Issue Resolution and Clash Avoidance with Autodesk BIM Collaborate

Issue Resolution and Clash Avoidance with Autodesk BIM Collaborate

by | Sep 16, 2022 | Architecture, Autodesk, BIM, Collaboration

ACC Blog - Round Trip Issues BIM Collaborate

Construction management is a highly complex and multi-dimensional collaborative effort. To execute on projects effectively, several people and moving parts all need to click and stay in sync. Issues need to be resolved quickly, questions must be answered in a timely manner, and there should be trust and accountability across the entire team.

Accomplishing all that, however, is easier said than done.

Design and construction teams struggle to find a seamless way to identify issues and circulate them to the appropriate stakeholders. Often, teams rely on spreadsheets, static reports, or third-party management solutions to gather information and make decisions.

Unfortunately, these tools and sources are unreliable and inaccessible to the wider team. They cause confusion and are ultimately ineffective for detecting clashes and resolving issues. Not to mention, the manual tasks involved with static documents and spreadsheets are tedious, time consuming, and can cause issues to slip through the cracks.

The result? Issues that could’ve been avoided bubble up to the surface later on in the form of rework — and unnecessary costs. Clashes alone account for 5% of construction spend and 52% of the $280 billion of annual rework costs are caused by poor project data and communication globally.

To address this, many companies turn to third-party point solutions to address specific problems. However, these programs usually require further training and implementation, as well as additional costs.

To make matters more complicated, the different parties involved (e.g., design firms, GCs, and subcontractors) all use different systems and platforms. The JBKnowledge 2020 ConTech report found that 63% of construction pros are using three to six more apps  — which makes integration and communication harder and limits project data usage.

All this to say that managing project issues in construction can be a headache.

What if you could address issues at the same time and at the same place, to streamline resolution?

The combination of Autodesk BIM Collaborate (part of the Autodesk Construction Cloud platform), Navisworks, and Revit makes all that possible.

Thanks to the tight integration between these solutions, issues can be created, managed, or resolved directly in the tools you work in daily, and are connected using a common data environment (CDE).

By surfacing and resolving issues in a CDE, you create a lasting history of decisions made for downstream stakeholders for future reference. It also allows multidisciplinary teams with different tools to manage and communicate about issues using a common solution.

All in all, this paves the way for a roundtrip workflow, which helps teams close the loop with any clashes or issues that arise.

Issues created in either Autodesk BIM Collaborate or Navisworks can be assigned and contextualized in either of those tools and resolved in Revit. That resolution then makes its way back to Autodesk BIM Collaborate for reporting and future project forecasting.

Let’s take a look at just one of the ways all these solutions work together.

 

 

Autodesk BIM Collaborate

Autodesk BIM Collaborate’s browser-based model coordination and design collaboration tool comes with automatic clash detection and grouping tools that help identify issues early on. The software’s UI is intuitive and easy on the eyes, so all discipline types (designers, GCs, and specialty contractors) can use the solution.

Team members can self-check their work as they go, and if issues come up, they can flag it with a location pin and add details such as the root cause, description, important dates, and clash screenshot. From there, they can assign the issue to the appropriate stakeholder.

Because multiple stakeholders can take part in identifying and assigning issue tasks, the coordination process is faster and much more streamlined. Issues and their associated models are stored in a common data environment for multi-team, product, and construction phase access to action on.

 

 

Navisworks Coordination Issues Add-In (Navisworks 2021-2022)

This Navisworks add-in connects models, views, and issues through a CDE, so BIM/VDC managers can easily create, track, assign, and resolve issues directly in their desktop application.

If a Navisworks user is unsure about an issue, they can simply comment directly within the platform. Similar to Autodesk BIM Collaborate, users can add issues and include details like type, location, assignee, description, and due date. They can then pair that issue with an image snapshot of the clash identified. Thanks to this add-in, stakeholders using the software can better contextualize the issue, resolve it, or assign it to someone else.

Navisworks also has an updated Coordination Space and Append capabilities. With the upgraded issues add-in, users now have the ability to append additional models from a Model Coordination space to their already opened set of models. This increases the efficiency of coordination meetings by allowing users to immediately update your .nwf files as new model files arrive from project design teams.

Plus, this free add-in seamlessly connects with Autodesk BIM Collaborate and Revit, so there’s no need for third-party integrations. You’ll reduce manual work and miscommunication, and resolve issues more quickly.

See for yourself by downloading and installing this add-in from the Autodesk App Store. Once installed, start Navisworks and navigate to the Coordination tab.

Revit Issues Add-in (Revit 2020 or later)

Using the very same common data environment and issues layer, architects and engineers working in Revit can scan through all the details we covered above and any additional information from the comments/history, to resolve the issue directly in the model.

