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2021 - Material Control Over Cut


Tom Klaber

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On 10/2/2020 at 5:56 PM, Rick Berge said:

We think the pen is due to the context and purpose of the drawing and object. Very few places does the pen depend on the specific material ('concrete'); instead it's almost always the purpose ('component-structural').  This is how we were able to shrink the component classes down to 4-5 representing component's function, and why pen is not in the material itself.

@Rick BergeI can live with setting the line thickness per class, but my issue is that walls interfere with components in drawings. We would like to switch between a simple plan representation and a detailed one. That workflow does not work. We have our walls setup to be black/grey and having a thick outline. Our components have different line thicknesses, like you said with structural and cladding/insulation, but the wall line thickness always interferes here. We always have to change the line thickness back and forth for the walls. A script is only semi-helpful. Users tend to forget using it. We never have the case that we want to use simple walls in unison with components. It's one or the other. The software should react to it.

And so far I don't see materials helping us with that. Maybe it's also not the purpose. I feel like materials have been introduced because they also exist in the other bim authoring tools.

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3 hours ago, elepp said:

And so far I don't see materials helping us with that. Maybe it's also not the purpose. I feel like materials have been introduced because they also exist in the other bim authoring tools.

 

I think the main (or only) purpose of a global Material System

(which I asked for some years ago)

Is that you no more need to re-create your same Concrete Material

in any PIO's Component Dialogs again from scratch.

You had to workaround by duplicating an existing Wall Style to get

your previous Component settings, instead of creating a new Style.

(Keeping RW Texture Settings, which were always tedious to setup)

But that would not help if you need the previous Concrete Material

in a Slab or Column Style.

 

So I am pretty happy with VW Materials.

I am just not sure if setting Materials "by Class" Option will really help

to avoid mentioned limitations in plan creation control,

or if it is even related to new Materials or just a general VW limitation

in its Viewport+ Class overrides system.

 

Beside, for BIM itself, feeding Materials with Data and Costs may be useful.

While I am not 100% confident that it will list correct Volume counts,

if VW isn't even able to show correct Wall lengths for butted Wall connections.

(because preferring the lengths of the connections of Wall Center Lines)

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5 hours ago, elepp said:

With the growing demand for little bim and big bim, people have less and less time focusing on plan production. A proper bim project involves lots of information management. And the time it consumes in your daily business is growing. The only way to solve this is a standarized workflow that produces drawings automatically with minimal manual input from the architect.

This also creates the challenge to avoid standardized output, I see it happening with clients that they are starting to "modularize" their installations so that it is easier to set up a new project in less time (and lower costs) with less chances for errors. Standardization equals efficiency (=cost reduction) in this mindset. This inevitably means that different facilities will more and more become the same over time.

 

For architecture it will be interesting to see how this standardization on things will turn out, the worst case scenario could be that the construction company puts the standardized "Lego" building blocks together for the required functions and the architect gets to do the "window dressing".

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2 hours ago, zoomer said:

I think the main (or only) purpose of a global Material System

(which I asked for some years ago)

Is that you no more need to re-create your same Concrete Material

in any PIO's Component Dialogs again from scratch.

That seems to be one purpose of the materials, which imho is a good thing because you can create reusable standardized compound materials and put them into a library.

Then any PIO that uses materials can refer to these compound materials.

 

2 hours ago, zoomer said:

So I am pretty happy with VW Materials.

I am just not sure if setting Materials "by Class" Option will really help

to avoid mentioned limitations in plan creation control,

or if it is even related to new Materials or just a general VW limitation

in its Viewport+ Class overrides system.

This is something I wonder about too, but it seems to me that this is something that could be fixed for most situations by the VW developers as long as it is clear how things should behave.

 

2 hours ago, zoomer said:

Beside, for BIM itself, feeding Materials with Data and Costs may be useful.

While I am not 100% confident that it will list correct Volume counts,

Given the mechanical stuff I'm doing with BricsCAD I wouldn't say "may be useful" but "will be useful if not necessary", though costs should probably be left out as you can sort that out when exporting the data into a cost estimating program that has the actual pricing of the used (compound) materials, as long as you get proper material specifications, volumes, areas etc. into your exported data.

 

Correct volume/area/length etc. calculations is something that VW really should focus on if it turns out the results are not as they should be. If anything is "deadly" for cost estimates it are incorrect data.

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13 minutes ago, Art V said:

This is something I wonder about too, but it seems to me that this is something that could be fixed for most situations by the VW developers as long as it is clear how things should behave.

 

If I got that correct the problem for @_c_ was that "by Class" option in Materials

isn't available for all settings she needs (Line Weights and such ?)

So that should be solvable (?)

 

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18 minutes ago, zoomer said:

 

If I got that correct the problem for @_c_ was that "by Class" option in Materials

isn't available for all settings she needs (Line Weights and such ?)

So that should be solvable (?)

