“We were driving BIM technology before BIM was BIM. We made symbols smart and tied them product databases which allowed us to offer accurate pricing and eCommerce fulfillment. We have been operational in this field since early 2003” said Douglas Lopez, Founder of 1st Pricing. Lopez continues “Our original patent was one of the first BIM patents issued and, primarily, covered comparison pricing. Now it has been expanded to cover many more critical issues like accessing a “Live Data Feed” from within CAD and eCommerce emanating from BIM.”

Some of the items covered in the additional intellectual property protection are:

 Inserting a price schedule into a construction plan drawing
 Component cost/pricing and comparison cost/pricing
 Live Data Feed (static or dynamic)
 Building Code
 Accessing BIM Data Outside of CAD
 eCommerce (5e or E-BIM)
 Exporting a BOM price schedule into a separate data base.

“We feel that this protection solidifies 1st Pricing’s leading role in the BIM process as the sole provider of critical product data including pricing, features and availability. We know that we have delivered a proven, practical solution to the 5D supply chain part of BIM that really no one else has addressed” said Lopez. “We are excited that the USPTO continues to reward our hard work and that we can deliver a segment of BIM that will transform the process of building a building. So many of our solutions are from my days as a general contractor and, in my opinion, it is about time we utilize useful technology to improve this process that needs it so badly.”

With the click of a button, the 1st Pricing technology accesses an internet portal and pulls comparison pricing of multiple brands to fill out a detailed bill of materials with all related content on demand. An online shopping cart is also automatically created for easy fulfillment from a local material distributor. Changes and updates are made within seconds so that everyone is on the same page. Today, the Company is focused on building materials for residential construction but plans to add commercial building products in the near future. In the CAD industry, the supply chain component is often referred to as the “fifth dimension of CAD” or 5D.

“Our technology transforms a set of plans from an interpretive document to a declarative statement,” adds Lopez.

About 1st Pricing

1st Pricing currently offers free plug-ins for users of TurboCAD® AutoCAD Architecture and AutoCAD Revit®. A Plug-in for Graphisoft’s ArchiCAD® is currently in beta and is expected to be released in the second quarter of 2010. More platforms will be released during 2010. The 1st Pricing technology was initially released in TurboCAD in 2003.

1st Pricing is part of California Distribution Center (CDC), a building material distribution company focusing on fenestration products. CDC Also operates 1st Windows.com – the only site on the Internet that offers instant, real-time, dynamic pricing and purchase of both replacement and new construction windows. The website, which also offers doors, skylights and acrylic glass block windows, has been online since April of 2000.

Currently the application will only handle small files and is primarily web-based, so there are still limitations. However, kudos to Mr. Keough for being the first to provide a solution with such tremendous potential.

Having the ability to access Building Information Models on portable devices will someday allow facility managers to easily identify issues, create work orders, and aid in critical response by using Augmented Reality. During the construction phase of a new project, contractors will be able to walk through a site with their iPhone, Android or iPad and see any phase of the project overlaid on the portable device using the its digital camera. The benefits and possibilities are endless.

BIMable will be keeping a close watch on this technology and will post updates as it matures. In the meantime, be sure to congratulate Mr. Keough and provide input on his contribution to the industry.

The title is not completely correct, cars are not really good, but they are less bad than buildings.

We hear constantly:

• “Cars cause Global Warming” (more accurately contribute to Climate Change).
• People are purchasing hybrids to do their part to help save the earth and lower our need for fuel.

We rarely hear:

• Buildings are the main problem. (They are)

BIM, specifically the data component, holds great promise to dramatically improve the performance and operation of buildings, as well as insuring that ecologically superior building products are specified. BIM is dependent upon accurate and available data.