This type of connectivity displays the same information to the entire project team, thus enabling stakeholders to literally stay on the same (digital) page. Stakeholders benefit from having more transparency and greater levels of accountability which result in less rework from issues slipping through the cracks.

Instead of waiting until the next coordination meeting to resolve an issue, users can continuously collaborate on models, speeding up time-to-site and reducing the expensive design iterations that occur from poor and sporadic communication.

You access this add-in from the Autodesk Desktop App or your Autodesk account. Get more info on how to use it from the Autodesk Knowledge Network.

 

 

Bringing It All Together

Autodesk BIM Collaborate, along with the Navisworks and Revit add-ins, take issue management to a whole new level.

These tightly integrated tools don’t just let you track or manage issues, they create an environment to collaborate and resolve them.

Issue resolution is tracked in Autodesk BIM Collaborate with a dashboard of outstanding issues and resolution overtime, paving the way for better management and prediction for future projects.

Plus, the entire project team can work together to resolve issues and collaborate with a “clash avoidance” mindset (as opposed to a “clash detection” mindset). This speeds up the time-to-site and reduces costly rework.

With a roundtrip workflow, issues are created in either Autodesk Construction Cloud or Navisworks, and actionable in Autodesk BIM Collaborate, Revit, or Navisworks, bringing the best of each environment to your next project.

Interested in experiencing Autodesk BIM Collaborate for yourself? Request a trial today.

The Value of BIM for FM Operations and Maintenance

The Value of BIM for FM Operations and Maintenance

by | Aug 26, 2022 | ARCHIBUS, Autodesk, BIM, Facilities Management

In the drive to capture and leverage data for better business intelligence, many organizations still rely on different data sets for the separate life cycle phases, with first planning and construction and then ongoing operations and maintenance. 

But by disconnecting the data between departments and teams, you slow down processes, reduce asset life cycles, and drive up costs. The solution is to create a clear path for data from building information modeling (BIM) to facilities management (FM). 

Make the case for BIM to FM

Although it’s true that “Data is king,” the implications for owner groups and facility managers are more complex than that three-word maxim can capture. In fact, to better understand the roles and importance of data, it makes sense to be more specific and say, “Data is king, but it’s like the king in chess.” 

What this new expression lacks in brevity and impact, it makes up for in better understanding and additional application. Because once you think of data as the king in chess, you know both its importance and weakness. Losing your king means losing the game. But the king by itself is not inherently powerful; instead, you need both the king and your other chess pieces in exactly the right positions to win. 

And if you have most of your data tied up in BIM in the planning and construction phases, you’re only ever playing less than half the board. In fact, when it comes to the total cost of ownership (TCO), capital planning, design, and construction are usually only 20% of the overall costs. The rest, including portfolio planning, assets and maintenance, and workplace, are the other 80%. 

So, how do you leverage BIM for FM operations and maintenance? 

Remember, business information modeling to facilities management is a journey 

Here’s a good spot to switch metaphors. You can think of BIM to FM as a sort of journey, and so the first question becomes “What’s the destination?” 

In the end, you’re looking to improve productivity, enhance comfort and safety, and optimize sustainability. You get more done, it’s easier and safer to do it, and because everything lasts longer, you’re using less energy and creating less waste. 

But at the same time, BIM to FM is more than a simple journey, with a basic beginning, middle, and end. Instead, you should double-back periodically to ensure success at every step. It’s an iterative process and an ongoing work in progress. 

Start your BIM to FM journey with these three questions 

Every journey, even ones that move in loops instead of straight lines, needs to start somewhere, and you can start by asking yourself the following questions: 

  • Who is going to use the data? 
  • What data are we going to collect (and how are we going to collect it)? 
  • How can you validate and maintain the data? 

There are of course many more questions along the way, but these first three help you lay the foundations for a successful project. 

Who is going to use the data? 

Here, you want to be as specific as possible, and for many organizations, it makes sense to go as far as creating personas for each type of data consumer. Ask yourself, what information does this person in this role need to do their job better. Listing the different demands and challenges of each role can help you then match them with the right data. 

What data are you going to collect (and how are you going to do it)? 

The key here is making the move from data for as-built to data for as maintained. What are the differences? The first, as-built, is a huge body of static information, including everything that was delivered through the design and construction processes. 

The second, as maintained, is smaller, lighter, and can be just the essentials, including, for example: 

  • Walls 
  • Doors 
  • Windows 
  • Schematic equipment  

Another important difference is that data for as maintained is not static. Instead, it changes over time to reflect and accommodate the goals of operations and maintenance. 

On the level of a practical example, consider the differences between the types and amounts of data you need to build a car headlight assembly vs the types and amounts of data you need to maintain one. To manufacture one, you need to know everything about the required materials and dimensions. But for repairs and maintenance, it’s just the make, model, serial number, along with which bulbs to use as replacements and how and when to periodically check them. 

