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Super i-models!

From CAD User AEC Magazine Vol 22 No 11 - NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2009

David Chadwick explains how i-models, together with ProjectWise Navigator, enable Bentley to deliver fully integrated dynamic collaboration

I have lost count of the number of times I’ve been told about the need for single unifying formats that will enable all manufacturers to supply software, hardware and any other commodity that will work with that of their competitors - only for the aspirations to peter out in the aftermath, as they go back into their enclaves and proceed with their own proprietary solutions, very much as they have always done!

As a marketing ploy in the past, ploughing your own furrow worked very much to your advantage - if you could supply your customers with (almost) everything that they needed and prevented them from tagging on some equipment from one of your competitors - with the danger of them finding out that what they supply could be every bit as polished and advanced as your one, and maybe even better!

This doesn’t work so well now, certainly not in the construction software market, as trends mitigate against the single contractor working on a project. Those that involve a number of different disciplines - architecture, civil and structural engineering, geophysical and analysis - entail numerous companies working closely together using their own particular software tools, with the broadest range of file formats.

The problems are obvious. The only way information could be shared was provided either by ploughing through the static data, drawings and models supplied by project partners, or by employing expensive interoperability

tools with, as Buddy Cleveland, Senior VP of platform technology for Bentley described it “no provision to capture and build on value-adding feedback the sort of things that should naturally happen between, say, a structural engineer and an architect.”

The inevitable corollary, he added, was that “the limitations of interoperability software, and the way that people had to work around these, created new risks of errors and omissions.”

What was obviously needed was a more dynamic approach to collaboration, enabling users, whatever their discipline, needs and software base, to interactively view, analyse and leverage all project information. To this end, Bentley Systems announced the introduction of ProjectWise Navigator V8i (SELECT Series 1) at their recent BE Inspired event, which provides dynamic collaboration software for iterative project review, and with it an exciting new concept - i-models.

WHAT ARE I-M

MODELS? We'll look at the contents and advantages of P/W Navigator shortly, when it can be put in the right context by explaining exactly what Bentley's new i-models are. At first glance they appear to be yet another format for storing data, and subject to the same problems outlined at the start of the article - a desire to impose more standards and formats onto an already overburdened market.

They aren't, though. They are designed to be neutral containers into which any contributor to a project, using

a number of source programmes to deliver whatever information they have about the project, 3D models, 2D drawings, documents and even standards, where it can be held and retrieved by collaborators who can incorporate the data within their own environment.

It is a robust solution, similar to Bentley's InPlant 15926 interoperability solution, which not only holds model data but full information about where it came from and how it has evolved - its 'change management history'. What’s more, it’s also self-describing! Not a narcissistic trait, but the ability to display or provide access to the information held within the i-model without having to use the resources of the source application to do so.

The storage formats being used in i-models use a couple of industry standards including CIS/2, IFC and ISO 15926 - flexible and data-independent, and ideal for streamlining the exchange of information between teams of collaborators.

The software applications covered at the moment include Microstation and other Bentley software products, and, if you wish, Autodesk's Revit, using a free plug-in. Models and information from other applications can be used to create i-model packages, but in such cases you would have to use the ProjectWise i-model Composer, which you can get access to if you have a ProjectWise Passport.

Which all means that should you, as an architect, wish to take advantage of the structural steel model of the building you are working on, you can retrieve the data directly from the i- model, automatically converting the format into one that can be used with your own application - presumably Microstation or Revit - and posting your input back into the i-model so that the structural engineer can take note of your suggestions or modifications.

Furthermore, the data is protected, coming with full-strength digital rights management and digital signatures to validate and verify an i-model's status. When you are widening access to your data you can never be certain of just who else is interested in what you are disseminating. Engineering precision is maintained throughout - in spite of the different levels of engineering precision used by each discipline.

PROJECTWISE NAVIGATOR

Now you have the data in place, you need to be able to view it! That's where ProjectWise Navigator V8i (Select series 1) comes in. It's the element that makes 'dynamic' collaboration possible. It allows project teams to get at the information stored inside i-models with its' advanced viewing capabilities.

For starters, it can handle multiple file types, including DGN, DWG and all i-model formats, and, if you need to go

farther, it is capable of being customised to open any other format you habitually encounter.

As a real-time navigation tool, it gives users the ability to explore models naturally and intuitively, and to play around with view settings to obtain more favourable views of the geometry

-but it goes further than that, allowing users to perform intelligent analyses, find business intelligence behind the geometry, measure distances, areas and volumes with the sort of complete engineering precision we mentioned above. You see how it fits in with the i-models, now, and why they have been designed to contain much more than the model geometry and information! Combined with ProjectWise Navigator, the two tools give project teams total flexibility in the information that can be assembled for a project, the way in which it can be accessed, and the analysis that can be run on the projects, such as “what-if” scenarios! Or the ability to optimise schedules, and to look at, and dynamically resolve, clashes onsite, either model-based geometric or schedules.

And, after having accessed the information, users can comment on the content, register their acceptance of

engineering changes, and mark-up the model with simple geometry, all of which is saved as a record of the dynamic collaboration workflow.

Clients and the wider public are not left out of the loop, either. ProjectWise Navigator can be used to create photorealistic images and animations, or to produce intelligent 2D/3D PDFs, which they can open in any one of a large number of free PDF viewers, and explore the models for themselves.

NAVIGATOR AND I-M

MODELS IN HARMONY Of course, it’s not absolutely necessary to use i-models with ProjectWise Navigator, but you would lose all the benefits outlined above. If you choose to do so however, ProjectWise servers can be set up to issue automatic dynamic notification of changes to project teams, and, for larger projects, that can also include schedule driven publication and transformation steps.

You may also find that such a solution can even be provided for less than the cost of other company’s collaboration tools that only incorporate static visualisation - the very devil all of the above has been set out to make obsolete. www.bentley.com

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