This article describes the building design scenario demonstrated during the Excellence in Structural Technology seminars presented in Australia in September 2014. Given a required modification to an existing concrete-framed, multi-storey building, the audience was taken step-by-step through a coordinated structural workflow that produced updated design deliverables documenting required structural changes.
Setting up the Team and Situation for the Demonstration
The design team for the demonstration consisted of Josh Taylor, who role played the project manager within a structural consultancy firm, and Wentao Zhang, who role played the lead structural designer. The structure considered was an existing concrete-framed building (see Figure 1) constructed in 2012 to AS3600. The structural team who performed the original design archived their work as an i-model and an ISM repository, to which Josh and Wentao have access. The information contained in these models was used as a starting point for the work to be done, rather than needing to start from paper as-built drawings.
The structural adequacy of the building was to be evaluated for a proposed air-handling unit to be placed at a prescribed location at the roof. Josh was sent unit specifications in the form of a pdf document, detailing unit dimensions and loads. The placement of the unit was conveyed with a two-dimensional CAD drawing. Josh was to now package this work for his structural design team to complete.
Figure 1 - Bentley i-model, shown in Bentley Navigator, containing the concrete-framed office building used as the basis of the building design demonstration.
Proposed air-handling unit at roof for which the existing structure is to be evaluated.
Tools Used
Although the process utilised in this demonstration used a number of software applications, there were aspects of a traditional 2D paper process that were desirable, in the name of simplicity and familiarity. One of these was the concept of markups on a set of drawings as the communication process between the project manager and the structural designers. In the 2D paper process, a set of progress drawings on which tasks and revisions are maintained and coordinated act as a natural communication vehicle between design team members. The project manager does not need expertise in structural design software, and can review the work of the structural designers via the information that makes its way onto the drawings. If the manager's review of the drawings yields any suspicion towards the structural design, he can then ask the design team for supporting information without drilling into the analysis and design models maintained by the design team.
Project Manager (Josh) Coordinates tasks with the Engineer (Wentao) via Bentley's ProjectWise Package.
Bentley Navigator V8i is the dynamic collaboration software used by infrastructure teams to interactively view, analyze, and augment project information. Bentley Navigator better leverages the interactive nature of information stored inside Bentley i-models for high-performance visualization. This in turn enables greater project insight to help teams avoid costly on-site errors.
With Bentley Navigator V8i, users can:
- View
- Open i-models, native DGN and DWG files, and point cloud files with one software product
- Explore models naturally and intuitively in real time
- Markup models and assign tasks to project team
- Manipulate view settings to interactively change data display on screen
- Analyze
- Find business intelligence behind the geometry with ease
- Measure distances, areas, volumes with complete engineering precision
- Simulate what-ifs, optimize schedules, dynamically resolve clashes
- Augment
- Group and classify items by leveraging the intelligence behind the content
- Mark up i-models with simple geometry, register and preserve comments
- Produce rich 2D/3D PDFs, create photorealistic images and animation
Bentley Navigator in Review Mode, allows use to explore model in 3D and assign markups to location. A markup is 2D snapshot of the model with annotation and markup tools. Markups are not limited to text, clouds, user can also append links to the markup such as links to PDF specification and links to folder locations.
Engineer:
To accomplish the task set out I will utilizing the following ISM enabled products.
- Bentley Navigator/i-Models: To view the tasks assigned to me and let the project manager know that its in progress
- Ram Concept: For its great built in system for considering time-dependent material effects as well as variable loading over time
- Ram Structural System - A Structural Analysis and Design package particularly suited for building, with many time saving features such as automated load generation and live load reduction features.
In the following video, I imported the roof level from the archived ISM repository into RAM Concept and used the Load History Feature to evaluate the new loads from the Mechanical Unit at year 3. The output from RAM Concept are 3 deflected contour plots (CAD), at day 33, day 1000 and day 4000.
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I then went into RAM Structural System and showed a model that has already gone through the ISM import steps. I showed deflected shape and also the column forces in RAM Frame module. As RAM Structural Systems is a collection of modules that share information, we went straight into RAM Concrete module to evaluate the column directly underneath the new Mechanical Unit. A comprehensive design report (PDF) of the column was produced.
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Next, we wrapped the CAD drawings of the deflected contours, and PDF column design report into an updated i-model.
Firstly, we evaluated the original file that the i-model was created from in AECOsim Building Designer, note that its just a file with many references, we showed some of the discipline specific tools for modelling.
We created a new results sheet with reference to the deflection contour plots we have previously exported out of RAM Concept.
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We created a section drawing of the model by placing a section call out, note that the view generated is not just a static snapshot, its a dynamic view that is aware of the 3D model it came from. This allowed us to directly place section callouts on the 2D view. Once the views were created we manipulated it via the clipping pane handles, we manipulated extents, view forward and view behind. We also included section and detail view of the footing, and also the design calculations previously generated from Ram Structural System onto this sheet.
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We amended the references and republished an i-model for our deliverable.(Please visit the site to view this video)
We viewed the deliverable via Bentley Navigator and also on mobile devices as well, such as iPad and iPhone.