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Vico Virtual Construction Suite 2008 (Cadalyst Labs Review)
July 1, 2008 By: Jerry LaiserinMultidimensional analysis and control capabilities transform the building process.
It's been said that everyone remembers his or her first time — especially the first time working with a new tool or technology that awakens new perceptions and opens new doors to what is possible. Perhaps it was a first-time exposure to CAD, spreadsheets, interactive graphics for gaming, e-mail, Web browsing, texting, instant messaging, wikis, or even YouTube. We think we've seen it all, then along comes a brand new way of interacting with the familiar that magically (and easily) transforms that familiar into a different way of seeing and doing. That's the reaction many folks have had after their first exposure to the full capabilities of Vico Software's Virtual Construction Suite 2008, a software suite that represents the latest generation of software thinking.
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In the beginning of the computer age, highly technical and scientific vertical applications were available for analysis, accounting, process control, and so on, and general- function, horizontal applications that cut across all disciplines could be used for tasks such as text-processing. Whether vertical or horizontal, earlier generations of software tended to mimic the manual processes they were replacing (corporate re-engineering guru Michael Hammer called this "paving the cowpaths.") Accounting software mimicked double-entry bookkeeping; word or text processing mimicked typewriters and physical cut-and-paste editing; and computer-aided drafting mimicked the various manual drawing, pin-bar drafting, and reprographic methods that preceded it.
Making Change
Over the past few years, a shift has occurred as each new generation of software better reflects the process transformations made possible by a primarily digital workflow. For example, desktop publishing and Web publishing represent new forms of media communication that need not mimic print media. Blogs threaten to replace magazines and newsletters. Where e-mail by its very name connotes a digital simulacrum of physical mail, newer media (instant messaging, online chatting, and social networking) represent uniquely digital forms of communication. This is the same with software tools for design and construction.
CAD has been superseded as a design/documentation tool by model-authoring programs lumped under the label building information modeling (BIM). Although such tools can produce drawings that look like their predigital counterparts, the underlying models are purely digital artifacts, constructed and managed exclusively by digital processes. These models can be directly linked to or embedded with specifications data in a way that is significantly different from the cross-referencing of paper drawings and typewritten specs. The same applies to coordinating model representations among disciplines in the digital realm — a far cry from overlaying transparencies of architectural drawings and HVAC drawings on a light table to search for clashes. Similar principles apply to integration of models with schedules, cost estimation, and so on.
 Vico Virtual Construction Suite 2008 |
This new way of looking at the building process is popularly known as BIM, especially among architects and engineers, or as virtual design and construction (VDC) among general contractors, construction managers, and design builders. As an historical aside, the term BIM is not new, nor was it coined or originated by any software vendor. The term building information models first appeared, albeit in Dutch, in research on the construction industry as early as 1987. The nomenclature was first used in English in a 1992 paper in the authoritative Journal of Automation in Construction. This usage is fully 10 years before my own efforts to popularize the term BIM and standardize its usage among the leading software vendors. On the other hand, VDC is a term I associate with my colleagues at Stanford University's Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE).
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About the Author: Jerry Laiserin
