Largest project acchived in BIM.

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone. AC, Revit, VW, AP users. I work in construction company. Right now we came across big (1.2 mil sqft) hospital project, and together with architects looking for best BIM software that will be able to run this project. Right now we are testing Revit (mostly because of architect) but when project goes into 250 kilo sqft hardware starts to say NONO (experience from other projects). It's a big problem. Hardware is not the problem (state of the art for today standards). Any experiences in that area?

[Dwight]

Karl wrote:

Dwight wrote:
I've never received a report of purely 2D elements (text, etc.) causing a performance problem. (Those 2D elements that are projected from 3D elements are another matter.) Have you or anyone else had seen text cause a performance problem (on a current computer)?

Fair Enough, and me neither, but they've gone to the bother of a dialog box for decreased 2D rendering quality for a reason - OpenGL hits its redraw ceiling and voom: jerky and slow.

I admit to speculating. Has anyone had a drawing failure because of linework, symbol and text size overloading? I have many objects (with buzzillions of line segments in the symbol) that cause quite a slowdown in redraw.....

[Anonymous]

I agree that we don't measure level of detail by sqarefootage of the building, but this is the only measure (together with the building type) that you have on the beginning of the project. It is the pretty good benchmark. And 1.2 mil. sqft is not that small. It is 111500 sq meters. You can make 45 level building with 50m x 50m (165ft x 165ft) in plan.
Anyway it is a lot.

[Dwight]

And if this building was going to be a plumbing fixture showroom with 1000 little rooms, say, the outcome is different than if it is a warehouse for gigantic granite blocks.

[Anonymous]

That's I said "(together with the building type)". On the other hands no one is including show room booths with it its equipment during design/construction phase. Dwight do you know any other better method to define size of the building that works?

[Dwight]

I am being the devil's advocate here to show that:

-- We can't anticipate what the file size or the maximum drawing load on the graphics card or the number and file size of undos stored in the temporary file and their impact on computer performance will be by looking at building area or volume.

-- There might be some rules of thumb established for curves versus straights or bitmaps versus vector fills, or placed images or PROJECT2 commands in GDL objects but we all see the effects of these choices very quickly - before any project gets very large.

-- No matter what, on a large or small project, viewed polygons and linework need management for productivity - you can't be Little Red Riding Hood in the woods strewing porcupine pate and expect not to meet the wolf.

My fear is that my collegues will blithly adopt building volume as an indicator of poor software performance when the real culprit is bad project management. Proper management lets you extend the power of your computer to do huge work.

So the naiive question is "how far can i get in making a big project WITHOUT using ANY project management?"

The sophisticated question would be "How best can the team cope with a project that will be bigger than anything we've done before, expecting that the visulaizing resources will be taxed." It is parallel to what i teach about preparing a visualizing plan from the getgo: a file management plan. From the getgo. Those seconds waiting for redraws really add up.

[Anonymous]

Thank you Dwight. Not exactly what I had in mind, but thank you anyway. My question was based on Area size because that is tipical architect thinking. Somebody who have any experience with regular 3D package (3dsmax, cinema ex.) know what you are talking about, but for average CADJOE it is magic. Who checks out what RESOL value current object have (hoping that designer of that object gave you that option and you are happy AC user). In other software it might be even more difficult. Not adding stupid things (like detailed furniture or equipment) to the project is one thing. Lowering quality of required elements (like segmentation of curved walls) totally different. Asking this question I was hoping to get answer like:

-We did 500.000 sqft residential project with no problem both on plan and in 3D window.

or (on the other hand):

-We did 300.000 sqft hospital and we had no problems on plan, but section were generated slow, and 3D was total disaster.

Anyway. Maybe some with that kind of answer now?

[Dwight]

Good questing for the answer. My point is that you can't tell how well a firm managed the process by having them say there was trouble or not.

Anyone who has trained Archicad users has encountered the "Nightmare of the 10,000 Trees." This is where a beginner finds a detailed tree symbol and loads the plan view, unaware that they are bombing the redraw.

It can be like that at many less-obvious levels in a project.

PErhaps we should start a thread on project speed killers?

Allow me: Go to Form Category Working in Archicad.

[SeaGeoff]

Dwight wrote:
Has anyone had a drawing failure because of linework, symbol and text size overloading?

Not a failure but a slowdown. Complex site plans with lots of 2D vertices: tree symbols, squiggly-line bushes, symbol line types, etc.

With regard to ArchiCAD's handling of Level of Detail (LOD), it leaves a lot to be desired. It should be adjustable by view (by way of a Model View Option), which I believe is how Revit handles it.

[Dwight]

See the topic "Project Speed Killers" in Working in Archicad.

[Erika Epstein]

Miki wrote:
Hello everyone. AC, Revit, VW, AP users. I work in construction company. Right now we came across big (1.2 mil sqft) hospital project, and together with architects looking for best BIM software that will be able to run this project. Right now we are testing Revit (mostly because of architect) but when project goes into 250 kilo sqft hardware starts to say NONO (experience from other projects). It's a big problem. Hardware is not the problem (state of the art for today standards). Any experiences in that area?

Miki,
The Eureka Towers Djordje mentioned is an excellent example of the process of how to approach a large and/or complex project as well as how to execute it. Thinking it through ahead of time, they broke the building down into somewhat stand-alone areas: skin, MEP, structural, residential units, Cores etc.
They also looked at team size. They felt teams of 2-4 people worked best. Each team had its own file. I believe they were hotlinked to a main file that had the entire building. The separate subfiles allowed for effective archicad file sizes. I think Repetitive areas such as apartment layouts, as with many projects, were done in modules.

As the overall building evolved it was an easy process to see how changes in one area might affect another.

Another key was their custom scripting of objects to make the model smarter. An example I remember was developing all plumbing fixtures to create holes in floor slabs. Floor penetration plans were automatically updated as plans evolved. The time spent manually checking umpton floors with human errors factored in was eliminated.

They also evaluated the team members recognizing that everyone has their strengths and weakness. Not everyone is going to be able to make customized GDL parts, and not everyone has years of experience to bring a project.

All in all a brilliant demonstration of the importance of planning the team that supported the design.

You might also contact graphisoft if you haven't already as they have done a lot work with the construction industry.