Bricsys Newsletter Q1 - 2013 Welcome to the Bricsys Newsletter Our goal is to make this a quarterly newsletter The road to BIM: Bricsys is committed to explore the limits of Bricsys Strategy for Mechanical Design: Bricsys’ answers to the to provide you with what can be done for BIM within the familiar dwg environment. different MCAD challenges with 3D direct modeling in BricsCAD. interesting news about the CAD market in general as well as the BricsCAD platform and the solutions from our Third Party development partners. The Bricsys Team The BricsCAD re-branding Artisan for BricsCAD, 2012 International The World’s Oldest CAD and miscellaneous creating realistic images Conference summarized by Operator uses BricsCAD. click to © 2013 by Bricsys updates. from BricsCAD models. the CAD analyst community. navigate ! Bricsys Newsletter AECQ1 CORNER - 2013 The road to BIM By Erik de Keyser Over the last several years Bricsys evolved from an alternative CAD provider In a BIM all AEC disciplines add their specific info to the model in order to: to a leader in bringing about the next generation dwg environment unifying deliver a digital representation of the complete building as conceived, 2D drawing and 3D direct modeling. While there still are many challenges including all the technical disciplines needed for making the building ahead on the road to deliver top-notch solutions for the mechanical market, operational when physically constructed (design phase) we are now ready for our next challenge in the AEC space. hand-over this digital information to the contractors for construction of Several of us at Bricsys have been involved with BIM in the past, developing the building, add information about modifications along the construction TriForma for MicroStation in the 90s and Architecturals for the dwg space in process and make the BIM “As Build” (construction phase) the 00s. When analyzing the many BIM solutions currently on the market we use the “As Build” BIM to operate the building during its life cycle believe that with our experience and technologies we can add substantial and keep it updated with modifications along that lifecycle (facilities value to the AEC market in general and for dwg users in particular. management phase). What is BIM? Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition. Bricsys Newsletter AECQ1 CORNER - 2013 In the design phase the BIM concept starts with the conceptual design of the Looking at today’s AEC market, it is clear that BIM is here to stay. architect, and gradually, as the design matures, more technical engineering At Bricsys we are actively working on two elements of the overall solution: disciplines become involved. Bit by bit other disciplines take over the the basic BIM technology with our BricsCAD BIM Module which will be responsibility about particular aspects of the building (e.g. structural made available for an extended beta over the coming weeks engineer for the structural analysis) and become the author/owner of their information. In a BIM the different players have to share (limited to view) the collaborative platform for the management of BIM models, for which their work with the other players, so that together they can avoid collisions we will use the cloud-based Chapoo Premium service and deliver the virtual digital model before construction starts. This is how BIM delivers major cost savings! Just as we have done for CAD software over the last decade, Bricsys is committed to explore and push the limits of what can be done for BIM For each engineering discipline there is a wide range of BIM software within the familiar dwg environment. More details to follow in future from several vendors and based on different file formats. To manage the newsletters, stay tuned. different models there is a set of neutral standard file formats such as IFC and AECxml. When converted to such a standard BIM format, the models can be compared, matched, and synchronized in order to identify collision problems and solve them before construction. To manage all this, the building team needs some kind of model repository accessible to all participants. The repository environment needs to provide the required access and workflow functions so that modifications applied to any of the models ultimately leads to synchronized common results. This process requires cooperation between major contractors as well as involvement of smaller sub-contractor with limited IT knowledge, and as such can best be provided by a cloud-based solution with zero installation hurdles and a seamless user experience. Bricsys Newsletter MCADQ1 CORNER - 2013 Bricsys Strategy for Mechanical Design By Dmitry Ushakov Automotive, aerospace, machinery, shipbuilding, rail transport, electronics, designing complex mechanical healthcare, white goods – all these industries are heavy users of Mechanical products – such as vehicles and Computer-Aided Design (MCAD) software. MCAD is one of the most their components – because sophisticated kinds of software with a 40-year history of outstanding they lack many of the important scientific research and excellent software engineering. However, all functions commonly found in mainstream as well as specialized MCAD products (CATIA, Creo, NX, Inventor, today’s 3D MCAD software. Solid Edge, SolidWorks) share one common drawback – they use proprietary file formats and do not work natively with standard .dwg files. Another challenge of existing MCAD products is rooted in MCAD challenges the fact that they implement Worldwide, there hardly exist engineering companies that do not use .dwg the “history-based parametric files to store and exchange 2D and 3D CAD data. Twelve million users of modeling” approach to 3D dwg-based CAD applications rely on the familiar environment implementing design. For engineers used to the well-known concepts of the model and paper spaces, viewports, design in 2D for many years database entities, block references, grip editing, and command line input. it is very difficult to adopt this The environment is easily extended and customized with hundreds of 3rd method, whose main drawback party products, helping users to speed up their design and make their is the impossibility of direct manipulation of geometry. Indeed, users of drawings compatible with different national standards. history-based systems operate parameters, which are used to generate the geometry. This is a totally different approach from the one used in the Users and companies can choose from different implementations of the dwg 2D drawing environment, where users can directly manipulate geometric environment – software products such as AutoCAD, DraftSight, IntelliCAD, entities (lines, arcs, polylines, splines) and their sub-entities by simply and many others. However, none of these software packages is suitable for dragging them and directly changing their shapes. Bricsys Newsletter MCADQ1 CORNER - 2013 Complicated design methodology is not the only drawback of history-based MCAD solutions. An additional problem arises from the need to work with and modify multi-CAD and legacy CAD data – imported from other CAD systems or from neutral CAD formats. Indeed, design history can’t be fully translated from one CAD format to another because each CAD system uses its unique set of 3D modeling functions – with different parameters and semantics. To address the problems of complicated design methodology of history- based systems and their inability to work with multi-CAD data, MCAD vendors recently added “direct modeling” software products to their portfolios. This however led to the next challenge: how to express design intent in a history-free model? Design intent of a CAD model can be thought of as a set of rules that defines admissible modifications of its geometry. In history-based systems it is expressed by the design history, which is of course absent in direct modeling solutions. So traditional history-based systems can’t be replaced with direct modeling ones, the latter can only As a result, most leading MCAD vendors end up offering their customer supplement the former. three different kinds of software: a parametric MCAD solution to design in 3D, a direct modeler to work with multi-CAD data, and a 2D drafting software to work with .dwg files natively. Engineering companies are therefore in the unenviable position to have to buy licenses, install and support software, and train their employees for three different CAD products. “An additional problem arises from the need to work with And whereas the extra costs this involves can maybe be borne by large and modify multi-CAD and legacy CAD data – imported from companies, this is definitely not the case for Small and Medium Sized (SME) other CAD systems or from neutral CAD formats.” companies running on tight budgets. Bricsys Newsletter MCADQ1 CORNER - 2013 Bricsys’ answers 2002 Is there a way to stop this unhealthy growth of CAD-related IT expenses for engineering companies, to maybe even bring them down several notches? BricsCAD, a full-scale dwg environment fully compatible with Is there a unified software solution for 2D drawing and 3D design based on AutoCAD through the command set and other end-user the familiar dwg environment? Is there a design methodology that combines features. BricsCAD is also a powerful platform for third party the advantages of both history-based parametric modeling and direct developers, who can easily port their applications using a modeling, and overcomes their drawbacks? broad suite of standard APIs. At Bricsys, we do believe there is! 2011 3D direct modeling in BricsCAD. Our approach is called variational direct modeling and uses 3D geometric and dimensional constraints to express design intent of any 3D model whether designed natively in BricsCAD or imported from any other CAD format.