 

It seems to me that it should be solvable, the underlying code infrastructure is already there. Unless they wrote the code for materials in such a way that it would require a considerable rewrite of that code.

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5 hours ago, Art V said:

This also creates the challenge to avoid standardized output, I see it happening with clients that they are starting to "modularize" their installations so that it is easier to set up a new project in less time (and lower costs) with less chances for errors. Standardization equals efficiency (=cost reduction) in this mindset. This inevitably means that different facilities will more and more become the same over time.

 

For architecture it will be interesting to see how this standardization on things will turn out, the worst case scenario could be that the construction company puts the standardized "Lego" building blocks together for the required functions and the architect gets to do the "window dressing".

To an extend we all are already doing it. I think it's a level of degree when it comes to standardization. The most extrem I have seen so far is from Katerra: LINK

They provide a software for architects/developer that starts with site analysis, down to choosing your faucets.

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19 minutes ago, elepp said:

To an extend we all are already doing it. I think it's a level of degree when it comes to standardization. The most extrem I have seen so far is from Katerra: LINK

They provide a software for architects/developer that starts with site analysis, down to choosing your faucets.

This looks a lot like a PDMS with GIS attached for the site analysis and 3D for modelling. PDMS (e.g. Aveva) is used in the chemical and petrochemical industry to manage large facilities from start to end including maintenance and if wanted also construction, it is for practical purposes very similar to what data driven BIM as in your link is (going to be) for architecture.


The issue with such systems is that if it is not in the system it either needs to be added or it basically doesn't exist/isn't possible. It's a bit like having to work in a gated community with only materials etc. that are available on premise.

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15 hours ago, elepp said:

To an extend we all are already doing it. I think it's a level of degree when it comes to standardization. The most extrem I have seen so far is from Katerra: LINK

They provide a software for architects/developer that starts with site analysis, down to choosing your faucets.

 

Do they actually provide anything other than a video of an imaginary system that seems to bear little resemblance to reality?

 

As an architect it's great to see their idea of the "design process"

- draw polygon around site

- dump some buildings on it

- choose roof shape

- choose taps

- job done!

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On 10/5/2020 at 2:37 PM, Art V said:

This also creates the challenge to avoid standardized output, I see it happening with clients that they are starting to "modularize" their installations so that it is easier to set up a new project in less time (and lower costs) with less chances for errors. Standardization equals efficiency (=cost reduction) in this mindset. This inevitably means that different facilities will more and more become the same over time.

 

For architecture it will be interesting to see how this standardization on things will turn out, the worst case scenario could be that the construction company puts the standardized "Lego" building blocks together for the required functions and the architect gets to do the "window dressing".

I have a friend who’s been doing a lot of MEP consultancy in China + says the way they build out there is amazing in that things are incredibly organized + buildings go up incredibly quickly but that the process is systematized to such an extent that the buildings are virtually identical + highly inflexible. They will end up doing things (incorporating features) that are entirely unnecessary just because they come in the ‘kit’ for the type of building being constructed. This is just an anecdote + I'm not an architect but I found the idea of not only aesthetics being compromised by this approach but functionality as well fascinating: ending up for example with a bigger building than you actually needed simply because it was quicker/easier/cheaper to go ahead + build the bigger building than modify the design for what was actually needed.

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27 minutes ago, Tom W. said:

I have a friend who’s been doing a lot of MEP consultancy in China + says the way they build out there is amazing in that things are incredibly organized + buildings go up incredibly quickly but that the process is systematized to such an extent that the buildings are virtually identical + highly inflexible. They will end up doing things (incorporating features) that are entirely unnecessary just because they come in the ‘kit’ for the type of building being constructed. This is just an anecdote + I'm not an architect but I found the idea of not only aesthetics being compromised by this approach but functionality as well fascinating: ending up for example with a bigger building than you actually needed simply because it was quicker/easier/cheaper to go ahead + build the bigger building than modify the design for what was actually needed.

That sounds very much like it used to be in the soviet union. Here in Germany with have what's been called "Plattenbauten" in the former GDR. Highly standarized building systems, that are a pain to maintain. The gaps between indivual concrete parts were huge and had to be filled with bitumen or other elastic material. We definetly don't want that back...grafik.thumb.png.1dcfd58a31acbcbe4759cac1d1433b66.png

grafik.png

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These are called LPS structures here (UK) + Ronan Point was a 22 storey tower that famously collapsed in 1968 after a small gas explosion in one of the flats…

I actually did an art project in another LPS tower several years ago in Liverpool which was due to be demolished. I can remember being quite alarmed at seeing the small steel angle brackets bolting the whole thing together when I pulled up the floors on the 21st story…

29 minutes ago, elepp said:

We definetly don't want that back...

According to wiki David Chipperfield thinks that the plain appearance of plattenbau discourages gentrification + ‘may be a factor that helps preserve social continuity for local residents + neighbourhoods’... !

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