AEC Magazine July / August 2021 by X3DMEDIA

Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

Rebuilding an icon

Collaborative VR What happened to AR? The death of architecture?

de Paris

E D I S N I E E FR N TIO A T KS R O W E G -PA 6 3

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Building Information Modelling (BIM) technology for Architecture, Engineering and Construction

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Industry news 6

Waiting for AR 40

Enscape adopts AI upscaling; GeoSLAM monitors construction progress; and Varjo teleports you to the construction site

As VR continues its rise, Augmented Reality seems to have got lost on the way to the party. We search for answers

BIM and the Notre-Dame Campfire AR 46 start-up has developed an AR / VR de Paris resurrection 14 Aheadset to take on the likes of the Hololens In 2019 Paris’s iconic cathedral was engulfed in flames. We explore how BIM is helping bring it back to life

The edification of all 48 Could VR be the solution to attracting young talent to the AEC industry?

The death of architecture + the rise of a new one 20 12 tools for collaborative The nature of architectural practice needs VR in architecture 50 to be disrupted. But what needs to happen for the industry to succeed?

Graphisoft gets MEP 22 Nemetschek brands Graphisoft and DDS-CAD are to merge to bring full MEP capabilities to the Archicad ecosystem

Archicad 25 26 Graphisoft is answering customer requests and increasingly integrating its cloud services and desktop products

From immersive modelling to design review, we share our top picks

Concept collaboration with Arkio 52 A VR system designed to solve the design and collaboration problems in AEC Also this month: 30 Construction playbook: the legal & contractual impact; 34 Reaching for the cloud with as-built drone data

Workstation special report

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R E A D Y C R E ATO R

News

GeoSLAM solution monitors construction progress

Nvidia unveils GPUs for SFF workstations vidia has launched a new family of lowprofile ‘Turing’ GPUs designed specifically for Small Form Factor workstations like the HP Z2 SFF. The new GPUs, which are very much focused on CAD and BIM workflows, include the Nvidia T1000 (4GB), Nvidia T600 (4GB) and Nvidia T400 (2GB). Meanwhile, turn to page WS28 for a review of the viz-focused Nvidia RTX A4000 / A5000.

■ nvidia.com

ollowing an extensive pilot with UK construction and property service company, Willmott Dixon, GeoSLAM has launched a new solution designed to ‘quickly and easily’ measure the progress of a construction project. The GeoSLAM Construction Progress solution will help construction companies obtain ‘clear and objective visibility’ of progress, helping to avoid missed milestones in the build or costly delays. The solution works by streamlining the monitoring of projects through point cloud data automatically generated by the company’s handheld SLAM (simultaneous

localisation and mapping) technology. Scans are then processed and compared against previous scans, or to CAD models. A PDF report is automatically generated and emailed to project participants or saved to a central file location. The PDF report will show the percentage of work complete or incomplete (compared to 3D model) and a simple visualisation of the site highlighting 3D change. Results can also be synced to collaboration tools including Dalux, Autodesk BIM 360 or Viewpoint 4projects. The data can also be exported to CAD or a CDE (common data environment). ■ geoslam.com

Unity Reflect Review gets annotations nity has added annotations and several other new features to its AEC-focused collaborative design review software Unity Reflect Review. Annotations are essential for design/ review but have been notably missing from the software for some time. Now comments can be appended to the 3D model and, with a single click, fellow collaborators can be teleported to their precise location. Users also have the option to comment on specific objects and BIM data. Since the annotation captures the camera view in which it was created, Unity says the tool is great for establishing a guided tour and can focus the meeting on particular areas of the model that need feedback.

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Visual fidelity has also been improved through support for Unity’s High Definition Render Pipeline (HDRP). Models can now be viewed with ‘polished physics-based lighting and shadows’. To ensure navigation is smooth when HDRP is enabled users will require a PC with a modern Nvidia or AMD GPU. General model performance can also be improved with new technology from 3D data preparation and optimisation firm Pixyz, which Unity acquired earlier this year. The new update ensures all models are ‘automatically optimised’ to improve performance and load times. Other features include a ‘follow mode’ that lets users see where others are in the model and easier model sharing via URLs. ■ unity.com/products/unity-reflect-review

■ pny.com

Survey data portal launches 3DUserNetVISION is a new online viewing and collaboration portal for survey data. It builds on 3DUserNet’s existing point cloud and model capabilities, adding support for imagery, 360 panoramics, textured meshes, orthographics, mapping and documentation.

■ 3DUserNet.com

Faro acquires HoloBuilder eality capture specialist Faro has acquired HoloBuilder, a US developer of photogrammetry software designed to deliver hardware-agnostic image capture, registration and viewing for construction firms. With an initial focus on construction management, HoloBuilder’s platform is designed to provide general contractors with a solution to ‘efficiently capture and virtually manage’ construction progress using off-the-shelf 360° cameras.

■ faro.com ■ holobuilder.com

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News

Enscape 3.1 uses Nvidia DLSS AI upscaling technology to boost 3D performance

nscape has added Nvidia’s Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) technology to the 3.1 release of its real-time rendering and VR software. According to the company, integrating the AI-based technology into Enscape 3.1 means users can get better quality and performance with lower system requirements to create a more realistic experience during walkthroughs and in VR. An Nvidia RTX graphics card, such as the Nvidia RTX A4000 or A5000 (which we review on page WS28 in the Workstation Special Report) or the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080, is required. Nvidia DLSS works by rendering internally inside Enscape 3.1 at a lower resolution then using deep learningbased upscaling techniques to output ‘a clean and sharp high-resolution image’ for high- quality videos and highperformance virtual reality walkthroughs. According to Dan Stine, director of design technology at Lake | Flato architects in San Antonio, Texas, Enscape 3.1 users with Nvidia RTX graphics cards can experience up to 30% more 3D performance on 1080p displays

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and up to 9x faster 3D performance on 8k displays. With VR head-mounted displays performance can go from 60 Frames Per Second (FPS) without DLSS to 100 FPS with DLSS. Video export will also be 36% faster. Stine explains that there are also visual quality benefits thanks to DLSS hardware-accelerated upscaling and antialiasing techniques. In a fast-moving scene, users can see enhanced definition in dense leaves in trees, and there is less noise and artifacts, such as ghosting around elements when moving quickly. Enscape 3.1 also supports the ray tracing of shadows to improve their visual quality and definition. The feature is only available when rendering a still image or a panorama. Ray-traced shadows will also be shown in the rest mode to allow previewing of a rendering. Other enhancements for Enscape 3.1, include a new high-quality Material Library, a Panorama Gallery and simplified assets with a white appearance. With the new Material Library, designers can choose from over 200 predefined ‘high-quality’ materials, such as wood, fabric, brick, and tile. These materials can also be imported into the

Enscape Material Editor, where various elements can be edited to get the desired look and feel for a project. An Asset Library is also available, and new materials and assets will be continually added with ‘every software release’. According to developers, this will ensure designers have access to the latest design trends to use in their projects. The new Panorama Gallery makes it easy to share and group multiple 360 panorama images simultaneously, entirely through a web browser. Users can create a personalised experience when presenting designs, and clients can navigate their way around a project from a web link or a QR code and visualise multiple rooms or compare different design options. Finally, the Enscape Asset Library has been updated with range of simplified ‘low poly’ assets that come with a simple, white appearance. According to Enscape, these assets are ideal for use in early design phases to give clients and colleagues an idea of your vision without distracting them from the core elements of your design. People, buildings, vegetation, furniture and vehicles are included within this initial batch of simplified assets. ■ enscape3d.com

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ROUND UP Revit productivity

NavVis improves mobile mapping for outdoor spaces

Ideate Software has enhanced its Revit productivity applications, including support for Revit 2022. Cloud network licensing now works in VDI and most other remote access environments, and the products also support the change from BIM 360 to Autodesk Construction Cloud (ACC) ■ ideatesoftware.com

Dynamo scripts Nonica has released NonicaTab PRO, an extended version of its free Revit add-on that allows users to customise a Revit with a toolbar to run Dynamo scripts. The PRO version allows users to import and export NonicaTab PRO toolbars and share them easily ■ nonica.io

BricsCAD point clouds With the release of “4Brics Plugin” PointCab has adapted its Origins technology to add point cloud conversion functionality to the BricsCAD range from Hexagon. PointCab already offers point cloud plug-ins for Archicad and Revit ■ pointcab-software.com

Cloud workstations US civil engineering firm Sherwood Design Engineers has successfully deployed Workspot’s cloud desktops in its offices across three states. The company had previously enabled some of its team to work remotely using VPN, but found desktop performance, especially for CAD, was too slow ■ workspot.com

Bimplus boost Allplan has updated its cloud-based data management and collaboration platform Bimplus. Features include a new and improved measuring toolkit, improved interaction and association of documents, enhancements to its BIM Explorer and the ability to invite guest viewers into projects ■ bimplus.net

3D printed panels Aectual, a specialist in bespoke 3D printed XL architectural and interior products, has launched new ‘100% circular’ 3D printed, acoustic diffusion panels designed in collaboration with architectural design group, Gramazio Kohler Research at ETH Zürich ■ aectual.com

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avVis has launched NavVis VLX 2nd generation, a new iteration of its flagship mobile mapping system optimised for scanning both indoor and outdoor environments. One of the main advancements is that the new system is more robust in outdoor environments and busy locations like a construction site. According to NavVis, users needn’t be concerned about an unexpected shower of rain or dust. “Previously, we positioned our devices for indoor scanning,” says NavVis CTO Georg Schroth. “But since we launched the original NavVis VLX we realised the need of our customers to mature the

device towards real outdoor readiness.” NavVis VLX 2nd generation also features a carbon-fibre frame that is strong and light, reducing overall weight. Added grips and redesigned shoulder pads are said to make the device more comfortable to handle and operate. For what NavVis describes as ‘reliable, survey-grade accuracy’, NavVis VLX 2nd generation is powered by precision SLAM technology to generate ‘high-quality’ point clouds of buildings and assets. The algorithm has been improved to make it more robust, especially in outdoor environments with plants and trees. ■ navvis.com/vlx

FineSANI aids plumbing BIM design ineSANI software from 4M is being used in the design of the water supply and sewerage systems for a cluster of public buildings in the new Jazan Economic City (JEC) in Saudi Arabia. The software is part of 4M’s DWG-based FINEMEP suite, which also includes modules for HVAC, electrical, firefighting and gas network design. Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) project designer Stefanos

Paradisanos is leading the plumbing design for the public buildings cluster, which includes the Government Facility of Security Forces, Fire Station, Emergency Medical Centre, Police Station and the City Hall. According to Paradisanos, one of the things that made FineSANI stand out was its accuracy of hydraulic calculations. Most other BIM solutions for plumbing design simply focus on the creation of drawings and the

extraction of bill of materials and tend to rely on third-party applications for the piping sizing and proper selection of the equipment. JEC is located 60km northwest of Jizan City, one of Saudi Arabia’s most important ports on the Red Sea. It has approximately 100 km2 of land area, two thirds of which are designated industrial and logistics zones. Once completed it will become home to approximately 300,000 people. ■ 4msa.com

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News

DatuBIM gets automated digital grade checking

atumate has added automated digital grade checking to its DatuBIM Construction Data Analytics platform. The cloud software can now transform 2D designs into digital data model objects, calculate grade checking reports, and further automate progress monitoring. With digital grade checking, Datumate is looking to turn what is traditionally a

manual process into one that is fully automated. Simply upload 2D designs (horizontal alignment, vertical profile, and cross-sections) and the platform autogenerates a 3D virtual design model for comparison with imported survey points or as-built site models. DatuBIM can automate the entire process using data captured by drones.

aim is to cover the entire lifecycle of civil projects, from planning and design to construction and maintenance. Daarwin is designed to overcome the limitations of lab and in-situ testing by using ‘real time backanalysis’, a methodology that compares monitoring data (such as topography, inclinometers, sliding micrometers etc.) to a numerical models to provide a more accurate representation of the real soil behaviour. ■ saalg.com/daarwin

BIMcollab optimises clash management IMcollab Cloud and BIMcollab ZOOM include a new ‘Smart Issues’ feature, billed as an ‘intelligent solution’ to time-consuming clash management. ‘Smart Issues’ emerged from BIMcollab’s combination of model validation and issue management – know the clashes they

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upix has released CupixWorks 2.0, a major update to its ‘3D digital twin platform’, which uses a consumer-grade 360-degree camera to capture construction sites. The resulting ‘3D digital twin’ is designed to enable building owners, general contractors and project managers to ‘build smarter’ and create value across the entire life cycle of a property. According to the company, its platform can be used for a relatively simple commercial building, a highly complex facility, or an infrastructure project like a road or bridge. Product enhancements include automated 3D spatial information extraction and editing tools, ‘comprehensive’ BIM data support, secure collaboration and data access controls, and more streamlined LiDAR data support.

■ cupix.com

■ datumate.com

Mott MacDonald invests in geotechnics ott MacDonald Ventures, the strategic corporate venture arm of the global engineering, consultancy, has made an equity investment in Spanish software and engineering start-up SAALG Geomechanics. SAALG’s Daarwin software provides an analytical capability for assessing ground behaviour during the construction stage of civil engineering and building projects. In the future the

Cupix extends ‘digital twin’

UoW invests in reality capture he University of Wolverhampton (UoW) School of Architecture and Built Environment (SoABE) will be using Matterport 3D capture technology for its education programme and to help deliver Covid-19 safe learning and streamline its estate and facilities management (CAFM). The UoW has created 3D digital visualisations of its new £45 million Springfield Campus, where the School of Architecture and Built Environment is based.

■ matterport.com

represent, to which objects they belong, and when they are reported or solved. In BIMcollab’s words, they carry all the necessary information about linked clashes to update their status automatically, without a user having to rerun clash detection rules. ■ bimcollab.com

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News

Varjo uses mixed reality to ‘virtually teleport’ AEC professionals to the construction site he Varjo Reality Cloud is a new ‘virtual teleportation’ platform from industrial VR/XR specialist Varjo. It enables anybody to 3D scan their surroundings in real time using a Varjo XR-3 mixed reality headset and then instantly transport others to that same physical reality. The Varjo Reality Cloud platform has a major focus on construction. Anyone can instantly ‘teleport’ to a construction site to join others live inside a collaborative immersive expeirience using a ‘highly accurate’ 3D reconstruction of the site. In the future, Varjo said, the technology could extend to merging as-designed BIM data with as-built reality models for construction verification. “With the Varjo teleport, you can have a construction worker, maybe one of the managers over there, put the headset on, and then the customers can join in, instantly,” says Urho Konttori, founder and chief technology officer, Varjo speaking with AEC Magazine. “Or maybe the architect can oversee the site, the creation of the building, give final comments and collaborate without having to actually fly to a different country.” To capture the reality, the Varjo XR-3 headset uses a combination of its built in LiDAR scanner and stereo video pass through cameras. The ‘fully immersive photorealistic real time 3D’ data is then pushed to the cloud in real-time where it is processed

on powerful GPUs and the pixels streamed to a variety of client devices. According to Varjo, thanks to its foveated transport algorithm, powered by Varjo eye tracking on the headset, you can stream your reality with a lower bitrate than you would stream a movie from Netflix, while keeping the human eye resolution quality. You currently need a Varjo VR-3 or XR-3 headset to experience the Varjo Reality Cloud, but this will extend to other devices in the future, including laptops, phones, tablets, or wireless headsets.

Building construction workflows

To help drive development of AEC workflows in the Varjo Reality Cloud, Varjo has acquired Dimension10, a Norwegian software company that specialises in BIM collaboration using VR/AR headsets. The company’s virtual meeting suite is designed specifically for AEC teams and will be a ‘critical component’ in future developments for virtual collaboration. Dimension10 (tinyurl.com/AEC-D10) will allow Varjo to bring in as-designed BIM models and merge them with as-built reality models captured by the Varjo XR-3 immersive headset. Capturing reality Varjo told AEC Magazine that it is The LiDAR scanner on the Varjo XR-3 already exploring construction headset can capture the world at distances verification workflows with of up to five metres at 30 frames per Dimension10, with the company having second. According to Varjo, accuracy is previously used on-site point cloud data sub-cm at close distance, but 5cm at 5m captured with traditional laser scanners. due to calibration tolerances. Larger areas Dimension10’s sofware has direct can be captured by walking around a site integrations with Autodesk Revit, and because positional tracking is subAutodesk Navisworks and supports IFC, mm, the accuracy would not decrease, BCF, FBX and other neutral formats. says Varjo. Varjo is also inviting select developers LiDAR data is then combined with to create solutions on the platform, using various in house developed algorithms an API, so expect more industry-specific that ‘fuse it with depth from stereo integrations. But, not for a while. In the disparity maps’ taken from the video see words of Timo Toikkanen, Varjo CEO, through cameras. “What this means is “It’s going to be a long journey, it’s not that we have a very robust depth estimate going to be happening overnight.” for every single pixel of the camera feed Alpha Access to the software will start and this is one of the game changers in the later this year. quality,” says Konttori. ■ varjo.com

What AEC Magazine thinks It’s still very early days for Varjo’s Reality Cloud, but we’re certainly excited by its potential. Yes, you could scan a construction site with a laser scanner or SLAM device, bring that dataset into VR and host a collaborative session, but that all takes time. The fact that this workflow appears to be seamless and happens

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on-demand in real-time is what makes it so interesting. With the Covid-19 pandemic there’s been a huge rise in demand for 360 cameras and on-site scanning and viewing the data remotely. Varjo Reality Cloud takes things to the next level in terms of experiencing the reality of what’s been built, without leaving the comfort

of your office or home. Without the accuracy of a laser scanner, however, whether this can extend to construction verification remains to be seen. Varjo may need to partner with a specialist like Topcon using tools like Verity to make this a reality. Finally, we’re not entirely sure what Health and Safety

would think about someone wearing a fully immersive headset on site (albeit one with mixed reality video passthrough) but if Volvo is letting its engineers drive real cars on test tracks when wearing one (tinyurl.com/ volvo-Varjo), walking around a construction site in a controlled way shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

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Anybody can 3D scan their surroundings in real time using a Varjo XR-3 mixed reality headset and then instantly transport others to that same physical reality

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Engineers at Volvo are wearing Varjo MR headsets to test new dashboard designs while physically driving real cars on the road

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Autodesk is currently discussing with the EPA, the potential to use the BIM model for the operation and maintenance phase, connected with IoT sensors to avoid any future fire

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BIM and the Notre-Dame resurrection We tend to take the perpetuity of iconic buildings for granted. From generation-to-generation, they have dominated skylines, and their silhouettes embody the very character of a city. In 2019 the world learned of the horrific news that the famous NotreDame de Paris was engulfed in flames

The Revit model includes Notre-Dame itself, the crypt, the sacristy, the spire, and the gardens behind the cathedral

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Feature

hen disaster strikes and a like materials and the painstaking work the backing of a European arts documenbuilding which means so required to preserve original elements tary he set out to capture the cathedral much to everyone is and repair fire the damaged stonework. from top to bottom using a Leica destroyed, it’s hard to look The cathedral roof was made from oak Geosystems laser scanner, starting at the away from rolling 24/7 news coverage and beams cut from centuries-old trees, west-side entrance. one is filled with disbelief and sadness. On which were even difficult to source in the At the time, Tallon wanted a laser scan 12 April 2019, as Notre-Dame still burnt, 13th century. With our habit of cutting of the building to understand the nature the French president, Emmanuel Macron down trees, Europe doesn’t have many of Gothic structure and to identify any vowed to put all of France’s resources into that are tall enough. Many experts think structural anomalies. Up till that point all rebuilding the iconic cathedral. the project is more likely to take decades. the standard surveys used to create The CAD industry is not one to miss a Emmanuel Di Giacomo, EMEA BIM drawings had tidied up errors of alignsilver lining marketing opportunity in a ecosystem development manager at ment, somewhat over-egging the precidark grey cloud. Shortly after the horrific Autodesk, France explained, “We were sion and capabilities of 13th century news, CAD software firms were in full shocked, all the world was shocked, espe- builders. Tallon’s laser scans were the swing offering to provide their AEC tools cially at Autodesk. Our CEO, Andrew only really accurate as-built measureto the project for free. Some ments of the cathedral. even contributed cash to the Sadly, Tallon died a few rebuilding effort. There was years before the fire at The team has been carrying out a lot of post- Notre-Dame and could not also a scramble to try and locate laser scan surveys of fire drone surveys to identify where the stones realise just how much his the cathedral which had been work would mean to the have fallen down, so they could be reused, carried out in the past, so they rebuilding of this fantastic repaired and put back in position could rapidly model the asGothic masterpiece. built in their BIM and CAD While Autodesk had this solutions. Thankfully, this underway, there was no frenzy didn’t last too long. It wasn’t until Anagnost was shocked and very sad organisation at a French Government spring this year, two years after the fire, about this. level in charge of the reconstruction. It that Autodesk has made any mention of its “We immediately resolved to help in was under the auspices of the Ministry of involvement in the rebuilding of Notre- the reconstruction of Notre-Dame and we Culture but there was a specific subsidiDame, in which Revit is playing a role. made a cash donation to the reconstruc- ary called DRAC (direction régionale des Five days after the fire, Macron tion fund. We thought that it would be affaires culturelles) involved. To speed announced he wanted to see the cathe- important to help with BIM and we start- up the process on 28 November 2019, dral rebuilt “more beautiful than before” ed to work with a company to create a Macron created a new public organisain just five years. To do this, the design BIM model of the cathedral pre-fire tion called the EPA (établissement public team, specialist renovators and construc- based on laser scans created by art and à caractère administrative), which basition firms, will have to overcome some architectural historian Andrew Tallon.” cally translates as the public administrasubstantial hurdles. The main problems Belgian-born Tallon had carried out a tion. He named a former army general include the sourcing of original like-for- laser scan of Notre-Dame in 2010. With Jean-Louis Georgelin to head it up and

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A brief history of Paris’s beloved cathedral Notre-Dame has played a key role in French history for 850 years and is the official ‘point zero from which all distances to Paris, France are measured. Construction started during the reign of King Louis VII (1163 AD), taking 183 years to build, it was France’s first Gothic stone building. In 1431, England’s Henry VI was crowned King of France and in 1804 Napoleon Bonaparte held his Emperor’s coronation at the site. The cathedral has survived the French Revolution, two World Wars, Nazi occupation and acid rain. The church measures 130m by 48m, with a 35m roof height. It was built mainly from limestone (from the same quarry that was used to build

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Versailles), wood from oak forests in Normandy, iron and lead. The design heavily utilised the then ‘new’ flying buttress external load supports for the masonry, an idea brought back from the crusades. It’s claimed that 1,300 oak trees were cut down for its roof between 1160 and 1170, and many could have been 300 to 400 years old at the time. The 96m spire which burned down in 2019 was an 18th century replacement and in the 19th Century an additional spire was added. The support structure for the spire had so much wood in it, it was affectionally known as ‘the forest’. France is currently felling the 1,000 oaks needed to replace the roof and spire structure.

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create the conditions to enable reconstruction and opening within five years, with the spire being completed by 2026. Autodesk engaged with the EPA and had a number of good conversations about using BIM, with the added bonus that the company was already creating a pre-fire BIM model from the most accurate survey. The EPA and Autodesk collaborated on the development of the creation of a Revit BIM model, focussing on the structural elements of the building, the stonework. They modelled the crypt, the sacristy, the spire, Notre-Dame itself and the gardens behind the cathedral. There is no carpentry model because there were no detailed drawings of the roof structure and there were no laser scan in the voids. The EPA had a number of specific uses for the BIM model, including planning for site logistics, crane positions, material delivery and organising site security. Because of the extensive lead pollution, access to the site needed to be controlled and extensive safety measures had to be taken by those working on the site. Autodesk provided some licences of its AEC suites, with access to AutoCAD, Recap (laser scanning) and Revit and gave the EPA access to Autodesk’s online collaborative platform, Autodesk BIM 360, for model sharing and project meetings. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has thrown a spanner in the timeline and the project has already lost a year, if it will truly be completed by 2024. The removal of the original scaffolding put up at the time of the fire, was also proving to be time consuming. The team has been carrying out a lot of post-fire drone surveys to identify where the stones have fallen down, so they could be reused, repaired and put back in position. The post fire BIM model was built in Revit from a survey carried out using 12 laser scanners which collected 46,000 scans. New stones are being made by hand. The idea is that even the carpentry will be remade by hand too. One of the other concerns is that so much water was pumped into the Cathedral that key structural elements might have moved or that it may have impacted the foundations. There are about 250 craftsmen of various trades onsite, and while material preservation and new stonework and woodwork will rely on traditional crafts, there will be a mix between these skills and digital skills, using laser scanning, drone, BIM etc. Autodesk hopes the EPA will leverage www.AECmag.com

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BIM 360 and BIM to speed up the process and avoid any onsite issues. Di Giacomo sees a big advantage in using BIM to examine the cabling of fire prevention systems within the building. It goes without saying that the EPA wants to make sure the future fire prevention system will be perfect. As they are building back in exactly the same way with lots of wood (sourced from around the forests of Le Mans) fire prevention is one of the more critical parts of the rebuild. Many of the subcontractors working on Notre-Dame are in the French regions, not in the capital. Access to BIM 360 coordination is less of an issue than onsite with very tight security and extensive protection required to work in the toxic lead environment. It’s taken two years to clean up the site, so now they can go back in and collect the remaining bits of burnt roof structure. The EPA is using

the BIM model to decide where the new scaffolding should go. As the project progresses, Navisworks and other Autodesk solutions could be used to plan 4D and 5D timelines. Autodesk is currently discussing with the EPA, the potential to use the BIM model for the operation and maintenance phase, connected with Internet of Things (IoT) sensors to avoid any future fire. This would be with the newly launched Autodesk Tandem Digital Twin Platform.

