bentleyuser.org - BC(UKI) 2007 Winter Conference Report

BC(UKI) 2007 Winter Conference Report
by Len Greetham - 02 March 2007

In this difficult climate of project pressure on our time and costs, it was reassuring to see a large number of delegates at yesterday’s BC(UKI) winter conference. Regrettably those who did not manage to extricate themselves from the daily grind, missed an enlightening event.

The whole event was a resounding success and was especially notable for its user involvement. This manifested itself in both in attendees and presenters. This has become synonymous with BC(UKI) events.

Following the conference theme “(How to) do it - with Bentley” it was obvious that ‘Experience and Learn’ became the watchwords. Certainly it would have been impossible for anyone to walk away without having learnt something or to be provoked into taking a fresh look at the way they design. Perhaps even to rethink their future direction

Pre-conference keynotes are renowned for being perceived as sales orientated. To confound this perception Ian Campbell of Adobe took delegates through an incredible and practical insight to enhancing information exchange and handling. Using the latest Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro suite he created and emailed several documents. Using the new version he showed how to empower recipients to comment, correct and digitally sign PDF files before emailing them back to source. This is achieved regardless of which version of the free Adobe Reader that the recipient has. Lastly Ian demonstrated how to send out questionnaires such as booking forms. The recipients were able to complete and resubmit them. The originator could then process returned information into some sort of database.

This eye opening start was quickly enhanced by Lars Hesselgren’s report on the New York Generative Components conference. A GC presentation is always a mind boggling adventure. Lars chose to illustrate this with investigating the effect of wind and torsion effects on tower designs. Also the ability of a building to interact to its environment by understanding and exploiting the behaviour of its elements

It was a thrilling reminder of the brilliance that exists in our industry today. It also served to underline that modern software is capable of more than just harnessing computer power to handle objects. Programs such as Generative Components are, in Lars words 'empowering design professionals to create systems that define and control objects, not just the objects'. This gives greater freedom to explore design ideas and solutions. However it demands more understanding and discipline to define the parameters and the rules that will control and govern the eventual design solution arrived at.

This message became even more apparent in the presentations on Generative Components and parametric design. These both focussed on the design of a tower. The first part was the manipulation of nodes within the Generative Components model, by Roly Hudson, that created amazing changes to the floor plate configuration. Understanding the parameters and the rules again! Without this the results were attractive, but not meaningful.

Once the configurations and control points were exported from GC, Alan Boyd employed some VBA applications to produce for each individual floor, plans with wall and mullion positions for further use in the design process. The underlying message was again think out the constraints and conditions governing these variations to ensure sensible and usable outcomes.

Bentley presentations focused on enhancing the design process. Firstly Ian Lapper took us through the capability of Projectwise Navigator to gather project information process and disseminate it in a managed environment.

Second to highlight the added value of Architectural Datasets in BIM that could be harnessed through Bentley architecture. Volker Thein showed them to be fundamental to successful implementation of both Bentley Architecture and BIM The simple analogy is 'you can only get out what you put in'. Once the details and information about your design elements and materials are contained in the dataset then the outputs are instant rewarding and always available

Having seen what it is possible to achieve the fun started with the 'contest between Triforma and Bentley Architecture'. It started with a confident John Davies, 'anything you can do, I can do too'. However from the outset John, the Triforma underdog, was quickly disillusioned. He did not have the sophisticated Bentley Architecture tools and palettes. These were at the finger tips of Bogdan Wasylkiw.
It got worse for John when Bogdan with Bentley Architecture quickly placed composite external walls. This was followed with internal walls and doors. After comparatively struggling with a few walls and a door John, the Triforma operator, capitulated. When Bentley Architecture continued to add room area data and door annotation with ease the contest was over.

The whole point of the exercise highlighted the power of Triforma as a core product. The special applications like Bentley Architecture operated on top of Triforma and provided the power to create sophisticated designs packed with extractable data.

We then moved on to the case study from Robert Klaschka on the use of Bentley Architecture. Robert highlighted quite clearly that using the BIM approach and incorporating Bentley Architecture gave any team, especially small teams the ability to take on demanding projects and produce amazing volumes and quality of information. However while enthusiastically encouraging teams to adopt BIM the message was clear that adaptation of currently available material and prevailing practices must be reviewed and refined. This was very much in line with the earlier message to understand and prepare before launching in.

The usual conference dilemma prevailed. This is making the agonising choice of what to miss out. Therefore I did not manage to catch any of the visualisation or rendering presentations, the V8 XM sketching, the configuration, the mapping and reference file sessions. I even decided to break out of the BIM building stream, missing the structural presentation, to relax in the hints and tips session. Well done to Lynne Taylor, who has endless good advice (and some warnings) to impart to any eager audience.

Finally it is a big thank you to everyone whose effort ensured such a successful conference. (even if you did not get your name in highlights). Not least to the staff at the Sheraton. Indeed consensus of opinion concluded that the venue should be booked for the same time next year. So if you found difficulty extracting yourself this year reserve the dates in next year’s diary now. Keep checking this website because we will not be resting on our laurels, and have other events in the pipeline.