In November I attended the Greenbuild Conference and Exhibition in Phoenix. There were hundreds of presentations, 1,800 booths (mostly Building Product Manufacturers) and over 24,000 attendees — more attendees than either the AIA or CSI National Conferences and Exhibitions. Al Gore was the keynote speaker. What is remarkable about this conference is that it clearly demonstrates that the architects, engineers, contractors and owners (private and government) are aware of the importance of the “green” movement. While many people have known of the advantages of well designed buildings for both energy savings and people productivity increases for decades, it has only been in the last few years that their efforts have turned into a movement.

There are fundamentally two components that determine if you have a “green” building:

• Design – Site selection, orientation, massing, shading, layout, mechanical and lighting conceptual approach, etc.
• Materials and Equipment – Specific products, carpet, tile, paint and equipment, fans, chillers, light fixtures and lamps, etc.

If you have a great design concept but select poorly performing materials and equipment the results of your efforts will be minimized. At Greenbuild, manufacturers promoted their messages as “green” manufacturers. The challenge to those that select and specify manufacturer products is finding out specifics on the products “greenness”, how it quantitatively compares to other products and what approaches were used to make the claims. For example a product could perform extremely well within the building environment but have major negatives associated with its manufacturing process, component materials, or disposal at the end of the buildings life. You need much more information than you can easily find to make the best selection, and you need this information on hundreds of thousands of products and materials.

The selection process becomes even more difficult because the manufacturer’s products data is supplied based upon the products in a “stand alone” condition. Little data is available on how products and equipment combine to perform in the assemblies that are the building. How the window frame is attached to the building structure will greatly determine heat gain and heat loss. We have data on the building wall, and the frame and glass, but what about the performance of the connection of the two elements?

Today BIM is really BiM; we need to get the “i” to grow up to a big “I”. We need more information on products and assemblies. Where are we going to get that information?

Many manufacturers have tremendous testing facilities. US Gypsum has very sophisticated facilities. There are private labs like UL and the NAHB Research Center, there are Universities that have focused programs, the military has research programs such as those managed by the Corp of Engineers, and there are the National Labs like the Lawrence-Berkeley Lab that has a massive collection of data on glass performance.

There is no one Lab devoted to buildings; the materials, assemblies, and design influences on performance. The construction industry is the largest industry in the world, buildings account for almost 50% of all the energy consumed in the world (cars account for 12%). Building construction costs and operations are the largest expense, after employees, for most companies. Through proper design, material selections and operations these costs can be reduced 30%. Buildings are often one of the greatest assets of a company, but only if they have maintained their value and not fall into disrepair or become obsolete.

Automobile manufacturers know tremendous amounts of information on every part and piece that goes into their cars; they are tested, modified, and improved on a continual basis. Cars cost about the same per square foot as a new furnished building, and I have yet to have a sunroof on a car leak, yet I have not seen a building that did not have at least one roof leak. We also know how to make informed purchasing decisions on a car because we have massive amounts of data on performance, options, resale value, reliability and the prestige factor. Ask a car purchaser if they will spend $1,600 more for the sport suspension they can make a quick decision, ask if they want to spend $200 more for a more efficient light fixture and you may get a blank stare. There is simply no easy way to get the data to answer all the questions on the performance and impact of a more efficient light fixture, door, window, etc.

A couple of years ago a collection of architects were asked what contributed to greenhouse gas emissions, the list of options included cars and trucks as well as buildings, the group indicated that 40% was caused by cars and trucks and seven percent from buildings. The actual answer was 12% from cars and trucks and 42% from buildings. If you do not know what is causing a major problem there is a good chance you will not contribute to the solution, so step one to making buildings less bad is that the owners, architects and engineers need to know what is creating the problems, step two is to give them the detailed and scientific information they need to solve the problems through an interface that makes searching for and finding the information needed at the time it is needed.

The latest talk of the town in the Apple blogosphere is 3D head-tracking. Apple recently filed a patent for technology that allows users to change perspective of an object by moving their head or body. So instead of dragging your mouse to rotate a graph or chart, you simply look behind it; a more intuitive approach (at least in the eyes of Apple engineers). Here’s a quick video of how this could be used to view 3D construction plans:

With all the attention augmented reality is getting, we’re not surprised to see big players like Apple experimenting with this genre of technology. Novelty aside, there seems to be endless applications. We think the technology would be great for the construction industry. Combined with construction software, contractors could use it to visualize complex construction projects, like the example above which uses 3D building models from Synchro software.