Conclusion Macron is still dedicated to pushing forward to deliver on a breakneck timeline. Even with all the digital tools we have at our command, this seems an incredibly unrealistic deadline. If traditional manufacturing skills are to be used exclusively, that is a bottleneck within itself. Then there is sourcing the July / August 2021

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Feature

In the early evening of April 15, 2019, a fire broke out beneath the roof of Notre-Dame Cathedral. As a UNESCO world Heritage site, the 12th Century building was offered the highest protection status possible. The French Fire Brigade regularly practised emergency exercises at the site, as everybody knew the timber roof was a potential fire hazard. Fire wardens regularly checked beneath the roof three times a day. This required ascending the 387 steps each time to get to the roof voids. The Cathedral was fitted with smoke and fire alarms. Constructed from stone and wood, the fabric of the building had suffered years of erosion and wear from weather and pollution. The wooden roof was covered in lead sheeting but as we all know, if left for too long, fissures grow and water can get in. This led to extensive rotting in the spire and roof timbers. They were spongy and had become powdery with age. French Ministry of Culture and the archdioceses of Paris had raised €100 million in the previous ten years to carry out extensive restoration of the cathedral.

At the time of the fire, the building was enveloped in scaffolding and the repair work was underway. At 6:20 in the evening the fire alarms went off and the guards evacuated the cathedral. The first inspection failed to find any fire and it was only on a second visit after seeing smoke, that the fire was finally located and it was well advanced. Unfortunately, the fire alarms were not automatically routed to the Fire Brigade and they were not called until half an hour after the fire was found. By the time firefighters arrived, the fire in the roof had been going for at least an hour. The white smoke that was rising from the roof turned black and flames could be seen from the spire. Firefighters mainly worked from inside the structure, braving falling debris and what would become a much worse problem - 400 tons of molten lead. Intensity of the fire was so strong it cracked stones and melted lead joints in the stained glass. Within an hour of the firefighters arriving, the Spire of the cathedral collapsed sending a fireball through the rest of the attic. Nothing could be done about saving the wooden roof,

material and having to deal with Covid -19 and a whole year just to clean the site up. This all needs to move in parallel at breakneck speed. With both an accurate pre-fire BIM model and a post-fire BIM model, there are a lot of benefits to be squeezed out of the digital twins. I can’t help but feel it would be prudent to use modern manufacturing techniques to replace stone and woodwork.

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IMAGE COURTESY OF WANDRILLE DE PRÉVILLE

The Notre-Dame fire

so firefighters concentrated on saving the bell towers, which was successful after 15 hours fighting the flames. In the aftermath, only one third of the Cathedral roof survived; the rest of the roof fell into the interior of the church, bringing down some of the vaulted stone ceilings. However many of the rib vaults held. While much of the story is about the physical damage to the iconic building, the fire combination with

While in Barcelona the Sagrada Família has been a work in progress since 1882, the designers continuing on that task have utilised modern CAD and computer numerical control (CNC) techniques to fabricate new stonework and improve productivity. I can see the argument as to why you’d want to rebuild as it was, traditionally handmade, as you wouldn’t digitally print out a portion of a damaged Vincent Van Gogh. By the sounds of it, most of the digital benefits for Notre-Dame will come as material is shipped to site, and coordination becomes essential to speed up reconstruction. I am sure it will also be an important environment for designing the new Cathedral roof structure, together with assembly sequencing. My final thought is we need to laser scan every building that is precious to us as soon as possible and it reminds me of the work being done by CyArk (cyark. org) which is a non-profit organisation which aims to scan, digitally

lead created a health hazard both on-site and around Paris. Lead levels on Parisian streets were five times the indoor legal limit. The cause of the fire remains a mystery, a post-fire inquiry identified the only possible culprits as being possible faulty electrical wiring or discarded cigarette butts from restoration workers. The cost of repairing the building is estimated to be anywhere between $1.13 to $2 bn.

record, archive and share the world’s cultural heritage. In every country, there should be a mandate to capture what we fear losing the most. A digital copy isn’t perfect, but certainly better than nothing should something terrible happen.

The Revit model in numbers The concept of using a modern day BIM modelling tool to create a digital twin of an 800 year old stone church certainly had us raising our eyebrows. BIM is great at modern buildings because they are mostly perfectly rectilinear. Take a 13 Century building and add some wear and tear, a little bit of warping and some subsidence, and it can be difficult to model accurately. The Revit BIM model contains 12,450 objects, most of which are adaptive components with a mix of traditional Revit families. From the model they found out that Notre-Dame has 30,028m of stone walls and 3,925m2 of lead roof. The model includes 186 vaults, and every vault was different, which proved the most time consuming to model from the laser scan.

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13.07.21 10:36

The death of architecture

(and the rise of a new one)

by Tal Friedman

The discipline of mainstream architecture is at an all-time low. Generic repetitive design, low sustainability and low cost / time efficiency have become the new norm. Despite the digital transformation in the field, we have failed to leverage BIM tools for creating a better built environment. But not all is lost! Advanced AI modelling techniques, together with robotic fabrication, promise to create the much-needed revolution in what we design and build. But these steps require us to disrupt the nature of architectural practice. So, what really needs to happen for the industry to succeed and are we really ready for such a change?

instein once said the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results. Yet here we are, designing the same buildings, over and over again and expecting to de-carbonise, save cost/time and improve architectural design — surprisingly, to no avail. Responsible for 40% of CO2 emissions and growing socio demographic problems as results of living standard gaps, it is time to admit modern architecture has failed us. It has failed to use technology to guide it to its goals due to fear of disrupting its own centralised power structure. In fact, the most common question raised when speaking about design automation is the concern for the well being of the architect rather than the well being of society and the built world. However, new AI technologies at hand can empower architecture to get back on

track and democratise construction. It’s time to go back to the drawing board and replan planning as we know it.

The rise and fall of the architect The architect, who has taken the historic role as guardian of architecture, has let its guard down and allowed a new player to dominate the realm, replacing the soft and often vague term of “architecture” with the hard and empiric term of the “construction industry.’ This is not new, of course. The architect has changed its role many times throughout history: from an on site omni present design-builder, to a “behind the desk” paper draftsperson and all the way to a computational specialist living in a virtual universe. What has always remained at the heart of the discipline is the desire to create a worthy living environment. However, the shift from a physical on-site methodology to a world of data

and theoretical geometry has disconnected the discipline from the ground to the point where the modern architect is merely a nester/drafter of repetitive shelf products that compose buildings. As a matter of fact, it is fabrication restraints dictated by producers and contractors that limit 99% of the buildings to repetitive boxes from early design stages. For the average architect, it is a given that any deviation from the norm will create an exponential price increase due to the added engineering and customised production. ‘Starchitecture’, on the other hand, is a game reserved only for those privileged enough to have unlimited budgets. In short, we have become strong on data, clouds and documentation, but weak on design flexibility and well being — aka architecture. So yes, we have managed to build mega cities higher, quicker, and more industrialised. Yet, the industry fails to meet its own success criteria, deepening the problem year after year. Just like in the story of the tower of Babylon, our success is

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We have become strong on data, clouds and documentation, but weak on design flexibility and well being - aka architecture.

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Opinion

Stadium design: Tal Friedman Architecture + Foldstruct

exactly what is leading us to our failure. So why should we be optimistic?

Build like a robot, sing like a human Automation tools and robots have created the fourth industrial revolution in fields like automotive and aerospace and are now more feasible than ever before for mainstream construction. It is estimated that since moving to the age of advanced automation, the price of a car has relatively dropped by about x3, yet construction is getting more and more expensive due to growing labour costs. Robotic tools like 6-axis robotic arms from KUKA or life-like robots from companies like Boston Dynamics and Festo have led to a new age of mass-customisation. But it wasn’t just the robots themselves that changed the game. More importantly, it was the ability to control them using digital DfMA (Design for Manufacturing and Assembly) methodologies. Now, these powerful tools are at the fingertips of the construction sector, we no longer have to think in terms of moulds and stamps. Instead, we can begin to design

in free forms and new morphologies. So how do you teach your architect or engineer next door to design for a machine, let alone a fabricator who is using traditional tools? After all, it took us thousands of years to come up with methods that match the human labour restraints. The answer: a singularity in the design process that connects all stakeholders to the same model, from initial design, all the way to fabrication and takes into account time and cost of building from preliminary stages. We now have the means to do so, if we only dare to step outside the box.

Make architecture great again The magic moment in architecture is the awe of seeing a design come to life and being surprised by the outcome you designed yourself. Undiscovered spaces form hidden gems. Reflections and lights tell more than meets the eye. With AI, we can achieve new levels of self-forming designs that will have to match our design goals as a principle, but have a free hand on how to get there.

Technologies like GAN (generative adversarial network) and ML (machine learning) have the power to create unimaginable forms and functions if we only dare to open that door. The building of tomorrow will have a life of its own and be based on an adaptable DNA, varying on needs and project goals, rather than design ownership of a single entity. The architect in that sense will have to give up a lot of the authorities it had as an individual designer, but in return gain access to a new world of opportunities. The boundaries must blur between an architect, engineer and manufacturer, and turn the building into a living product. We must guide, select and choose, rather than dictate. In the work of Foldstruct, the aim is to democratise the planning process and mix between endless data combinations in a platform where architecture is a metric and not a title. So what will the future of architecture hold in an age of automation? Will it kill architecture as we know it, or return it to its old glory with a new twist? ■ foldstruct.com ■ talfriedman.com

Too many buildings look like this. A far cry from reaching the goals set out by the industry and authorities

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Feature

DDS CAD is an MEP-focused BIM application with powerful calculation tools, intelligent components, symbols, macros, parametric objects, reports and parts lists generators

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Graphisoft gains MEP German holding company, Nemetschek, owns fifteen AEC design related brands, including three BIM tools: Graphisoft (Archicad), Vectorworks and Allplan. Over the next year, two of its brands — Graphisoft and DDS-CAD — will merge to add full MEP capabilities to the Archicad ecosystem by Martyn Day

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Feature

hen it comes to defining the capabilities of a product through its name, Archicad poses difficulties. It sounds like it only does BIM for architecture. As it’s head-to-head against Revit, which is multi-disciplinary, this has been a problem and perhaps created a misconception. For many years Archicad has been developed to cater to the display of structural objects, as well as mechanical, electrical and plumbing components. If you look at the latest releases concerning structural design, there are swathes of built-in features that you don’t see anywhere else for seamless iterative workflows between architect and structural engineer. But would a structural or MEP engineer choose Archicad as their weapon of choice for core design? Probably not. But this could change over the next few years, as Nemetschek takes DDS CAD (Data Design System) and merges it into Graphisoft. DDS CAD is a Norwegianbased developer of dedicated MEP design tools, which was acquired by Nemetschek in 2013. It has predominantly sold directly and is popular in central Europe. The integration within Graphisoft will take multiple years to fulfil, but this obviously gives the Archicad developers an opportunity to form a dedicated team to build powerful MEP libraries, analysis and automation into the product and give Archicad an equal footing when compared to Revit like-for-like. Nemetschek’s seeming reticence to integrate its burgeoning stable of products has been a source of debate in the industry over the years. It seems that the company is finally identifying and is willing to address areas of obvious synergy within its own stable, as well as continuing to acquire new technologies and firms. Looking at DDS CAD, its interface does appear like a Windows product from the 1990s. But underneath it’s a standalone, all-in-one, 2D CAD and 3D BIM design and documentation system which offers powerful calculation tools, intelligent components, symbols, macros, parametric objects, reports and parts lists generators. While the MEP logic and content are evergreen one can easily imagine a contemporary Archicad front end for all this capability. We talked with Graphisoft CEO Huw Roberts to find out more about the move. What’s your view of Archicad becoming a multi-disciplinary BIM tool? 24

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Huw Roberts: In the design of buildings strengths, business aspirations, skill sets today, especially when you’re using BIM, in these two companies, and together we the connections and sharing of informa- can chart the right path. Both firms are tion between disciplines is critical. firmly committed to Open BIM, and Architects don’t work in a vacuum, and therefore have data structures that can the best architects have really high levels map to each other. of collaboration with their engineers. I But we are not Autodesk; this isn’t don’t talk about multi-disciplinary so about having a new suite or a bundle we much, only about integrated disciplines can sell. We’re much more about integrator interdisciplinary. It’s about working ing the work of designers and engineers, together. than about just mashing products togethWith any great building, engineering is er. Firstly, how do we support the actual not an afterthought, it is intertwined with individual at the keyboard who is trying that design. And this is true at every scale to design something? Then, how does of building. So, we’re all about empowering that person work in a team and consume teams to create great architecture and that or share information with other people? means focusing on empowThere’s no expectation ering that whole team. We here that we’re going tell want to provide the best our MEP customers, you design experience for all have to act like archieverybody involved. tects and use Archicad, or We have great connecthat architects will have tions to tools that are on to buy a multidiscithe market, and we’ve got plinary product and have Open BIM but that only all this engineering stuff goes so far. Design iterain their way. This is just tions are becoming increasdifferent functionality, ingly real time. While we serving a different use already have good MEP case, for different people. modelling capabilities, we And this isn’t taking don’t have those domain away from our existing There’s no algorithms and those resources and focus - we expert systems with autoare adding to the team to expectation that mated calculations. we’re going tell our provide new capabilities. But I also think that just the end, it just gives MEP customers, In because something’s in Graphisoft that ability to you all have to act provide a more compreBIM and offers an integrated workflow, it doesn’t like architects and hensive solution across mean it has to look or feel use Archicad, or the AEC market. the same way for everybody. We will fully respect that architects will Conclusion have to buy a and support that as we go It’s clearly early days and forward. We don’t want multi- disciplinary there is much for to tell MEP engineers Graphisoft and DDS product and have CAD’s design teams to they need to design like all this engineering discuss, in terms of roadarchitects. stuff in their way map and the future develDDS CAD is standalone. opment. It will obviously Will that carry on, or will be a while before we really it be just ported over to Archicad? see any deliverables from this announcement. What we can tell from this is that Huw Roberts: We certainly are commit- Nemetschek has entered a new phase, conted to supporting the existing customers centrating effort in to making more of the on a path that works for them. There will breadth of technologies it owns, as well as be another DDS coming out of this fall, its intention to step up to be more featureand another one next year. That will have to-feature competitive against Autodesk a path. As to how that takes advantage of Revit. Despite the internal focus on vertibeing part of Graphisoft? cal product development, it’s good to hear Our guys and their guys have to put that the company is still dedicated to its their heads together and as a united Open BIM philosophy and will continue to team, we need to talk to customers! We work with an ecosystem of independent are just at the start of this. There’s a structural and MEP software developers. whole lot of complementary technologies, ■ graphisoft.com/archicad ■ dds-cad.net

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Software

Graphisoft Archicad 25 The new release of Archicad, Graphisoft’s flagship BIM authoring tool, is the silver anniversary (25th) edition. Heavily focussed on delivering on customer requests, Graphisoft is increasingly integrating its cloud services and desktop products, writes Martyn Day

hile we live in strange Despite the pandemic, Graphisoft’s Archicad 25 times and the ‘normal’ CEO, Huw Roberts remains buoyant. Archicad has turned 25, and the flagship world still feels some- “2020 has been our best year ever,” he told BIM tool from Nemetschek’s Graphisoft what distant, the software AEC Magazine, “We have high aspirations division is not showing its age. It is, in industry doesn’t seem to have skipped a and expectations for 2021 and beyond.” fact, even older than the release number beat. It’s somewhat reassuring to see In the UK, Graphisoft experimented would portray. The first version came out annual releases come out from key soft- with giving away free use of Archicad in 1987, before software firms got into the ware developers delivering on the contin- licences for six months. This was an habit of rolling out annual releases. ued evolution of design tools, indicating attempt to break the stranglehold that The software spans Microsoft their customers are still managing to con- Autodesk Revit has on the UK market Windows and Apple Macintosh, expands duct their business, albeit in disjointed and to give potential migrators ample BIM viewing to mobile Apple iOS and geographic locations. time to see if the grass was indeed green- Android and offers cloud-based teamWe have a lot to thank the cloud for and er, given the deep-felt frustrations that working through its BIMcloud. probably all have difOver the last ten or ferent perspectives on more releases, the future IT infrastruccompany has proven Key areas for the development in Archicad 25 include that it has a dedication ture, collaborative tools, offices and digiticollaboration with MEP and structural (building on to evolve, expand and sation. But hopefully last year’s new functionality), enhanced design tools rewrite the underpinwe can all now find the ning foundations of and more accurate quantity take-offs unmute button in the Archicad code to Microsoft Teams. better use modern If anything, the pancomputing power. demic has seen us rely on technology led to last year’s open letter to Autodesk Archicad 25 and Archicad 24 (which more than ever. When the impact of (tinyurl.com/adesk-letter) . came out soon after the pandemic startCovid-19 was better understood, There does seem to have been some ed) share a common theme, that of dediGraphisoft introduced free emergency traction with this aggressive offer, and cating development to respond to cuslicences for customers whose staff, sud- AEC Magazine has talked to a number of tomer feedback and requirements. denly working from home, had difficulties firms who took up the opportunity. This is a departure from the focus of accessing licences located on company Roberts stated that the company’s teams previous releases, which were themed networks. Graphisoft also offered free in Brazil, Russia, Latin America, around addressing specific design areas. access to its BIMcloud service (which was Singapore, and Southern Europe have seen This means there’s little wholly ‘new’ in an additional subscription) to enable strong double-digit growth over the last Archicad 25 in terms of capability, but it remote collaboration between even more year, while Austria, Italy, USA, UK, and should be a guaranteed crowd pleaser to distributed teams. France are well above the year-to-date plan. its user base.

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20/07/2021 07:38

Duke Ellington School of the Arts

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July / August 2021

Architect: cox graae + spack architects | LBA Joint Venture

Photo © Chris Ambridge

20/07/2021 07:38

Key areas for the development in Archicad 25 include collaboration with MEP and structural (building on last year’s new functionality), enhanced design tools and more accurate quantity take-offs. Visualisation gets a major boost with realistic shadows and user-customisable surface textures, as well as enhanced rendering capabilities. Documentation sees more precise quantity and cost estimations as well as new labelling options for Zones and MEP elements.

as part of SAF-based data exchange Archicad now automatically maps them to manufactured profiles based on a predefined or customised database. MEP: Archicad 25 now automatically displays MEP-related information for a smoother mechanical, electrical and plumbing documentation workflow.

Core enhancements: It’s now quicker to shift between 2D/3D views. Polygonal openings make it easier to create custom Key features wall openings (such as for MEP openGraphisoft has taken a broad brush to ings) to make holes of any shape, providenhancements with this release, with ing more accurate quantities. work on features across the board. There Stair construction has an additional are new features and extensions to exist- way of defining the walking lines of a ing capabilities in modelling, drawing, staircase using ‘Along Chord’ method, in workflow and visualisation. Below is a addition to the ‘Along Arc’ method. summary. There’s a new stair winder and stair landing options. Native Survey Point is a new centralised Surface textures can now be displayed way of handling real-world coordinates directly in section and elevation views in across all OpenBIM workflows. It sup- Archicad. Realistic soft-shadow and ports IFC and BCF file exchange and also cover fill option on textures can also be provides better interoperability with con- displayed in section and elevation views. ventional file formats such as DWG. In the Mac version, Archicad now supports the Apple Metal graphRevit to Archicad tools: ics engine for faster renderNow supporting Autodesk ing. This replaces OpenGL. Revit 2021, you can import Graphisoft has Support for Rhino 6 and 7 expanded the models has been enhanced. RFA & RVT geometry as native Archicad objects and capabilities of create MEP equipment from Object library updates: The BIMx and Revit Family files. Export a huge library is expanded BIM Cloud 3D model as Revit 3D geomewith 39 new residential and try and hotlink a 3D RVT furniture and enabled commercial model. Archicad now hanobjects, such as new modular them to work dles Revit’s ‘Discipline filter’, kitchen cabinets, sofa beds, together so when you hotlink a Revit curtains, coat racks, tables, seamlessly file, what you see in Revit is chairs, mattresses, and grills. what you get in Archicad.

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Solibri connection: Nemetschek’s BIM checking application, Solibri is now better integrated with Archicad through an add-in to ease round-tripping of data. You can select Solibri’s current ‘Selection Basket’ items in Archicad and view them with the same camera position. Structural enhancements: Archicad 25 continues its expansion into the structural vertical. Updates to the Offset Adjustments and Connection Range can help eliminate overlapping parts of 2D members, and includes enhancements to structural support creation. When opening the engineer’s SAF model, Archicad 25 correctly displays loads and load data and supports this when round tripping the data. When exporting structural elements 28

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BIMx and BIM Cloud

While Graphisoft’s flagship design tool is Archicad, the company has also led the pack in BIM model distribution and collaboration tools. BIMx enables ‘Hypermodels’ to be shared with clients and contractors, without the need for any preloaded BIM applications, yet still accessing all the important project data. BIMx provides real-time model cutthroughs, in-context measuring, and project markups in the model context. BIM Cloud is the cloud service that centrally hosts models and enables controlled teamwork. With this release, Graphisoft has expanded the capabilities of both products and enabled them to work together seamlessly. BIMx desktop viewer can now open both 2D and 3D files and can be accessed

from the BIMcloud desktop application. While in the past BIMx has worked on Apple iOS devices, the 3D BIMx engine is now finally available for Android as well. BIMx can open 3D models of any size and complexity through streaming, 2D, 3D project views and animations can be saved for later access. It’s also possible to print hard copies of any 2D or 3D project view from BIMx. While Android users have had to wait, the new flavour of BIMx is fully featured and supports both 3D models and 2D drawings, the Smart Measure function, animations, presenter mode, and realtime illumination calculation. BIMcloud, accessed via a Graphisoft ID, has been rebooted to handle a huge 100K file capacity and opened-up so that users can host all their project files in the convenient location of their choice. This means customers can store their project files in one secure BIMcloud location, while BIMx can be accessed from the BIMcloud desktop application for faster, more convenient collaboration and visualisation. The new BIMcloud SaaS licence transfer assists smaller practices and sole practitioners, who will benefit from the ability to pool resources while delivering projects in joint ventures, without any hidden costs. It means you can work in a team and bring your own licence.

Graphisoft Forward In addition to new software, Graphisoft is offering a new ‘Global Software Service Agreement’ called ‘Graphisoft Forward’. It will be available with Archicad 25 and is described as a ‘strong user-relationship for Graphisoft and its clients’. Graphisoft Forward is said to lower the overall cost of software ownership through access to exclusive tools, training, one-on-one support, and services. Early access to downloads and free product updates means users will be first to benefit from the latest innovations and capabilities. As Graphisoft sells through Value Added Resellers (VARs), we are not exactly sure what this means for them, but at the time of launch, Graphisoft stated that ‘partners often extend the core benefits of upgrades to add additional benefits and value locally’. We assume this means that VARs are free to enhance and extend their own ‘Forward’ offerings. “During the early days of the pandemic, firm principals saw first-hand how crucial an emergency licence of Archicad could be for their businesses,” said Huw Roberts, Graphisoft CEO. “Providing this www.AECmag.com

20/07/2021 07:38

Software

1 Surface textures can now be displayed directly in section and elevation views in Archicad 2 Polygonal openings now make it easier to create custom wall openings

expanding it by 100,000 square feet. Derek Banocy, AIA, associate principal of cox graae + spack explained, “From IFC file exchange for consultant coordination to 3D design of complex geometries, Archicad was essential to the entire team to deliver the Duke Ellington School of the Arts. Put simply, it would have been impossible to visualise, design, and construct this innovative design without the collaborative team process ingrained in our office culture.”

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continuity of service as we did, helped us decide to make it a permanent feature.” At the time of launch the following upgrades were included with Graphisoft Forward. • Get every update as they become available without paying extra. • Volume discounts, preferential pricing. • Free or reduced admission to events. • Training and access to Graphisoft’s knowledge base. • Unlimited access to Graphisoft’s dedicated localised Technical Centre. • Licence Pooling – automatic optimisation of a company’s software licence usage. • Emergency Licences – guaranteed access to emergency licences. • Licence Key Insurance – replace a stolen, damaged, or malfunctioning licence – once a year, free of charge. • BIMx Model Private Hosting and Sharing – 10 GB private storage space included. www.AECmag.com

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• Graphisoft Learn discounts – discounted courses about Archicad, BIMx, and BIMcloud. • Epic Games Twinmotion included. • Library Part Maker Add-On – create virtually any custom object. Rough pricing for Graphisoft Forward membership will be 18% of the cost of a perpetual licence per year. Three-year deals bring that down to around 15% of a perpetual licence per year.

