Even a seasoned engineer can have difficulty visualizing plans.

It’s one of the reasons why eggheads in the building industries have rallied behind the adoption of virtual reality (VR) in project design.

At Mortenson‘s office in Portland, VR has already changed how builders and owners interact. It was a big part of the design of the AC Hotel by Marriott and the Hyatt Regency at the Oregon Convention Center. In fact, nearly all local Mortenson projects employ virtual design and construction (VDC) somehow.

There is another reason why techies in construction are excited for VR.

“There’s the cool factor for sure,” said John Hall, an integrated construction coordinator for Mortenson.

The firm’s Portland office (which began as an offshoot of the Seattle office) recently purchased several HTC Vive headsets and navigational tools to improve visualization.

“People around the office are always peeking on what we’re doing,” said Dan Mehls, vice president and general manager of Mortenson’s Portland office

Clients now get a better spatial sense of their buildings, according to Mortenson staffers. This has helped them make more decisions earlier on, which saves them money. One confidential Mortenson client reportedly spent nearly two hours with the VR goggles on, in his virtual building, calling out changes to gathered staffers.

For Mortenson, the technology has made it less reliant on physical mock-ups, which can run them around $60,000 to $80,000.

Staying ahead of the curve regarding construction tech is big business for Minneapolis-based Mortenson. One of the country’s largest builders, it helped pioneer building information modeling (BIM) in the late 1990s, during construction of the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.

The major insight to emerge from that collaboration, according to Mortenson’s integrated construction staff, is how the team was able to tie 3-D renderings to a fourth dimension: time, or scheduling.

These days, all large builders utilize BIM somehow. Firms like Mortenson offer clients a full range of options, from minimal to fully immersive. New with this technology is the ability to “ambulate” – or walk around – the 3-D environment, according to Hall.

“It’s not just a scale model; you actually get to experience the space,” he said.

Construction companies today have an array of off-the-shelf virtual reality programs at their disposal. Mortenson says its edge is in the details. It can provide a customer a bespoke virtual environment in as little as two weeks, and with customizable elements down to the wallpaper.

“You can really present to your customer what you’re going to build,” said Anartis McKerral, an integrated construction coordinator at Mortenson. “Especially with 2-D plans, you spend a lot of time in your head trying to figure out what something is going to look like – you try to picture how far away is that ceiling, or that reception desk or hospital bed? But when you get in a VR environment, you don’t have to struggle so hard to imagine it.”

Construction coordination professionals in Portland are testing programs that not only find clashes in congested areas, but also can foresee operational problems – like pipes that would be difficult for maintenance workers to access. Such design flaws are rendered in stark relief in a VR environment.

The next advancement in VDC is commonly thought to be augmented reality. Whereas VR technology projects a version of the real world for a user, augmented reality headsets overlay virtual elements onto the real world.

“Imagine a craft worker doing a concrete pour,” Hall said. “In his glasses he sees exactly where the rebar is supposed to go, in the hole in the dirt.”

Hall and McKerral say Occupational Safety and Health Administration-approved safety helmets equipped with augmented reality are in development. For now, the major advantage of virtual reality is its empowerment of the developer in the design phase.

Though there’s occasional pushback from older, veteran builders, buy-in on this new technology is high, according to Mehls. One corporate job, in Pennsylvania, was saved $500,000 in changes detected early through use of virtual reality, according to the company.

For younger people, the move toward fuller integration is a more natural one. This is hugely helpful for an industry struggling to attract the next generation of builders, Mehls said.

“This stuff is just so, so cool,” he said.

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Team members behind the renovation/addition of 138,000��square feet at the Portland State University School of Business Administration had used BIM before. But never like this, they said.

Instead of merely detecting clashes in the piping and conduit, building mapping software in this case helped ensure every piece of the project was routed appropriately. And with the first half of the project now turned over to the owner, and the remaining, entirely new construction, the team is breathing a little easier.

The ‘perfect storm’

Lots of firms bid for the $60 million project before PSU decided to withdraw its RFP��and not select a winner. The feedback it provided SRG was to add “international flare” to its next proposal.

“They wanted the project to have a bigger profile than what a local firm could provide,” Stadler said.

