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Digitalisation in Building Design: Graitec is an Effective Partner for BIM

Digitalisation in Building Design: Graitec is an Effective Partner for BIM

Customer challenge

For the planners and architects of buildings for healthcare and public property developers, the topic of BIM is less of unknown territory and more of a proven application for successful work. Whilst this is now the case for BFT Planung GmbH from Aachen, it wasn't always the case. A nationwide full-service provider with around 130 employees has been able to rely on the support of an experienced software partner. Graitec, an international developer of BIM software and Autodesk Platinum Partner, has been responsible for CAD support for the Aachen-based planners. From the start, the management of BFT was very open to the prospect of BIM. However, many support requests to the Graitec Helpdesk showed that AutoCAD alone no longer met the needs and requirements of the project teams. Therefore, a comprehensive analysis of the company's software usage was carried out.

Project goals

As Daniel Hoffmeister, sales manager at Graitec, remembers, "We then presented BFT with relevant Autodesk solutions and helped them find the right license for their needs." During this process, the existing IT infrastructure and the number of future CAD users were compared with the current license situation, then adapted accordingly. Hoffmeister recalls a solution was found: "We found the right tools for BFT with the Building Design Suite and the Infrastructure Design Suite. Gradually, we converted the existing licenses into suites, with Autodesk Revit for building design and Autodesk Civil 3D for civil engineering. These were later unified into the current AEC Collection. For the customer's best interests, we attached not only great importance to the selection of the correct tools, but also made sure to find the most cost-effective solution."

Solution

To introduce BFT employees to the new software, Graitec held various workshops on the latest solutions. BFT were able to choose the dates and venues, as well as the content that they needed. Over several months, the team was trained, with all users initially receiving an introductory course relevant to their specialist discipline. On top of this, Graitec also offered special advanced courses for so-called 'key' or 'power' users, for the Revit Family Editor and Revit Dynamo, for example. Fatiha Mouhsine-Lagribi, state-certified technician and BIM coordinator at BFT, told us about her training experience: "All of our BIM coordinators and modellers took part in the workshops. Initially, the transition from AutoCAD wasn't easy, especially for the employees who had been working with AutoCAD for a long time and who now had to familiarise themselves with the new 3D perspective, as well as the templates with many filters and settings."

Business outcome

Especially at the start, but still today, questions about new programme features and problems regularly arise. Therefore, the Graitec Helpdesk is essential for quickly resolving any issues. According to the BIM coordinator. To enable BFT to get the utmost use of Revit, they use the PowerPack for Revit, developed by Graitec. This plug-in offers various functions that simplify daily tasks in Revit, such as the dynamic link to Excel, where data exported from Revit can be edited and then reimported into Excel. When BFT started using Revit, it increased workload and required a pronounced learning process for everyone. The contracting authority also had no experience with BIM in this field, but they had appointed a BIM manager with whom Fatiha Mouhsine-Lagribi could exchange and consult.

Conclusion

Since then, the technician has been a committed Revit user. She particularly appreciates the clash detection work, which immediately reveals sources of error and the possibility of joint access for work on a project. There has now been an acceleration of many work processes in planning and execution. The overall coordination model also ensures that all project participants always have access to the latest version of the building model. BFT followed Autodesk's path into a subscription at a very early stage and was thus able to upgrade its Autodesk product portfolio cost-effectively. All their licenses contain complete BIM tools. In the next step, the users at BFT and the BIM specialists from Graitec are planning to introduce the BIM 360 platform further to improve the interaction between building and civil engineering and simplify communication with all project participants, especially external planning partners.

Project summary

    Duration & delivery

  • 10
  • 2021-10-09

    Autodesk solutions

  • Architecture
  • Engineering & Construction Collection
  • AutoCAD
  • BIM 360 Docs

    Services provided

  • Product Training
  • Technical Support
  • User Workshops & Community
  • System Implementation
  • Configuration & Deployment
  • System Integration

    Customer industry

  • Architecture, Engineering & Construction
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