Archicad 25 signature building As with every release, Graphisoft likes to adorn its annual box and marketing packaging with the work of one of its customers. This year’s signature project is The Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, DC, an award-winning design by Washington-based cox graae + spack. The firm transformed an aging historical national landmark into a top-tier educational and performance facility,

Finally, Graphisoft usually holds an annual event for its key customers but obviously the pandemic scuppered last year’s plans, as well as this year’s. For 2021, Graphisoft has announced a free online event called ‘the Building Together 2021 conference’ which will take place over three days, from 14 to 16 September. The range of topics will include sustainability, the future of architecture, integrated design and Building Lifecycle Intelligence. There will be more than 30 leading architects and experts from around the world who will participate in the form of roundtables, keynotes, and “TED Talk” presentations. Last year’s presentations can be seen at graphisoft.com/buildingtogether-2020. Huw Roberts, Graphisoft CEO added, “Topics like diversity in architecture, rapid rehousing, the future of cities, the changing role of architects, and the challenges of cultural heritage preservation will also be covered. Architects, experts, and students from around the world are all invited.” ■ buildingtogether.graphisoft.com ■ graphisoft.com/archicad

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Comment

Construction playbook What about the implementation: documents and risks? by May Winfield

he Construction Playbook sets out the Government’s guidance on sourcing and contracting public works. It notes from the outset that it is focused on getting projects and programmes right from the start, and that it champions innovation and use of technology, including modern methods of construction and implementation of the UK BIM Framework. There is an interesting reference to an intention to use standardised contract terms and limit changes to the drafting, although it remains to be seen what form and content such contract terms will take. Whilst awaiting these (which in any case form just one part of the process), the industry and contracting clients are seeking to understand the aims of the Construction Playbook. But, to date, there appears to have been little consideration of the actual method of implementation from a contractual and legal perspective. What documentation will be needed? What are the new legal and contractual liabilities, roles and responsibilities that will arise? What risk management steps do parties need to take as a result? This article seeks to examine a few of the areas within the Construction Playbook to highlight the issues that may arise, and the need to carefully consider the legal and contractual impact. By doing this, one may ensure clarity and common understanding, and avoid disputes and unnecessary loss of time and money.

Modern Methods of Construction (“MMC”) The use of MMC has been growing within the construction industry for some time; see for example the various research publications issued by the UK Government (tinyurl.com/MMC-REF). The Playbook points out the need to reimag30

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ine procurement to support investment in MMC, by adopting longer term contracting for example, and/or by building on the presumption in favour of offsite construction. The Playbook also announces that the Government will look to procure construction projects based on product platforms comprising standardised and interoperable components and assemblies, the requirements for which will be part of a digital component catalogue. While the active move towards MMC is a necessary and important progression for the construction industry, the Playbook necessarily does not go into the detail of implementation, and there are potential complexities that need to be overcome for MMC to be successful without leading to confusion or unintended liabilities. Taking the intention for product platforms as an example: who will be responsible for compiling and updating the digital component catalogue? To what extent are parties responsible to guarantee the interoperability of their components and assemblies? To what extent are the design team responsible compared to the components’ manufacturers, for errors, flaws or failure of the MMC components to fit or function as expected? It will be important for parties to consider these issues up front, to allocate risk and roles clearly and appropriately, as well as arrange the design process to suit the requirements of MMC – there would likely need to be a design freeze earlier in the process to enable components to be manufactured with confidence.

Early engagement and outcome-based approach The Playbook points out that clear, outcome-based specifications will facilitate

innovative, cost-effective solutions. It urges contracting authorities to consider how they can continuously improve their approach to innovation, including considering any unintended conflict between the approach to innovation and the commercial conditions around this. It says that a shared focus on outcomes, rather than scope, will unlock innovation and drive continuous improvement. A shift to outcome-based specifications would benefit from a corresponding shift to a more outcome-based procurement model, rather than the costs-based approach more common at present. KPIs and other outcome-based measurements may feature more heavily in contracts than they do currently. The question of how these measurements are set, and how they are then measured, will become a vital consideration. What if the KPIs or other outcome specifications become unrealistic or unreasonable? As the Playbook recognises, a wide range of stakeholders may need to be involved to create appropriate design objectives, requirements and specifications; this may include end users given the end product must, after all, suit them. However, how many projects have an identified end user and stakeholders at the early design and tender stages when requirements are crafted? Does the agreement have sufficient flexibility to enable parties to collaborate to continue to innovate to reach a positive outcome, whilst reasonably protecting their positions? The Playbook recommends the specification of consistent standards for products and interfaces - to reduce unnecessary bespoke solutions and enable efficiencies. In going down this path it will be important for parties to remember, among other things, to be wary of fitnesswww.AECmag.com

20/07/2021 07:55

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Comment

for-purpose design obligations or strict Effective contracting the Farmer Report: Modernise or Die. warranties to achieve certain standards The Playbook explains that the governThe Playbook suggests that stanas these could fall outside many profes- ment wants to create a contracting envi- dardised contracts or standardised consional indemnity insurance policies. ronment that delivers a sustainable, resil- tract terms can be used to help simplify Obtaining appropriate professional ient and effective relationship between and speed up procurement procedures. advice is vital when pursuing a brave contracting authorities and the supply However, the construction industry new way of interacting or procurement to chain, focused on outcomes, and that cre- already predominantly uses standard ensure parties rights and risk allocation ates long-term value for all. form contracts (albeit often with projectis as intended, and equally importantly, This will, realistically, require a shift specific amendments). The shift will falls within their insurance cover if away from costs-focussed tendering therefore be in parties adopting collaborsomething goes wrong. towards more value-based and outcome- ative processes and terms within their The Playbook acknowledges that intel- based tendering, which is in line with the documentation, although this needs to be lectual property rights are a relevant rest of the Playbook’s proposals. The accompanied with the correct mindset. issue to consider, including how it might Playbook’s proposed use of Project The most perfect, collaborative contract arise from the contract. The contracts Scorecards, which will form part of con- will be of no assistance if parties are not will need to be clear in where the intel- tractual documentation, is an interesting open to working collaboratively, and conlectual property rights tinue the traditional adversit for the various elesarial mindset and passing ments, and when such down of risk. rights transfer (if they The most perfect, collaborative contract will be of The proposals of the no assistance if parties are not open to working Playbook appear to lead to are intended to). What are the best arrangemore framework contracts collaboratively, and continue the traditional ments for intellectual than individual tenders, adversarial mindset and passing down of risk property rights to minithereby enabling parties to mise cost and time, but develop collaborative, maximise other aspects close relationships over like efficiency and innovation? What suggestion. They are intended to inform time and develop and refine their rights are needed to fully benefit from contractual processes and form the base- requirements and ways of working. The the intellectual property created at line for robust post-completion evalua- processes and documentation of the BS future stages of the project? tion. Whilst the Playbook is correct that EN ISO 19650 will be one of the keys to It is helpful that the Playbook goes on the right KPIs will incentivise delivery of effective contracting in the manner to emphasise that intellectual property the things that matter and promote good envisaged by the Playbook. Indeed, the rights should be managed with clear relationships, as mentioned above, it may Playbook recognises this in requiring responsibilities set out in the contract. be tricky to set the correct KPIs. the adoption of the UK BIM Framework Contracts are still often only considered The Playbook acknowledges that KPIs which primarily consists of the BS EN late in the day, or their importance disre- must be quantifiable and measurable, but ISO 19650 standards and supporting garded entirely, to the detriment of all what is quantifiable and measurable will documentation. It also makes various parties as the project progresses. vary from project to project and parties references to processes that are integral may have different understanding of how parts of the BS EN ISO 29650 processes Delivery model assessments they should be complied with. The mea- such as capturing lessons learnt and The correct delivery model approach can surement of the KPIs will be equally feeding this back to improve processes. make a significant difference in deter- important and will need to be transparConclusion mining whether innovations like digiti- ent and fair. sation and MMC are maximised and Guidance at tender stage may be help- The Construction Playbook is a tremensuccessful. The risk and value profile ful, as will setting out the processes for dous and vital step by the Government in needs to be considered early, but also fulfilment within the binding contractual providing proactive supportive messaging reflected in complimentary terms within documentation, to ensure a level of con- for the development and innovation within the contracts to ensure intentions are sistency and understanding. As regards the construction industry. It is important fulfilled. Are risks allocated to the par- the Scorecard itself, whilst being a con- to use this opportunity to progress these ties best able to manage and mitigate tractual document, how will it interact areas albeit in an informed way, to avoid them? The Playbook notes that an effec- with the rest of the contract terms? Will it undoing the potential benefits and alienattive commercial strategy will include be, in essence, a collation of KPIs that ing participants. This includes putting in aligning commercial considerations need to be fulfilled in line with a party’s place the right, clear processes, terms and such as the form of contract, payment other contractual obligations? Does the documentation so all parties know what is approach and performance management Scorecard take precedence over other expected, and who is responsible for what, with the delivery model. contractual documents and terms? when and how. This will – at the very least The processes and procurement methThe Playbook mentions, on a number – minimise potential misunderstandings ods envisaged by the Playbook will proof occasions, the importance of collabora- as we increasingly move towards the duce more data and interactions than in tion to deliver intended outcomes. This is future of the construction industry. traditional contracting models. The (rela- an accepted fact, reflected in the widetively new) role of Information Managers spread adoption of the more collaborative May Winfield is global director of commercial, could be of great assistance to manage this way of working demanded by BIM and in legal and digital risks at Buro Happold. in an orderly and risk-managed fashion. various respected reports - most recently Connect with her on Twitter @Buildlaw_Arttea

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Case study

Reaching for the cloud with as-built drone data Monitoring the progress of a large data centre using reality modelling helps keep everyone on the same page and prevent a gas line rupture

i n n e a p o l i s - b a s e d different stage of construction. We also or we miscalculated - pretty fast and hasMortenson is a construc- use the data from Pix4Dcloud during sle-free,” comments Fluckiger. tion company with over 67 briefings to specify who needs to work years of experience in con- where. Logistically, it worked out very Project collaboration struction, solar energy, and infrastruc- nice that way,” says Ryan Fluckiger, Throughout the project lifecycle the ture. In May 2018 the company was senior integrated construction coordina- Mortenson team works with different subhired as a general contractor for a data tor and reality capture lead at Mortenson. contractors and for every single one, havcentre project in Eagle Mountain, USA. ing up-to-date information of the as-built The data centre currently consists of Tracking site progress and planning is important to be able to complete the job. three buildings, each of which will be As the project’s general contractor, The trade partners use the project data approximately one million square feet Mortenson is responsible for overseeing delivered from the Pix4D platform to when finished. and coordinating construction and keep- verify their work and to avoid encounterWorking on a large project like this ing everything on track. ing underground utilities while the inevitably has its challenges. Obstacles “We use the Pix4Dcloud data to verify owner of the project keeps an eye on the such as planning and logistics, danger- that the project is progressing according overall progress. ous underground utilities, Working with many subsite progress tracking, and contractors requires the lack of up-to-date data are Mortenson team to be able to only a few of the issues The superintendent was overlaying a CAD file properly track the work with a utility map on top of the orthomosaic done by each subcontractor Mortenson’s team has faced.. and sharing it with the trade partners online. so that they can get paid for Expansive site they did respectively. They could see right away where the utilities what As the site is spread over For example, the team used are on-site and avoid encountering them 500 acres, this presented a Pix4Dcloud to check the logistical challenge for installation of fences on site. Mortenson and its trade partners working on the project. On top of to the schedule,” explains Fluckiger. Utility detection that, construction of the three buildings “Being able to plan and weekly track the To ensure the safety of the general public did not start at the same time which made progress of the project has been invalu- and construction workers, it is crucial for it harder to monitor project progress. able to our superintendents which are the Mortenson team to locate and avoid The solution was to do this from the coordinating and planning the work.” damaging utility lines before starting any air, so Mortenson flew a DJI Phantom 4 As this is a big project and the team is groundwork. RTK drone to capture the site. Around moving millions of cubic yards of earth, That’s why Mortenson’s team was very 1,200 – 1,400 images were taken each small miscalculations can have great con- careful with the underground utilities of week and processed in the Pix4Dcloud sequences. That’s why the Mortenson the project and was verifying their locaplatform to generate a reality mesh. team is constantly keeping track of cut tion within Pix4Dcloud. “On a weekly “Pix4Dcloud is helping us to remotely and fill volumes of stockpiles. basis, the superintendent was overlaying track the progress of each building and to “Within the Pix4Dcloud software we a CAD file with a utility map on top of the share it easily with the trade partners can verify how much dirt we have moved, orthomosaic and sharing it with the trade over the cloud, as each building is at a before and after, if everything was correct partners online,” explains Fluckiger.

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1 Roof drainage pointcloud 2 Live utility overlay site logistics 3 Utility pointcloud verification

“They could see right away where the utilities are on-site and avoid encountering them. This was happening while they were planning or digging on-site.” In 2020 while excavating the site, damaging a gas pipe could have cost people’s lives. “The subcontractor company received a CAD file and was told that it contained the latest data of underground utilities, but it did not. Luckily, by using Pix4Dcloud they were able to see that some lines looked like gas, which was subsequently confirmed on closer inspection. “If the gas line was not spotted in time, anything could happen - from explosion to severe injuries,” adds Fluckiger. “This is not only a hazard to people working around but it could disrupt the service because we have a live data centre on-site. That would shut down all the utilities. It would cost money and time but also people’s lives which is the worst outcome.” To further verify utilities, the Mortenson team is exporting the point clouds to Navisworks. “The process is fairly easy - click, download, and upload to Navisworks. It takes a couple of minutes,” explains Fluckiger. “We also upload the orthomosaics to Bluebeam for demonstration purposes and to Revit to further plan and optimise the logistics on site. That is one of the reasons for choosing Pix4D many options for downloading outputs and also the file formats we need.”

The Eagle Mountain data centre is due to be completed on schedule in September 2021. All operations will be supported by 100% renewable energy and will reach a net zero emission. ■ pix4d.com ■ mortenson.com

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Workstation special report for BIM, design viz, reality modelling and more THE LATEST

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workstation special report

Desktop workstation buyer’s g Greg Corke goes back to basics with some general advice for those looking to buy a workstation for architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) workflows If you read AEC Magazine, the chances are that you already own a workstation. But how much do you know about it and how involved were you in its purchase? If you leave everything to your general IT department, you could end up with a machine that slows you down or, worse still, is simply not able to run your more demanding applications. We all work within budget limits, so it is really important to spend your money in the right areas. We’ve heard plenty of horror stories, including that of one large engineering firm that spent loads on a dual CPU workstation with lots of cores that ran at a low frequency (GHz), even though its designers only ever used CAD. In that example, buying a workstation with a single high-frequency CPU with fewer cores would not only have saved money, but significantly increased the productivity of the design team. Choosing the right spec is very important – and we cover this in depth in this special report – but it is not the be all and end all of buying a workstation. In this article, we look at other important points to consider.

Warranty Virtually all workstations come with a three-year warranty, but the level of cover can vary considerably between manufacturers. This isn’t just about protecting your investment. In the event of a

HP Z2 Tower G8 running Navisworks

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failure, you need to get machine. Warranties can be your workstation back up extended and negotiated, so and running as quickly as also bear that in mind. possible and with minimal The chassis hassle. A next business day (NBD) Workstations are not just on site warranty is common about their constituent parts. with workstations from The chassis can be incredibly major OEMs. Some custom important. There are three manufacturers only offer main points to consider: size, ‘return to base’ as standard noise and serviceability. But or NBD on site for the first having easy access to things Having to send like USB ports or headphone year. Having to send away away your your workstation to be sockets can also make a big repaired could mean days workstation to difference. Ask yourself the without its use, which could following questions: Will the be repaired be catastrophic when on a machine fit on your desk, or could mean tight project deadline. will it have to be kept down Many minor repairs can days without it, by your feet? If you need to be done by yourself. Some which could be move it, is it heavy and does manufacturers specifically it have built-in handles? catastrophic make their workstations Are the fans so noisy that when on a tight they are distracting? Can easy to service, so customers can be guided over the project deadline you expand the system with phone or video call and GPUs, storage or memory get themselves back up (are there free memory and running the same day (or the next slots)? Is it easy to service internal day if a part needs to be sent out). Other components? manufacturers state that any repairs or Of course, if you are the type of person alterations that are carried out by the that would never dream of getting inside a customer invalidate the warranty, so computer then serviceability is a moot point. check with your supplier first. Think about the things that matter to you. When comparing prices of workstations, For some, aesthetics are very important. make sure you are looking at details of the warranty and not just the Custom manufacturer or OEM specifications of A frequently asked question is whether t h e to buy from a custom manufacturer or a major OEM like Dell, HP, Lenovo or Fujitsu? There’s no simple answer, but there are a number of things to consider. Custom manufacturers are more flexible in how machines can be configured and are generally quicker at introducing new technologies. Many such firms overclock their CPUs, which can boost performance. OEMs, on the other hand, spend much more time on R&D to make

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workstation special report

s guide sure that components work well together and do extensive studies into acoustics, electromagnetic interference and thermodynamics. OEM workstations tend to be more solid and easier to service, particularly as some custom manufacturers try to cut costs by using budget PC chassis. OEM workstations also go through extensive testing and certification to make sure they work well and will be fully supported with many different CAD/BIM applications. With custom manufacturers, you are usually just getting the certification of the GPU. Of course, many large architecture and engineering firms will only buy from major OEMs for reasons of support, management or global availability, so the decision is already made.

Performance Nobody ever complains that their workstation is too fast, but the additional money one must spend to increase performance needs to be weighed up against the benefits experienced. Some performance increases are easy to quantify, such as the time it takes to render a scene or process a reality model, so it is easy to envisage the potential benefits. 3D graphics performance, however, is harder to measure. More frames per second (FPS) is always better, but if you are unable to discern a difference, does it really matter? Generally speaking, anything over 25 FPS is fine for 3D design work. You can get away with lower frame rates on the desktop, but Virtual Reality is different. An underpowered GPU could make you feel sick as it can’t keep up with your head movements – or it may mean you have to spend hours manually optimising BIM models every time you bring them into VR.

Know your bottlenecks Understanding how your software works and where your bottlenecks occur can help you make informed decisions on workstation purchases. Many of the major workstation OEMs offer free workstation tuning software that can monitor resources in real time and over a set period. Other good tools include GPU-Z for monitoring GPU usage, CPU-Z for CPU and Windows Performance monitor. If you are experiencing slow 3D performance, for example, check to see how much of your GPU is being used. If it’s 100%, then investing in a more powerful GPU would probably help. However, if usage is significantly less, you could be wasting your money and would be better off buying a higher frequency CPU. Once you understand where your bottlenecks occur, it can help you assign budget to the correct areas and tailor a workstation for your specific workflows. Read this AEC Magazine article to find out more (tinyurl.com/WS-bottlenecks). www.AECmag.com

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Processor (CPU) In a workstation, you should always aim for a CPU with a high frequency (GHz). This is good for general system and modelling performance as many operations are single threaded. i.e. they use only one CPU core. Multi-threaded operations can use multiple CPU cores (and sometimes virtual CPU cores). Rendering is the best example; as a rule of thumb, doubling the number of cores halves rendering time. Simulation software and point cloud processing software also tends to be multithreaded, but there can be diminishing returns as you use more cores. In saying that, it is possible to do multiple simulations on a single machine at the same time, providing you have sufficient memory and memory bandwidth, storage bandwidth and software licences. CPUs that have lots of cores typically run at lower frequencies, so it’s important to strike

Graphics (GPU) The professional 3D graphics card or graphics processing unit (GPU) is one of the key components that defines a professional 3D workstation. Unlike consumer GPU drivers, pro graphics drivers are specifically designed to work with professional 3D software (especially CAD and BIM software) and are given an official stamp of approval for each application through ‘certification’. This comes with the promise of full support from the software developer. Pro drivers can mean better performance, better stability and access to specific features, such as RealView in Solidworks, Order Independent Transparency (OIT) in several 3D CAD applications, and AMD Radeon Viewport Boost (see page WS26). If there are any display or stability issues in your CAD or BIM software, they are more likely to be fixed in a subsequent driver release. Nvidia has the lion’s share of the add-in GPU market with its Nvidia RTX and Nvidia Quadro family, but AMD Radeon Pro also plays

Storage (SSD / HDD) M.2 NVMe Solid State Drives (SSDs) have quickly become the standard in workstations. Sequential read/write speeds are superior to 2.5-inch SATA SSDs, although this won’t always result in real world benefits. M.2s are also smaller, which has helped reduce the size of workstations. Newer workstations, including those with AMD Ryzen 5000 or 11th Gen Intel Core CPUs, support PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs, which offer double the sequential read/write performance

Memory (RAM) You should always aim to have enough memory so you never run out, as performance can significantly slow down if your workstation has to page data to your SSD. Memory requirements will always change over time. Your datasets will get bigger and the

a balance. Another strategy is to optimise your workstation for modelling and send your multi-threaded calcs to a server or the cloud. Intel used to dominate the workstation CPU market, but this is changing. AMD now has extremely competitive processors for all different workflows. However, with the exception of Lenovo, AMD-based workstations are still only available from specialist manufacturers like Scan, BOXX, and Workstation Specialists. For CAD and BIM centric workflows, choose 11th Gen Intel Core or Intel Xeon W-1300 CPUs (up to 8 cores) or AMD Ryzen 5000 series (up to 16 cores). Intel still has the edge in single threaded performance, but AMD offers much better multi-threaded performance as it has double the number of cores (see page WS4). For very high-end multi-threaded workflows, it’s very hard to recommend anything other than the AMD Threadripper or Threadripper Pro. It’s important to note that CPUs from different families cannot be directly compared by GHz.

a very important role. Some Intel CPUs include integrated graphics. While the performance can be OK for entry-level 3D workflows, certain professional features might not be supported and the number of application certifications is much less. Still, professional GPUs are facing increased competition from their consumer counterparts — Nvidia GeForce and AMD Radeon. Some of the major workstation OEMs now offer consumer GPUs in their workstations - both desktop and mobile. High-end consumer GPUs tend to feature less memory than high-end professional GPUs but can easily compete on raw processing power. For CAD and BIM workflows we still recommend sub-£500 entry-level to midrange pro GPUs, but when you get into the high end, an area where you need more 3D performance for real-time visualisation, GPU rendering or virtual reality (VR), the difference in price is greater and pro graphics cards are often a harder sell for those on a budget. Nvidia even has a GeForce ‘Studio’ driver for applications including Enscape, Unreal Engine and V-Ray.

of PCIe Gen 3 models. Those working with very large datasets, such as point cloud, simulation or video editing, should benefit most. The cost of NVMe SSDs has come down a lot but Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) continue to offer the best price per GB. HDDs should absolutely not be used as a primary drive for operating system and applications, but they are good for secondary storage and do not impact load / save times of CAD models that much. However, if you need to process large point cloud or simulation datasets, especially if you don’t have enough RAM to hold the data entirely in system memory, then NVMe SSDs are always best.

memory footprint of applications will increase with new releases. With this in mind, it’s good to buy a workstation with spare RAM slots for easier upgrades. However, for best performance, memory should be installed in pairs, quads or eights, matched to the number of CPU memory channels. ECC memory can protect against crashes, which becomes important for lengthy calculations as you can lose hours of work.

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workstation special report

Intel Core vs AMD Ryzen for CAD, BIM and beyond With 11th Gen Intel Core and AMD Ryzen 5000, competition in workstation CPUs has never been so strong. Greg Corke explores the best CPUs for designcentric workflows from CAD and BIM to reality modelling and rendering

ne of the questions we get asked most often at AEC Magazine is ‘which processor is best for CAD or BIM?’ Normally, we wouldn’t hesitate in recommending Intel Core or low core count Intel Xeon processors (after all, Intel has demonstrated a clear lead in single threaded performance for the last fifteen years) but with AMD’s recent resurgence in the CPU market, things are no longer so clear cut. In October 2020 AMD launched its AMD Ryzen 5000 Series, based on its 7nm ‘Zen 3’ architecture, and finally took the performance crown from Intel. With more cores (16 vs 10), high clock speeds and superior Instructions Per Clock (IPC) , AMD Ryzen 5000 outperformed 10th Gen Intel Core in both single threaded and multi-threaded workflows. It quickly became the processor of choice for users of CAD or BIM applications like Revit, Inventor and Solidworks, as well as CPU ray trace renderers like V-Ray and KeyShot, or those built into the CAD applications themselves. Well — it did for those who could

AMD Ryzen 5000 There are four AMD Ryzen 5000 processor models, differentiated largely by the number of cores – 6, 8, 12, or 16. This is the same number of cores offered on the previous Ryzen 3000 series, but the IPC improvement is significantly higher – also 19% generation over generation. The top-end AMD Ryzen 9 5950X has 16 cores and 32 threads. It has the lowest base frequency (3.4 GHz) but the highest boost frequency (4.9 GHz), making it very well suited to both single threaded and multithreaded workflows. The other three models in the range are the Ryzen 5 5600X (6 cores, 3.7 GHz, 4.6 GHz boost), the Ryzen 7 5800X (8 cores, 3.8 GHz, 4.7 GHz boost), and the Ryzen 9 5900X (12 cores, 3.7 GHz, 4.8 GHz boost). See table below for the full specs.