Rumor has it the technology could also be used with more traditional 2D images like electronic building plans (i.e. digital blueprints). Using the iSight camera to detect head movement, users could potentially scroll up and down or left and right by moving their head.

We’d like to see this work with takeoff and estimating software, a system that allows contractors to measure areas and lengths to determine quantities of construction materials (e.g. how many 2×4s are needed to build a wall). This is currently accomplished by tracing an electronic plan with a mouse or digital pen. Could the same activity be performed with a head nod?

It’s probably a few years before any of this technology trickles down to the construction industry. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts on other ways – and other industries – that this could be used with.

Imagine walking down the street, looking for somewhere to eat. You use your phone to photograph a restaurant, and the overlay on the screen shows you menu items pulled from the restaurant’s online menu, reviews from newspapers and so forth.

Science fiction? No, this is available right now from a startup called Layar (www.layar.com), with content from Yellow Pages, Google, Flickr and Wikipedia.

Modern smartphones, such as iPhones and Google Android devices, can determine their own location through GPS and an internal compass, they can download data through mobile broadband connections and they have reasonably powerful graphics-processing capabilities. These provide the necessary ingredients for mobile augmented reality.

While consumer applications have come first, the possibilities are endless for retail, medicine, education, engineering and construction. Imagine standing at a construction site, viewing it with the wireframe model overlaid. What value would that have for the client or in planning submission or public consultation? Imagine being able to click on a balcony four floors up and get the flat’s information — number of bedrooms, sales cost, floor plan, the environmental specifications. And being able to “view” the shadows of buildings play across the plot and any existing buildings through a time-lapsed year — what would that be worth?

This is far better than either a traditional CGI or expensive physical models. As nice as they are, CGIs and models do not place the viewer in the site; they do not have context and relevance. But visualizing the building in its real position — albeit a muddy field — will speak volumes.

By blending augmented reality with local social media sites — blogs and wikis set up to allow comment on new developments, one could obtain residents’ comments, images and questions about the design, resulting in a very interactive and pertinent consultation.

During construction, site visits could be augmented by being able to view the actual versus the planned in 3D while at the site —simply point your phone at the building and see the actual and the digital overlaid.

Post-construction, facilities management and maintenance could walk round the finished building, being able to “click” on the building components and getting specifications, data, construction methods, or being able to control the elements — HVAC, security, fire, lift logic and so forth. This would be further enhanced by the use of BIM (building information model) cad tools and software in the design process.

The possibilities for this “new” technology are constrained only by our own visions of use of technology and the hardware with which to support it. At the moment, companies are nibbling at the edges of the technology, with no commercial products yet on the market. But with all the opportunities out there it is surely only a matter of time before someone grasps the mantle.

The lowdown on augmented reality

What is it?
An interactive experience based on the overlaying of digital information onto real world imagery in real time. A mix of computer graphics and live video, if you will.

Think, for example, of a sports clip with an overlay showing the direction and trajectory of the ball.

The beauty of augmented reality is that the user can interact with the digital component, accessing and changing the information displayed.

Why are you hearing about it now?
Giant leaps in mobile technology mean that many of us are now walking around with mini-computers in our pockets. All of a sudden, there are exciting possibilities for working applications that don’t cost the earth.

Want to try it now?
Start with Wikitude — available for iPhones and Google Android devices. It overlays Wikipedia information onto an image of what you are looking at on your phone. Also check out Layar (www.layar.com) or Google Goggles (www.google.com/mobile/goggles)

Postscript :
Simon Johns is an IT consultant and former director of IT at Broadway Malyan.
Visit his website at since68.wordpress.com

To help architects, engineers, contractors and other design professionals keep up with the rapidly evolving world of virtual modeling technology, RedVector is pleased to release “Building Information Modeling (BIM): An Introduction.”

