AEC Tech News (#206)

National Standards Evolve Slowly

While the National CAD Standard plugs along and plugs in, the National BIM Standards Project gains momentum.

Last month Cadalyst.com polled readers on which CAD standard they use for AEC. The poll ran for about six weeks and received 529 responses. The significant interest it generated led us to wonder what’s currently happening with the CAD and BIM standards and how close they are to an update and to being viable for the industry. Here’s what we found.

NCS Update
Version 4 of the U.S. National CAD Standard (NCS) is expected to be released in PDF format this fall. The NCS consists of three publications: The AIA’s CAD Layer Guidelines, the Construction Specification Institute’s Uniform Drawing System (Modules 1-8), and the U.S. Department of Defense Tri-Services CADD/GIS Center’s Plotting Guidelines. The coordinated NCS provides owners and AEC teams consistent and efficient communication, plus reduced costs for developing and maintaining standards and transferring design data to facility management.

Although adoption of the NCS is voluntary, a document released by the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS) Facilities Information Council (FIC) shows that currently there are more than 5,000 National CAD Standard licensees, with many of those holding site licenses, which allow for 10 users per license. According to David A. Jordani, FAIA, chair of the FIC Board of Directors and of its NCS Project Committee, when you begin to extrapolate the number of licenses to the number of people who actually use it on a number of projects, the significant reach of the NCS becomes immediately apparent. “We know we’re into tens of millions of drawings that have been impacted by the NCS,” Jordani said. Read more>>

1-2-3 Revit: BIM and Visualization, Part 2

By Rick Rundell, AIA

Google "Freedom Tower" and you'll get well over one hundred thousand image hits -- many of them photorealistic images of a building that hasn't been built. This is testimony to the power of today's design visualization applications and their ability to explore, validate, and convey architectural design concepts. Read more>>

COADE Discover Tour
August 22, 2007
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
The COADE Discovery Tour is a series of educational sessions about the recently released CADWorx Plant Design Suite 2008. Topics covered include new capabilities such as tighter integration between CADWorx Plant Professional and CADWorx P&ID Professional.
Read more>>

Southern California CAD Summit
August 23, 2007
Anaheim, California
Presented by U.S. CAD (formerly L.A. CAD), this day-long event includes more than 30 industry-specific classes for professionals in the fields of architecture, MEP (manufacturing, engineering, plumbing), civil and structural engineering, geospatial, design visualization, manufacturing design, and electrical design. Read more>>

Autodesk AEC DevCamp
September 5-7, 2007
Boston, Massachusetts
The AEC Conference features more than 20 training classes on Autodesk's industry-specific customization and application development technologies. Introductory classes will be offered for people just starting to customize. For professional software developers, there are advanced topics to help resolve complex code scenarios. Read more>>

For Cadalyst's full calendar of events, click here.