SRG was familiar with Stuttgart, Germany-based Behnisch Architekten and its principal Stefan Behnisch through green design circles. And Behnisch himself is said to have a personal connection with PSU.

“So it was really a perfect storm for us,” Stadler said.

Since the “rejuvenation” effort began in 2015, SRG has worked hand-in-hand��with Behnsich’s Boston office – the Germans in charge of the big-picture vision, and SRG handling matters like delivery, documentation, logistics, and even hosting Stefan Behnisch on several trips to Portland.

What the team turned in was ambitious – in the case of the renovation, a clean and airy modern update to 1970s design, and new construction featuring a showpiece atrium encased in sloped glass. Workmen last month waterproofed the glazing and added steel members to support several massive skylights. Shoring recently came off the slab, exposing many different tight radiuses and angles.

BIM functioned here, as on every project, as a shared resource for team members down to the foreman level. It was key to the “intensive” semi-weekly meetings of project leaders. Skanska‘s mechanical, electrical and plumbing partners for the project were also involved, keeping data constantly updated. Skanska’s VDC (virtual and design construction) manager, Robert Smith, has been on-site throughout, helping glue together different 3-D models and coordinating the latest designs with foremen and other managers.

Skanska project manager Ryan Gay said that in his opinion, the intent of BIM is to coordinate what’s being installed to make sure everything fits. This project has been that, plus design evolution – or, essentially, “designing as we go.” Overall, there were “consistent” changes to what Skanska was installing.

“Some of it’s just tinkering, moving things a foot in either direction to get a certain look,” Gay said. “Some of it’s redesigning the entire electrical system.”

Part of the problem was the minimal amount of ceiling called for in the original designs. Most projects hide their infrastructure – water and electrical conduit, ductwork, etc. – under dropped ceiling, so the routing of that stuff doesn’t matter much to the architecture, Stadler said. But on this project, “literally” every piece of infrastructure is out in the open.

Working in the team’s favor was the CM-GC delivery method. The process afforded “fluidity” in cost reconciliation. An example is in the exterior cladding, which was originally intended to be tiled metal panel. That choice proved costly once Skanska priced it out. The firm selected another material that would meet the project’s aesthetic goals, but the Portland Design Commission thought a higher quality was needed. Eventually, the “stars aligned,” Stadler said, and the commission OK’d the next, and final, alternative – a Morin-made, V-profile, blended mill-finish stainless steel panel in a horizontal configuration.

Other changes include wood doors designed as oak being switched to maple, because the contractor recognized��the cost difference between softwood and hard. The ductwork was also swapped out in value engineering, from oval to more economical rectangular. The whole ceiling was originally supposed to be painted, but that was taken out to afford a more “industrial” look, with some of the tectum panels now painted bright accents. A passive air transfer system using offset air slots in the walls also had to be tweaked.

“It was challenging to build. We had to help design the construction because what they designed wasn’t constructable,” Gay said.

Other challenges include those associated with working on a busy college campus in a dense urban area – just-in-time deliveries, minimal staging area, road closures, noise and other construction impact mitigation. And, as with many others these days, the project has been affected by the labor shortage, Gay said. As many as 100 craft workers have been employed. On the day of a site tour last month, about 45 union and nonunion tradespeople were working.

As of last month, there had been only one reported injury on the project, and it was minor, Gay said.

The next phase should proceed faster, with material selections having already been vetted. It will be all-new construction, which is generally faster than renovation. Plus, there won’t be any asbestos to mitigate or faculty members to avoid.

‘Furniture and walls’

This project was percolating for a long time, according to Cliff Allen, dean of the business school.

He said it’s been nicer interfacing with donors and alums now that it’s��fully funded.

“Fundraising for buildings, it’s difficult,” Allen said. “Our donor base loves a new building, but what they love even more is to give to the school and the students. It will be nice to get back to fundraising for things like student scholarships and faculty endowments, instead of furniture and walls.”

PSU has a number of other projects in the works, several of them comparable in cost to the School of Business Administration. The $70 million renovation and seismic upgrade of Neuberger Hall now has a contractor (Fortis Construction) and an architect (Hacker), and heavy work should begin soon. Crews broke ground in April on the new $50 million Viking Pavilion at the Peter W. Stott Center. It also features Fortis as the builder, as well as a design partnership consisting of a local firm (Woofter Architecture) and a high-profile out-of-town firm (Denver-based Sink Combs Dethlefs).

