It seems like architects jumped on board with Revit®-based software from the beginning because it helps them produce more detailed designs and really doesn't add a lot of additional work. However, engineers have traditionally avoided the switch from AutoCAD® to Revit. In this roundtable, we will discuss the benefits of using Revit from both the architectural and engineering point of view. Architects can explain why engineers need to use Revit and engineers can defend sticking with AutoCAD. Construction managers can also weigh in on why it helps when the engineer produces a 3D model.

In this session, we’ll look at ideal workflows for using Revit software, and how to avoid key time-wasting traps, as discovered the hard way by an experienced Revit software-using mechanical engineer. We’ll examine opportunities for fundamental changes to overall workflow, as well as how to improve current methods. Emerging features such as Insight 360 software are shown as a great opportunity for engineers and architects to collaborate during initial design stages and to calculate heating and cooling loads. You’ll receive advice about how to control level of detail and coordination, particularly at early design stages. We’ll also give some specific technical tips and tricks to help engineers get the most out of their Revit software systems and spaces. This is a follow-up to the 2013 class on improving efficiency by using Revit MEP software for mechanical calculations. This session features Revit MEP. AIA Approved

As technology becomes more integrated into our daily lives, it is increasingly necessary that architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) professionals develop industry-specific innovations to improve the workflow that delivers the built environment. Altering your team’s composition will advance the level of technological integration into your practice for decades to come. Adding in-house software engineers and programmers to your team can facilitate a higher level of ideation, innovation, and computational design that transforms the uses of Revit as a software into an enhanced industry platform. This integration comes with hurdles that can be overcome through leadership, energy, and team-wide engagement. This lecture will explore how to solve challenges in the AEC industry by integrating software engineers into your firm’s culture and pushing the way Revit was designed to serve the industry.

Sundt Construction faced a difficult site work package that included landfill remediation. During the project pursuit, Sundt defined a new process to generate volumetric comparisons from UAS-captured data; align with the project coordinate system; and produce an engineered report. This reduced the risk of over excavation, enabled everyone on the team to see how earthwork progressed, and captured construction progress in a meaningful way. Calculating quantities in Civil 3D software produced accurate quantities and an intuitive visual, and enabled the flexibility required to track 6 different quantity types. This class will discuss the process used to bring new value through these construction technologies and demonstrate the process of generating the data.

With rapid growth in technology—especially in manufacturing processes—coordination between designers, engineers, and shop-floor CNC (computer numerical control) programmers is a challenging scenario. Manufacturers cannot always make designs created by designers and engineers, and they send the designs back to the design team for modification in the part model. Additionally, sometimes the right tools may not be available on the shop floor. To overcome these problems, designers and engineers should obtain a basic knowledge of CNC programming and CNC-code generation, which could reduce the time to market and enhance the company's return on investment. This class covers the steps involved in importing the CAD Model into Inventor HSM integrated CAM Solution for Inventor 2015 software. This process reduces the errors involved during importation and further enables designers and engineers to generate CNC codes and set up models for manufacturability. We will also discuss workflow regarding sending the codes to a machine.

Shaun Bryant (a.k.a “Mickey Gervais”) and David Butts (a.k.a “The Redneck Tech”) have decades of combined experience with AutoCAD software and Revit software in both the architecture and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) disciplines. Come and join them for “The Showdown,” where they host an industry talk about industry best practices for multidisciplinary, multiplatform projects that will help keep the face-offs between architects and engineers to a minimum. Enjoy the wisdom that will bring peace to the project workplace. Sharing the stage with them will be several well-known, world-class experts whose unrivalled expertise will delight you and educate you at the same time! Come on down and see if you need to “keep the peace” in your project team, and enjoy the banter as they discuss their pet peeves and how they solve them.

Are you new to CNC? In 90 minutes you will understand what you need to know to start cutting parts.

How do designers' and engineers' models have an impact on machining and manufacturing? This class explores topics that need consideration throughout the design and engineering phase of each new project, including feature selection and issues surrounding modeling with parts versus assemblies.

Through our embedment in a team of 700-plus structural and MEP (mechanical, electrical, and plumbing) engineers and technicians in our London office, within a worldwide company pool of over 10 times that, we have digested the core components of what a Structural Team needs to know to push the Building Information Modeling (BIM) boundaries to the next level, from embedding data to linking analysis and design models; from quantification to sustainability dashboards; from 3D rebar to Advance Steel software implementation; from Revit software templates to enhanced Revit software content; and from IFC output to model reviewing and verification. And with interoperability at the heart of it all. Arup Group Limited is one of the world's premier engineering design consultancies with over 12,000 staff in 90 countries worldwide, and this class will demonstrate our structural workflows across the globe. We will share what we’ve learned on our BIM journey, and how it is benefitting our daily creative process.