11th Gen Intel Core Intel has significantly more models in its 11th Gen Intel Core family. These are differentiated mostly by power draw and base frequency, and less so by the number of cores. With 11th Gen Intel Core you only

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X

AMD Ryzen 7 5800X

AMD Ryzen 9 5900X

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X

Intel Core i5-11600

Intel Core i5-11600K

Intel Core i7-11700

Intel Core i7-11700K

Intel Core i9-11900

Intel Core i9-11900K

# of CPU Cores

# of CPU Threads

3.70 GHz

3.80 GHz

3.70 GHz

3.40 GHz

2.80 GHz

3.90 GHz

2.50 GHz

3.60 GHz

2.50 GHz

3.50 GHz

Max Boost Frequency

4.60 GHz

4.70 GHz

4.80 GHz

4.90 GHz

4.80 GHz

4.90 GHz

5.00 GHz

5.20 GHz

5.30 GHz

Cache

L2 Cache 3 MB L3 Cache 32 MB

L2 Cache 4 MB L3 Cache 32 MB

L2 Cache 6 MB L3 Cache 64 MB

L2 Cache 8 MB L3 Cache 64 MB

12 MB Intel Smart Cache

16 MB Intel Smart Cache

Default TDP / TDP

65 W

105 W

65 W

125 W

65 W

125 W

65 W

125 W

Price (Ex VAT)*

£229

£317

£424

£574

£176

£192

£262

£292

£344

£441

Base Frequency

*PRICE TAKEN FROM SCAN.CO.UK ON 5/7/21

actually get hold of one. The global chip shortage meant demand massively outweighed supply and even if AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs were in stock, prices were sometimes hugely inflated. This bought Intel some time, and in March 2021 the chip giant hit back with its 11th Gen Intel Core desktop processor family (code-named Rocket Lake-S). Based on its ageing 14nm manufacturing process, expectations were low. However, the new chip family came with the promise of a massive 19% IPC performance improvement, generation on generation. In other words, if a single core on a 10th Gen and 11th Gen Intel Core CPU ran at the same frequency, the 11th Gen would be 19% faster. This was obviously big news for users of CAD and BIM software for whom single threaded performance really matters, and it immediately put pressure back on AMD. However, the single threaded boost came at the expense of multi-threaded performance. 11th Gen Intel Core had two fewer cores than 10th Gen Intel Core, so rendering times actually went up.

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get a choice of 6 or 8 cores. identical to 11th Gen Intel Core processors, All Core i5 models have 6 cores and 12 but include support for Error Correcting threads, while the Core i7 and Core i9 Code (ECC) memory. models have 8 cores and 16 threads. As Finally, it’s important to note that you mentioned previously, this is a step down can’t directly compare AMD and Intel from the 10th Gen Intel Core processors CPUs in terms of their frequency. It’s not which offer up to 10 cores and 20 threads. just the GHz of the CPU that matters, but With fewer cores than the AMD Ryzen the Instructions Per Clock (IPC) that it 9 5900X and Ryzen 9 5950X, it’s very can execute. You should only compare hard for Intel’s 11th Gen Core processors frequency when trying to decide between to compete in highlytwo CPUs from the same threaded workflows like series, although you should rendering. It means the get a fairly good idea When it comes still main battleground for Intel across families. to rendering is in single threaded or more On test lightly threaded workflows, AMD Ryzen centring on CAD or BIM. In an ideal world we would 5000 wins There are three main have tested all different hands down. processors — the topmodels of Intel and AMD With the 11th end Intel Core i9-11900K CPUs, but the time it takes (3.5 GHz base, 5.3 GHz to test with real-world Gen Core Turbo), the Intel Core applications (and processor processors i7-11700K (3.6 GHz, 5.0 GHz availability) meant this was maxing out at not viable. Turbo), and the Intel Core i5-11600K (3.9 GHz, 4.9 GHz eight cores Intel Instead, we focused on Turbo), all of which can be two different workstations simply can’t overclocked (see later). — the Scan 3XS GWP-ME compete Intel also offers non “K” A132R with the top-end versions, which are locked AMD Ryzen 9 5950X (16 so can’t be overclocked, and cores) and the Workstation have a lower base frequency, a slightly Specialists WS-184 with the Intel Core lower turbo frequency and draw less i9-11900 (8 cores). Unfortunately, we power. There are also slightly cheaper were unable to get hold of an ‘unlocked’ “F” variants which have the integrated Intel Core i9-11900K which has a higher graphics disabled. With most CAD, BIM base clock and a slightly higher boost and viz workstations featuring discrete frequency (see table on previous page). pro GPUs from AMD or Nvidia this could We’re aware that this is a bit of an save a bit of cash. ‘apples and pears’ comparison, so the Major workstation manufacturers like results should be interpreted accordingly. Dell and HP tend to offer all three variants The AMD Ryzen 9 5950X has double in their machines, as well as Intel Xeon the number of cores of the Intel Core i9W-1300 series CPUs, which are virtually 11900, so is obviously better suited to

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highly-threaded workflows like rendering. It also costs around 65% more (£574 vs £344 Ex VAT). However, in terms of single threaded workflows, the two workstations should give a good indication of relative performance between the two processor families. It should also be noted that different results could be seen with different motherboards and memory configurations. For consistency, both machines featured 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) of 3,200 MHz memory and a 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD. To streamline our extensive testing, different GPUs were used for different tests, but the same GPU was always used in both machines. The full specs can be seen on page WS9.

CAD, BIM and beyond CAD and BIM applications like Solidworks, Autodesk Inventor and Autodesk Revit, are bread and butter tools for product designers, engineers and architects. In the main they are single threaded and while some processes can use more than one CPU core, it’s only usually ray trace rendering that can take full advantage of all the processor cores, all the time. In Autodesk Revit 2021, the RFO v3 benchmark (fig. 3) showed a clear lead for the Intel workstation in model creation and export, although the AMD workstation predictably won out in rendering. We saw similar results in Solidworks with the SPECapc 2021 benchmark (fig. 1), although Intel’s lead was extended considerably in ‘model rebuild’. We also did some manual tests in Solidworks 2021 (fig. 2) and the AMD workstation closed the gap, coming in

Revit appears to run fastest on 11th Gen Intel Core

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Reality modelling Reality modelling is becoming much more prevalent in the AEC sector. Agisoft Metashape is a photogrammetry tool that generates a mesh from multiple hi-res photos. It is multi-threaded and uses a combination of CPU and GPU processing. We tested using a benchmark from specialist US workstation manufacturer Puget Systems (fig. 8). In most of our tests Intel had a clear lead, but AMD did claim top spot in one test. Interestingly, Puget Systems reports that the AMD Ryzen R7 5800X, which has half as many cores as the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X but a higher base frequency (3.8 GHz), is faster in three out of the four tests. In fact, it even beat Intel. In point cloud processing software Leica Cyclone Register 360 (fig. 9), which can run on up to 6 CPU threads (as long as the workstation has sufficient memory), the AMD machine had the lead when registering both of our point cloud datasets. www.AECmag.com

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Processor frequency in relation to number of CPU threads used (using Cinebench custom run)

6.0 5.8

Processor frequency (GHz)

a touch behind the Intel workstation in model opening and IGES export. Storage does play a part in these processes, but the CPU still plays the major role by far. We also tested with the new InvMark for Inventor 2022 benchmark by Cadac Group and TFI (fig. 7). Intel had the lead in most sub tests, apart from the solid sweep modelling operation and (of course) rendering. Interestingly, while Task Manager indicated that some processes are multithreaded (for example, data translation, drawings, and FEA) multiple cores are either used sparingly or only for short bursts in combination with single core processes, so overall there’s no real benefit to having more than eight cores. Here, it’s worth pointing out the chart to the right where you can see how frequency drops as more cores (threads) are enabled. Between 12 and 16 threads, Intel maintains a higher frequency than AMD, so this could help give Intel a lead in workloads that use a similar number of threads. Interestingly, even though the Intel Core i9-11900 has a moderate base frequency of 2.5 GHz, the workstation’s cooling lets it maintain a 4.6 GHz boost on all eight cores. Of course, the central code in many CAD tools is quite old and new generation tools like nTopology, which focus on generative design, are built from the ground up for multi-core processors (and, more recently, GPU computation). For our nToplogy geometry optimisation test (fig. 4) we solely focused on the CPU and, with all cores in use, the AMD workstation had a clear lead.

5.6

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5.2 5.0 4.8 4.6 4.4 4.2 4.0 3.8 3.6 3.4

Number of threads

Rendering There were no surprises when ray trace rendering with V-Ray, Cinema4D and KeyShot, or any renderer built-in to our CAD and BIM tools (fig 5/6). With twice as many cores as Intel, the AMD workstation was always going to come out on top, even if its cores run at a lower frequency. We also did stress tests to see if CPU frequency dropped over time. When rendering in Cinebench for over an hour, the Intel maintained 4.59 GHz and the AMD maintained 3.74 GHz, testament to the excellent cooling in both workstations.

Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132R » AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU » 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3,200 MHz memory » 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD » Asus Pro WS X570-ACE motherboard » Noctua NH-D15 air cooler » Full review on page WS12

Graphics CPU frequency has some influence over graphics performance, but the extent to which it does depends on the application. In Revit, Solidworks and Inventor — applications that tend to be more CPU limited — Intel showed around a 10% Frames Per Second (FPS) performance lead over AMD when using the same GPU (fig. 10). This went to down to 5% in Solidworks when RealView, Shadows and Ambient Occlusion (AO) were enabled — graphics effects that place much bigger demands on the GPU. In Unreal Engine 4 — an application renowned for being GPU limited, rather than CPU limited — the difference between Intel and AMD was negligible with our arch viz test scene.

Workstation Specialists WS-184 » Intel Core i9-11900 CPU » 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) 3,200 MHz dual channel Corsair Vengance RGB Pro DDR4 memory » 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD » Asus Prime Z590-P motherboard » Be Quiet liquid cooler » Full review on page WS13

Multi-tasking These days, very few architects, engineers or product designers use single applications, and with compute intensive workflows on the rise, such as reality modelling, rendering and simulation, it’s very important to consider multi-tasking when choosing a CPU. Even with 8 cores, it’s possible to leave July / August 2021

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one or more multi-threaded tasks running in the background, and still leave resources free for bread and butter 3D modelling tasks. To explore multi-tasking potential, we pushed both machines to their limits, with a demanding AEC workflow, consisting of point cloud processing and photogrammetry (fig. 11). We registered a 24 GB point cloud dataset in Leica Cyclone Register 360 while processing a series of high-res photographs in Agisoft Metashape at the same time. If done sequentially it would have taken 1,218 secs on the AMD machine and 1,207 secs on the Intel, but running both jobs in parallel the AMD finished in 895 secs and the Intel in 954 secs. With more threads trying to run concurrently, the Intel machine starts to slow down. To push the machines even harder we added ray trace rendering into the mix, rendering an 8K scene in KeyShot 10 using 4 cores and 8 threads. Here, the AMD’s 16 cores showed a real benefit, completing all three tasks in 1,024 secs compared to 1,459 secs on Intel. The AMD machine also has the headroom to push the rendering load up to 8 cores and 16 threads which reduced the time to 863 secs. Doing the same on Intel, and dedicating all of its 8 cores to rendering really took its toll as it caused Agisoft Metashape to crash.

Solidworks 2021 SPECapc benchmark

2.63

CPU simulate 0

1,579

235.3

42.3

14,854

Multi-core test

26.6 0

100

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nTopology 3.24

Geometry optimisation

10.48

Assembly open

98.99

IGES export 0

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73.40

74.57 20

115.87

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11,064

V-Ray 5.0 CPU Benchmark

19,839

2.7 0

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KeyShot 10 Benchmark

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Ray trace rendering

Bike seat (Voronoi pattern)

100

25000

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

1.23 Time secs (smaller is better)

9.44

Solidworks open

1,649

282.0

Rendering

1.86 1.64

Cinebench R23 (ray trace rendering)

Single core test

Export 2.20 2.05

CPU convert

Having read multiple reviews from respected tech websites like Anandtech, we were a little surprised that the Intel

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

89.5

2.39 1.53

The verdict

79.1

Model creation

4.35

1.23 Time secs (smaller is better)

CPU rebuild

SMT/HT: Simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) on AMD and HyperThreading (HT) on Intel essentially splits each of the CPU’s physical cores into two virtual

CPU tests

1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

CPU raytrace

cores. It’s enabled by default and gives Both workstations were tested straight out a proven performance benefit when of the box. However, AMD and Intel CPUs rendering, but it has been known to slow can also be tuned in different ways. down other processes. Disabling SMT / HT in the BIOS made Overclocking: Both machines were virtually no difference to performance configured with stock CPU settings, where in most applications. Puget Systems has the frequency on one or more cores gets an reported a benefit of disabling SMT on automatic boost or turbo, as long as it stays AMD workstations when using Agisoft within set thermal and power limits. Metashape, but that was not what we To push performance higher, CPUs can observed in our tests. While processing also be overclocked, a process that typically time went down in one of the datasets, for involves tweaking frequencies and voltages. the other three, it actually went up. On Intel Core processors (those with the ‘K’ suffix) overclocking permanently Availability increases the frequency of all cores. Workstation brand also has a huge Different manufacturers take different influence over your choice of CPU. Pretty approaches to overclocking and some much every vendor offers a workstation push CPUs harder than others. A few with 11th Gen Intel Core CPUs. However, manufacturers hand-select CPUs that they workstations with AMD Ryzen 5000 know will overclock best. Overclocking is CPUs are only available from specialist not supported by the major manufacturers. manufacturers like Scan and Workstation With AMD Ryzen 5000, overclocking Specialists (see page WS16 for a round-up). can be controlled through Precision Boost This could change, of course. With AMD Overdrive 2, a feature which essentially offering superior performance in some makes AMD’s standard boost technology multi-threaded workflows, we are certain more aggressive. It can’t be overclocked on that Dell, HP, Fujitsu and Lenovo are all cores in the same way that Intel can, but paying close attention. Lenovo already has some manufacturers are finding new ways a workstation with an AMD Threadripper to get more out of the processor. Pro CPU, with up to 64-cores.

Autodesk Revit 2021 RFO v3 benchmark

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workstation performed so well. In single threaded workflows it demonstrated a clear lead over the AMD workstation. It was typically around 10% faster, but in some tests it was as little as 1% or as much as 56% (when rebuilding a model in Solidworks). For CAD and BIM software, single threaded performance is where it counts. Yes, there are some processes within these applications that are multi-threaded, but very few can use all of the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X’s 16 cores. And, even if they can, it’s often only for short bursts, mixed in with single threaded operations. There are caveats to this, such as executing a solid sweep in Inventor, where AMD has a clear lead. Also, in new generation modelling tools like nTopology, which have been built from ground up for multi-core CPUs. Some of the more advanced CAM and simulation tools can also take advantage of more than eight cores, although this is not the case for Solidworks Simulate or dynamic simulation and FEA in Inventor. Even photogrammetry software Agisoft Metascan doesn’t show any major benefit from the Ryzen 9 5950X although AMD does have a small but significant lead in point cloud processing software Leica Cyclone Register 360. All of these observations are only relevant if you’re using your workstation to do one thing at a time. The Ryzen 9

InvMark for Inventor 2022 (by Cadac Group and TFI)

5950X has significantly more potential than Intel when it comes to multi-tasking, using its 16 cores to full effect to run several CPU intensive tasks concurrently. This all leads us onto rendering where the AMD Ryzen 5000 wins hands down. With the 11th Gen Core processors maxing out at 8 cores Intel simply can’t compete. And if rendering is part of your day-to-day workflow then the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X looks to be the obvious choice. Of course, the Ryzen 5000 Series and 11th Gen Intel Core isn’t just about the top-end models. For CAD users on a tight budget the 6-core Intel Core i5-11600 looks like a great value CPU. And, as

Agisoft Metashape Professional 1.73

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1,159

Saving to disk

Dynamic Sim

3,671

22.82

1,894

Data Translation

Opening files

1,522

Graphics testing (with AMD Radeon Pro W6800)

Park Map

1,686

Autodesk Revit 2021 RFO benchmark

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391 426

School model

mentioned previously, in some workflows, the 8-core AMD Ryzen 7 5800X can actually outperform the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X in multi-threaded workflows, even though it has fewer cores. In summary, choosing a workstation processor boils down to how you intend to use your machine. 11th Gen Intel Core looks to be the CPU of choice for vanilla CAD or BIM and some lightly threaded workflows. However, AMD is not that far behind. AMD is also a strong contender for those who multi-task and if ray trace rendering is also part of your day-to-day workflow then the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X wins hands down.

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Modelling

Your choice of CPU has very little bearing on 3D performance in GPU limited applications like Unreal Engine

963

1,992

1,313

FEA

665

1,777

1,263

Large dataset (99 GB)

Cyclone and Metashape

699

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1,888

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Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132R 11th Gen Intel Core workstations might have have the edge in CAD and BIMcentric workflows, but this Ryzen 9 5000 beast from Scan wins hands down when it comes to rendering and extreme multi-tasking, writes Greg Corke

ike many workstation manufacturers, it’s been a frustrating six months for Bolton-based Scan. AMD Ryzen 5000 CPUs have been in huge demand, but the global chip shortage has meant limited supply. This now appears to have eased and Scan workstations with ‘Zen 3’ AMD CPUs are now rolling off the company’s production line. The delay has brought some benefits. Scan can now pair AMD’s impressive desktop CPU with a choice of three Nvidia ‘Ampere’ pro GPUs. The Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB), Nvidia RTX A5000 (24 GB) and Nvidia RTX A6000 (48 GB) are all available as options inside the new Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132R. For our review machine, Scan has chosen the top-end AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU. With 16 cores, 32 threads, a base frequency of 3.4 GHz and a boost of 4.9 GHz, this processor is adept at handling all different types of workflows. You get excellent performance in single threaded CAD and BIM software, as well as multi-threaded power for simulation, point cloud processing, photogrammetry, generative design, CAM and, of course rendering.

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As you’ll learn from our indemanding graphics-centric Product spec depth article on page WS4, the workflows (or a tighter budget) 11th Gen Intel Core CPU still a downgrade to the Nvidia ■ AMD Ryzen 9 5950X processor has the edge in many workflows. RTX A4000 will shave close (3.4 GHz, 4.9 GHz However, when it comes to to £1,000 off the £4,167 (Ex boost) (16 cores, 32 threads) rendering and extreme multiVAT) price tag. See our in-depth ■ Nvidia RTX A5000 tasking, the 8-core Intel Core review of both Nvidia GPUs on GPU (24 GB) i9-11900 or Intel Core i9-11900K page WS28. ■ 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) simply can’t compete with the The Asus Pro WS X570Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3,200 MHz 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X. ACE motherboard is ■ 2 TB Samsung 980 To explore the machine’s workstation-grade and has Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD + 4 TB Samsung multi-tasking potential, what Scan describes as an 870 Evo SATA SSD we pushed it to its limits, ‘over-engineered cooling and ■ 3XS workstation with a demanding AEC power delivery system’. It has case with tempered glass window workflow, consisting of point four memory slots, populated ■ Microsoft Windows cloud processing in Leica in our test machine with 64 GB 10 Professional Cycone Register 360 and (2 x 32 GB) of Corsair Vengeance 64-bit photogrammetry processing DDR4 3,200 MHz memory. For ■ 3 Years warranty – 1st Year Onsite, 2nd in Agisoft Metashape. Not only memory hungry workflows and 3rd Year RTB did it reduce processing time like point cloud processing, it’s (Parts and Labour) to 889 secs from 1,306 secs (the easy to upgrade to 128 GB, as ■ £4,167 (Ex VAT) time it took if both jobs were run we did when testing with Leica scan.co.uk/3xs sequentially), but the machine Cyclone Register 360, though was still responsive enough to you’ll first need to clip off one of model comfortably in Revit. See our in- the CPU fans to get to the slots. depth AMD vs Intel article on page WS4 to With a second PCIe Gen 4 slot, you can find out more. add a second Nvidia RTX A5000 GPU at a The 2 TB Samsung 980 Pro NVMe PCIe later date although you may need a bigger 4.0 Solid State Drive (SSD) certainly helps PSU than the 750W Corsair RMX, which here as it’s able to read and write data very is 80PLUS Gold rated. Scan technicians quickly, so storage doesn’t become too can advise here. much of a bottleneck. Everything is housed in a new custom Rather than supplementing the M.2 SSD Scan 3XS workstation case, which is with a 3.5-inch SATA Hard Disk Drive available with both solid and tempered (HDD) for secondary storage, Scan has glass side panels. It’s a nice sturdy chassis included a 4 TB Samsung 870 Evo SATA with a 3XS branded vented front that SSD instead. Costing less than 10p per GB, helps ensure cool air runs freely from SSDs are quickly becoming the future of front to back. all workstation storage, and not just for A substantial dual radiator, dual fan OS, apps and select datasets. Noctua NH-D15 air cooler helps keep the Coupled with the Nvidia RTX processor running cool. We observed A5000 GPU, the workstation a peak frequency of 4.91 GHz in single has an obvious bias towards threaded workflows, going down to 3.74 graphics intensive workflows, GHz with all 16 cores running flat out for suggested by the ‘ME’ (Media extended periods. Scan says the Noctua and Entertainment) abbreviation is generally quieter than an equivalently in the product name. rated hydrocooler, and it’s hard to The Nvidia RTX A5000 is a argue with that. The entire system was hugely powerful professional incredibly quiet, even under heavy loads. GPU for real-time viz and GPU rendering. At 4K resolution, The verdict we got in excess of 20 frames This is another excellent machine from per second in most of our test specialist workstation manufacturer applications. The exceptions Scan. With the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X were Unreal Engine 4 when real- CPU, the 3XS GWP-ME A132R is equally time ray tracing was enabled and adept at handling single threaded or in Autodesk VRED Professional multi-threaded workflows. Whether when anti-aliasing was set to that’s for rendering stills and animations, ultra-high. However, these or for demanding multi-tasking reality are extreme workloads. Most modelling workflows, it doesn’t really mainstream viz users should matter. And with an Nvidia RTX A5000 expect a smooth, reactive GPU backing it all up with substantial viewport when navigating graphics horsepower, it can handle pretty models, and superfast results much anything you throw at it. And it when GPU rendering. does all this while giving out little more For those with less than a gentle hum. www.AECmag.com

workstation special report

Workstation Specialists WS-184 The 11th Gen Intel Core processor might be a step back in some departments, but in single threaded workflows like CAD and BIM it remains king. Furthermore, coupled wth the right components — as it is in this new tower from Derby-based Workstation Specialists — it can also provide a solid foundation for more demanding workflows. By Greg Corke

hen Intel launched its ‘Rocket Lake’ processor family earlier this year it came under a lot of flak for having fewer CPU cores than the previous generation. 10th Gen Intel Core maxed out at ten, but the new 11th Gen Core CPUs were limited to eight. The reality is, this is only an issue if you use software that can take full advantage of that many cores. And for most architects, engineers and product designers, that’s typically only ray trace rendering. For those that rely solely on CAD or BIM software, it continues to be all about frequency and Instructions Per Clock (IPC). And here, Intel delivers in spades. The Intel Core i9-11900 CPU, at the heart of this Workstation Specialists desktop tower might have a base clock of 2.50 GHz, but in many of our single threaded CAD tests it hit 5.15 GHz on a single core, just a touch slower than the stated maximum of 5.20 GHz. And this isn’t even Intel’s fastest 11th Intel Core CPU. If you can get hold of one, the Intel Core i9-11900K can go all the way up to 5.3 GHz. Despite ‘only’ having eight cores, the Core i9-11900 performed very well in some multi-threaded workflows like point cloud processing and reality modelling. Applications like Leica Cyclone Register 360 and Agisoft MetaShape might be multi-threaded but there appears to be little additional benefit (or none at all) to having more than eight cores. It’s only when you get into highly-threaded applications like rendering and geometry optimisation that CPUs with more cores, such as the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, have an advantage. You can learn more about this in our AMD vs Intel article on page WS4. Our test machine came with 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) of 3,200 MHz dual channel Corsair Vengance RGB Pro DDR4 memory. This is a good amount for an allround BIM-centric workstation. Those who simply work with average sized models in Revit or other BIM tools should get away with 32 GB. Conversely, www.AECmag.com

