In the era of 2D CAD, many firms invested in custom tools and development staff to write and maintain them. A firm's overall experience varied in terms of the success of this investment and just about everyone has a story to tell about being burned from spending money developing custom tools. However a number of market forces are coming into play that continue to drive the need to customize the Revit® software platform, and the question is, Do you rely entirely on third-party software or go back down the road of customization? This class explores the benefits of investing in the development of custom tools for your firm, and shows how Revit is really different this time for those who have a horror story to tell. This class looks at the tools Stantec has developed in the last year and the return on investment we have already seen. We also examine our overall strategy and approach to development.

For several years, Stantec has maintained a software stack used to extract data from Revit software for various purposes. Most recently, this was in support of a benchmarking effort to collect standardized, normalized data from our models for reporting and analysis by project type and sector. In this scenario, users must “submit” their data after they have a QA check. Autodesk Data Exchange and APIs present a method to standardize the data extraction process and give control to the end user in regards to what data is exported for downstream use. This process removes the compute from the local desktop and reduces the complexity of the internal code base. Using Microsoft Azure as a data pipeline, we move the data traffic off the corporate network (LAN, WAN, VPN, and ISP). This class will discuss our development of a solution that maximizes the Autodesk Forge Data APIs. In addition to benchmarking, we’ll touch on some of the other areas where we have experimented with the tooling, including as part of our digital twin project.

Model health, model checks, model specifications. Pass, fail, scoring: why, how, what, where! This course will discuss what Stantec has been doing in terms of model health checks, model scoring, model specification checks, and our current state of building out a database to hold the information. We will dig into how we got to where we are currently, as well as future plans. We will particularly look at graph databases and cloud storage as more flexible solutions that can better handle the data and types of queries that interest us. In addition, since we know that not everyone has in-house development teams or Stantec’s breadth, we will look at the various platforms that are now commercially available that can be used to achieve similar results.

In the last 2 years, Revit®-based software has added a number of features that make it even more important to maintain a solid company template that can help to ensure high-quality, consistent documents and data. Yet at the same time projects are constantly evolving along with your standards, or your firm is so large that a single template can't fit all that you need. This class examines some of the key feature changes in Revit, their impact on how your project teams work, workflows for how to make sure project teams can get the latest standards, and a review of some simple API utilities that can make it even easier for users to fully use the benefits of the project template you've worked so hard to build.

With increasing focus on computation and data-driven solutions, architects and designers need to become more comfortable with data manipulation and preparation. One of the biggest risks that comes from the increased use of tools such as Dynamo is that a large amount of data manipulation is defined in the scripts themselves. This locks the data business logic into the script, which is accessible by only a subset of users. We have found that, with large projects, it’s better to utilize datacentric tools for formatting and manipulation prior to feeding the data into Dynamo. This affords the possibility that the final data set can be used to drive multiple outputs. In this class, we will focus on the key attributes of a good data process, using a recent project as an example. We will take you through the cleaning process, as well as the script development in Dynamo and the graphic production process in Revit software that was complimentary to other data-visualization tools. We’ll also review the decision-making process that went into our choice between using Revit or FormIt software.

With the release of the BIM 360 Design Collaboration module, a variety of opportunities are open to project teams with respect to how they control the information flow between different participants. Understanding the flow of publish, package, share, and consume is just the beginning. Understanding the nuances of the permissions system lets you connect your linked Revit files to each other and to other data types in ways that go beyond the strict rules imposed by the system's default behaviors. We will walk you through the most-restrictive (default) approach, and then address strategies regarding how to make the permission system work for you, and how to integrate non-Revit design team members using Desktop Connector or the Forge platform. Beyond how to use the system, we will also address the consequences for consultants engaged in the environment via their clients. What are the implications for third parties when they’re asked to participate in what is effectively a “low-trust” environment over which they have no direct control?

The evolution of Collaboration for Revit, now BIM 360 Design software, is a hot topic this year. This roundtable will present various questions and ideas for discussion as a companion to the various lectures that are on the same topic. What is different, and what is the same? What are the favorite or most challenging features? How do we best collaborate in this new platform? Are different approaches relevant depending on the project? Is the experience different based on project role? What are the lessons learned, best practices, and ideas for future evolution? Come discuss and learn from the collective experiences of a group.