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...

[owen]

monkeybrain wrote:
Very interesting. I have printed it and will present it today hopefully.

You must always consider who commissioned the survey. There was a BIM survey done a few years back commissioned by Bentley - and they specifically told the surveyor to leave ArchiCAD out (as its inclusion would have shown Microstation in distant 3rd place rather than as the only option other than Autodesk Revit. The survey is available at AECBytes)

Nonetheless I don't doubt its validity, it at least covers all the major options out there. Very interesting (and surprising), particularly Fig 2 where the only category AutoCAD & ADT outdo the BIM competition is in collaboration - understandable given nearly 60% of the market is using the same 'DWG-native' application, and the other programs can all Import-Export DWG fairly well. 3 key areas which have traditionally been AutoCAD strengths (at least according to its proponents) - Ease of Use, Construction Documentation Production and Drawing Coordination - show it lagging at around 50-60% satisfaction vs 80-85% for ArchiCAD/Revit.

So i wonder when if ever this survey is going to see the light of day over at that Autodesk mouthpiece AECBytes?