those who deal with huge point new Nvidia RTX A4000 which Product spec cloud datasets, would likely be comes with a substantial 16 GB better served with 128 GB — the of memory. As you see from our ■ Intel Core i9-11900 processor (2.5 GHz, maximum the Asus PRIME review on page WS28, this is an 5.3 GHz Turbo) Z590-P motherboard can take in impressive all-round GPU for (8 cores, 16 threads) its four memory slots. workflows that include GPU ■ 64 GB (2 x 32 GB) 3,200 MHz dual The motherboard fits snuggly rendering, real-time 3D, realchannel Corsair inside the Fractal Design Define time ray tracing and VR. Vengance RGB Pro DDR4 memory 7 Compact chassis. At 427 x For an additional £767 you ■ 2 TB Samsung 210 x 474 mm this is a shrunkcan upgrade to the Nvidia RTX 980 Pro NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD down version of the popular A5000 (24 GB). But if you’re ■Asus Prime Z590-P workstation case used by many very much focused on CAD/ motherboard of the UK’s custom workstation BIM and other less demanding ■ Fractal Design manufacturers. 3D applications, you could Define 7 Compact desktop chassis For easy access, there are two easily drop down to the Nvidia (427 x 210 x 474 mm) USB 3.2 Gen 1 ports up front, but Quadro P2200, even though ■ Microsoft Windows no USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 Type-C. If this 5 GB pro GPU is now 10 Professional 64-bit you have devices that need the getting a bit long in the tooth. ■ 36 Months more modern USB standard, premium RTB The verdict you’ll probably want to buy a hardware warranty with remote hub to plug into the single USB The Workstation Specialists engineer diagnostics by next business day Type C port at the rear. WS-184 is an excellent choice ■ £2,414 (Ex VAT) The machine has three fans for CAD- and BIM-centric that move air from front to workflows. In applications like ■ Upgrades back and, together with the ‘Be Revit it delivers where it counts, 128 GB memory Quiet’ CPU air cooler, keep the but also has enough cores - add £315 machine running pretty quietly. to support more processorNvidia RTX A5000 - add £767 For a machine of this type, it intensive workflows like 8 TB Samsung 870 offers the perfect combination point cloud processing and QVO - add £696 of size and expandability. In photogrammetry. the bottom section of the case, For those with a focus on workstation specialists.com nestled alongside the 750W rendering, the fact that the ATX 80-Plus Platinum Certified Workstation Specialists WSPower Supply Unit (PSU), there are two 184 would struggle against an AMD 3.5-inch drive bays. Ryzen 9 5950X-based workstation could For most CAD-centric workstations, we’d be a moot point if your software is tuned usually expect one of these bays to be fitted for GPU. The Nvidia RTX A4000 GPU with a Hard Disk Drive (HDD) to give a cost- (or RTX A5000) is more than capable of effective mass storage partner to the on- doing the heavy lifting here. board NVMe SSD. For example, in a budget Conversely, strip out the high-end GPU, workstation, a combination of 512 GB Solid drop down to 32 GB of RAM, and pare State Drive (SSD) and 2 TB HDD is typical. back on the storage and you should have However, for this machine, Workstation a very affordable, but fast workstation for Specialists has gone for SSDs throughout. bread and butter CAD and BIM work. For the main system drive there’s the high-performance 2 TB Samsung 980 PRO M.2 PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, which offers up to 7,000 MBps read and 5,100MBps write. But this has been partnered with an 8 TB Samsung 870 QVO 2.5-inch SATA III SSD. With 560MBps read, and 530MBps write, the 870 QVO offers significantly lower sequential read/write performance than its PCIe 4.0 counterpart, but with a whopping 8 TB to play with, it’s a great alternative to an HDD in I/O intensive workflows like point cloud processing, where collosal datasets are frequently read from / written to disk. For graphics, there’s the July / August 2021

WS13

ULTIMATE PROCESSOR PERFORMANCE WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK With AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Series Desktop Processors, you now can have the processor to tackle all your compute needs for optimal productivity without sacrificing performance. So do it all, and do it fast with AMD Ryzen™ 5000 Processors for Creators.

workstation special report

WS-1640A-PRO-G4 [Threadripper Pro] This Threadripper Pro workstation is not for everyone, but looks ideal for applications where memory bandwidth is critical, writes Greg Corke

n just a few years AMD’s Threadripper CPU has become synonymous with high-performance workstations. This is especially true in design viz, where rendering tools like V-Ray, KeyShot and Unreal Engine thrive on the plentiful CPU cores. But Threadripper is not actually a workstation processor. It’s a ‘consumer’ CPU with buckets of multithreaded performance — far more than your average YouTuber or gamer would ever need. Even though Threadripper has sold well, AMD knew it needed a dedicated workstation CPU in order to properly address the workstation market (just like Intel has done with Xeon), so in summer 2020 it launched Ryzen Threadripper Pro. Threadripper Pro shares the same core silicon as Threadripper, but has several features that set it apart from its ‘consumer’ sibling. These include more memory channels (8 vs 4), so it has more memory bandwidth; higher memory capacity (2 TB ECC memory vs 256 GB) so it can support larger datasets; and additional PCIe Gen4 lanes (128 vs 64), so it can support more GPUs and SSDs. While these features can give Threadripper Pro an advantage in some workflows, the downside is the CPU runs at slightly slower clock speeds than consumer Threadripper with equivalent core counts, both in terms of base and boost frequency. How this equates to realworld performance will depend on the application — whether it’s bottlenecked by memory bandwidth or CPU frequency.

Open competition Threadripper Pro was originally exclusive to Lenovo in the Lenovo ThinkStation P620 workstation. However, in March 2021 AMD opened up the CPU to everyone, resulting in a plethora of new workstations. One of those machines is the WS-1640A-PRO-G4 from Derby-based Workstation Specialists, which can be configured with a choice of three AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro CPUs — the 16-core 3955WX, 32-core 3975WX or 64-core 3995WX. The first thing you notice about the machine is its size. At 240 x 547 x 475 mm, the Fractal Design 7 XL chassis is significantly larger than the ThinkStation P620 (165 x 460 x 440mm). www.AECmag.com

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But there’s a reason for this. Engine, Threadripper Pro has Product spec Built around the Extended ATX been seen to deliver a 30-40% ASUS Pro WS WRX80E-SAGE jump in performance over an ■ AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO SE WiFi motherboard, the WSoverclocked Threadripper CPU. 3975WX CPU 1640A-PRO-G4 can support Threadripper Pro’s 8-channel (32 cores) (3.5 GHz, 4.2 GHz boost) up to four double height GPUs, memory should also benefit ■ 128 GB (8 x 16 GB) twice that of the ThinkStation workflows like video editing 3,200 MHz 8-channel P620. If you’re into GPU and post-production and when DDR4 memory rendering this is an important running multiple tasks in ■ 1 TB Samsung 980 PRO M.2 PCIe 4.0 consideration. parallel. NVMe SSD + 2 TB Seagate Barracuda It also means there’s plenty 3.5-inch HDD Graphics of room for storage expansion. ■ Fractal Design 7 XL With three on-board PCIe 4.0 Our review machine came with chassis (240 x 547 x 475 mm (WxDxH) M.2 slots and eight SATA ports, two GPUs to test: the AMD ■ Microsoft Windows you can easily add to our review Radeon Pro W5500 (8 GB) and 10 Pro 64-bit machine’s storage — a 1 TB the new Nvidia RTX A6000 ■ 36 Months Samsung 980 PRO PCIe 4.0 M.2 (48 GB). The difference in Premium RTB hardware warranty NVMe SSD and 2 TB Seagate performance is huge, but so is ■ with AMD Radeon Barracuda 3.5-inch HDD. the price and not all workflows Pro W5500 (8 GB) There’s a total of eight memory need such high levels of graphics £4,899 (Ex VAT) slots, all of which need to be processing. We’d recommend ■ with Nvidia RTX A6000 (48 GB) GPU populated in order to make the the AMD Radeon Pro W5500 in £8,199 (Ex VAT) most of the 8-channel memory workflows like simulation and workstation specialists.com architecture. Our review point cloud processing where machine was fitted with 128 GB graphics requirements are quite (8 x 16 GB) DDR4 3200 GHz, but those low, but the GPU still delivers good all who work with huge datasets can go all the round performance and is fully certified for way up to 2 TB with 256 GB 2,933 GHz ECC a range of 3D applications. registered modules. If you’re into real-time visualisation, Our review machine came with the 32- VR or GPU rendering, the Nvidia RTX core Threadripper Pro 3975WX, which A6000 is a phenomenal GPU. And, if you has a 3.5 GHz base frequency and a 4.2 GHz really want to beef up the GPU rendering boost. It’s well suited to a range of multi- capabilities, you can pack four of these threaded workflows, from rendering, double width cards inside, something you photogrammetry and CFD which typically can only do on very few other workstations. max out all available cores, to FEA and point cloud processing which, while multi- The verdict threaded, might use fewer cores. The WS-1640A-PRO-G4 is an excellent, The machine performed well in our well-built workstation, ideal for the rendering tests but was outshone by the most demanding of users. But it’s not for 32-core consumer Threadripper Scan everyone. While the superior memory workstation we reviewed earlier this year. It bandwidth of Threadripper Pro should was around 7% slower in KeyShot and 12% benefit certain workflows like engineering slower in V-Ray. In applications like these, simulation and some aspects of design viz, memory bandwidth is not as important those that simply do ray trace rendering as frequency. In KeyShot, for example, the may still be better off with consumer Threadripper Pro maintained 3.8 GHz on Threadripper, especially as it’s cheaper. all cores, but Threadripper hit 4.0 GHz. The caveat is, if you work with huge In point cloud processing software datasets: Threadripper Pro goes all the Cyclone Register 360, the gap was much way up to 2 TB, while Threadripper peaks smaller, but Threadripper still had a 1% at 256 GB. In summary, get to know your lead. This could be a case of memory applications, workflows and the bandwidth and CPU frequency cancelling size of your datasets before each other out. you invest. For Threadripper Pro to shine against its consumer counterpart it needs to be used in applications where memory bandwidth is critical, such as CFD or FEA, as it means data can be fed into the CPU much quicker. Unfortunately, we don’t currently have any engineering simulation software in our testing suite, but we have heard anecdotally that in applications like Ansys Mechanical users might see a significant performance benefit. AMD also told us that when compiling shaders in Unreal March / April 2020

20/07/2021 09:29

workstation special report

CAD workstation round up The latest workstations for CAD and BIM-centric workflows: 11th Gen Intel Core (up to 8 cores) and AMD Ryzen 5000 (up to 16 cores) to go beyond 3D design and into the realms of rendering, reality modelling and simulation 1

BOXX Apexx S3

Dell Precision 3450 SFF

Fujitsu Celsius W5011

BOXX has built a major part of its business around overclocking and with the BOXX Apexx S3 it permanently boosts 11th Intel Core clock speeds across all eight cores. The Intel Core i7-11700K runs at 5.0 GHz, while the Intel Core i7-11900K runs at 5.3 GHz. As with all BOXX workstations, there’s also a huge focus on build quality, with the custom chassis made from ‘aircraft-grade’ aluminium, offering a strength and rigidity way beyond that of most off-the-shelf cases.

The Dell Precision 3450 SFF is a very compact desktop workstation. Measuring a mere 290 x 93 x 293mm it can even be mounted behind a display (pictured left). The ‘small form factor’ chassis does mean a more limited set of processor options, maxing out at the 65W Intel Core i9-11900 or 80W Intel Xeon W-1390. It’s also restricted to entry-level pro GPUs, but the AMD Radeon Pro WX 3200 and Nvidia Quadro P1000 are perfectly suited to 3D CAD and BIM workflows.

This 21 litre ‘micro tower’ is not as deep as comparable workstations, as the motherboard and GPU span its entire depth. It offers a choice of 11th Gen Intel Core or Intel Xeon W-1300 processors and can be configured with a massive range of GPUs, from the entry-level CAD-centric Nvidia T400 up to the Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000 (it doesn’t yet offer the new Nvidia RTX A4000 / A5000). Other features include up to 128 GB of memory, multiple drives and tool-less access.

■ boxx.com ■ boxx-tech.co.uk

■ dell.com/precision

■ fujitsu.com

Lenovo ThinkStation P350 Tiny

Boston VENOM R41-10NP

Broadberry CyberStation SFF

Tiny by name, tiny by nature — this is the smallest workstation on the planet, measuring a mere 37 x 183 x 179mm. However, it still has everything you need for mainstream CAD and BIM workflows, including an 11th Gen Intel Core i9 CPU (8 cores, 5.2 GHz), up to 64 GB of DDR4 3200 MHz memory and a choice of Nvidia P1000 or T600 GPUs. There’s no room for a HDD but with an M.2 PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD up to 2 TB there’s still plenty of storage. Plus, built in WiFi.

Boston offers a huge variety of desktop workstations in its Venom range, from Intel Core and Intel Xeon, to AMD Threadripper, Threadripper Pro and AMD Epyc. This AMD Ryzen 5000 machine can be fitted with optional liquid cooling for ‘maximum performance and whisper quiet operation’ and matched with up to 128 GB of DDR4 3,200 MHz stock or 4,733 MHz overclocked memory. All of Boston’s workstations are available to lease.

With its 250 x 203 x 367 mm Fractal Design Core 500 chassis, the Broadberry CyberStation SFF is one of the smallest AMD Ryzen 5000 workstations. This, together with the built-in WiFi, make it well suited to home workers. Despite its size it can still take a whole host of pro GPUs, up to the Nvidia RTX A6000. Two RAM slots on the Gigabyte AMD Ryzen X570 I AORUS PRO motherboard mean it’s limited to 64 GB, but that’s still plenty for most CAD-centric workflows.

■ lenovo.com/workstations

■ boston.co.uk

■ broadberry.co.uk/amd-ryzen-workstations

Interpro IPW-R9 Dell Precision 5760

Novatech ProStation WR7-WX41

Overclockers RENDA

As the name suggests, the InterPro IPW-R9 features a choice of 3rd Gen AMD Ryzen 9 CPUs, including the 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X and 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X. To keep clock speeds running as high as possible for longer periods, the UK firm uses a range of Corsair all-inone liquid CPU coolers. Different BIOS profiles can be created for customers, matched to their workflows. For example, to allow higher clock speeds by temporarily sacrificing cores.

The Novatech ProStation WR7-WX41 is built around the AMD Ryzen 5000 Series with a choice of three CPUs — the 8-core 5800X, 12-core 5900X and 16-core 5950X. It’s fully customisable, but not just core components like memory, graphics and storage. Customers can also choose from 15 different CPU coolers (air or liquid) and nine different chassis, from full towers like the Phanteks Enthoo Pro (pictured) to 4U rack mounts like the Chenbro RM41300G.

It’s not hard to guess what this UK firm specialises in. The Overclockers RENDA workstation is all about pushing the limits of performance, while maintaining stability. Professional overclocker Ian Parry (aka 8Pack) heads up the R&D, delivering hand-built machines based on each customer’s workflow requirements. With a custom water cooling solution he says he can push the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X to 5.1 GHz on one core and 4.6 GHz on all cores.

■ ipworkstations.com

■ novatech.co.uk

■ overclockers.co.uk

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www.AECmag.com

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workstation special report

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BIMBOX Stryker III

HP Z2 G8 SFF

BOXX Apexx Denali

Armari Magnetar

BIMBOX is laser focused on the AEC sector and has extensive experience of Revit, Enscape, Leica Cyclone, V-Ray, Unreal Engine and many others — and, importantly, what makes them tick. The firm takes overclocking extremely seriously. For its Stryker III workstation it ‘delids’ the Intel Core i9-11900K CPU, taking off the standard heat spreader and mounting its own liquid cooler directly onto the silicon. This brings down the CPU temperature considerably so it can safely run at 5.3 GHz on all cores. BIMBOX is based in the US, but with the help of Ingram Micros its machines will soon be built, sold and supported in the UK and other countries.

With its 338 x 308 x 100mm chassis, the HP Z2 G8 SFF is slightly bigger than the Dell Precision 3450 SFF (top left) but has the option of more powerful processors. These include the 125W Intel Core i9-11900K and the Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000, which extends the reach of the workstation beyond 3D CAD and BIM and into the realms of entry-level viz. According to HP, the Z2 G8 SFF offers ‘Unthrottled performance’ thanks to Z’s ‘industry-leading’ thermals that keep the processor and graphics card cool, so they can run at max performance for extended periods of time. ‘Unthrottled performance’ also extends to the new PCIe Gen 4 Samsung PM9A1 SSD.

With its Apexx Denali, BOXX was one of the first workstation manufacturers to offer a Ryzen 5000 Series workstation. It uses the same compact custom ‘aircraft-grade’ aluminium chassis as the Intel-based Apexx S3 and at 174 x 388 x 452mm it’s smaller than most AMD Ryzen 5000 tower workstations. But that doesn’t come at the expense of expandability. The Apexx Denali can house up to two high-end Nvidia RTX, Nvidia GeForce or AMD Radeon Pro GPUs and two 3.5-inch Hard Disk Drives (HDDs). To keep the processor running at peak frequencies it uses a liquid-cooled closed loop system with a sizeable radiator.

The Armari Magnetar V16R-RA850G2-2S is one of the smallest AMD Ryzen 5000 Series workstation out there, measuring a mere 360 x 87 x 400mm. The custom chassis features a high quality Japanese steel frame which was designed in-house by the specialist UK manufacturer. Unlike many other small form factor workstations, there is no compromise on graphics and the workstation can support one dual slot GPU like the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 or two single slot GPUs like the Nvidia RTX A4000. Custom fans and a 14cm all-in-one liquid CPU cooler help maintain peak performance, while still preserving quiet operation.

■ bimboxusa.com

■ hp.com/z

■ boxx.com ■ boxx-tech.co.uk

■ armari.com

www.AECmag.com

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workstation special report

Best lightweight workstation laptops 2021 Our top picks for ultra-portable mobile workstations to take CAD and design visualisation on the road — all under 20mm and most below 2kg

HP ZBook Studio G8

The 15.6-inch HP ZBook Studio G8 is HP’s first mobile workstation to offer both pro and consumer graphics options in the same machine, up to the Nvidia RTX A5000 (16 GB) or GeForce 3080 (16 GB). Both GPUs are ideal for design viz, VR and GPU rendering but as the laptop is very slim (17.5mm) we expect the same GPU might run faster in the thicker (22.8mm) HP ZBook Fury G8 15, which should offer better cooling and increased power draw. The HP ZBook Studio G8 offers a choice of 11th Generation Intel Core H-Series processors up to the Intel Core i9-11950H but only up to 32 GB RAM, which might be a little light for some workflows. It also features an optional HP DreamColor display with a 120Hz refresh rate, a billion on-screen colours, 100% DCI-P3, and ‘end-to-end’ colour accuracy with Pantone validation. It starts at 1.79kg. ■ hp.com/z

Dell Precision 5760 The Dell Precision 5760 is somewhat unique as it remains the only thin and light 17-inch mobile workstation from a major vendor. It is a replacement for the Dell Precision 5750 but features an enhanced thermal design including dual output fans, vapour chamber and a hidden exhaust venting through the hinge. Like the 15-inch Dell Precision 5560 (see top right) it features a combination of aluminium and carbon fibre for the chassis and a 94% display to body ratio thanks to the 4-sided InfinityEdge, 16:10 aspect ratio display. The thin (8.67 mm - 13.15 mm) and light (2.15kg) design means some compromise on graphics with the Nvidia RTX A2000 (4 GB) and Nvidia RTX A3000 (6 GB) being the only options, although the latter is ‘VR Ready’. However, it offers the same broad choice of 45W 11th Gen Intel Core and Xeon CPUs and supports up to 4 TB of PCI Gen4 SSDs and 64 GB of DDR4, 3,200 MHz memory. ■ dell.com/precision

WS18

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www.AECmag.com

workstation special report

MSI Creator Z16 Dell Precision 5560

MSI’s new pro-focused laptop marks a change in aesthetics for the Taiwanese company. The slimline 16mm chassis is made from CNC-milled aluminium with a ‘Lunar Gray’ finish. It starts at 2.2kg. With a 16-inch 16:10 aspect ratio display you get a bit more viewing space than the traditional 16:9. ‘True Pixel technology’ means extremely accurate colours and the display is hardware calibrated in the factory to give 100% coverage of the DCI-P3 colour gamut. QHD+ (2,560 x 1,600) resolution means pixel density is lower than a typical 4K (3,840 x 2,160) laptop display. The Z16 features a choice of 11th Gen Intel Core H series processors, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 laptop GPU with Nvidia Studio drivers, up to 64 GB memory and up to 4 TB of storage spread across two M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

The Dell Precision 5560 wins hands down when it comes to portability. It’s the thinnest and lightest out of all the 15.6-inch mobile workstations — a mere 7.7mm at the front, 11.64mm at the rear and starting at 1.84kg. And with ultra thin bezels, it’s also notably smaller than comparable machines. In order to achieve this sleek aesthetic, it only includes entrylevel graphics options including the Nvidia T1200 (4 GB) and Nvidia RTX A2000 (4 GB), which are best suited to 3D CAD / BIM and entry-level viz workflows. However, there’s no compromise on the CPU with options going up to the Intel Xeon W-11955M (8 Core, 2.60 GHz up to 5.00 GHz). The laptop supports up to 64 GB of DDR4 3,200 MHz memory and 4 TB of NVMe PCI 4.0 storage. The IPS 4K ‘Gorilla Glass’ display is also top notch — 500 nits, 100% AdobeRGB and 99% DCI-P3. ■ dell.com/precision

■ msi.com

Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 The first three generations of this thin and light mobile workstation featured a 15.6-inch display and CAD-focused pro graphics. The G4 edition is a ‘clean sheet’ design with a 16-inch display and higher-powered GPUs, including the ‘professional’ Nvidia RTX A5000 (16 GB) and ‘consumer’ Nvidia GeForce 3080 (16 GB). Memory and storage capacity remains the same with up to 64 GB DDR4 3,200 MHz and up to two 2 TB M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSDs. To accommodate the higher-end GPUs, which draw significantly more power than those in previous generation ThinkPad P1s, Lenovo has developed a new thermal design. It is also using AI to dynamically manage the ‘cooling budget’. For example, if a workflow is dependent on both the CPU and the GPU, it might set the Total Graphics Power (TGP) to 80W, whereas if a workflow is totally reliant on the GPU, such as GPU rendering, it could go as high as 90W or 100W. Despite more powerful GPUs and a larger display, the ThinkPad P1 Gen 4’s carbon fibre and magnesium alloy chassis has only increased slightly in size and weight – 361.8 (w) x 245.7 (d) x 18.4mm (h) and starting at 1.81kg. ■ lenovo.com/workstations

Microsoft Surface Book 3 (15-inch) The Microsoft Surface Book 3 launched in 2020 so is the oldest machine in this round up, but it warrants inclusion because it offers something different. At the push of a button, you can remove the touchscreen display and turn it into a tablet. And with the optional pressure sensitive Surface Pen, use it for precision sketching. The 15-inch display has a resolution of 3,240 x 2,160 and an aspect ratio of 3:2, which is deeper than all the other machines. As it’s last year’s model, the Surface Book 3 features a 10th Gen Intel Core processor - the Core i7-1065G7. With a boost of 3.9 GHz, performance in CAD will be OK, but with four cores and a base clock of 1.5 GHz it will be significantly slower than others in multi-threaded workflows like rendering. For graphics, you have the option of the Nvidia Quadro RTX 3000 (6 GB), which is designed for entry-level viz, but its ‘Max-Q Design’ means it will run slower than other machines with the same GPU. The Microsoft Surface Book 3 has a thickness of between 15mm and 23mm and weighs 1.9kg with the keyboard and 0.81kg without. ■ surface.com

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AMD Radeon Pro W6800 This beast of a card is the first pro GPU from AMD with hardware-based ray tracing built in. With a whopping 32 GB of on board memory it’s designed for the most demanding arch viz workflows, writes Greg Corke Price $2,250 amd.com/radeonpro

memory to protect against crashes. And instead of three axial fans that recirculate air inside the machine, it has a single ‘blower’, which draws in cool air from the top of the card and pushes it out the rear of the machine. This design can be particularly beneficial in multi-GPU workstations. Perhaps most importantly, however, is that the Radeon Pro W6800 has a colossal 32 GB of on-board GDRR6 memory, double that of its consumer counterparts, and more than Nvidia’s pro GPUs at the same price point.

