BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes 1

BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes

2 BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes

GraphisoftVisit the Graphisoft website at http://www.graphisoft.com for local distributor and product availability information.BIM Curriculum Lecture NotesCopyright 2009 by Graphisoft, all rights reserved. Reproduction, paraphrasing or translation without express prior written permission is strictly prohibited.TrademarksArchiCAD, Virtual Building and Virtual Building Solutions are trademarks of Graphisoft.All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.

BIM Lecture 5: CollaborationBIM LECTURE 5: COLLABORATIONTopics Internal Collaboration Office Organization TeamWork Hotlinks Complex ProjectsCollaboration is essential for making the project team function and moving projects forward as rapidly as possible. Today well talk about how the advanced BIM programs support communication and project sharing in the architects office.

COLLABORATION IN THE OFFICEAn essential component that allows architects to do their job is communication. A key factor is how running projects are shared between the team members. Effective collaboration techniques are able to adapt to the project team size and the office organization. Industry-leader BIM applications offer various solutions for project sharing that can be used alone or in combination.

OFFICE ORGANIZATION: SMALL OFFICEBefore we go into more details about project sharing, lets have a look at the typical organizational hierarchy of architectural offices. The first example shows a small office with about 4-6 architects. As seen on the chart, there are two independent project teams with 2 architects and 2 draftsmen working in each. Due to the relatively small firm size and the generally limited-size projects, informal communication is sufficient to handle project coordination issues in most cases. The typical problem for offices of this size is that they cant afford a full-time CAD and IT manager, so somebody in the office has to tackle these problems part-time, which naturally decreases that persons productivity.

OFFICE ORGANIZATION: LARGE OFFICEThe large office depicted in this picture employs more than 20 architects, independent design and visualization teams, and full-time CAD and IT managers. The biggest challenge for these firms is to automate the sharing of large projects and to ensure the adoption of office standards within the whole office team.Organization 4 project Teams Three projects run in parallel (one big project) Two project teams are working on a big project under the supervision of a project director Each project team contains 5-10 people Full-time CAD and IT managers Independent design and Visualization Team supports the project architects1 BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes

BIM Lecture 5: CollaborationProblems Very strict CAD and IT standards are required Project sharing in big design teams is difficult Continuous communication between the design team and the project teams is necessary

INTERNAL COLLABORATION-BIMAdvanced BIM programs offer a number of methods for sharing the BIM project. These solutions can be used effectively in both small and large firms. The two most common project-sharing methods are the Teamwork approach and the use of hotlinked files.

THE TEAMWORK CONCEPTThe ArchiCAD Teamwork (TW) concept provides an effective and integrated solution for sharing BIM data among project team members. Details of the TW approach are explained on the accompanying figure. The keystone of this concept is that a central file contains the complete and up-to-date BIM model. Team members work on local copies and regularly send and receive changes between the central file and the local copies. Furthermore, users can work only on dedicated workspaces, thus avoiding project coordination problems.BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes 2

BIM Lecture 5: CollaborationEVALUATION OF TEAMWORKTeamwork has many advantages over other project-sharing methods. The efficiency of this technology has been tested on many large projects in the past 10 years. Teamwork offers a secure, organized, transparent and controllable project-sharing solution for architects. On the following slides well introduce some of the key features of this technology.Benefits

Effective:Team members can work on the same project simultaneously

Secure:No overlapping workspaces; Team members cant modify or accidentally delete the others work

Organized:Team members have dedicated roles and rights

Transparent:Team members can check the actual status of the project at any time

Controllable:Team leaders can revise the changes made by the project team

Limitations

Team members cant send or receive changes simultaneously The CAD manager has to set up a schedule for sending and receiving timesTeam Member Roles

Teamwork members have dedicated roles and rights while working on the project. Five role options are available when signing in to a project: administrator, team leader, teammate, mark-up and view only. The rights of each role are listed below. Administrator

coordinates the team and first share the Teamwork file so that the team members can sign in to it Team Leader

is the person responsible for the project Teammate

is any team member working on any part of the shared project.