Looking for an easy way to add wireless communications to a project? Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee? Wireless electronics is considered by many to be a dark art, even electrical engineers! However, today’s modular hardware and simplified software resources has made it possible for even nonelectrical engineers to successfully add wireless communications to their designs. This course is for mechanical engineers, industrial designers, architects, and software engineers looking to control objects wirelessly or gather data from devices or systems remotely. Spend time with us learning to add Wi-Fi to your next project! Using Eagle, we will build a small sensor-based system that posts data to the cloud and responds to commands from your browser. Some familiarity with embedded software platforms, including Arduino, Raspberry Pi, or similar will be helpful but is not required. Familiarity with breadboarding concepts will also be helpful.

With Revit software and Advance Steel software, structural engineers have tools available to enable them to take their designs past construction documents and into fabrication and construction. Construction schedules are faster, integrated project delivery is more common, and the Who, How, and When of structural shops drawings and fabrication models are changing. This presentation will show how US-based structural engineers who already create their design models and drawings with Revit software can use this same software to create shops drawings from their fabrication models for rebar, precast, and structural steel, and also create concrete lift drawings. Attendees will learn why these services are offered, how engineers can offer them, and best practices to follow to offer Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based structural shop drawings. This session features Revit Structure and Advance Steel. AIA Approved

The challenges we face in our industry revolve around saving time and money. Traditional methods of design engineering do not embrace the technological evolution of CAD software. There's a better workflow, and the software is already available to seamlessly integrate design drafters, engineers, and steel detailers into one model. I will walk you through the lifecycle of one of our projects with the use of Revit software and Advance Steel detailing software, of designers working with detailers, to produce fabrication drawings without producing a single structural design drawing.

Game engines are known for their innovative graphics and physics. That would make it seem like game engines are only beneficial to architects. This is just not the case. Game engines provide a wide range of benefits to engineering firms, and this class will explain how to get started using them in a way that is easy, fun, and affordable. Game engines could be used to help QA/QC a project, or to help visualize engineering analysis 3D models, or for real-time interactivity using virtual reality (VR), or even as an interactive game that shows construction sequencing animations, and much, much more. The possibilities are endless. Game engines are fun to use, so it’s time to use them in your engineering firm!

Revit families were created to communicate with each other; we can push or gather data via their connectors, which lets us create some very powerful families and schedules. Using this data, we can coordinate across disciplines and decrease errors and design time. Mechanical can input values and provide electrical with the necessary information to properly design their systems with minimum effort. Parameters can be viewed as discreet bits of information you plug in to your equipment to populate your schedule-an arduous, tedious task. But if you look at how all those bits of data can affect all the other bits of data, and you can get them talking to each other, you'll have a useful design tool. Since engineering is chock-full of formulas, we'll look at how we can use these formulas to drive our parameters and streamline the design process. We'll look at how mechanical elements push data upstream to help calculate electrical loads.

In the structural engineering industry, one of the challenges is reducing manual and tedious design tasks. Computational design tools such as Dynamo software give structural designers, engineers, and detailers the possibility to automate the creation of their deliverables to build structures with minimal energy. By doing so they spend less time on the repetitive tasks and more energy on the important parts of the design. In this class, you’ll learn how Dynamo can support design automation and computational modeling workflows for structural analysis and design of concrete and steel structures. You’ll learn about the appropriate packages to perform automation in your own daily workflows, and you’ll receive a set of teaching examples.

Everyday structural engineering workflows have repetitive tasks and data interoperability issues that can be resolved with a more parametric approach. Structural engineers and BIM designers can benefit by using Dynamo to develop custom tools to assist them to exchange data between internal and external software platforms, perform engineering calculations, optimize, and generate drawings. But then the question is how can engineers trust the calculations done by a custom Dynamo tool developed by another engineer? This class will demonstrate and discuss how we can make Dynamo assist engineers by presenting both basic and complex workflow examples. Further, the class will discuss some good practices and suggestions to convince your boss and your team to use Dynamo, and cover how to get past the “black box” problem.

Do you reuse most or all of your previous designs for every new customer order? Do you want your salespeople and/or your customers to be able to easily configure design orders and be confident that the configurations are valid? If so, join us in this class as we discuss how Autodesk Inventor Engineer-to-Order (ETO) software delivers easy-to-use web and mobile interfaces for configuring products. You will also learn how Inventor ETO enables easy reuse and management of CAD data in the back-end database.

Whether you're part of a distributed team or an individual, the cloud offers many benefits: Access to your apps and data from anywhere on any device, unlimited hardware scalability, the ability to collaborate with anyone and best of all pay only for what you use. Join us for this session to learn how Frame helps engineers and architects unlock the power of the cloud to boost collaboration and productivity for Revit, AutoCAD, Inventor and any other Windows application.