Monster memory

t’s been a long time coming but AMD has finally delivered its first professional GPU with hardware ray tracing built in. And with 32 GB of VRAM, the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 is a beast of a graphics card. Priced at $2,249, the Radeon Pro W6800 goes head-to-head with the 16 GB Nvidia RTX A4000 ($1,000) and 24 GB Nvidia RTX A5000 ($2,250), both of which we review on page WS28. In terms of raw performance, the Radeon Pro W6800 sits somewhere between AMD’s ‘consumer’ Radeon RX 6800 and Radeon RX 6800 XT. But as a workstation-class card there are several key differences. First, it will be certified for a wide range of professional applications, including all the major CAD and BIM tools. This can be especially significant for enterprise customers. It can also support up to six displays, which can be important for powerwalls, and features Error Correcting Code (ECC)

32 GB is a huge amount of memory for a GPU, surpassed only by the 48 GB Nvidia RTX A6000 which costs twice as much. It means the Radeon Pro W6800 can handle some seriously demanding visualisation datasets. This could be a huge multi-disciplinary city-scale model with immense detail or one with less geometry but hyper realistic assets such as 8K textures or detailed vegetation. It’s a huge step up from its predecessor, the AMD Radeon Pro W5700, which only had 8 GB and highlights AMD’s ambitions for high-end design viz and real-time ray tracing. The new GPU features enhanced Compute Units (CU) with dedicated ‘Ray Accelerators’. As this is AMD’s first pro GPU with hardware ray tracing, there aren’t currently a huge number of applications that can take advantage of its ‘Ray Accelerators’, but this is changing. The list currently includes applications that support DirectX Raytracing (DXR), such as Unreal Engine. Also, any that

Solidworks 2021 SP3 (OpenGL) SPECapc benchmark (FSAA) - RealView, shadows & AO 1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

1.72

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

N/A 0.0

0.5

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 2.08 2.29 2.52

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

2.26

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

N/A

3.0

0.0

0.5

1.0

3.02 2.90 3.35

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0

Solidworks Visualize 2021 SP3 (ProRender)

Computer model (denoising disabled)

Computer model (denoising enabled)

1,000 passes, accurate quality (1,500 x 1,500 resolution)

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

100 passes, accurate quality (1,500 x 1,500 resolution)

358 225

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Nvidia RTX A4000

250

300

350

400

67 45 56 46

3.5

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia RTX A5000

174 0

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

351

211

Nvidia RTX A5000

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The Radeon Pro W6800 supports a new pro driver feature called Radeon Pro Viewport Boost, which is designed to reduce latency and boost viewport navigation performance. It detects when a 3D model is moving quickly in the viewport then

SPECapc benchmark (FSAA) - shaded with edges

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Viewport boost

Solidworks 2021 SP3 (OpenGL) 1.23 Benchmark score (bigger is better)

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feature Radeon ProRender 2.0, the latest version of AMD’s physicallybased rendering engine. This includes Solidworks Visualize, Acca Software, Autodesk Inventor, Rhino, Autodesk Maya, and Blender. Looking to the future, it will also extend to any application that supports Vulkan Ray tracing, including those in development at Solidworks (Project Romulan tinyurl.com/SW-graphics), Autodesk (One Graphics System - tinyurl. com/Revit-GPU) and Enscape. The Radeon Pro W6800 will not accelerate ray tracing in Nvidia RTXenabled applications such as Luxion KeyShot, Chaos V-ray, Chaos Vantage, Enscape 3.0 and others. Of course, the Radeon Pro W6800 can also be used for many other applications that don’t rely on hardware ray tracing. This includes those that use the OpenGL or DirectX graphics APIs, including real-time design viz tools like Lumion or Twinmotion, Virtual Reality (VR) or photogrammetry software. The GPU is very much focused on viz and is not optimised for FP64 (Double Precision) code, so applications like engineering simulation will likely to continue to be best served by the AMD Radeon Pro VII ($1,899).

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automatically drops the resolution in specific areas to reduce the number of pixels the GPU needs to process. Then, as soon as that movement stops, it restores the full pixel count. According to AMD, this can increase Frames Per Second (FPS) dramatically without impacting the visual experience. AMD Radeon Pro Viewport Boost currently works with Revit, 3ds Max, Twinmotion and Unreal Engine (for packaged projects only, not currently Unreal Engine Editor). Support for other applications is coming soon. We explore this in more detail on page WS26

best with PCIe 4.0 workstations. With double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0, data can theoretically be fed into the GPU much quicker, although it won’t make a difference in all workflows. PCIe 4.0 compatible CPUs include 11th Generation Intel Core, Intel Xeon W-1300, AMD Ryzen 5000, AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3900X and Threadripper Pro 3900WX series. The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 is also designed to work better with AMD CPUs with AMD Smart Access Memory. This essentially gives the CPU better access

Unreal Engine 4.26

Specifications The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 is the first workstation GPU to be based on AMD’s 7nm RDNA 2 architecture. AMD states peak FP32 Throughput (Single Precision) as 17.83 Teraflops of Compute Performance. It is not optimised for FP64 (Double Precision). With six Mini DisplayPort outputs it can drive up to six displays at 5K resolution or up to two displays at 8K resolution. The board itself is full height, double slot, with a peak power of 250W. It requires a 6-pin and an 8-pin power connector and should fit most mid-sized tower chassis. The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 is a PCIe 4.0 graphics card. While it is fully compatible with older PCIe 3.0 workstations, it’s designed to work

to the GPU’s onboard memory. AMD says it unlocks higher performance for ‘key professional workloads’ but did not elaborate further. The Radeon Pro W6800 also includes 128 MB of AMD Infinity Cache, a ‘lastlevel’ data cache integrated on the GPU die designed to reduce latency and power consumption.

The Radeon Pro W6800 on test We put the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 through a series of real-world application

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - rendering)

Architectural house

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

9.90

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

18.40 11.60 16.53

22.30

8K (7,680 x 3,840 resolution)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

510 294 390 280

Nvidia RTX A5000

212 0

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

1.23

100

200

300

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - real time)

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - rendering)

Colossal building (28 GB)

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

2.30

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

6.80

2.20

Nvidia RTX A4000

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

1,283

1,243 673

Nvidia RTX A5000 5

600

218

Nvidia RTX A4000

3.40 1

1.23

500

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 3.10

Nvidia RTX A5000

8K (7,680 x 3,840 resolution)

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AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

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Over the past few years Unreal Engine has established itself as a very prominent tool for design viz, especially in architecture and automotive. It was one of the first applications to use GPU-accelerated real-time ray tracing, which it does through Microsoft DirectX Ray tracing (DXR). It means the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 is fully compatible. For testing, we used two datasets, both freely available from Epic Games: an arch viz interior of a small apartment and the Automotive Configurator, which features an Audi A5 convertible. Both scenes were tested with ray tracing enabled (DirectX Ray tracing (DXR)) and without (DirectX 12 rasterisation). The Radeon Pro W6800 did well with DirectX 12 rasterisation, showing a vast improvement over the Radeon Pro

Lumion 11.5 (DirectX 12 - real time) 4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

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benchmarks, for GPU rendering, real-time visualisation and 3D CAD. All tests were carried out using the AMD Ryzen 5000-based Scan 3XS GWPME A132R workstation (see page WS12 for a full review). Resolution was set to 4K (3,840 x 2,160) and we used AMD’s enterprise 21.Q1 graphics driver. For comparison, we used AMD’s previous generation ‘RDNA’ workstation GPU, the AMD Radeon Pro W5700 (8 GB), plus Nvidia’s brand new ‘Ampere’ workstation GPUs, the Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB) and Nvidia RTX A5000 (24 GB), which we review on page WS28.

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W5700, and sitting somewhere between the RTX A4000 and RTX A5000. With real-time ray tracing enabled, however, it fell notably behind both Nvidia GPUs. Without hardware ray tracing built-in, the Radeon Pro W5700 pretty much ground to a halt.

especially in real-time 3D where it was very hard to navigate the scene. With the smaller scene, however, the Nvidia RTX A5000 demonstrated a clear lead over the Radeon Pro W6800 and the RTX A4000 also stood up well, edging out the Radeon Pro W6800 when rendering.

Autodesk VRED Professional 2022

Autodesk VRED Professional is an automotive-focused 3D visualisation, virtual prototyping and VR tool. It uses OpenGL and delivers very high-quality visuals in the viewport. It offers several levels of real-time anti-aliasing (AA), which is important for automotive styling, Lumion 11.5 Enscape 3.0 as it smooths the edges of body panels. Lumion is a real-time rendering tool Enscape is a real-time viz and VR tool for However, AA calculations use a lot of GPU popular with architects. The 11.5 release architects that delivers very high-quality resources, both in terms of processing and uses DirectX 12 rasterisation. It does not graphics in the viewport. The software memory. We tested our automotive model currently support hardware-based ray has used elements of ray tracing for some with AA set to ‘off’ and ‘ultra-high’. tracing. time and version 3.0 is RTX-enabled, so As we have seen previously with AMD The software can work with 8K textures hardware ray tracing is supported on GPUs, the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 did and has a vast object library including Nvidia RTX GPUs. Later versions will OK with anti-aliasing set to off, but was trees with leaves that move still significantly behind in the wind, all of which the RTX A5000. With antican place huge demands aliasing enabled, however, The AMD Radeon Pro W6800 stands out on GPU processing and performance dropped memory. considerably, with even from the competition due to its substantial We tested the GPUs in the RTX A4000 taking a 32 GB of memory, surpassed only by the two ways: one measuring Nvidia RTX A6000 which costs twice as much substantial lead. real-time 3D performance Solidworks Visualize 2021 in terms of Frame Per The name of this GPUSecond (FPS) and two, recording the time it takes to render an use the more modern Vulkan API and accelerated physically-based renderer is a support ray tracing on both Nvidia and bit misleading as it works with many more 8K scene. applications than the CAD application of Lumion supplied us with two datasets: AMD GPUs. For our tests, we used a large scene of the same name. It can import models from a standard architectural house with surrounding vegetation, which will fit a building complex and its surrounding PTC Creo, Solid Edge, Catia and Inventor, into 8 GB of GPU memory; and a colossal area in Enscape 3.0 (non RTX). At 9.5 GB, as well as several neutral formats. The software was initially programmed building model which needs 28 GB, more the GPU memory requirements of this than the capacity of the Nvidia RTX model are relatively high, but Enscape to work with Nvidia Iray and, more recently, Nvidia RTX. However, in the A4000 (16 GB) and RTX A5000 (24 GB). models can be much larger. In terms of performance, the Radeon 2020 release, AMD Radeon ProRender It came as no surprise that the AMD Radeon Pro W6800 came out top when Pro W6800 delivered a very smooth was added, so users now have a choice testing the 28 GB model as it was the only experience at 29 FPS, more than double of two rendering engines. Both support GPU able to load the entire dataset into that of the Radeon Pro W5700. It edged denoising, a post-processing technique memory. The Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB) out the Nvidia RTX A4000 but was a bit that filters out noise from unfinished / noisy images and means you can get better and RTX A5000 (24 GB) really struggled, behind the Nvidia RTX A5000.

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Unreal Engine 4.26 (DirectX 12 - rasterisation)

Unreal Engine 4.26 (DirectX 12 - DXR)

Audi car configurator model (ray tracing disabled)

Audi car configurator model (ray tracing enabled)

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

N/A

AMD Radeon Pro W6800 Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

1.23

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

8.38

Nvidia RTX A4000 33.00

9.40

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 24.61

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

13.44

Nvidia RTX A5000 0

19.02 10

Unreal Engine 4.26 (DirectX 12 - rasterisation)

Unreal Engine 4.26 (DirectX 12 - DXR)

Arch Viz interior model (ray tracing disabled)

Arch Viz interior model (ray tracing enabled)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

24.30

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

46.30 26.89 39.40

1.23

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

5.30

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

5.21

Nvidia RTX A4000 51.15

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700 N/A

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28.83 16.98

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

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AMD Radeon Pro W5700 N/A

WS22

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

1.23

8.04

Nvidia RTX A5000 0

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looking renders with significantly fewer rendering passes. We tested both AMD and Nvidia GPUs with Radeon ProRender using the PC model from the SPECapc for Solidworks 2021 benchmark. We rendered at 1,500 x 1,500 resolution with 1,000 passes (denoising disabled) and 100 passes (denoising enabled) with accurate quality. Both settings produced excellent visual results. With denoising enabled, there was little between the Radeon Pro W6800, and Nvidia’s Ampere GPUs, but the RTX A5000 had a bigger lead with denoising disabled.

With six Mini DisplayPort outputs the W6800 can drive up to six displays at 5K resolution or up to two displays at 8K

Solidworks 2021 While most CAD applications won’t benefit from any GPU more powerful that the Nvidia Quadro P2200 or AMD Radeon Pro W5500, Solidworks 2021 is an exception. By using OpenGL 4.5, a more modern version of the popular graphics API, more algorithms can be pushed onto the GPU so there is a benefit to higher performance cards. Even so, the application is still CPU limited to some extent, so the performance benefit of more powerful GPUs isn’t as big as you’d expect from a dedicated real-time viz tool. Like most CAD tools, the most popular way to view models in Solidworks is in shaded with edges mode. Using the SPECapc for SolidWorks 2021 benchmark we saw a small improvement over the Radeon Pro W5700, although the Radeon Pro W6800 was behind both Nvidia GPUs. Solidworks also features more realistic display styles for viewing models in real

With a peak power of 250W, the W6800 requires a 6-pin and an 8-pin power connector

Enscape 3.0 (OpenGL)

Autodesk VRED Professional 2022 (OpenGL)

Large building complex

Automotive model (No Anti Aliasing)

Automotive model (Anti Aliasing - Ultra-high)

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

1.23

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 Inconsistent results Nvidia RTX A4000

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

36 20

30.65

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

30.88

5.45

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 48.80

3.30

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

51.85

7.30

Nvidia RTX A4000 63.30

12.25

Nvidia RTX A5000

VRMark - Cyan Room DirectX 12

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

1.23

49.65

Nvidia RTX A4000

Nvidia RTX A5000

99.77 57.7

182.43

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

351.17 173.69

Nvidia RTX A4000 98.25 100

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 75.1

15.98 10

AMD Radeon Pro W5700

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

1.23

DirectX 11

AMD Radeon Pro W6800

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Frames Per Second (FPS) (bigger is better)

VRMark - Blue Room 1.23

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AMD Radeon Pro W6800

Nvidia RTX A5000 0

4K (3,840 x 2,160 resolution)

238.4

Nvidia RTX A5000 0

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Arch viz studio Beehive pushed the W6800 to its limits in Lumion on ‘Aedas City’, a visualisation project that features six of the international architecture firm’s building designs. It uses 28 GB (yes, 28 GB) of GPU memory

time. Solidworks RealView, which is only Nvidia RTX A6000 which costs twice as competition from Nvidia. The 16 GB supported by pro GPUs, adds realistic much. But you have to take design viz very Nvidia RTX A4000, for example, materials and supports environment seriously to need such a huge amount. generally offers a little less performance reflections and floor shadows. Meanwhile, Architectural visualisation studio than the Radeon Pro W6800 but costs ambient occlusion adds more realistic Beehive certainly does. It pushed the half as much. Meanwhile, the 24 GB shadows and helps bring out details. W6800 to its limits in Lumion, while Nvidia RTX A5000 offers parity on Both viewing styles are more GPU- working on ‘Aedas City’, a visualisation price, but has a clear performance lead intensive, so performance is less limited project that features six of the international in some workflows and better software by the frequency of the CPU. In our architecture firm’s building designs. compatibility. One can’t help but wonder tests, we saw a bigger benefit to the more And because the project could be held if AMD has missed a trick by not pricing powerful GPUs when RealView, shadows entirely within GPU memory, it managed the Radeon Pro W6800 more aggressively and ambient occlusion were enabled. to massively reduce render times for a 891 to make it more competitive in workflows We were unable to test where large memory capacity the Nvidia RTX A5000 as is less important. Or perhaps Solidworks 2021 Service there’s room for a Radeon Pro There is a strong workflow argument for Pack 3 did not recognise the W6700? card. We expect this to be Nvidia also appears to have having so much memory on a GPU, by not fixed in SP4, out soon. a clear lead in DXR hardware having to worry so much about optimising ray tracing, although this geometry or textures VRMark is perhaps to be expected. We also tested with VRMark, AMD’s ray accelerators are a dedicated Virtual Reality ‘first generation’ and there is benchmark that uses both DirectX 11 and frame video – from 36 hours and 11 mins also scope for driver improvements. DirectX 12. It’s biased towards 3D games, (with the 24 GB Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000 AMD is innovating in other areas, so not perfect for our needs, but should GPU) to 9 hours and 27 mins (with the however. The Radeon Pro Viewport give a good indication of the performance Radeon Pro W6800). Boost, for example, is an exciting one might expect in ‘game engine’ viz There are big benefits for projects like feature that takes a smarter approach to tools, although all datasets are different. this but this is an extreme example. Most how precious GPU resources are The Radeon Pro W6800 came out top design-centric visualisation workflows allocated. And this is certainly one to in the ‘Cyan room’ test which measures require significantly less GPU memory, watch for the future. DirectX 12 performance. AMD itself has although with ever increasing demands We also wait with interest to see how highlighted how its ‘RDNA 2’ architecture for realism and resolution, this will the forthcoming 8 GB AMD Radeon Pro performs well in DirectX 12 applications. likely change in the future. There is also a W6600 shapes up. At $649 it should hit strong workflow argument for more GPU the sweet spot for CAD users who also want The verdict memory, by not having to worry so much a real-time 3D, ray tracing or VR capability. The Radeon Pro W6800 stands out from about optimising geometry or textures. Nvidia doesn’t yet have a pro GPU with the competition due to its substantial For now, in more mainstream viz hardware ray tracing in this entry-level 32 GB of memory, surpassed only by the workflows, AMD faces very stiff market segment.

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AMD Radeon Pro Viewport Boost In recent years AMD has allocated significant resources to the development of its Radeon Pro graphics drivers. The new 21.Q2 release promises to increase 3D performance by dynamically reducing viewport resolution, and without impacting the visual experience. Radeon Pro Viewport Boost works with any AMD Radeon Pro GPU but Greg Corke tests it out with the new Radeon Pro W6800 tinyurl.com/viewport-boost

t the beginning of June AMD launched the AMD Radeon Pro W6800, a monster 32 GB professional GPU, which we review in-depth on page 20. Such a huge amount of on-board memory certainly makes the W6800 stand out from other GPUs in its class. However, the ‘RDNA 2’ workstation card also features a new pro graphics driver feature called Radeon Pro Viewport Boost, which is designed to reduce latency and boost viewport navigation performance. The idea behind the technology is simple but smart. It detects when a 3D model is moving quickly in the viewport, then dynamically drops the resolution to reduce the number of pixels the GPU needs to process. Then, as soon as that movement stops, it restores the full pixel count. According to AMD, this can increase Frames Per Second (FPS) dramatically without impacting the visual experience. AMD Radeon Pro Viewport Boost currently works with Autodesk Revit 2021, Autodesk 3ds Max 2021, Twinmotion and Unreal Engine 4 (for packaged DirectX 11 projects only – not currently DirectX 12 or Unreal Engine Editor). Support for other applications is coming soon. It works best in GPU limited workflows. i.e. those where the GPU is being pushed to its limits and is the bottleneck in the workstation. And, with this in mind, it should deliver the biggest benefits at higher resolutions (4K and above), with larger models and when visual quality settings are maxed out.

Testing Radeon Pro Viewport Boost Radeon Pro Viewport Boost is enabled in the AMD Radeon Pro 21.Q2 driver under graphics settings. Users have control over the minimum dynamic resolution that WS26

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the application viewport will drop down With this in mind, the benefits of to, expressed as a percentage of its native Radeon Pro Viewport Boost in CAD or resolution. It can be set between 50% and BIM applications like Autodesk Revit are 83.3%. The lower the value, the bigger the less clear. potential performance boost. In Revit, the most popular way to view To show the extent to which it is BIM models is in ‘shaded’ mode. However, working at any given moment, one to with this display style enabled we saw no four small green dots appear in the top benefit to Radeon Pro Viewport Boost. As left corner of the viewport – one being the with many CAD and BIM tools, the GPU least, four being the most. simply isn’t stressed enough, so the CPU The smart thing about Radeon Pro becomes the bottleneck instead. Viewport Boost is that it only works when It’s only when you start ramping up the model is in fast motion, when the eye is the quality settings that more demands less sensitive to a loss of visual detail. are placed on the GPU and Radeon Pro In both of our Unreal Engine arch viz Viewport Boost can come into effect. interior scenes, for example, it only kicked And while the performance increases in when ‘running’ (shift, up arrow) and not can be large, we only found a few select when ‘walking’ (up arrow only). At 50%, scenarios where a substantial benefit the drop in resolution is clearly visible could be seen. but only really when you actively look out We tested with four relatively small for it. At 83.3% it was very hard to see any Revit models and found that if the difference. following criteria were met — realistic When modelling in Revit or 3ds max, display style, smooth lines with antilines become more pixelated. But with aliasing, transparency enabled, and the speed with which one tends to pan, viewport set to perspective mode — then rotate, or zoom-in, to quickly shift focus to there was a huge performance gain; a different part of the model, it’s really not almost double the Frames Per Second. detrimental to the overall experience. But without all of those enabled — We tested on a fairly standard 4K especially with the viewport set to (3,840 x 2,160 resolution) 60Hz IPS orthographic — the performance gains panel. There may be a bigger discernible were minimal, or there were none at all. difference on higher spec We would be interested displays. to learn how the system The performanceworks with significantly It’s good to see benefits can be huge. larger Revit models. AMD innovating In Unreal Engine 4.26, It’s also worth pointing testing with a Paris out here that most CAD by taking a interior scene from and BIM applications smarter approach already have a built-in arch viz artist Benoit to how GPU Derau (benoitdereau.com) feature to help improve resources are we saw frame rates viewport performance more than double when working with large allocated. Why (116%) when minimum models. In Revit, for bother rendering resolution was set to example, the ‘simplify pixels that most 50%. In Unreal Engine’s display during view freely available Arch viz feature people won’t even navigation’ interior scene packaged (which is switched on notice when as a DirectX11 project it by default) suspends models are moving certain graphics effects increased by 59%. at speed? In Twinmotion the and temporarily removes boost was around 30% some objects when the with the ‘materials room’ model is in motion. demo scene when visual settings were set Radeon Pro Viewport Boost gives the to ‘ultra’. In 3ds max we saw around a 20% best performance boost when this feature improvement with AMD’s ‘snow bike’ is enabled, so you are getting a lower res model with high anti-aliasing and “High representation of a model that has already Quality” shading. been simplified. Of course, Revit like many CAD and What about CAD/BIM? BIM applications, is renowned for being For design viz applications like Unreal CPU limited so it’s hardly surprising we Engine and Twinmotion having the found reduced benefits for Radeon Pro highest quality graphics is always the Viewport Boost. This is especially true for ultimate goal. However, in 3D CAD and a high-end graphics card like the Radeon BIM modelling workflows it’s usually less Pro W6800, which is complete overkill important, with the focus instead on the for Revit. clear representation of geometry. In CAD applications that make better

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use of the GPU, such as Solidworks 2021, AMD Radeon Pro Viewport Boost could have a bigger impact in a broader set of viewing styles. It’s also important to note that CAD applications are changing, with new graphics engines that use modern APIs like Vulkan to push more processing onto the GPU and reduce the CPU bottleneck. This includes future versions of Solidworks (Project Romulan tinyurl.com/SW-graphics) and Autodesk Revit (and other Autodesk applications) which will use the new One Graphics System (tinyurl.com/Revit-GPU).

