Cadalyst - July 2008 - (Page 40)

aecinsight By Jerry Laiserin BIM Goes Residential Design and production software give homebuilders all the advantages of BIM. or the past six years, building information modeling (BIM) has been hailed by designers and constructors of commercial and institutional buildings as a revolution in the construction business. Ironically, the world of stick-built, single-family detached dwellings on the U.S. market has long enjoyed many of the same beneﬁts without all the hoopla. A large chunk of this market is served by local and regional homebuilders operating as integrated design–build organizations and turning out a few dozen homes or fewer per year. These builders require software that includes many of the capabilities demanded by architects for design and modeling, plus the ability to easily produce plan sets for filing with building officials and coordination with subcontractors (such as plumbers and electricians). They also require that their tools provide unique capabilities for generation of framing plans, bills of material (BOMs), cut lists for lumber yard orders, and so on. Furthermore, homebuilders increasingly rely on slick renderings and animations to help them sell their as-yet unbuilt designs to prospective homeowners. The latest BIM-like capabilities extend to pricing and ordering materials and components — such as windows, doors, plumbing fixtures, and the like 1ST Pricing www.1stpricing.com — and closing the loop from the digital model AccuFrame System http://accuframesystem.com back to the onsite work for greater accuracy of BuilderConnect Solutions www.builderconnect.com construction and assembly. In fact, there are so BuildersCAD and Intelli-Framer many builder-focused www.builderscad.com design and production BuilderTREND tools on the market that www.buildertrend.com it would be impossible BuildTopia to do justice to all of www.buildtopia.com them in a single column. Cadsoft My apologies in advance www.cadsoft.com if I’ve overlooked one of CG Visions your favorites. www.cgvisions.com Chief Architect www.chiefarchitect.com F Figure 1. Third-party providers, such as CG Visions, offer homebuilders comprehensive modeling and plan services based on sophisticated and integrated software technology that might otherwise be beyond the reach of a residential builder. (Image courtesy of CG Visions) Sticks and Stones BuildersCAD and the related Intelli-Framer product — sold by the same company as ARRIS, a pioneering Sigma Design and ARRIS www.arriscad.com SoftPlan Systems www.softplan.com general-purpose architectural design program — encompasses wood-framing and material-takeoff functionality not needed by architects who don’t also build. This extends to ordering key homebuilding components, such as doors and windows. Sigma Design also markets its eZ series of viewing, mark-up, and online collaboration tools that can be especially valuable on smaller projects (such as residential construction) that may not justify the expense and system overhead of a full-blown project collaboration network (see “Share and Share Alike,” Cadalyst, December 2007, www. cadalyst.com/1207AECInsight). Considered by many to work similarly to ArchiCAD, a leading BIM model-authoring tool, SoftPlan ranks among the leaders in all aspects of product needs for homebuilders, from design to estimating, framing, permitting, and so on. SoftPlan includes visualization capabilities to help homebuilders sell their designs, and the company provides excellent support, training, and educational materials to make its products easy to use. Envisioneer, from Cadsoft, is another highly capable, fullfunction software package for homebuilders that is offered at a competitive price point. As with many programs aimed at homebuilders, Envisioneer encompasses everything from interior design within the home to landscaping design that surrounds the home. With all of Envisioneer’s functionality www.cadalyst.com cadalyst July 2008 40 http://www.1stpricing.com http://accuframesystem.com http://www.builderconnect.com http://www.builderscad.com http://www.cadalyst.com/1207AECInsight http://www.cadalyst.com/1207AECInsight http://www.buildertrend.com http://www.buildtopia.com http://www.cadsoft.com http://www.cgvisions.com http://www.chiefarchitect.com http://www.arriscad.com http://www.softplan.com http://www.cadalyst.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Cadalyst - July 2008

Cadalyst - July 2008 Editor’s Window CAD Central FIRST Robotic Beasts Draw Students to Engineering Power! Speed! Action! — Mighty Mobile Workstations are Packed and Ready for Adventure! Vico Virtual Construction Suite 2008 AMD ATI FireGL V8600 and FireGL V8650 — 1-GB and 2-GB Graphics Cards Gaining Independence and Influence The Current State of MCAD Rewriting the Rules of PDM BIM Goes Residential CAD Cartoon Issue Indexes Pleasures of Customization

Cadalyst - July 2008

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