Now that you know what you need, it’s time to figure out how to get it. Even for something as simple as a door, there are a lot of steps, including: 

  • Schematic design 
  • Design development 
  • Construction drawings 
  • Shop drawings 
  • Final installation 

 And at each step, different data is generated, often by different stakeholders. BIM allows you to collect the data along the way, with each stakeholder adding data as they generate it. From there, you can aggregate everything into a single data record that you can feed into a CMMS. 

How can you validate and maintain the data? 

This step is critical because, in the end, if the data can’t be maintained, there is no point in capturing it at all. 

On top of that, any mistakes that you make tends to call into question all your other data. If you have 20 points of data, and two of them fall out of date, people are going to tend to distrust the other 18, even though they’re accurate. 

There are different tools sets that allow you to ensure the data can be trusted. For example, the Autodesk Standardized Tool for Revit. The goal is to create a bi-directional flow of data, from BIM to FM, that ensures accurate validation and ongoing maintenance. 

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What’s New for MEP in Revit 2023

What’s New for MEP in Revit 2023

by | May 9, 2022 | Autodesk, BIM

With Revit 2023, we’re pleased to provide capabilities that span all aspects of the workflow for electrical and mechanical design; from early conceptual design and analysis, to the creation and documentation of design deliverables, along with improvements to support detailed design for construction.

These improvements address a number of strategic areas, including using analysis as the basis of design, and using models as deliverables for construction. They also address quality-of-life issues for BIM practitioners, several of which were top vote-getters on on the Revit Idea Station.

Let’s get into it.

NEW ANALYTICAL WORKFLOW FOR ELECTRICAL PRELIMINARY DESIGN

We are pleased to deliver a new early stage design workflow for electrical engineers and designers. Similar in concept to the Systems Analysis Framework provided for mechanical engineers in the 2020.1 release, new functionality equips electrical engineers to define early stage design information pertinent to power distribution within Revit.

Unlike traditional workflows that have engineers managing information in different places — preliminary one-lines, spreadsheets, DWGs, and often PDFs — this new workflow provides a way for Revit to manage the key electrical loads and distribution information, without having to physically model any part of it. We heard from designers that the requirements for distribution systems are defined and iterated long before it is necessary or even desirable to create a physical model. As such, it is now possible to conceptually define and connect loads and distribution system elements before commencing model creation.

This new workflow provides a BIM centric way to commence electrical power distribution design workflows, with a vision towards connecting those workflows to downstream workflows in the future.

 

MAJOR PAIN POINT RESOLVED FOR MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL DESIGNERS

One of the long standing big pain points with connected MEP networks is that they were never designed with phasing in mind. Over the years, this has resulted in two main problems that arise when an element is demolished, and resulted in one of the top MEP specific ideas on the Revit Idea Station. This release solves those two key problems, which are: elements losing their system association, and elements no longer connected to adjacent elements.

Historically, once an element (e.g., duct or pipe elements) is demolished, it no longer ‘remembers’ what system it was part of. As a result, various workarounds existed to be able to define views that show the appropriate demolished system elements (e.g., piping views for hydronic, plumbing, fire protection, medical gas, etc.) in appropriate demolition views. This has been resolved in this release. When an element is demolished, it still maintains relationship to the system, thus property values such as System Name, System Classification, and System Abbreviation persist.

Additionally, when elements are demolished (whether design duct/pipe, conduit, cable tray, or fabrication elements), they maintain their connectivity to adjacent elements, thereby support typical modification behaviors.

Note: this does NOT solve the larger problem of having independently computable states of mechanical or electrical system networks.

ENERGY ANALYTICAL MODEL IMPROVEMENTS

As the need to measure and reduce Building Energy Use and Carbon Emissions only grows and while Next Gen Insight is still in development we made a number of foundational improvements to Revit’s Energy Analytical Model. These will benefit Insight (for early stage / big picture energy analysis), Systems Analysis (for more detailed sizing and simulation) and gbXML export for 3rd party analysis tool.

While the main focus of these improvements relate to Accuracy, Precision and Performance, we started this by essentially refactoring key components originally written many years ago. This not only provides a better basis for making even more improvements in the future, it provides improved Revit processing speed up to 3X faster and now eliminates memory limitations for very large models in Revit 2023.

Beyond this, knowing the single biggest source of accuracy and precision issues with the Energy Analytics Model (EAM) come from the handling of curtain walls, the robustness and efficiency of this has now been greatly improved. For example, previously individual curtain panels would result in separate analytical surfaces, even when they had the same thermal properties. Now these are rationalized into a single analytical surface and this greatly reduces processing time in both Insight and Systems Analysis. There are also many other conditions/combinations of curtain panels and other elements that now resolve better.