With Radeon Pro Viewport Boost enabled and min resolution set to 50% some pixelation is noticeable on this wall painting when ‘running’ in this Unreal Engine scene. The four green dots (top left) show that Viewport Boost is in full effect

What we think It’s good to see AMD innovating by taking a smarter approach to how GPU resources are allocated. Why bother rendering pixels that most people won’t even notice when models are moving at speed? From our tests we see a clear benefit for design visualisation, where applications almost always push the GPU to its limits and visual quality is of paramount importance. We’re less convinced with the broader advantages for CAD and BIM software. In Revit, for example, it appears you have to use a fairly specific combination of visual settings in order to benefit. And, in a workflow where the clear representation of geometry is usually the priority, one would also question how many people actually view models that way. At the moment, application support is quite limited, but this will grow. We imagine AMD is working on support for Unreal Engine Editor as well as DirectX 12, which should be a big attraction for viz artists, especially those working with huge datasets that approach the substantial 32 GB memory limit of the Radeon Pro W6800. When AMD first announced Viewport Boost it was exclusive to the Radeon Pro W6800 and W6600 GPUs. AMD has now confirmed that it will be expanding support to prior generation Radeon Pro GPUs as well. So, for those that already own an AMD Radeon Pro GPU, this could be a great way to get more out of your investment. And it’s perhaps with less powerful GPUs like these, that users will get the biggest benefits. In all of our tests we experienced pretty good viewport performance (most well above 20 FPS) even with Viewport Boost disabled. But it’s when frame rates drop lower, and viewports become choppy, that any performance increase can make a huge difference to practical workflows and become far more important than numbers on charts. www.AECmag.com

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As soon as you stop ‘running’ the four green dots disappear and the full resolution image is instantly restored

In 3ds Max, with Radeon Pro Viewport Boost enabled and min resolution set to 50%, there is little difference between the moving image (left) and the static image (below) although the lettering on the bike is not as sharp

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Nvidia RTX A4000 / A5000 Nvidia’s new Ampere-based pro GPUs, the Nvidia RTX A4000 and RTX A5000, offer a big step up from the Turing-based Quadro RTX family. With more memory and significantly enhanced processing, they promise to make light work of demanding realtime ray tracing, GPU rendering and VR workflows, writes Greg Corke Price $1,000 (A4000) / $2,250 (A5000) nvidia.com

n February 2021 we reviewed the Nvidia RTX A6000, the first pro desktop GPU to be based on Nvidia’s ‘Ampere’ architecture. With 48 GB of memory and buckets of processing power, the dual slot 300W graphics card is designed for the most demanding visualisation workflows – think city-scale digital twins or complex product visualisations using very hi-fidelity textures, such as those captured from real-life scans. Of course, the Nvidia RTX A6000 is complete overkill for most architects or product designers who simply want a capable GPU for real-time visualisation, GPU rendering or VR. And it’s here that the new Nvidia RTX A4000 and Nvidia RTX A5000 come into play. Announced at Nvidia’s GTC event this year, the PCIe Gen 4 ‘Ampere’ Nvidia RTX A4000 and Nvidia RTX A5000 are the replacements for the PCIe Gen 3 ‘Turing’ Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 and Quadro RTX 5000, which launched in 2019. The RTX A4000 and A5000 are midrange ‘Quadro’ GPUs in everything but name. Nvidia might be retiring its longserving Quadro workstation brand, but the features remain the same. Both GPUs offer more memory than their consumer GeForce counterparts, are standard issue in workstations from Dell, HP and Lenovo, and come with pro drivers with ISV certification for a wide range of CAD/BIM applications. And with an estimated street price of $1,000 for the Nvidia RTX A4000 and $2,250 for the Nvidia RTX A5000, they have much more palatable price tags than the Nvidia RTX A6000 which costs $4,650. WS28

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Nvidia RTX A4000 (16 GB) With 16 GB of GDDR6 ECC memory, the Nvidia RTX A4000 offers a big step up from the 8 GB Quadro RTX 4000. 8 GB is fine for mainstream viz workflows but for more complex projects it can be limiting, so delivering 16 GB in a sub $1,000 pro GPU is a big step forward. Previously, 16 GB was only available on the ‘Turing’based Quadro RTX 5000. As you’d expect from Nvidia’s new ‘Ampere’ architecture, the Nvidia RTX A4000 also offers a significant improvement in processing. This can be seen in all areas of the GPU with more CUDA cores for general processing, thirdgeneration Tensor Cores for AI operations and second-generation RT Cores for hardware-based ray tracing. It leads to a substantial performance increase in many different applications (see later on). Furthermore, as the Nvidia RTX A4000 is a single slot GPU with a max power consumption of 140W delivered through a single 6-pin PCIe connector, it’s available in a wide range of desktop workstation form factors. This includes compact towers like the HP Z2 Tower G8 and Dell Precision 3650. The board features four DisplayPort 1.4a ports and can drive up to four displays at 5K resolution. It is cooled by a single ‘blower’ type fan, which draws in cool air from the top and bottom of the card, pushes it through a radiator and then directly out of the rear of the workstation chassis. This is in contrast to most consumer GeForce GPUs which use axial fans that recirculate air inside the machine. There are pros and cons to each design, but with a blower fan you can stack cards within the chassis without having to leave space between them. This means you can get a very good density of GPUs inside a mid-sized chassis. With the AMD Threadripper Pro-based Lenovo ThinkStation P620, for example, you could get four Nvidia

RTX A4000s back-to-back, which could be a very interesting proposition for GPU rendering. Even though the RTX A4000 doesn’t support NVlink (so there’s no pooling of GPU memory) 16 GB is still a good amount and two, three or four RTX A4000s could work out well in terms of price/performance compared to the more powerful RTX A5000 or A6000. Another potential use case for highdensity multi-GPU is workstation virtualisation using GPU passthrough, where each user gets a dedicated GPU. Again, this workflow looks well suited to the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, which can be configured with up to 64 CPU cores and 2 TB of memory. Other more niche pro viz features include support for 3D Stereo, Nvidia Mosaic for professional multi-display solutions, and Quadro Sync II, an addin card that can synchronise the display and image output from multiple GPUs within a single system, or across a cluster of systems.

Nvidia RTX A5000 (24 GB) With 24 GB of GDDR6 ECC memory, the Nvidia RTX A5000 offers only a 50% memory uplift compared to the Quadro RTX 5000 it replaces. Like the Nvidia RTX A4000 it offers a significant upgrade in all areas of processing — CUDA, Tensor and RT cores. It’s a double height board, with a max power consumption of 230W which it draws from the PSU via an 8-pin PCIe connector, but it’s still available in compact towers. The board also features four DisplayPort 1.4a ports and is cooled by a single ‘blower’ type fan, but only draws in cool air from one side of the card. The Nvidia RTX A5000 supports all the same features as the Nvidia RTX A4000 but differs in two main areas. One, it supports Nvidia NVLink, so GPU memory can be expanded to 48 GB by connecting two 24 GB GPUs together. Two, it supports Nvidia RTX vWS (virtual workstation software) so it can deliver multiple high-performance virtual workstation instances that enable remote users to share resources. In the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, for example, which we reviewed earlier this year, you could get a very high density of CAD/ BIM users who only need high-end RTX performance from time to time. www.AECmag.com

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Nvidia RTX A5000 inside the AMD Ryzen 5000-based Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132R workstation

Testing the new cards We put the Nvidia RTX A4000 and Nvidia RTX A5000 through a series of real-world application benchmarks, for GPU rendering, real-time visualisation and 3D CAD. All tests were carried out using the AMD Ryzen-based Scan 3XS GWP-ME A132R workstation at 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution using the latest 462.59 Nvidia driver (see page WS12 for a full review). For comparison, we used the last two generations of ‘4000’ class Nvidia pro GPUs – the 8 GB ‘Turing’ Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (from 2019) and the 8 GB ‘Pascal’ Nvidia Quadro P4000 (from 2017). Three to four years is quite a typical upgrade cycle in workstations, so the intention here is to give a good idea of the performance increase one might expect from an older machine (N.B. to see all of the benchmark scores for the Nvidia Quadro P4000 visit tinyurl.com/ RTX4000). We also threw some Nvidia RTX A6000 scores in there. These were done on two different workstations with a 32-core Threadripper Pro 3970X and a quad core Intel Xeon W-2125 CPU. While both CPUs have lower frequencies and instructions per clock (IPC) the results should still give a pretty good idea of comparative performance, especially in GPU rendering software. The results of these tests can be seen in www.AECmag.com

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the charts on page WS20 in our review of Vantage, for example, is built from the the AMD Radeon Pro W6800. ground up for real-time ray tracing so can maximise the usage of RT cores within Hardware-based ray tracing the new GPUs. It’s been just over two years since Nvidia introduced ‘Turing’ Nvidia Quadro RTX, Chaos Group V-Ray its first pro GPUs with RTX hardware ray V-Ray is one of the most popular tracing. physically based rendering tools, In a classic chicken and egg launch, especially in architectural visualisation. there were very few RTX-enabled We put the new cards through their paces applications back then, but this has using the freely downloadable V-Ray 5 now changed. For design viz, there’s benchmark, which has dedicated tests for Chaos V-Ray, Chaos Vantage, Enscape, Nvidia CUDA GPUs, Nvidia RTX GPUs, Unreal Engine, Unity, D5 render, as well as CPUs. Nvidia Omniverse, Autodesk VRED, The results were impressive. In the KeyShot, Siemens NX Ray Traced CUDA test, the Nvidia RTX A4000 Studio, Solidworks Visualize, Catia Live was 1.62 times faster than the previous rendering and others. generation Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 Nvidia RTX gave GPU rendering a and in the RTX test 1.70 times faster. The massive kick start and while there is lead over the Pascal-based Quadro P4000 increased competition from hugely was nothing short of colossal – 3.53 times powerful CPUs like the 64-core AMD faster in the CUDA test. As the P4000 Threadripper [Pro], we are seeing deeper does not have dedicated RT cores, it could penetration of GPU rendering tools, not run the RTX test. especially in architect / engineer / product Stepping up to the Nvidia RTX A5000 designer friendly workflows. will give you an additional boost. Nvidia RTX is being used to massively Compared to the Nvidia RTX A4000 it accelerate classic viz focused ray trace was between 1.27 and 1.37 times faster. renderers like V-Ray, KeyShot and Interestingly, the RTX A5000 was not Solidworks Visualize, which we test later that far behind the RTX A6000, which on in this article. However, some of the costs more than twice as much. more exciting developments are coming from the AEC sector in tools like Enscape, Luxion Keyshot Chaos Vantage and Unreal Engine, KeyShot, a CPU rendering stalwart, is a which really make ray tracing ‘real-time’. relative newcomer to the world of GPU July / August 2021

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rendering. But it’s one of the slickest implementations we’ve seen, allowing users to switch between CPU and GPU rendering at the click of a button. In the Keyshot 10 benchmark, part of the free KeyShot Viewer, the performance leap was even more substantial than in V-Ray. The Nvidia RTX A4000 and Nvidia RTX A5000 outperformed the Quadro RTX 4000 by a factor of 1.89 and 2.51 respectively. And the RTX A5000 was only 20% slower than the RTX A6000.

Solidworks Visualize

being able to render at such speeds is quite incredible and can have a profound impact on workflows. In comparison, it took the Quadro P4000 GPU 105 seconds, so you can see just how far things have progressed in four years.

Real time 3D While GPU rendering is a major play for the Nvidia RTX A4000 and Nvidia RTX A5000, real-time 3D using OpenGL, DirectX and (in the future) Vulkan continues to be a very important part of architectural visualisation, with applications including TwinMotion, Lumion, Enscape, Unreal Engine, LumenRT and others. Of course, the boundaries between realtime 3D and ray tracing continue to blur. In fact, out of the list above only Lumion and Twinmotion are yet to support RTX, although it should be coming to Twinmotion soon. To test frame rates, we used a combination of monitoring software

boundaries of automotive visualisation will still likely need the top-end Nvidia RTX A6000 especially for high-res VR workflows. In Unreal Engine we used two datasets: an arch viz interior of a small apartment and the Automotive Configurator, which features an Audi A5 convertible. Both scenes were tested with ray tracing enabled (DirectX Ray tracing (DXR)) and without (DirectX 12 rasterisation). The results were pretty much as expected with good scaling between all the GPUs with DirectX 12 rasterization. With real-time ray tracing enabled, performance naturally takes a hit in general, but the Quadro P4000 really suffers without any RT cores.

The name of this GPU-accelerated physically based renderer is a bit misleading as it works with many more applications than the CAD application of the same name. It can import models from Creo, Solid Edge, Catia and Inventor, as well as several neutral formats. We also tested with VRMark, a dedicated Since the 2020 release the software has Virtual Reality benchmark that uses supported Nvidia RT cores and Tensor DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. In the DX12 cores to improve rendering performance test both GPUs came in second to AMD’s with Nvidia RTX GPUs. Users can choose Radeon Pro W6800 (see page WS20). to render scenes with or CAD and BIM without denoising enabled. Denoising is a postThe Nvidia RTX A4000 The performance leap from the Quadro RTX processing technique and RTX A5000 are based on machine learning overkill for most CAD 4000 to RTX A4000 is hugely impressive, that filters out noise from and BIM applications and and the step up from the four-year old unfinished / noisy images are unlikely to give you ‘Quadro P4000 is simply phenomenal and is the foundation for significantly better 3D many RTX-accelerated performance than more applications. It means mainstream GPUs like the you can get better looking renders with including FRAPS, Xbox Game Bar and Nvidia Quadro P1000 or P2200. significantly fewer rendering passes. MSI Afterburner. We only tested at 4K However, CAD applications are DS Solidworks reckons that if a scene (3,840 x 2,160) resolution. At FHD (1,920 x changing and, in the future, should be able routinely needs 500 passes without the 1,080) resolution this class of GPU simply to make much better use of the plentiful denoiser, then you may be able to achieve isn’t stressed enough. power of higher-end GPUs like the RTX the same rendering quality with 50 passes A4000 and A5000. with the denoiser enabled. In Autodesk VRED Professional we In addition, it is important to note that We tested the stock 1969 Camaro car tested our automotive model with AA set both GPUs will be certified for a wide model at 4K resolution with 1,000 passes to ‘off’ and ‘ultra-high’. range of pro CAD / BIM applications, (denoising disabled) and 100 passes Considering that this pro viz which is important for some firms. This (denoising enabled) set to accurate quality. application used to only really run is especially true for enterprises that buy Both settings produced excellent visual effectively on Nvidia’s ultra-high-end 100s or 1,000s of workstations from large results. professional GPUs, it’s quite astounding OEMs like HP, Dell and Lenovo and want The RTX A4000 and RTX A5000 that the Nvidia RTX A4000 – a sub assurance that the GPUs will be stable and delivered the 100-pass render in 22 $1,000 card – delivered over 30 FPS at that they will be properly supported by seconds and 14 seconds respectively. 4K resolution with medium anti-aliasing. the software developer. This isn’t the most complex scene but In saying that, those really pushing the Certification is a major reason why

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Solidworks Visualize 2021 SP3 (Iray)

1969 Camaro car model (denoising disabled)

1969 Camaro car model (denoising enabled)

1,000 passes, accurate quality 4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution)

1.23

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

Nvidia Quadro P4000

100 passes, accurate quality 4K (3,840 x 1,080 resolution)

1,029

Nvidia RTX 4000

349

Nvidia RTX A4000

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600

800

1000

1200

Nvidia Quadro P4000 1

105

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32.94

Nvidia RTX A4000 1

Nvidia RTX A5000 1

Nvidia RTX A6000 2

120 1

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5.60

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 1

Nvidia RTX A5000 400

1.23 Relative performance to reference system (bigger is better)

Nvidia RTX A4000

140

Render time (secs) (smaller is better)

Nvidia RTX 4000

211

Nvidia RTX A5000

Nvidia Quadro P4000

1.23

Luxion KeyShot 10 benchmark (GPU)

62.34 82.60

AMD AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU (462.59 driver)

99.62 60

100

AMD Threadripper 3970X (461.09 driver)

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V-Ray 5 image courtesy of Toni Bratincevic

Solidworks 2021 can make better use of powerful GPUs than most CAD applications but it is still CPU limited to some extent, so the performance benefit the new cards give you isn’t as big as you’d get from a dedicated real-time viz tool. In the SPECapc for SolidWorks 2021 benchmark we saw a small improvement, generation on generation with the shaded with edges. The Nvidia RTX A4000 was 1.10 times faster than the Quadro RTX 4000 and 1.44 times faster than the ‘Pascal’ Quadro P4000. With RealView, Shadows and Ambient Occlusion enabled we saw a bigger benefit over older GPUs. The Nvidia RTX A4000 was 1.16 times faster than the Quadro RTX 4000 and 1.57 times faster than the Quadro P4000. We were unable to test the Nvidia RTX A5000 as Solidworks 2021 SP3 did not recognise the card. We expect this to be fixed in SP4, out soon.

Conclusion With the new Nvidia RTX A4000 and A5000, Nvidia has made its ‘Ampere’ GPU architecture much more accessible to a wider audience. In particular, we see the sub $1,000 Nvidia RTX A4000 hitting the sweet spot for designers, engineers or architects that want a pro viz capability in their workflow. The performance leap from ‘Turing’ to ‘Ampere’ (Quadro RTX 4000 to RTX A4000) is hugely impressive. In realtime 3D, a 45% to 60% boost, generation on generation, seems typical, with even bigger gains from real-time ray tracing when the enhanced RT and Tensor cores come into play. The step up from the four-year old ‘Pascal’ Quadro P4000 is phenomenal, especially for rendering. Equipping the RTX A4000 with 16 GB of memory is very significant. While we often see models/scenes that surpass 8 GB (the capacity of the previous generation Quadro RTX 4000) scenes that are 16 GB and above are certainly less common, and more the preserve of viz specialists than most architects or product designers who use standard materials and assets. For viz workflows that need lots of memory, Nvidia has strong competition from the 32 GB AMD Radeon Pro W6800,

Chaos Group V-Ray 5.0 benchmark

V-Ray GPU CUDA

V-Ray GPU RTX

290

Nvidia Quadro P4000 1 634

Nvidia RTX A4000 1

1,025

Nvidia RTX A5000 1

Nvidia RTX A6000 2

AMD AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU (462.59 driver)

1500

AMD Threadripper 3970X (461.09 driver)

1,559

Nvidia RTX A5000 1 1,531

1000

919

2,128

Nvidia RTX A6000 2 2000 1

500

AMD AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU (462.59 driver)

1000

2,490 1500

2000

2500

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200

400

500

Nvidia RTX A4000 1 1,299

N/A

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 1

1000

Nvidia Quadro P4000 1 Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 1

For more performance data see charts on page 20 as part of the in-depth review of AMD Radeon Pro W6800 with 32 GB of on-board memory

1.23 vrays (calculations per minute) (bigger is better)

800

1.23 vpaths (calculations per minute) (bigger is better)

but in less demanding worflows Nvidia’s biggest competitor in pro graphics is currently itself. The new 12 GB ‘consumer’ GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, for example, might have half the memory of the Nvidia RTX A5000, but offers more performance on paper for half the price. Nvidia even has a GeForce Studio driver for applications including Enscape, Unreal Engine and V-Ray. Despite the obvious attraction of Nvidia’s consumer GPUs, Nvidia’s ‘A’ class models should continue to find favour in large firms and enterprises that buy in volume, want more memory, consistent supply, pro viz features or the assurance of certification. Nvidia still has some work to do to flesh out its Ampere family. While mobile workstations already have entry-level RTX A2000 and A3000 GPUs, there’s no equivalent for desktops. The AEC industry would certainly welcome a sub $500 pro RTX GPU to replace the Pascal-based Quadro P2200, which is now long in the tooth. In years gone by, we would have expected to see a desktop RTX A2000 before the end of 2021, but with ongoing supply challenges and high demand, things are very hard to predict right now.

600

some firms choose Nvidia’s pro-focused RTX GPUs over their ‘consumer GeForce’ counterparts so they can confidently use applications like Revit, Solidworks, PTC Creo, and Siemens NX alongside more vizfocused tools like Chaos V-Ray, Enscape, Luxion KeyShot and Solidworks Visualize.

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Dell U4021QW UltraWide Dell’s UltraWide monitors are wellregarded in the design and engineering industry. Al Dean takes a look at the latest product, which targets the home worker who needs that little bit extra when it comes to screen real estate

he way we look at our computing hardware has changed over the last 15 months. After all, many of us now find ourselves more regularly interacting with others through a screen, rather than face to face – plus we’re stuck working in our own homes. With these limitations in mind, the idea of being hunched over a laptop screen every day isn’t appealing, even one with a 17-inch display. It’s just not good for our working practices, or our spines. As a result, the idea of a display device that supports better posture, gives you a lot more pixels to play with and which doesn’t look like it’s been mandated by a corporate IT department, is appealing. This is where the new Dell UltraWide U4021QW display has some real strengths. Having spent the last two months in close contact with the 40-inch 5,120 x 2,160 (5K2K) resolution display, I can share what day-to-day life is now like. WS32

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Set up

resolution settings and installed the Dell The first steps are to attach the stand, Display Manager application, you can adjust it for height and tilt, then figure out then start to explore what the 40-inch connectivity. Here, you have a number 5,120 x 2,160 display feels like to use. of options: USB-C (or Thunderbolt), Personally, I also like to calibrate a DisplayPort or two HDMIs. While the new display every week or so for the ThunderBolt and DisplayPort options give first month or two, just to ensure that the you the full 60Hz refresh option, panel is as close to accurate it’s worth noting that this steps as possible. I use DataColor’s Product spec down to 30Hz for HDMI. Spyder device for this. My personal choice was to ■ 40” LED-backlit LCD curved monitor In use use DisplayPort to connect to ■ 5,120 x 2,160 my trusty desktop workstation, My usual set-up is two 27(WUHD) resolution. and the powered USB-C port to inch monitors, both running 21:9 Aspect Ratio connect to my MacBook Pro – the at HD, rather than 4K. By ■ 946.6 mm x 248 mm x 457.8 mm benefit of the latter being that comparison, and in terms (including Stand) I don’t need a separate power of screen real estate, the ■ Pixel Pitch cable, as it draws under 90W. U4021QW is the equivalent 0.1815 mm However, most workstation-class of one and a half, but it’s the ■ Frequency 60Hz (via DisplayPort) / laptops will be way over this. 5K2K resolution that really 30Hz (via HDMI) The set-up process is pretty makes it sing. It’s clear, crisp ■ Brightness 300 cd/m² slick – with one caveat (one that and represents colour pretty ■ 2 x HDMI, says more about the author of accurately. The calibration DisplayPort and this review than it does about I ran only had to tweak the Thunderbolt 3 Dell’s user experience team). settings a little. ■ 100mm x 100mm VESA Mount You scroll through the options Compared to running two ■ Height Adjustment on a small menu to the lower right monitors, I don’t miss the 120mm, Swivel 60, of the screen using a joystick. I separation of the two displays Tilt -5/+21 completely missed this first time and found that window ■ 13.8 kg round, so spent a good 15 minutes management wasn’t a concern, ■ 3-year Advanced Exchange Service switching the monitor off/on and even if you’re essentially and Premium Panel jabbing what I already knew was losing half a monitor. If you’re Exchange to on-site not a touchscreen device. You accustomed to using a single ■ £1,610 (Ex. VAT) have been warned! display, then this is going to ■ dell.com Once you’ve updated your feel incredibly expansive. www.AECmag.com

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If you’re a Windows user, then the Dell Display Application is useful for zoning up your display and having application windows snap to known positions. You can set this up, then save it as a preset so that your work environment is always the same. I only wish there was a similar tool for Mac OSX.

have the bulk of your screen showing one machine, and a smaller quarter or eighth of the screen showing what’s going on in your other.

In conclusion

The Dell U4021QW is a great display. Whether you’re looking for a replacement for a single or dual-monitor set-up, or Managing two machines perhaps replicating it at home, then it’s Modern, well-designed monitors (rather got pretty much everything you need in than consumer-grade displays) come into their own in the way they tackle the needs of professional users. An excellent example is how this system manages inputs. For example, I often run both the Mac and the Windows workstation at the same time, so having quick options to switch inputs is very useful, without too much pressing of cryptic buttons, rather using the onscreen menu and rear-mounted joystick/button combination. There are also some nice options to explore: split-screen and picture-inpicture (PnP). This means you could split the screen into two halves, with each machine represented in its own half. The PnP option also means you can

terms of aesthetics. In other words, it looks pretty slick compared to many, but also offers flexibility of inputs, window control and more. Ultimately, the quality of the display is what makes or breaks this hardware, and on this count, it’s a winner. Clear and crisp, it also represents the full colour range accurately. To be honest, Dell might need to send around the heavies if it wants it back.

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Compared to running two monitors, I don’t miss the separation of the two displays and found that window management wasn’t a concern, even if you’re essentially losing half a monitor

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5K2K monitors: what other options are there?

LG 34WK95U-W

LENOVO THINKVISION P40W-20

MSI PRESTIGE PS341WU

Screen size: 34-inch Price: $1,499 Web: lg.com

Screen size: 40-inch Price: $1,699 Web: lenovo.com

Screen size: 34-inch Price: $999 Web: msi.com

Notes: LG has been a favourite of ours for a while, having spent years with a trusty 28-inch LG CRT back in the day. The LG 34WK95U-W is 34-inch ultrawide, but still manages to pack in 5,120 x 2,160 pixels. It strangely comes in 7kg heavier than the Dell.

Notes: When we tested out an early variant of this (the ThinkVision P44w), it really impressed, so we have no reason to doubt that fitting this form factor out with a 5K2K display will rock. A few tweaks, such as the phone stand in the base) are pretty nice too.

Notes: MSI describes this as a display for creators (read: We made it in white). It looks stunning and a decent colour gamut (98% of DCI-P3) means it should display colours accurately. Whether it’ll be those colours in two years’ time remains to be seen.