Those projects also include ambitious designs and a mix of public and private dollars. The breakdown of the business school project is about one-third private, and two-thirds from the state.

The project effectively doubles the school’s footprint. The new facility will feature 23 classrooms and 11 break-out rooms that can be reserved by students. All will be rigged with technology to enable distance learning. There will be a Bloomberg terminal-equipped finance research lab, and a primary lab for marketing research, on topics such as consumerism.

It will mean the business school can add to its enrollment of 3,800 undergraduate students, and, likely, its 400-500 graduate students. With the school sharing space with the Graduate School of Education, students, staff and faculty had grown snug in their old space. But close quarters don’t necessarily translate to collaboration, and the new facilities were designed with teamwork in mind, Allen said.

PSU has changed a lot since it began as a commuter campus. “Interaction” wasn’t being fostered by the old building and students were left to meet after class at nearby coffee shops, or not at all. The new building’s design – for all its complications to the build team – reflects the state of the industry today, and where Allen says it’s going.

“We’re trying to build camaraderie, and that’s really a change in how we view things,” he said. “The irony is, kids are using more devices and connecting in new ways, but the face-to-face is becoming more and more important to businesses.”

PSU School of Business Administration

Project: renovation of six-story building and construction of student pavilion

Cost: $60.3 million ($20 million from private donations)

Contractor: Skanska USA

Architect: Behnisch Architects-SRG Partnership Inc.

Progress: first phase finished, completion of second phase anticipated for August 2017

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Perry Gliessman, director of technology and advanced computing at Oregon Health & Science University, thinks the institution’s new data center at its Hillsboro campus could become a prototype.

At least that is the idea, said Gliessman, who designed the dome-shaped structure in about eight months. OHSU got an international patent and will market and license the design, which could suit others building on a small footprint or trying to reduce energy costs.

“We think it is the model of the future,” he said. “We would like to see it replicated out there, particularly for people who don’t have a lot of acreage.”

The geodesic dome design, popularized by Buckminster Fuller in the 1950s, met several criteria for OHSU, which is projecting significant growth in its advanced computing and genetic storage needs, said Gliessman, who runs the university’s primary data center in downtown Portland.

“I basically looked at the issues we had and looked for ways to future-proof the building and give it a long life span,” he said. “I knew there must be a better way to do this.”

While the building has some exhaust fans to account for rare times when outside air temperatures exceed 90 degrees, few other noncomputing devices consume energy inside. In fact, the unmanned building’s power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio is projected to be 1.13 – one of the lowest for data centers in the U.S.

PUE ratios identify data centers’ energy consumption by non-information technology machines in relation to consumption by IT machines. A PUE of 1.7, typical for a data center, means that for every kilowatt of power needed to run computers and data storage, an additional 0.7 kilowatt of power is needed to run other systems, such as fans or air conditioning units. It is not uncommon for data centers to have a PUE of 2.0 – equivalent to one kilowatt of mechanical power for every one kilowatt of computing power, Gliessman said.

“We won’t know how low we can go until we power up more equipment,” he said. “There’s no doubt we’ll meet the metric and we might even exceed it.”

Most notably, the dome shape maximizes surface area, allowing for air intake and exhaust systems to both cool and heat the building’s 10 server racks. The structure has no duct work for heating and cooling, Gliessman said. Instead, the 18,000-square-foot building has air-intake louvers around its circumference that bring in outside air. Cooler air will circulate among the 10 data center racks, and hotter air will rise toward the ceiling.

“I needed vertical space for the hot air plume to rise to the top,” he said. “That’s why we don’t need (many) exhaust fans. Air rises to the top.”

What the data center lacks in above-ground mechanical systems, it makes up for in underground electrical wiring. Installation of approximately 4½ miles of underground conduits became the $22 million project’s biggest construction challenge, said Trevor Wyckoff, project manager for Skanska USA Building. Skanska finished work in July.

“You have all this lineal footage of conduit in three different layers four feet deep and it all has to come within a half inch of fitting,” Wyckoff said. “It absolutely had to be precise.”