Finally, and specifically for Systems Analysis because it uses EnergyPlus via OpenStudio measures, we’ve addressed a long list of small issues that together were pulling run success rate down to around 70% but is now close to 100%. This is based on our analytics and testing and we say close to 100% just because geometry never ceases to surprise and we’re not wanting to be complacent.

ELEVATION ANNOTATION IMPROVEMENTS

Two other highly rated MEP Idea Station items are related to improving the ability to annotate elevations of MEP segments. The improvement addresses both design and detailed fabrication elements, for mechanical, as well as electrical. Previously, the elevation of an element such as pipe or conduit was always reported relative to its reference level. This improvement provides the flexibility to define tags to annotate relative to the level, the project base point, or survey point. We also improved the available built-in parameters for annotating straight segment components of MEP systems to provide a lot more flexibility. These improvements address these Idea Station items:

  • “Currently with fabrication pipe in Revit you are unable to set the Spot/Invert Elevation tagged parameters to go off of a different value than level. For example, when doing underground pipe it often needs to be based off of sea level (project base point), not offset from level. I.E: we want to see 347′ – 6″ not -2′ – 1″.”
  • “Currently when using any of the elevation parameters they tag only one end of the pipe. For level runs this is not an issue, but it is not possible to get the top and bottom elevations of a sloped run.”

OTHER IMPROVEMENTS FOR MECHANICAL AND ELECTRICAL DESIGN FIRMS

We also added categories for Plumbing Equipment and Mechanical Control Devices (for things like thermostats), to make it easier to define views that contain the expected elements.

Additionally, in family editor, it is now possible to re-host a connector, allowing you to move it within family editor without having to redefine it.

Another request we implemented is adding a parameter for the circuit number for the Electrical Equipment category, so it can be included on tags, schedules, and view filters, just like all other electrical devices and mechanical equipment.

Lastly, we improved the way that annotation symbols nested in family with the ‘maintain annotation orientation’ option properly maintain orientation in certain cases. There were cases where symbols that are directional in nature (e.g., an exit sign with directional arrow) could show inconsistently between plan and ceiling views, and we also addressed the issue where a family rotated on the surface of a wall (e.g., rotating a duplex receptacle from vertical to horizontal) could result in unexpected annotation orientation.

 

Top Left and right: New categories for Mechanical Control Devices and Plumbing Equipment are in Revit 2023
Bottom Left: Nested annotation symbols within families maintain proper orientation in advisable cases

DETAILED MECHANICAL MODELING/FABRICATION IMPROVEMENTS

An improvement to manufacturing workflows is that we addressed consistency problems related to how holes for damper blades develop in duct fittings. Prior to this improvement, proper support for holes is somewhat inconsistent across patterns, and the behavior could be a bit unpredictable. In some cases, holes are not developing even if configured to do so, and in other cases, holes are developing at incorrect locations, resulting in a lot of manual 2D modification of duct developments, disrupting manufacturing operations.

Addressing this cuts out manual intervention in the process, thereby streamlining design to manufacturing and assembly workflows.

Building on the foundation of Revit 2022.1, Revit 2023 adds enhancements for the creation and editing of detailed mechanical models, making it easier to accurately create a model that is ready for installation, and in particular, making it easier to deal with the complexities of sloped piping systems.

In 2022.1 the improvements were:

  • Ensuring that routing rolled fittings (elbows and tees) maintain perpendicular orientation, and don’t become slightly askew.
  • Providing the ability to easily connect between two elements at an arbitrary slope, or place a vertical riser (similar options existed for some time already with the design LOD elements).
  • Improvements to maintaining sloped piping layouts – eliminating cases of undesirable shifting of elements in other parts of the network.

In 2023, additional enhancements improve the editability of fabrication elements, applying similar capabilities that historically only existed on design elements. These are:

  • Added end of element elevation controls to straight fabrication segments, making it easier to adjust the top and bottom elevation of a elements in canvas
  • Flip controls on in-line fittings such as wyes and valves, to easily adjust their orientation when necessary.

 

PLATFORM IMPROVEMENTS

There are a wide variety of improvements to the Revit platform that provide a benefit to MEP users. One of our favorites is the new ability to displace elements in 2D views, which addresses this long standing Idea Station item:

“We need the ability to offset annotation symbols in families to prevent overlapping symbols in our documentation. Maybe the annotation could attach to a widget (similar to the room calculation point) that allowed dynamic movement of the annotation in the project.” – Jerry

Additionally, improvements enable tagging of displaced elements which addresses this idea station item:

“I want to draw attention to the fact that several versions of Autodesk Revit tool we have “Displace Elements”. This tool would be very useful for engineers to create isometric views of piping systems, cable trays, air ducts, etc., but we cannot tag displaced elements!” – R_Mitin

Be sure to check out all the Design Productivity and Documentation Efficiency improvements in Revit 2023.

 

 
 
[Authored by: Ian Molloy, Martin Schmid, Brandon White]