stories 2012

[Pete (STZ)]

we have tried 3 projects in the past 12-14 months in full BIM using VW2011....everything from a two storey house alts and adds, 12 storey 165 unit apartment building and development of 5 town houses and villas running into the same problems as you christian - stuffing around with wall and floor junctions, then an engineer changes the slab profile or we move a wall and have to do it all again....

Doing 1:100 plans and elevations and 1:50 sections (using them as a base to draw over....

After all of this and experiencing all the annoyances we have with creating the model, I have been looking very seriously at Revit and Archicad and had many interrogations with 'experts' and done my own test projects using the trial version...

Result: Revit is the far superior modeller - even for simple projects, ArchiCAD wins for getting the stuff out, project setup, interface, Revit wins on compatibility with other consultants (many who are moving to Revit from ACAD).

As for vectorworks - nothing beats it for making communication easy - pity it is so bloody hard to get it to work... it needs the constraint locks of Revit, and the teamwork of Archicad, and the section (both vertical and horizontal) settings (to control both lineweights AND depth of cut of both AC and R....storeys that work (preferably like Revit) then perfecto!... oh and vector patterns.

P

[Guest]

Its all about Economic Cost, mate a VW Structural Engineer could Bim Apartments or BIM Resource Mining Projects... When I stuff around with the Slab on multistorey apartments it costs the client $10K a day (in rent) on the other hand a 120 TPH Gold plant costs the client $10m a day (gross profit....Havent you noticed theres a Resource/Mining Boom...)NNA should be focusing their product towards General BIM Engineering...IMO,Stories can wait a little while.

[Tom G.]

There are over 6500 views of this thread and I take that to mean there is either a high level of interest in BIM OR there is a high level of frustration in that there is no discussion anywhere within on the topic of the thread title: Stories.

Tom

[VincentCuclair]

Or both......

[Christiaan]

... vectorworks ... needs ... the teamwork of Archicad...

We had this CPD the other day entiled "BIM - Your Next Step", which is basically an intro to BIM in the context of Vectorworks:

http://www.ribaproductselector.com/Docs/3/27633/external/CPD27633.pdf

It was useful in that it highlighted a different strategy we could use to transition to BIM (i.e. go for the low hanging fruit first by using as many BIM tools as possible in 2D, rather than jumping in the deep end of 3D).

However, in terms of 3D BIM, we were also told that VW doesn't have a teamwork server because you only need one person working on the model. Which doesn't bode well for the modernisation of VW team work capabilities.

I accept that we don't need a teamwork server in the context of the utopian idea of a single model shared between consultants but I don't accept it in the context of working on a project within a practice.

I can't work out whether NV and their marketing apparatus actually believe that you only need one person working on a model or whether they're actually working on a solution and just spinning this line in the mean time because they don't feel like they can admit they're lacking a crucial feature.

[Patrick Fritsch]

TOO MUCH VERSATILITY OR JUST NOT ENOUGH CLARITY?...YOU PICK!

Ya know back on this Stories issue, as example of confusing look at a basic thing such as wall heights, it can be set/modified via any of the following;

-Layer settings

-Default Story Layers dialog box

-Wall styles preferences dialog box

We can input different numbers everywhere but it's not clear which setting overrides another or is simply cumulative...not clear or too versatile? You Pick!

Here's another one.

The default Stories "Names" vs the "Level types" in the "default story Layers" Dialogue box; Whats the difference? their named the same in the out of the box software.

Also,

When you give these Level types a name such as "Floor" or "Slab" , you'd think you could tell me if I'm going to be drawing the Top or Bottom of Slab when I'm going to be using the slab tool, no, I have to guess.

Now that I got that off my chest,

I THINK THE PROGRAMS FUNCTIONALITY IS THERE, BUT IT'S ALL ABOUT SEMANTICS that the program engineers need to get their head around and then explain it to us or even better make it so clear and versatile that I don't need this forum to be able to use the function.