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IPD Workflow and Documentation


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Hi everyone,

I'm taking for a spin all the BIM softwares so I can decide which one to use. I have worked with Revit and Archicad already, now I'd like to see if Vectorworks isn't a better solution.

I don't want to start a thread (mainly because this is my first post), by asking for comparison of these software. I know very well what Revit and Archicad are capable and what are their limitations.

I'm actually here because of Vectorworks it self. It's rendering seams really good, easy and fast everything that a BIM software needs so it can generate the documentation for a projects' contest. I've also seen that many people produced really good (2D) drawings with this program, but then I saw that most people using vw was working on a 2D CAD-like workflow like many were doing years before with Archicad.

For me to use a BIM/IPD system is to know that the end product will need to do correct documentations. The idea of modeling in 3D to get correct quantity is a fact, but from this 3D model we should all be able to extract the 2D documentation being it a floor plan, a section or model elevations (and etc.).

After moving away from AutoCAD world and entering into Revit world, I've learned its workflow (gave up 3 times before I got it right :) ) and then I was able to get good results. Later I tried Archicad and even though I did gave up again 3 times until I got used to the layer combination idea I did got good results either. But now I'm going to try VW 2011, and it's workflow is completely different (the naming of the base concepts make it a little confusing in the begining - calling layer a level and class a category). This is not bad, just different.

The reason I'm posting in here is because I got stuck on 3 issues, all related to documenting the project:

1) Let's say we are creating a 2 story height residence, the first level will have the height of 3 meters and the second 3 meters as well. But let's say that in the living room we are going to make that space double height, so this wall instead of being 3 meters height will be 6 meters height. When we are going to generate the floor plans views we need to add layers to these floor plans. The problem comes here, the view should not be correlated to the layers but to elevations of the whole model. So when I extract the 2 floor plan the walls that surround the living room which are locate at the first level, but with 3 meters height appearing at the second level, it doesn't appear on the 2 floor plan because there we will show only the mod-floor-2 layer

2) Another thing is the fact that I didn't found any view range. By convention here every thing that is above your floor plan showed at the view should come as dashed and double points line representation and below your level should come as dashed. Archicad and Revit allowed me through a configuration tab to define the view range of a level so it could calculate this extra projection lines to the view, but I'm not finding anything similar on VW. For example, lets say we have a building which has a marquise on the second floor, now this marquise projects outside of the first floor boundary, so it should be projected as dashed with double points on my first floor plan document, the same would have with a roof that projects outside of the building projection.

3) Sections is a common concept of documenting not only architecture, and viewports is a concept that I learned at AutoCAD when dealing with paperspaces. Sections, at least when talking about technical drawing (architectural drawing being one inside this category), is represented with a thick line of what is cut and a lighter line to what is after and even lighter for anotations and other things. Vectorworks seems to create a new class to put the cut representation on section layer viewports (SLVP), but lets say we have a wall, I would cut this wall and then the cut representation should have a thick line, puting it on the cut class will make not difference as it is not represented, but then we want the composition of the wall appears, so we have to do more configurations. After a while I got the section to represent the wall-compositions, but the core layer of the wall (concrete, brick and other things) had the correct representation with a thick line, but its finishes (paiting, tiles and other things) were represented as thin lines. Other thing is that, what was not being cut was not being represented as thin lines, but yet if I had put then on another class it would but this would make the extra representations that the original class had like colors for demolish and construct plans that I don't want to lose.

So the whole issues I'm trying to understand in vectorworks is how do I correctly make the views out of the BIM model to put them on a sheet layers without having to fix lines and other things by hand.

Even though I know some people discuss that the BIM workflow is not about generating 2D drawings automatic, the fact of having a complete 3D model with lots of informations, the basic thing people do expect from it is to generate the 2D directly since all the informations are there (or maybe they should be there). The fact is that the 2D drawings being updated from the BIM model automatically is what makes our work better, no longer in need to lose time to deal with line widths or with line representation and to actually focus on doing projects better with better solutions.

The first time I actually did a project in Revit, it was not the rendering, neither the way of doing objects that attracted, it was the fact that I got able to fix problems that the BIM have let me see that 2D workflow would not, and the fact that I had time to think about these problems without losing time of fixing the representation of all the drawings. By the way, I think that BIM products (the IFC model and other things) are not going to be valorized soon, because the exchanging of informations is still based on Autodesk DWG among professionals and using plotted 2D drawing papers among construction phases, until everyone gets a tablet device capable of the BIM softwares so they can pass the IFCs and check it in the middle of the street, IFC will not yet be the biggest concept, and until then the 2D documentation and Drawings will be the default exchange, so BIM can be a lot of things, but for me it has to produce at least the automatic drawings, for correct (nowadays) exchange format (2D).

Sorry for the long post, but how can I take advantage of Vectorworks IPD workflow allowing me to create automatic documentations?

(Using Mac OSX 10.6.7 with VW 2011)

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  • 4 months later...

Diogo, the problem is that VW isn't a specialist architectural BIM tool but a jack of all trades 2D and 3D modelling tool. As a result we're faced with a high level of abstraction in comparison to ArchiCAD/Revit. We're also faced with quite a bit of manual work?sometimes inordinate amounts?to configure and cajole it into outputting what we'd expect from a specialist architectural BIM tool. Often you just won't be able to do something without someone telling you that you need to draw or model it manually.

While VW is slowly being hacked in an effort to keep up I've given up hope of it ever reaching feature parity with the likes of ArchiCAD and Revit, especially when it comes to intelligent model creation and automated output from the model. For whatever reason the VW development team just don't seem to see this as critical to their user base. Instead they see the primary component of BIM as being interoperability, sharing geometry and data with other members of the team. This has been a huge strategic mistake in my opinion.

VW would be far better placed in the market today if development had concentrated on the ability to create intelligent models and automatically output traditional 2D data from the model.

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Hi Diogo, all those issues you have raised are valid but can be resolved by planning the model differently (as Christian as pointed out)

1) If the first floor has a wall, and the second floor also have a wall, then just draw them as two different walls

2) You can overcome this by doing an extra 2D layer with Dotted lines that you can turn on and off. But I agree that this is very frustrating!

3) You can show the wall components in Section, but it takes a long while you get all the wall components set up correctly.

And Christian, I agree with you on that may key elements is missing from Vectorworks. As an ARCHITECTURAL tool, some important tools that Diogo pointed out sorely missing.

Furthermore, working on a model as a team presents a nightmare.

ArchiCAD has many good points, but it has a bad interface for 2D drafting, and is more expensive.

Revit does't run on macs.

So Vectorworks, rather being the best choice, is the product that happens to fill in a particular void in the market. We'd love to see it being developed as a more meaningful collaborative tool.

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