Advice on Cad strategy for a new airport

[Anonymous]

Hi all

Bear with me now....

The brief:

Find a 3D application to model a 550 meter long airport terminal. This will be used as a reference model for a 50 strong team to pull their GA sections and plans from and use this to produce production information packages. It will be a "mother" model against which all 2D drawings could be checked.

The problem:

I would use Archicad. Have used it for 6 years and love it.
Our office uses Microstation V8xm and the client (large company) insists we use Autocad to comply with their drawing standards.
So, we have to end up with DWG's that comply with all of the clients requirements (hundreds and hundreds of specific layers, very complicated stuff)

An external cad consultancy are proposing Autocad Architecture as the 3D model application and would write some custom software to convert all DWGs to comply with the clients requirements.

The solution:

How would you do this? I do not know much more than what I have written here as I will have a meeting with the client soon and we will go into more detail...

I am thinking Archicad for Teamwork all the way but have to admit that I have never used Teamwork but have built models of buildings for up to £20 million in value. Please keep in mind that only a handful of people would work on the "mother" model and update it and the rest would only extract information from this model.
Please keep in mind that there is no way this office will convert the entire office to Archicad.... They are a microstation firm and have used it for 20 years. It will never happen. (I will try though ;0)

I know that this forum has some very knowledgeable people and if you do not know the best way to organise this project's cad strategy then no one will....

Spare some change for a brother...

[Anonymous]

I have no personal experience of such a large project, but a couple of thoughts -

My first question would be given the current trend for curvy swoopy bendy architecture for airports and the like, do you know for sure if ArchiCAD can actually model the structure with sufficient accuracy and control?

I also assume you are fairly familiar with dwg production from AC. Have you tried a test to see if you can configure the translator to output dwgs to the correct requirements? I have found the dwg output barely adequate, with many graphical glitches. Have you tried to open up the produced files in another program to check?

Those would be my first worrys to be honest!

[Anonymous]

Please note that we have not started on this new stage yet. We will spend the next 4 weeks setting up a strategy and the input from this forum will help a great deal with this.

As we had problems meeting the clients requirements in regard to linetypes and layers converting the files from Microstation I am positive that it will be impossible to achieve it in Archicad. Unless I get some wizard to write a custom plug in for me.

I believe in simplicity and think that it might be best to export sections and elevations from Archicad in a few layers and then open it in Autocad and detail it all up properly and use the correct attributes.

It would enable us to still use BIM but use Autocad to move from 1:100 to 1:20 and larger.

As the client is this huge organisation they will not accept drawings even if there is the smallest discrepency and contractually we will be obligated to provide the information in DWG format.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

If you yourself are uncertain as to how to proceed I would strongly advise that you engage the services of a consultant / mentor / coach. Merely championing ArchiCAD in the office will not suffice here.

With the aid of a consultant you might establish (among other things):

team member roles and an on-the-ground plan of attack
parceling out of the work to team members or sub-teams
keeping as many hands out of the Teamwork model as possible
protocols for information (used to be called DWG compatibility in the old days) sharing, project libraries, schedules, document frameworks.

DWG production can mean a number of things these days. Round trip collaboration with consultants using DWG may have issues that do not have anything in common with the challenge of producing As-Builts to a client's CAD standard. The first is all about interoperability; the second, if well organized, is housekeeping. [there's lots of resources available to do the hand-off of the deliverables]

The point of working in ArchiCAD would be the right and proper establishment of Information standards. Information is key here.

[note the absence of the term BIM here, but wouldn't that be what you want to do on a project this size?]

[Anonymous]

We've just finished a "large" project in ArchiCad 10 (in a Swedish scale) that have been ongoing for about three years by now, and there was consultant that use ADT, AutoCad with special applications, and other softwares. But in our 3d controll it was just ArchiCad and another consultant that don't use Autodesk product that delivered correct .dwg 3d drawings Maybe because of lack of knowledge but it was fun
And none of the consultant complain about our .dwg 2d files that act as ground for the other consultant.

So I can't see why it should be any problems. There are plugin applications for AutoCad that made horrible .dwg files...

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

monkey, you might want to check this thread
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=22082&highlight=airport
and maybe contact Nando.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the information so far.

We have an external consultancy but that does not mean they necessarily choose the best route.

The office does not want to use BIM as it would be foolish to introduce it to the office on such a large project.

Reading the thread Ignacio pointed out makes me want to stay clear of Archicad. Jesus that sounds complicated.

I want to look at things from a strategic point of view only at this stage.

Is it worth it having a BIM model in parallel with pure 2D software or would an Autocad Architecture 3Dish solution with Autocad be the better solution.

I have found out since that on Heathrow T5 they used Architectural Desktop but I have also heard that they had problems. This was in 2003 though and maybe the software has improved since.

[Dwight]

So you mean that you'll be second-guessing your paid consultant [who has access to all the information you can provide] because of what a bunch of strangers on a forum say [without them having any knowledge of your operation or your management challenge]?

[Anonymous]

Dwight wrote:
So you mean that you'll be second-guessing your paid consultant [who has access to all the information you can provide] because of what a bunch of strangers on a forum say [without them having any knowledge of your operation or your management challenge]?

Yes.

I want to make an informed decision on a strategic level. At the end of the day I will be responsible if the drawings are issued late and not the paid consultant. Once we made a strategic decision on which route seems best the consultants have to come up with a detailed solution.

In cad everyone is bias, like football fans... we all have our favourites. That does not necessarily mean that it is the best choice.

I also find that most forums are an equal or better resource than a single expert.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

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