Skanska used Building Information Modeling and GPS technology to make sure all the conduits were layered correctly. The contractor also prefabricated all of its conduit racks off-site to save time, Wyckoff said. Once the measurements were exact and the racks were assembled, they were put into the ground and set in place, he said.

Data Center West

Owner: Oregon Health & Science University

Contractor: Skanska USA Building

Construction cost: $22 million, including equipment

Architect/engineer: IDC Architects

Construction start date: May 2013

Construction completion date: July 2014

Designer: Perry Gliessman, OHSU

The post Efficiency under the dome appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Highway contractors with the right tools will have a competitive advantage bidding for projects when the Oregon Department of Transportation next year introduces a new bid document option.

Those tools include automated machines such as bulldozers, graders and rollers, and guidance systems that allow workers to plug in digital plans and follow them exactly to engineers’ specifications. That ability to model a construction site in 3-D is a cost-saving advantage that can help a company submit a lower bid.

Construction Information Modeling for highway and road construction is similar to Building Information Modeling for vertical construction. The 3-D technology is starting to take off in Oregon and around the nation, said Ron Singh, ODOT‘s chief of surveys and geometronics manager.

ODOT has long had a policy of releasing only 2-D plans and then providing data so that highway contractors could build their own models. However, beginning Jan. 1, 2015, ODOT will require its engineers to release plans in 3-D, Singh said. He has been pushing for the change for years.

“We’re talking about ways to automate construction,” he said. “To do that, we have to employ new ways to survey, design in 3-D, and take that data and put it into the model.”

Most highway contractors do not have equipment necessary to operate in 3-D, Singh said, so ODOT will continue to release 2-D plan sets. But highway contractors with 3-D tools will be able to more accurately estimate costs and bid for less.

“What’s going to happen is those contractors with the technology will have less risk, and their bids will come in lower than somebody who doesn’t,” he said. “The message to contractors is that you need to get into this business of automated machine guidance because you will be able to estimate your quantities better and you will be able to build better. If you don’t, you will probably have competition from those that do.”

For highway contractors with GPS and other technologies, the change by ODOT will mean improved cost estimates and better finished products, said Alan Aplin, vice president of Woodburn-based Kerr Contractors.

“Any company who owns GPS also owns software to view the 3-D model so they can see things,” Aplin said. “The state’s giving us the data so we can better visualize what we’re building. We will perform a more accurate estimate and be able to build a faster job.”

Singh was among state and national transportation leaders who gathered in Corvallis last week to discuss the future of construction that the new ODOT policy will help support. The “Design to Paver” conference drew representatives of 20 transportation departments from around the country, and spotlighted innovative technologies.

Oregon is one of about 13 states that is designing in 3-D and building projects using 3-D models, said Bryan Cawley, construction management team leader in the Federal Highway Administration’s Office of Infrastructure. The FHA, he said, is trying to encourage the use of intelligent construction technologies such as LIDAR, which is used to produce 3-D models.

“Contractors who take advantage of more advanced equipment, including guidance systems, GPS and land-based laser survey equipment, will work more freely and in a more productive mode,” he said. “There is more precision, decreased waste and a better overall product.”

The modern construction site, as Singh calls it, will be built from a 3-D engineered model, have automated machines and be connected by a series of servers updating information in minutes, he said.

K & E Excavating, a presenter at last week’s conference, has invested $2 million in automated equipment over the last 10 years and should realize increased savings when ODOT begins offering documents in 3-D, K & E President Kerry Kuenzi said. The firm has built its 3-D foam models using data it has requested from ODOT.

“The biggest thing is production greatly increases – by around 50 percent,” he said. “Because it’s like we have our own set of plans in the cab. There is no guesswork. You are not waiting for somebody outside of the machine telling you where you are at.”

Getting started with automated GPS systems requires about $100,000, said Ken Shersty, vice president of Portland-based PPI Group, which sells automatic grade-control systems in Oregon and Washington. That investment would pay for a grade-check package with a base and rover system as well as an automated machine, he said. Those tools allow a contractor to design precisely and access information inside the cab while work is being done, he said.

“They just have to realize that if they’re going to compete in tomorrow’s marketplace, they’re going to have to make the investment,” he said.

More information on intelligent construction systems and technologies is available at .

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Like any renovation of a historic building, the $33 million project to update the 511 Federal Building for the Pacific Northwest College of Art has been a creative leap of faith.