Mark-uponly adds corrections or highlights elements that require checking or modification by other Teammates

View Onlyis able to access the shared project through the network but not allowed to make changes

WORKSPACE DEFINITIONBefore signing in to a project, team members are requested to reserve a workspace for themselves. Teamwork doesnt allow overlapping workspaces, so each user has to work on different parts of the project. 3 BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes

BIM Lecture 5: CollaborationWorkspaces can be reserved using a variety of methods to allow maximum freedom for project sharing: Stories Layers Selection Marquee Drawings (sections, elevations etc.) LayoutsBIM Curriculum Lecture Notes 4

BIM Lecture 5: CollaborationSEND & RECEIVE CHANGESUsers must regularly send and receive changes to keep the Teamwork file and the local copies up to date. Changes made by any team member are sent to the shared Team Project by choosing the Send & Receive Changes command, or (optionally) when signing out. Changes sent to the Team Project do not appear automatically in other Teammates copies. In order to see changes made by another Teammate, they too have to choose Receive Changes.

MORE TEAMWORK FUNCTIONSTeamwork offers many additional services for architects: Password protection when signing in to a project Revision history Optional comments about each change Changes can be reviewed by the team leader before sending them to the central file

THE HOTLINKED FILES CONCEPTWe have now looked at Teamwork as a collaboration method, and now we shall look at another basic project-sharing solution/internal collaboration method, which is the concept of hotlinked files. This approach allows you to develop and store parts of the main project file -also called as host- in a separate external file that is often referred as source or module file. The project file (host) includes only a reference (hotlink) to the content of the source or module file. Modifications that have been made to the source files will be represented in the host file automatically. The project file can contain several instances of the same hotlinked module that makes this method ideal for managing repetitive elements in a project. A common example of this approach is when the typical room of a hotel is saved in a module file that is inserted as hotlinked module in the main (hotel) project file several times. Whenever the hotel rooms need to be modified only one single module file has to be updated and the changes will be automatically reflected in all the hotel rooms in the main project files.Highlights of the hotlinked file concept: Parts of the main project (host)can be stored in external files (source or module) Whenever the content of a source/module file is changed, the modifications automatically appear in all instances of

the hotlinked modules placed in the host file. This method can be found (with various names) in almost all CAD and BIM applications. Hotlinked modules in

ArchiCAD or external references (Xrefs) in AutoCAD are all based on the same approach.

EVALUATION OF THE HOTLINKED FILE METHODThe hotlink solution has advantages and disadvantages compared to the Teamwork method. The concept itself is easy to understand and can be used with any kind of project. It can be very effective when multiple instances of the same elements are used in a project (e.g. the rooms in a hotel). However, the Hotlinked file method cannot solve the project coordination problems of an architectural firm since the project owner doesnt get any feedback about the changes made in the module files. Furthermore, the location and name of the source files are critical to project consistency, so this method requires additional file management efforts by the project team leader.5 BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes

BIM Lecture 5: CollaborationBenefits

Hotlinks can be used effectively to manage repetitive elements in a project (e.g. rooms in a hotel) Hotlinked files can also refer to other hot-links. That is called a nested module. Hotlinks can be used to subdivide a larger building into smaller, easier-to-handle logical partsLimitations

Owner of the host file doesnt have automatic control over the content of the hotlinked files Changes to the hotlinked file can cause conflicts in the host project Moving or deleting the hotlinked file will break the hotlink in the host

COMPLEX PROJECTSComplex or large projects require special collaboration solutions. The previously discussed project-sharing methods alone cant solve all the problems raised by big or complicated buildings. Teamwork is limited by the send and receive time, while hotlinks are not able to solve the collaboration issues like overlapping workspaces or concurrent editing model elements. There is no ultimate solution for these problems. The successful collaboration approach should be adequate for the office organization and the type of project. As a rule, large projects should be divided into smaller, easier-to-handle logical parts with a clever combination of Teamwork and hotlink solutions. The slide shows one possible project-sharing scenario. In this example a multi-story office building is in the construction design phase. The building consists of two towers. From the very early stage a 3D model of the whole building was built, containing only those elements that were essential for visualization and conceptual design. Based on this model two Teamwork files were created (one for each towers) that served as the basis of the construction documentation. The Teamwork files are referring to external hotlinked modules and Xrefs such as column grids, land surveys and other consultant's drawings. The documentation is stored in two layout book files in order reduce the size of the Teamwork projects and to allow the project documentation team to work parallel with the designers/architects.BIM Curriculum Lecture Notes 6

BIM Curriculum Lecture NotesBIM Lecture 5: CollaborationCollaboration in the OfficeOffice Organization: Small OfficeOffice Organization: Large OfficeInternal Collaboration-BIMThe Teamwork ConceptEvaluation of TeamworkWorkspace DefinitionSend & Receive ChangesMore Teamwork FunctionsThe Hotlinked Files ConceptEvaluation of the Hotlinked File MethodComplex Projects

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