The power of a model, lets you forget!

Last week, while talking about standards, I asked the retail design team a question:

“What’s the colour, hatch scale and pattern of the space used for a Toy dept in one of our store plans.”

They use them daily but struggled to remember because nobody ever thinks about it. The truth is I had no idea either as it was something set up years ago. Originally it was a lisp that added a predefined AutoCAD hatch, now it’s an AEC Space (added from a tool palette) which also reports area, volume, perimeter and other custom information.

That’s a simple example but shows the power of embedding information in objects and automating process. This story from Cadalyst shares how modelling and automation helps one firm build better houses, quicker;

Small Changes Add Up to Big Savings - Cadalyst AEC
“For more than a year, Lindemann Bentzon Bojack Engineering (LBBE) has been advocating the potential advantages of whole-house design.”

"Applying the idea of whole-house design, enabled by 3D models, means our teams work simultaneously on a project so that it's completed in 30 days vs. 90 days -- a 66% time savings,"

“To organize those 700,000 drawings that the company produces yearly in Autodesk Architectural Desktop (ADT) as well as track revision information, Avatech's team designed a custom application to get ADT's Project Navigator and Sheet Set Manager”