After several months of demolition work, the project team is starting to see formerly hidden portions of the 95-year-old building come into view, said Chris Bixby, associate principal of Allied Works Architecture, which designed the renovation on Portland’s North Park Blocks.

“One of the primary actions we’re taking with this building is to remove the layers of history that blocked the natural light that originally illuminated the work space,” he said. “What we’re really doing is peeling those layers away and bringing the natural light back into the building.”

That involved redesign of the building’s north end to become a more connected, communal space. The north end previously served a variety of uses, including mail sorting for the U.S. Postal Service to daytime detention for U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

Crews are now completing form work and pouring slabs for the new mezzanine that will help define four major public spaces on the ground floor – a library reading room, an atrium, a multiuse space and an object study library. The mezzanine will be supported by thin cables.

“It was the major move we did to the building,” Bixby said. “The rest of the project is about editing out 60 years of bad renovation work.”

For PNCA President Tom Manley, the project will stand out because contemporary architecture and a historic building are being fused.

“The way the (renovation) was designed was to create unity in (a) building in a way that respected the historic architecture,” Manley said. “I think they did a fantastic job.”

Many unknowns were uncovered, said Doug Greenwalt, senior project manager for Howard S. Wright, the project’s general contractor.

Most of those surprises have come from a demolition process to restore some of the building’s original look and open large, functional spaces that had been buried by two previous renovations. Workers had covered transom windows and north-facing sawtooth skylights, which were common in industrial buildings and now are highly coveted by studio artists.

Additionally, marble-paneled walls and terrazzo-style flooring were revealed in the Grand Corridor and each of the six floors in the tower. They were hidden for years by old plaster and orange carpeting removed during demolition.

Howard S. Wright had performed a similar job at Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall, so it knew what it was getting into with the PNCA project, Greenwalt said.

“We put hours and hours into cleaning this up,” he said. “It was pretty hammered when we got it.”

Wading into the unknown meant creating various mock-ups for building elements including classroom spaces, windows, doors and the air conditioning system. A new HVAC system will be installed to improve energy performance.

Also, a new viscous damper system will provide greater seismic strength. Only a few structures in Portland feature viscous dampers, which are chevron-shaped devices that absorb the shock of an earthquake rather than resist it. The dampers had to be purchased 40 weeks in advance; they will be delivered in August.

Installation of the system will require precision at a micron level, Greenwalt said. Using Building Information Modeling will allow Howard S. Wright to test exactly what the system will look like and ensure that pins fit perfectly through the holes, he said.

“The tolerances are very small for each damper,” he said.

The contractor also created a 3-D model using BIM to ensure that all mechanical and electrical elements would not clash with the original structure, Greenwalt said.

“We need to keep the duct work as tight as possible,” he said. “It’s nice to have clash detection because we want to be certain at installation time.”

Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design

Location: 511 N.W. Broadway, Portland

Cost: $33 million

Construction start date:��January 2014

Anticipated construction completion date:��January 2015

Owner:��Pacific Northwest College of Art

Developer:��Gerding Edlen

Architect:��Allied Works Architecture

Engineer:��KPFF Consulting Engineers

General contractor:��Howard S. Wright

The post Diving into the unknown appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Handing over a building information modeling platform can be sort of like handing over keys to a company car. If an accident were to occur, who would be responsible: the driver or the owner?

“When we hand out drawings or the electronic media of those to the contractor, we’re essentially giving them the keys to our legal foundation in a way,” said Kurt Haapala, a principal at in Portland.

BIM technology lets architects and contractors vet design details across all trades in virtual, three-dimensional models. In general, it delivers more detail and fewer opportunities for mistakes in the field.

As a result, the use of BIM is growing across the nation. But as lines are increasingly sketched in virtual environments, questions are arising over where they’re drawn legally. For instance, what would happen if information were interpreted incorrectly?

“If they no longer ask the questions and just figure it out incorrectly in the field, and something happens, we’re still liable,” Haapala said. “So it gets really muddy, really quick.”

For example, an architect once used BIM to fit the mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems of a major university’s building into the ceiling plenum. The design was so tight that systems could fit only if they were installed in a particular order – a detail the contractor didn’t understand until assembly was 70 percent complete.