The course covers the ways that a Building Information Model can use a digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of a facility to enable collaboration among all the stakeholders on a project, and shows how it can increase productivity from the planning stages through the finished product. The origins of BIM are discussed, along with some common limitations, current standardization activities, and its increasing popularity as a primary tool in the industry for project information and coordination.

“Because Building Information Modeling is so effective for helping pros pull together and organize data from the many different sectors involved in planning, it naturally follows that BMI can save time on a project and improve quality while decreasing costs,” says Jeff Nippes, RedVector’s Product Development Coordinator. “It’s quickly becoming essential for industry professionals to have a working knowledge of BIM.”

Because BIM already offers advantages as a single source of building information for the design and construction processes and may eventually impact the entire industry, RedVector will continue to keep A/E/C professionals informed with courses like “Building Information Modeling (BIM): An Introduction” as new developments begin to unfold.

About RedVector
RedVector sets the standard of excellence in online continuing education for licensed and certified professionals in the engineering, architectural, construction and long-term healthcare industries. With an online library exceeding 1,000 courses, authored by more than 100 subject matter experts and spanning all 50 states, RedVector serves more than 130,000 design and construction professionals. The recipient of numerous community honors and industry awards, RedVector was founded in 1999 and is headquartered in Tampa, Florida. For further information call 1-866-546-1212 or visit www.redvector.com.

Contact:
Victoria Zambito
VP Marketing
RedVector 866.328.8883
Victoria.Zambito@redvector.com
4890 West Kennedy Boulevard
Suite 740
Tampa, Florida 33609

Phoenix, November 11, 2009 – ecoScorecard, the technology platform that helps building product specifiers evaluate environmental attributes of products, today revealed the new ecoScorecard plug-in that works with Google SketchUp and provides a critical link between popular BIM (Building Information Modeling) tools and important environmental rating systems such as LEED. The announcement was made today in conjunction with the opening of the US Green Building Council’s annual Greenbuild Expo.

The new integration will enable users to easily access environmental product attributes and rating system calculations for ecoScorecard enabled products that are in the Google 3D Warehouse, resulting in faster and more accurate rating system documentation for Google SketchUp users.

“The BIM process is built on the concept of coordinated information, and ecoScorecard takes that process a step further by providing an immediate to link to environmental product attributes and rating system calculations,” said Martin Flaherty, president of ecoScorecard. “Users can now pull data from ecoScorecard enabled products directly into the model and use that information throughout the design process.”

Introduced in 2007, ecoScorecard provides product specifiers with the ability to search and evaluate products based on environmental characteristics. The program does the calculations necessary for rating systems such as LEED, GGHC Labs 21, CHPS, and the NAHB Green Home Building Guidelines and includes and accounts for other third-party product certifications. The tool also produces the product documentation necessary for inclusion in the submission process. ecoScorecard is free to users and is supported by manufacturers interested in making the specification of green products easier for both their customers and their salespeople.

“Our original mission for ecoScorecard was to help make the specification of green products easier, and that has not changed,” explained Paul Shahriari, CEO of ecoScorecard. “Now, parallel to the growth of the green building movement, BIM is changing the entire building process. Never before has there been a single system that could provide context to all parties thinking about building. And the ecoScorecard technology platform is perfectly poised to link environmental product attributes and rating systems to BIM tools.”

Mr. Shahriari explained that ecoScorecard’s initial BIM integration was designed for Google SketchUp because of the accessibility and popularity of a Google tool. Plug-ins for other BIM tools such as Revit are slated for release next year.

For more information, visit http://ecoscorecard.com/.

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Media Contact: Reva Revis, ecoScorecard
reva@ecoscorecard.com 312.929.5025

LEED is a registered trademark of the U.S. Green Building Council
Google SketchUp is a registered trademarks of Google, Inc.
Revit is a registered trademark of Autodesk, Inc.