Introduction
A very big issue that has faced the whole construction industry is how change is managed or communicated. Here at IDEA StatiCa, we are working on several methods to help facilitate this. Historically, we have had DXF output for plates and DWG from our Viewer application, but getting information back into a BIM solution has been somewhat lacking – until now!
From this current release (23.1), we have been able to create a compliant IFC file and import this into Revit, Tekla Structures, SDS2 and any viewer that has an IFC import option. However, there are differences between all of these receiving solutions that I will also highlight in this article. Not only in the workflow, but also in the end result.
Historically
Many engineers have been educated to use analog methods: 2D drawings and sketches that were created either by hand (often considered works of art now) or by CAD solutions (such as AutoCAD). Many a time, these were initially created by the person who wanted the information, so they were realistically created from a modeling solution (such as Tekla Structures) but the information received back was in the form of their drawing/sketch, but heavily red-lined annotated! Then to ensure that the changes were incorporated correctly, these were marked off in blue with green being the final check – other colours are available! These sketches and markups would also form part of the quality-checking process, especially true when conforming to ISO 9001.
As time progressed, these analog methods were digitalized into the magic of a marked-up PDF document. Still red though!