The unnamed parties settled for millions of dollars out of court because the subject was deemed too complicated for a jury, said Randy Lewis, vice president of loss prevention and client education for the design professional group of XL Insurance. At the heart of the matter was a breakdown in communication – a key element in navigating the new virtual frontier.

Lewis said 40 percent of the claims that XL Insurance handled in 2012 came from situations arising out of communication failures.

“We have this new technology available to us, and just using this new technology with the old processes can potentially set up problems, but also prevent the team from fully leveraging the power of that technology,” he said.

And as roles evolve (such as when an architect dictates construction sequencing), so do responsibilities. So far, the legal industry has been slow to catch up.

“It has become a big question mark as to how this collaborative process affects the traditional allocation of responsibility,” said Darien Loiselle, a shareholder and attorney specializing in construction law at .

Loiselle said the onus is on project teams to identify roles and responsibilities early in a project, especially since no precedents have been established in a courtroom. That could change as BIM gains a firmer industry foothold.

According to , the use of BIM has grown from 28 percent to 71 percent in the past six years. Use among contractors, in particular, has increased from 50 percent to 74 percent since 2009.

Jan Willemse, a partner at in Portland, said his company is weaning itself entirely off of AutoCAD in favor of BIM.

He acknowledged that contracts are behind the technology curve, but added that approaches like integrated project delivery (a legal arrangement in which the owner, architect and contractor work together as one entity) and the Big Room (a virtual or physical construction command center of sorts) have helped teams respond.

Willemse said BIM should not be viewed as legally binding, but rather as a supplemental tool to help parties interpret design intent. Shop drawings may have given way to clash detection, but the contract drawings are still the bottom line.

Dale Stenning, a manager with , agrees. He said that while contracts are still somewhat “squishy” in terms of BIM and liability, they are no more ambiguous than they were before the technology emerged. That’s partly because a divide has always existed between contract documents and evolving shop drawings.

“Our industry doesn’t really have a mechanism for merging those two efforts into a cohesive agreement,” he said. “The dysfunction isn’t new; it’s just got a new wrapper on it and a new vocabulary built in.”

Stenning thinks that as the industry moves forward, design-build agreements will replace hard-bid, lump-sum contests. Lewis agrees, because he believes collaborative processes are better able to harness BIM’s potential.

“We haven’t changed how risk gets allocated or adjudicated,” Stenning said. “But we have changed the conversation about where the risks are (and) what can be done. And most importantly, we can find the problems much earlier in the process. As they get discovered earlier, more solutions are available for weighing the best options.”

Rob Fallow, a senior project manager, said the firm now uses BIM on virtually every one of its projects. The company, like Hoffman, has created new positions for BIM experts who can help teams manipulate models in the field.

IPD processes, Fallow said, also are playing a big role in the company’s adoption of the technology. Communication, however, is still the most important tool for risk mitigation.

“If we’re making a change to the model … it’s really the contractor’s responsibility to keep the designer in the loop,” he said. “So it takes a little extra care to make sure you’re looking out for your team members. You don’t want anyone to fall behind.”

Meanwhile, the legal implications of BIM are being discussed in industry circles. The American Bar Association, for instance, has added a BIM addendum to its library of ConsensusDOCS. Also, the American Institute of Architects has updated its standard forms for the technology.

Haapala said that ultimately, trust is a critical component in a successful BIM project, but a legal foundation is smart.

“Do I have a contract at Mahlum that has been renovated and polished? No,” Haapala said. “But I can tell you that our contracts are under review with our attorney.”

The post BIM’s big question: Who’s legally liable? appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Software developer AutoDesk has released a preview of its , its software for Building Information Modeling.

Solar radiation (basically, energy from sunlight) mostly contacts roofs and windows. The solar radiation turns into thermal radiation as it moves through the walls and into buildings, which makes building temperatures rise. This makes attics, which are close to the roof, and rooms with lots of windows really hot.

Good design can help mitigate unwanted heating and improve buildings’ energy efficiency.

This is where Revit comes in: This solar radiation technology will display solar radiation levels on various surfaces of building models. The technology uses building shapes and information on local weather patterns. It can be applied over an entire city block to take shading patterns into account.

The post Revit previews Solar Radiation Technology appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

Software developer AutoDesk has released a preview of its , its software for Building Information Modeling.

