News about Bentley Systems of late has been focused on how they’re bringing AI to reality modeling and asset management, but their specific commitment to the AEC market can be seen with their two acquisitions to bring BIM to geotechnical pros, as well as their acquisition of Synchro Software to extend digital workflows for infrastructure project delivery. All of it underscores the company’s commitment to creating comprehensive software solutions for advancing design, construction and operation processes.
These news items were being discussed at the AIA Conference on Architecture 2018, but Bentley Systems was also showing off AECOsim Building Designer. This multi-discipline building design application allows designers to explore design alternatives so that they can quickly and easily consider countless “what if” alternatives. Regardless of geometry or project scale, designers can effortlessly look at countless options while also predicting their real-world performance.
AECOsim Building Designer has common shared design products, so there is commonality between systems. Ultimately, it is a scalable BIM solution that can be utilized in a design environment within a shared set of libraries and workflows. Multiple people can work on the same models simultaneously, no matter where they’re located.
These capabilities all stem from AECOsim Building Designer’s focus on allowing users to design in context and truly bring a site location to someone’s desktop. Doing so is about a four-step process:
- Context capture
- Building design
- Computational design
- Visualization
ContextCapture is a subject that Sean Higgins has covered in depth and detail on SPAR3D.com, but the essence of this step is about being able to create 3D models using photos taken by any digital camera, from high-definition aerial rigs to iPhones and UAV-mounted cameras. This information is what fuels AECOsim Building Designer and allows designers to consider and create options that will fit a specific space or location.
From there, users can utilize the building design features in AECOsim Building Designer to quickly and easily create, visualize and interact with variations of a model. It’s simple to produce coordinated architectural documentation directly from the building model and also create floor plans, sections, elevations, and schedules for any architectural component. Users can employ point clouds of virtually any scale natively within the modeling environment as context for designs.
Computational design allows users to explore more possibilities in less time and efficiently create and manage complex geometry. Users can easily consider design constraints and relationships to improve design quality and performance.
However, while a building or structure might look good as an object in a 3D space, that’s not indicative of what it will look like in the real world. With the visualization process of AECOsim Building Designer, users can understand how this object will look, react and function in the real environment. You can generate images and animations with life-like detail and high-end photorealistic renderings with no need for additional software. The 3D features are incredible, as users can literally put themselves in the scene, to the point they can duck under the water and view their scene from a nearby mountaintop. It takes the concept of understanding of how something will look and function in an environment to another level.
AECOsim Building Designer includes capabilities for architectural, structural, mechanical and electrical system design as well as construction documentation. Bentley says the system allows users to deliver buildings faster and with greater confidence, and that’s something they enable in terms of the process, usability and capability of the system.
To learn more about AECOsim Building Designer, click here.
