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Construction Detailing and VW BIM


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I have always used and valued VWs' 3D capabilities for design, design studies and presentations (w RenderWorks or Artlantis) but have rarely used the tools in a truly BIM way. The 3D work is separate from the actual working drawings. We use some of the program's BIM capabilities ie the wall tool and door and window tools, worksheets - but usually just for 2D purposes.

It seems undeniable that BIM is the future - and that the future is here. I'm preparing to use a small institutional project - a little school addition - as a test VW BIM project. I've been reviewing all the info I can find including what is on the VWSS site. I'm aware from numerous postings on the subject that there are opinions as to the limitations of VW's BIM abilities, but I am surprised at how many tools and techniques there are that have been around for years that I have not been aware of.

What I really do not understand is how, in the VW BIM universe, we are to create construction details... In the on-line presentations and tutorials I see lots of 1:100 scale plans and elevations - and somewhat generic sections - but little construction detailing that is linked to the model... This seems like a pretty obvious (deliberate?) omission.

I've poked around in an exhaustive (brilliantly produced) ArchiCad tutorial package assembled by that company to understand how it does BIM and was frankly a bit surprised to see that there details seem to be given greater information by using a 2D drawing technique overlaid onto 3D section cuts (granted some of the 2D ArchiCad tools appear to resize, adjust automatically to model changes)... Is this how it is imagined in VW? 2D details? Are we still obliged to manually update the detailed 2D info every time the model changes?

Can anyone offer insight into this question? Resources?

I wish VW would post some tutorials, recommended practice info on this subject - since a building project is largely communicated thru large scale details...

As an aside - although there is much to love about VW, I've always found the how-to documentation rather sketchy and difficult to follow. I know the program is capable of much more than I use it for. The program's big advantage - that it can be used in many different ways - is also one of its drawbacks: It isn't always clear what the most effective techniques and practices are. The advent of the on-line film clips is an improvement on the frequently "opaque" written information available - but that said, a thorough, consistent project-based set of training films - not unlike the ArchiCad example - would be very useful.

Garth Norbraten

Toronto

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For various reasons, including making sure we have very clean easy-to-read details, we stick with 2D for details. We tend to draw our details at 1:5 in colour on A3s.

We use the model as a background when starting a detail to ensure we're correctly co-ordinated with the model but that's it.

I think details derived directly from the model with little user intervention will eventually become the norm but I think that's a wee way off yet.

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I have recently started doing more and more detailing from models but it requires some special techniques that I hope are improved with new tools in the near future.

We do primarily residential so the BIM requirement is not needed. My goal is merely drawing efficiency. I find myself exploiting the tools as much as I can to get the individual components into the model. Here are a few examples:

- The co-planer nature of the Extrude Along Path command allows me to wrap crowns and fascia's and gutters easily around my eaves and/or rakes. Good for details and elevations.

- taking my design level roof object drawn first to represent the entire roof assembly and full overhang and pretty quickly duplicating it in place and changing thickness and heights to create a series of stacked and properly classed roof objects each representing a component of the roof assembly and each with overhangs set as needed per component. (hopefully this gets automated soon in an upgrade)

- setting my sheathing and siding wall components only to extend down to overlap the floor framing and up past the truss area to the roof deck.

- using class overrides in viewports to achieve different hatches and line types (for footings for instance) whether you are creating a foundation plan or elevation (dash no hatch), an overall building section (generic solid), or detail (solid line with hatch)

These and many other aspects allow me to get reasonably detailed section cuts through the model. More and more as the tools improve and I learn to use the them better and develop these techniques I'm finding the need for 2d overlay to be less and less. Yes, there is a long way to go but using the Linear Material, Detail Wood Cut, and Batt Insulation tools in a quick trace is much better than starting from scratch or even tracing a model shell with no components at all.

Another sorely needed advancement is a tool to take a cropped viewport showing a foundation to roof wall section and introducing breaks so you can shrink it onto the page. Right now I have no choice but to duplicate the viewport for each break and adjust the crop for each one and then move the collection of viewports in place. Makes annotations a challenge. I use one overlay viewport for all the common scale detail annotation overlay on the same page for simplicity. I am longing for a special detail viewport that allows me to set the number of horizontal and vertical divisions along with the size of the breaks between the divisions and then the unwanted gaps would get automatically zipped out of the viewport. I believe Revit has this capability. A way to allow groups of common scale detail viewports to share a common annotation layer would be another welcome improvement.

My current method is somewhat tedious especially considering the section viewport regeneration time but it still seems better then other methods which include more 2d drafting and details with no connection to the changes that take place in the model.

BTW - I use DLVP's to get the model into a satellite file and generate the section detail viewports from there.

Joe

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  • 1 month later...

(..)I've poked around in an exhaustive (brilliantly produced) ArchiCad tutorial package assembled by that company to understand how it does BIM and was frankly a bit surprised to see that there details seem to be given greater information by using a 2D drawing technique overlaid onto 3D section cuts (granted some of the 2D ArchiCad tools appear to resize, adjust automatically to model changes)... Is this how it is imagined in VW? 2D details? Are we still obliged to manually update the detailed 2D info every time the model changes?

(..)

archicad details are 2d (with annoying fillings and single lines, many times multiplied where elements join), but you have always the possibility to rebuild from the model. there you but lose all additional revisions you did in 2d to the detail.

i find it fair, anyway. i (still) can't imagine any 3d detailing work - the execution drawings must be sent to the construction site.

and i could get by with such a method for vw details.

rob

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