Solar radiation (basically, energy from sunlight) mostly contacts roofs and windows. The solar radiation turns into thermal radiation as it moves through the walls and into buildings, which makes building temperatures rise. This makes attics, which are close to the roof, and rooms with lots of windows really hot.

Good design can help mitigate unwanted heating and improve buildings’ energy efficiency.

This is where Revit comes in: This solar radiation technology will display solar radiation levels on various surfaces of building models. The technology uses building shapes and information on local weather patterns. It can be applied over an entire city block to take shading patterns into account.

The post Revit previews Solar Radiation Technology appeared first on Daily Journal of Commerce.

While Boston and Los Angeles have poured ample money and employee time into a pilot program to help cities handle growth, Astoria took up the same program by arming interns with 25-foot tape measures.

The program, called the Human Development Overlay District, creates three-dimensional models of entire neighborhoods: Hollywood, Boston’s Chinatown, and downtown Astoria. Planners and social service agencies can then use the models to help the areas accommodate growth.

Right now, Astoria doesn’t have funding for a community resource center, or employees to run it – hallmarks of the program in Boston and Los Angeles. The town of 10,000 people couldn’t keep up with those metropolises, said Lucien Swerdloff, a leader in the Astoria program and a computer-aided drafting instructor at Clatsop Community College.

“They have huge resources,” Swerdloff said. “We have no resources here.”

As a result, Astoria’s participation in the program, along with the grant the city received, was reduced. Full participants received $125,000 for the first year, with more to come; Astoria got a one-time grant of $40,000, which pays for interns to build Astoria’s virtual city.

Intern Joseph McCartin, a Clatsop Community College graduate, spends his free time exploring three-dimensional models: video games such as Counter-Strike and Crysis. The games got him into the college’s drafting program. “I wanted to see how (the models) were made,” McCartin said.

And Swerdloff got McCartin working on the downtown Astoria project. “I thought, ‘Wow! I get paid to do 3-D modeling,’ ” McCartin said.

To create a virtual Astoria, McCartin and another intern measure buildings in the real Astoria to the inch. A third intern gathers information on how the buildings are used and then enters that into the model.

When the model is finished, planners can plop down proposed buildings and see how they fit into the virtual downtown, Swerdloff said. “If you have buildings that are fairly accurately represented on either side of a lot, you can superimpose it and say, ‘Does it work? Does the height work? Do the windows line up?’ ” he said.

The program, paid for with a Ford Foundation grant, goes beyond mapping Astoria’s physical features to show how those features are used, said Brett Estes, the city’s community development director. “As things change in the community, we can (match) developers working on projects with social service agencies,” he said.

Estes described how that might work: A downtown apartment-dweller on a fixed income might use the model to find out how new high-end developments might affect his or her rent. “The person under that scenario could go to a location that serves as a contact to the community and say, ‘I have these concerns.’

“And they could come up with different scenarios and get a feel for how the neighborhood changes,” Estes said. “If they want to stay in the neighborhood, there could be programs for rent assistance or to help prepare for change.”

Grocers could use the model to predict changes in their customer base, Estes said. “If they noticed a change in demographics downtown (to) people with a higher income level, the business owner might say ‘I really see the opportunity to carry wine and gourmet cheese.’

“They could capitalize on that new market and could even partner with an organization to provide marketing assistance,” he said.

It was important to include Astoria, even as only a partial participant, said Paul Patnode, principal research associate with the Environmental Simulation Center, the New York-based organization that runs the program. “Small towns frequently face a lot of the same challenges as larger cities,” Patnode said.

“Before the economy turned south, Astoria was facing a lot of development pressure along the waterfront that threatened to disrupt businesses and residents, and cause gentrification,” he said.

The model being created won’t solve any of those problems, Patnode said. It will, however, give information to help planners and social service agencies work together.

If Astoria is getting the program done on a shoestring, it’s still getting it done, Patnode said. He doesn’t expect Astoria to take a big-city approach.

In fact, he said, the whole point of the program is to help cities keep their identities despite turbulent changes. By looking broadly at the disruption those changes can create in communities, Astoria can grow without losing its character.

“They say it’s gritty, not pretty,” Patnode said. “And they want to keep that.”

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