EUI (energy use intensity) for that project type and the project’s percent reduction from the national average EUI toward meeting the firm’s 2030 goal for the current year (currently 60%). It can also generate graphs and other reports, and can be used by a firm to track all active design projects, not just those for which green building certification is being sought. The reports developed through the tool are meant to provide a year-to-year look of a firm’s work. The tool, which has still to be named, was developed through collaboration between members of the AIA Committee on the Environment, the AIA Large Firm Roundtable, AIA Chicago Chapter Working Group, and several individuals from AIA member firms.

And finally, in what is another boost to BIM technology implementation that facilitates Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), the AIA Contract Documents team released several new documents as part of the latest release announced at the Convention, two of which relate specifically to IPD. These are: the C198-2010, Standard Form of Agreement Between Single Purpose Entity and Consultant for Integrated Project Delivery; and C199-2010, Standard Form of Agreement Between Single Purpose Entity and Contractor for Integrated Project Delivery. These two agreements add to the eight existing IPD agreements, all of which can be seen at: http://www.aia.org/contractdocs/AIAS076706.  They highlight the AIA’s efforts to help lead the industry to more fully embrace IPD and promote greater collaboration among architects, contractors and owners throughout the project lifecycle. The IPD agreements are available in paper format as well as through the use of the AIA Contract Documents software, which collectively includes more than 100 forms and agreements to address the range of relationships, project types, and delivery methods involved in design and construction projects.

Conclusion

While I regret not being able to make it in person to the AIA Convention this year, I was glad of the opportunity to experience it virtually and was impressed by how information was available for those who could not travel to Miami to attend the event. By archiving the sessions and making them available for 12 months, the AIA has extended the learning experience, both for virtual attendees as well as those who were able to attend the show but may have missed out on specific sessions. In future AIA events, hopefully, a larger number of the scheduled sessions will be recorded and made available for online viewing in this manner. While it won’t make the in-person attendance less compelling, it greatly helps to extend the benefits of the content that is shared by the US architectural community to any interested AEC professional located anywhere in the world.

Stay tuned for a dedicated article on the new solutions unveiled at the show to be published in a few weeks.

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.