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20/07/2021 10:30

workstation special report

Hybrid working what does it mean for AEC firms? With many firms re-evaluating office space and working from home policies, we asked Adam Jull of IMSCAD about the role that virtual workstations can play – and the differences between VDI, public and private cloud

he pandemic has shifted the way we all work. As the dust settles and we try to get back to some sort of normality, a hybrid work model seems to be the favoured approach of employers and employees alike. But what does this really mean for AEC firms who have historically invested a lot in their offices / studios to provide great spaces for client facing and for collaboration amongst staff? The nature of hybrid work means that staff will be in the office less and split their time between the office and home – or a remote location that is not the traditional office. As a result, less office space is required, but will this translate into firms reducing their office footprint, which could save considerable cost, or will it

Learning by example VDI and private cloud

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Parkhill, a US architect and engineering firm with nine offices spread across Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, has deployed a successful VDI solution that gives 400+ creative professionals the freedom to work anywhere, on any device using all of their applications including the Autodesk suite. Parkhill invested in an on-premise solution, with 16 servers running 430 desktops using

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As we start to come out the other side of the pandemic, and attitudes to the traditional office continue to change, firms are looking for more robust IT solutions to support flexible working

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lead to firms changing the way they use their existing office space? The answer is both. Those firms that can downsize now, surely will. However, those that cannot (perhaps they have a longer lease they cannot get out of) will still likely change the way they use their existing space. In both cases, it is likely that fewer desks will be needed, staff will be hot desking, and more collaboration and meeting spaces will be required. With staff working from home for two or three days a week, firms need to ensure they invest in the right remote graphics technology solutions so everyone can work from anywhere productively.

applications that require a lot of resource so they can be used to their full potential. Investing in the right technology to facilitate this move to hybrid working is paramount. VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) is a proven solution for giving design users the performance they require when working remotely. VDI technology enables you to deliver desktops via virtual machines (VMs) and the desktops are managed from a central server. There are several ways for firms to deliver these virtual desktops to their users. On-premise or on-prem VDI is deployed on your own infrastructure. This could be one server in your office or a private data centre, where you are responsible for the infrastructure and everything associated with it. A real positive of this sort of solution is that the servers can be provisioned to suit your use case, your specific application-mix and the individual user workloads. Private cloud or hosted VDI is when virtual desktops are outsourced. They The tech options are deployed and hosted in a hosting In the AEC space, the company’s datacentre, on bare metal majority of designers servers, and the hosting company is use industry-specific responsible for the infrastructure. Like the

Citrix. In light of the pandemic, Parkhill will tell you it has gained an advantage over its peers from a mobility standpoint and an IT management perspective. The solution has come into its own during the pandemic, with nearly all staff working from home and now working two or three days a week away from the office. On a smaller scale is a UK-based manufacturing firm that

was looking to minimise future disruption on productivity, in terms of hours and days lost with users not being able to work to their full potential when they could not access the office during the pandemic. The firm needed a solution to enable remote work for 50+ design users and chose a private cloud solution. The solution included three servers, two of which include two GPUs,

providing desktops to 20 users each and the third, one GPU providing desktops for the further 12 users. Another example of a successful on-premise VDI solution is that of HUNT EAS, a New York-based engineering, architectural and surveying firm. Hunt had an existing Virtual desktop solution in place, but the solution had never performed, and the company was looking to upgrade from

the existing four server environment providing desktops for 65 users to one providing desktops to 90+ users. The new environment consists of five servers and provides all users great performance running AutoCAD, Autodesk Revit and other applications. It has proved invaluable over the last year through the pandemic as well as when major snowfall affected New York last winter.

www.AECmag.com

20/07/2021 10:34

I MG:MagnusSkogsf j or d

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workstation special report

on-premise solution, firms get the same benefits of provisioning infrastructure to match their use cases, applications and workflows with the extra advantage of not having to buy or manage the hardware. Hyperscale or Public Cloud Desktopse.g. Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud. This is where a firm pays for ‘instances’ of virtual desktops. While spinning up a new instance is easy, a VDI solution on the public cloud still requires extra underlying infrastructure and integration components to work. From the architecture and networking to the security, the customer is responsible for everything they build in the public cloud.

(Capital Expenditure) required as the infrastructure needs to be purchased, racked and set up before you can start provisioning the desktops. Once fully functioning, the cost are minimal - yearly licence renewals and support. With a private or hosted cloud solution, there will be an upfront fee to set up and then a monthly cost, keeping CapEx to a minimum and enabling a more manageable OpEx (Operational Expenditure) model. When looking at a Public Cloud VDI solution there are no upfront costs - you just pay for the instances. However, you will need to add additional products and components to your virtual What are the benefits? infrastructure, from domain controllers The benefits of these types of solutions are to VMs and each comes with an associated many - most importantly furnishing your cost on top of the cost of each instance. users with the performance they require when working both in the office and at One step at a time home - or anywhere else for that matter. Not all firms move to VDI in one go. Historically, users have been reluctant Some firms continue to utilise their to give up their physical workstations physical workstations and often use the as they have worried about not getting VDI solution to facilitate remote work. the same performance when using other Often they will sweat the workstation technologies. until end of life, by which time the user This was highlighted for many as they is accustomed to working on a virtual tried to work from home on hastily put desktop and the change to doing so full together remote work solutions that did not time is not so dramatic. give the performance they required when Another facet to this is those firms they suddenly had to vacate the office. that are starting small, providing a VDI Your IP is obviously very important and solution for a single team or for a specific security is another great benefit of this type project - in essence using this as a pilot. of solution. Some firms will actually invest in a single With all data being stored centrally, server either on-premise or a private no data leaves the infrastructure. With cloud, specifically as a pilot project and applications also kept centrally on the get users from all over the firm to test. Both servers, all patches, upgrades and fixes are sensible approaches. can be managed centrally as a single There are also firms employing a hybrid instance and the management of users, approach, as it is a big ask to migrate to the their access to applications and data is cloud in one single leap. You also need to also centrally controlled by IT which factor in that public cloud providers might will result in a reduction in IT not be the most cost effective for the types management costs. of applications and workloads that AEC With users not relying on their physical firms are using. workstations and not having to be at their desks, firms are far more resilient to any Closing thoughts interruptions. In addition to obvious When the Covid-19 pandemic first hit, pandemics, this could be due to bad many AEC firms had to quickly adapt weather stopping travel or a fire at the existing IT to allow architects and office. With a virtual desktop solution engineers to work effectively from home. there is a built-in business continuity Data centralisation was key, so remoting capability, meaning users can remain into office workstations quickly became a working and therefore productive no temporary fix for some. matter what happens. Now as we start to come out the other side, and attitudes to the traditional office What are the real costs? continue to change, firms are looking for Cost is obviously a major factor in more robust IT solutions to support determining the solution that you will go flexible working. And proven with, and the costs associated with each of technologies like VDI present a huge these deployment methods will vary. opportunity for those looking to When looking at an on-premise fully embrace a truly hybrid future. solution, there is a large CapEx ■ imscadglobal.com WS36

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AEC Magazine’s cloud workstation roundup Amazon Web Services (AWS) offers two cloud workstations; G4dn uses Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs while G4ad features AMD CPUs/GPUs. AWS uses the latest AMD Radeon Pro GPUs but doesn’t offer the same flexibility as Microsoft in terms of how GPU resources can be allocated. BOXX has a different take to other cloud workstation providers insofar as it takes its high-performance desktop workstations and makes them available to users of CAD and demanding viz applications over a 1:1 connection. The service is currently focused on the US, but is coming to the UK soon. Cloudalize has lots of experience in the AEC sector with products like Revit. It offers a ‘payper-use’ or an ‘unlimited-usage’ subscription model and a big choice of cloud workstations out of its private datacentres Google offers a big choice of GPUs for its virtual workstations including the Nvidia P4, T4, and P100 GPUs. Several come preconfigured in the Google Cloud Marketplace. Microsoft Azure NVv4 virtual workstations stand out because they offer huge flexibility in how GPU resources can be allocated. The AMD Radeon Instinct MI25 GPUs can be virtualised at a hardware level, so you only pay for the GPU resources you need, as opposed to many other cloud workstations which use a whole GPU. Nutanix Frame is a Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution designed specifically to deliver 3D applications or desktops to any device. The flexibility of the Frame service allows firms to select their preferred infrastructure (Azure, AWS, GCP or hybrid environments powered by Nutanix AHV) to allow them to reach users in more than 200 countries. The company places a big emphasis on ease of deployment. Scan, best known for its desktop workstations, teamed up with Ebb3 for its Scan 3XS Cloud Workstation. Read this AEC Magazine article to learn more tinyurl.com/scan-ebb3 Tehama offers an enterprise desktop-as-aservice with a big emphasis on security. It allows firms to create ‘secure virtual rooms and desktops’ on the cloud. Workspot aims to simplify the deployment and management of cloud workstations by delivering virtual desktops as a service. This includes Windows 10 desktops and Windows 10 cloud workstations, including the AMD-based Microsoft Azure NvV4 Virtual Machines (VMs). The company has extensive knowledge of the AEC sector.

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22/07/2021 16:05

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24/03/2021 09:50

Technology

Waiting for Augmented Reality Design visualisation technology has seen huge leaps and bounds in the last five years, from realtime ray tracing to the availability of low-cost VR headsets. So, what happened to Augmented Reality? It seems to have got lost on the way to the party. Martyn Day searches for answers

atience is a virtue. I guess it’s a ing, and it took several decades to shrink being a year away. And the danger here is virtue that technology fans are the necessary hardware from the size of a with Apple mobile solutions, all products not renowned for. We always room to the size of a phone, VR headsets in the ecosystem seem to be extensions of want the best processors, fastest have since rapidly dropped in price and the phone. The Apple Watch is an extengraphics, and highest resolution displays become commodity items. sion of your phone, iPad is just a big in the smallest form factors. The industry Some no longer require incredibly pow- phone, and I fear that the Apple glasses does very well to try and keep up with erful workstations and many have man- will primarily be a display for notifications our demands with regular new dollops of aged to become free from cables and teth- and other personal digital assistant feapower every year, but sometimes it prom- ers. AR headsets, despite billions being tures. Apple has pushed out the boundary ises exciting new worlds and capabilities spent in development by many companies, for AR and its mobile devices with built-in that always seem to be LiDAR. However, most a few years away. of the applications and This all may sound commercial uses which [With edge computing] the headset can be super very “it’s 2021 where is I have seen, have tended lightweight. You don’t need a big battery, you just my flying car?” but I to merely offer novelty can’t help but feel that need good display technology, 5G and some cameras. value. Augmented Reality AR is in need of a All the AI, all of the processing is taken off the device killer (AR) headsets like the set of spectacles. Chris Bryson, Sublime, Edify Microsoft HoloLens or To find out what the Magic Leap 1 still seem problems were, and if experimental, too any breakthrough techexpensive and are so capability-con- still have high-end price tags, tend to be nologies were in the pipeline to change strained that they ultimately disappoint. fairly bulky and are out of reach for most my perception, I talked with industry Looking at Virtual Reality (AR’s more in the AEC industry. All this leaves me veterans Martin McDonnell (Soluis, popular cousin) there are a number of wondering if AR will ever go mainstream Sublime, Edify), Chris Bryson (Sublime, options, from commodity consumer and become a commodity, beyond holding Edify) and Keith Russell (Magic Leap, but priced headsets such as the Oculus Quest up the phone or an iPad to get an image formerly Autodesk, Virtalis and an (£299) and HTC Vive (£599), Valve Index augmented overlay? industry XR consultant). (£1,399) to high-end, high fidelity, enterWhile there is a lot of talk about Apple One of the fundamentals pushing the prise solutions like the Varjo VR 3 working on some lightweight AR glasses, commoditisation of VR was the huge (€3,195). While it was years in the mak- these have never appeared despite always market for application in games. I asked

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20/07/2021 13:50

Magic Leap’s vision for Augmented Reality (AR) in architecture

McDonnell if this was a reason the AR headsets were not as advanced? Martin McDonnell: AR does have the market appeal, but the current hardware can’t deliver at the price point. But when you can attain it, and the product experience levels up one more generation in terms of field of view, the usefulness will open up many, many, many markets around AR. It’s the internet multiplied by mobile as a level of disruption. It’s definitely, in my opinion, going to change the game massively. The problem is it needs to be lightweight and cheap. It needs to be a device that has an 8-hour battery life. All of those boxes need to be ticked. When that happens, then everything opens up and it isn’t just enterprise that can afford it. Chris Bryson: Microsoft [with the HoloLens] has come into the market and included the whole SLAM [Simultaneous Localization and Mapping] technology, all of the AI, the onboard processing, as effectively a proof of concept to enable people to develop high-end AR apps. This shows you what could be done. The issue is that everything else, the display technology itself, the battery technology, is two or three generations away from doing www.AECmag.com

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the same thing that Facebook has just done with the Quest 2. I’d say there’s five plus years to get there. Now who’s got the deep enough pockets to pay for all that? Well, interestingly, you know Snap (as in Snapchat) just bought WaveOptics (enhancedworld.com) who is a provider of AR display technology based in Oxford. Its key technology is using semiconductor processing, high volume processing to make the displays. Microsoft and Magic Leap use waveguide optical technologies, which are almost bespoke, almost one offs. WaveOptics have got a volume manufacturing process going for AR glass and Snap has already proved it’s interested in productising AR glasses. These commodity displays solve one of the key problems and that’s cost. As to CPUs, Qualcomm is still the only game in town in terms of processors for the masses, while Apple makes its own silicon. Qualcomm is the provider of the processor technology, the 5G technology that’s going into the Oculus Quest 2, but really in the future, instead of having all of that processing on the device, the next step is to use 5G, so you can have that processing in what we call Edge Computing, off the headset, and then you’re just streaming that data to and

from the headset. This means the headset can be super lightweight. You don’t need a big battery, you just need good display technology, 5G and some cameras. All of the cool stuff, all the AI, all of the processing is taken off the device.

Remote control Removing the processing overhead from the device and using 5G to stream data is a very interesting concept. 5G can deliver in excess of 100 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) and enable headsets to connect to cloud-based compute power. McDonnell and Bryson have already carried out a simple proof of concept on the Glasgow subway 5G network. Martin McDonnell: It’s not so much bandwidth, but latency that’s the problem. We could almost get there with 4G today, in terms of throughput with compression, but actually super low latency, sub-20 millisecond latency is what’s needed. At that point everything opens up because with the types of BIM models we’re talking about, massive CAD models, all of those can be on your server. You don’t need to then try and lightweight and optimise them to run on a mobile July / August 2021

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Technology

phone type of processor. That, to me, is the solution looking forward, as you’re always going to prefer to have a big, beefy bit of processing on-site somewhere, and with 5G, as soon as that becomes commonplace, or at least installable where you need it, then we can go really lightweight on the user’s device.

Local delivery With so many companies already having powerful desktop workstations, especially with GPUs like Nvidia RTX, could local workstations be used instead of expensive high-spec cloud instances?

tories, large enterprises - will be able to deploy their own 5G on premise as well. The whole 5G protocol was designed with the specification of ‘a million subscribers within one square kilometre in a city, getting up to a gigabyte of bandwidth each’. Now, that’s not been achieved yet. The concept was designed with countries like South Korea in mind, with really dense coverage of people that need low latency, high bandwidth mobile. As soon as the AR glasses are cheap enough, you could have everybody walking around in a city, and all of that cool processing that currently takes a £4K Hololens to do SLAM like object recognition, etc., you’ll be able to do that do that on the beefier processors in the datacentre.

Martin McDonnell: 100%, yes. We are enabling that for a VR customer right now and they want to go with Quest 2 or Pico G2 headsets, but you can pretty much throw up a custom 5G solution that will give you access to your local RTX power. It’s mind-bendingly awesome when you can throw around colossal datasets and see them on a sub £300 headset. We’ve got a few problems with Oculus, which is owned by Facebook and there are pri[AR] vacy concerns.

Development velocity McDonnell and Bryson come from an application development background. I wondered if part of the reason AR was embryonic was because the developer tools are not there yet?

Martin McDonnell: I think they are there. I think the problem is somewhat been pre-solved by VR. VR is a is is good test ground definitely going aforreally AR applications and to change the Chris Bryson: CloudXR with the Varjo-type crossfrom Nvidia is another solu- game massively. over headset (XR-3 mixed tion which enables access to The problem is, reality) we can start in VR your RTX on your beefy and move to AR and we get it needs to be machine, which can be tethto continue to test. We see lightweight and VR to AR as a continuum, ered to a 300 quid headset. You could use Wi Fi, but cheap. It needs the same data flowing the nice thing is that 5G is through XR experiences. I to be a device low latency to be able to do believe in the future, VR with an 8-hour and AR terminology goes that too. So in theory, one server, one card can do mulaway and it will be XR or battery life tiple users, maybe up to something, and we’ll just Martin four users. talk about that digital realiMcDonnell, With infrastructure that’s ty, a digital overlay. Soluis, Sublime going to be around in the I think what’s missing is a next year or two, we will be massive body of knowledge able to do some really amazand skill and experience in ing things and that’s what we’re targeting UX design. If we think back to when the with Edify, initially for VR, immersively web arrived in the 90s everybody lifted being able to bring in big CAD models, their sage desktop layouts and slapped with a server probably on premise with them on the web. We had page layouts WiFi. And then, very quickly, to be able from magazines all over the Internet for to expand that to AR with edge compute, years until someone said ‘wait a minute, which is basically the cloud as long as the I’m on a screen, I’m scrolling, this is difdatacentre is in your country or near ferent. Eventually the penny drops, and your setting. we get things like apps, and we get a In the future, 5G service providers will whole different form of experience on the make much smaller base stations that will screen. I think that’s the journey we need also go within offices. So here - offices, fac- to go on, particularly for AR.

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Hardware limitations One the major technical limitations of today’s generations of AR headsets is the limited field of view in which overlays can be displayed. Human eyes are amazing things with a very wide field of view. The clipping point where the computer graphics stops is all too apparent and hampers the immersive experience. I asked is the limited view in all AR headsets stops people from adopting? Martin McDonnell: I don’t think it really matters yet, because they just haven’t got a lightweight cheap device that everyone could have a go at. I think the field of view on Magic Leap and HoloLens 2 is OK for a bunch of tasks. It’s perfectly functional and useful. But not as an immersive experience, to get close to the kind of feeling of emotion you get from VR. Digital objects overlaid in the real world. Chris Bryson: That’s really difficult to do! It’s definitely a ‘Scotty can you change the laws of physics?’ One technology that might work is micro LEDs, but they are right in their infancy. Facebook bought a couple of micro LED small companies: one actually from Scotland, to create tiny projectors, because the smaller your projector is, the easier it is for you then to control the light and make those wider viewing angles. It’s now kind of a landgrab for some of that key fundamental technology. Battery technology is never going to improve that quickly, as far as I can see. Again, it’s offload on the cloud, all that processing, and then you don’t need to use so much power. Martin McDonnell: I actually think the right solution for meeting the short-term needs will be to use the phone. We accept the weight size of the that in our pocket these days. Using that to drive your glasses is a really obvious one - it’s effectively what Magic Leap did, but a physical tether. I think you’ll carry a battery in your pocket to power the device. .........................................................................................................................................................................

That point brings me to the conversation I had with Keith Russell, director, enterprise sales EMEA at Magic Leap. Russell is an industry visualisation veteran, working in both software CGI developers, as well as with the mixed reality, VR and AR hardware firms. Magic Leap is an infamous company in AR for a number of reasons - having raised $3.5 billion in funding with signifwww.AECmag.com

20/07/2021 13:50

icant input from Google, Disney, Alibaba and AT&T, being notoriously secretive, yet loving hype, having a real character of a CEO - Rony Abovitz - being almost sold for $10 billion and then hitting a wall when the long hyped product, a pair of $2,300 goggles, eventually shipped. Magic Leap became the kind of the ‘WeWork of AR’. Rather than describing Rony Abovitz, it’s probably best to watch his TED talk, ‘The synthesis of imagination’ which is probably one of the weirdest TED talks ever given (tinyurl.com/ MagicLeapTed). However, the device it did produce was beautiful, perhaps not quite as radical and game changing as the company had promised - it still had a narrow field of view, expensive lenses, and the CPU and GPU came in a ‘Lightpack puck’, but these were somewhat underpowered. It became a popular tool amongst developers, less so a commercial success. In 2020, the company slimmed down and got in new management, headed up by Peggy Johnson (formerly executive Vice President of business development at Microsoft). Magic Leap secured new investment and has since re-focussed on the enterprise market, aiming at applications in the medical, training, factory and construction markets. Its next generation device is currently in development and will be available in 2022. It promises to challenge existing form factors, being half the size and half as light as the first generation with double the field of view. That really would be an interesting device, but it’s not going to be cheap.

Architectural barriers AR has certainly piqued most interest in construction and field work, as opposed to design and architecture. I asked Russell why that was? Keith Russell: In terms of AR adoption in AEC, it’s key to understand the different groups and types of companies within the AEC market. I think architects, generally, have been slower to adopt the technology, partly because of their need to pick a project to use it on, and the consideration of how they will bill it to a project or client. It’s a bit chicken and egg, and hence it’s the case that their typical billing method makes them cautious of adopting new technology without a project to apply it to. With engineering and construction companies however, it’s different. If there’s a tool that can be proven to save time or money on a project, or does somewww.AECmag.com

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1 2 VisualLive, recently acquired by Unity, uses the Microsoft HoloLens to overlay CAD/BIM models onto the construction site to review the design, validate against the existing conditions, verify install completion, create reports, and collaborate in real time 3 Trimble SiteVision can be used to place and view georeferenced 3D models, above and below ground, with centimetre accuracy using Global navigation satellite system (GNSS) technology

July / August 2021

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Technology

thing faster, they’re much more receptive around you, you don’t feel isolated, you because they’re not billing it; instead it are not concerned by trip hazards etc, so directly helps them save costs. They tend is a more comfortable experience, hence a also to have a budget for internal tools wider group are happy to adopt and use and development. the technology, even senior executives Hence, if you get the chance to explain who previously have been reticent to try the advantages of AR collaborative meet- VR devices. ings vs sending six people to site to hold a The first time I took a mixed reality meeting, it’s an easy time and cost saving. device into a company, one of the very When Covid restrictions came into senior guys came into the room to see play, it wasn’t possible to send six people what was going on, and immediately onsite, so that really accelerated the wanted to try it. We put a large scale 3D adoption rate. Hence, the industry start- model into the space in the boardroom ed reaching for tools that allowed them to and he was able to walk up to it and virtually meet or at least have one person review the design, plus he could turn to onsite guiding the converhis team and discuss the sation with other remote design. It meant he was based colleagues. completely comfortable Therefore, we saw a huge with the process and didn’t interest in smart glasses to feel isolated. use as a connected device Barriers to mainstream for the ‘see what I see’ use case. It’s not augmented Compared to VR headsets, reality, but a simple ‘assistAR headsets are still expened reality’ use case that sive. I asked Keith what will allows you to do a multidrive adoption of AR? person Teams call on a hands-free device. Keith Russell: There’s a This has led to a lot of great difference between It’s not just companies and teams in adoption of an enterabout the device, the construction getting very prise device and a consumit’s about the comfortable with wearable er device. With a consumer devices, so now we see a secdevice you are convincing solution that ond wave of interested com- solves a problem customers to spend their panies as they look to see own money for a set of feaor saves a cost. tures. For an enterprise what else is possible with Users shouldn’t device it is different. What wearable devices and want to move up to full augmentkeep fixating on I mean by that is, if your ed reality solutions. job could be the device, but day-to-day Once you have a full 3D made easier by using a AR look at the use device, and the company is augmented reality device it cases and the is possible to project 3D BIM going to purchase it for models onto your surroundyou, and that company is solution ings at scale. You can selecgoing to train you on how Keith Russell, tively look at the HVAC to use it, you’re probably Magic Leap ducting, the electrical congoing to adopt it. duit runs, the sprinkler sysTherefore, the cost of the tems etc, and turn everydevice is only relevant to thing on and off selectively whilst walking the company purchasing it on your through a full-size model. behalf, and if they can see an immediate Then you can bring in remote based return on that investment it is an easy colleagues to view the model and effec- win all round. tively hold a MS Teams or Google Meet to The enterprise world is adopting AR discuss what you all are seeing. That is on mass. For example, in production demonstrably a considerable time and environments we’re seeing AR deliver cost saving, plus companies don’t need to worker instructions and train workers on send their experts out all over the coun- the assembly line, showing them how to try for a series of single visits. It’s possi- assemble a set of parts, which sequence ble to visit multiple sites in a day from a the seals and washers go on, the torque central location. settings for the bolts or the sequence that AR is also a more adoptable technology you have to put these cables in, all via by a wider team than say VR has been. content rich AR instructions. Because you carry on seeing the world Also it’s not just about the device, it’s

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about the solution that solves a problem or saves a cost. Users shouldn’t keep fixating on the device, but look at the use cases and the solution. Our approach at Magic Leap is to reach out to companies and ask what problems we can help them with. How can a content rich AR experience enhance and augment their workforce or their design teams? Can we bring together teams in a 3D collaborative meeting environment when you can discuss ideas and concepts with co-presence? Those users also want that solution to connect to their back-end systems. It has to connect into their device manager, it has to connect into the Wi-Fi and IT systems, it has to be an enterprise ready solution. Currently I still see adopters worrying about the form factor of the device, but forgetting that it’s going to evolve. Magic Leap has already hinted that our next device will be lighter, with a bigger field of view, because hardware will always improve. As the form factor evolves, the device itself is not what users should be concerned about because they are buying into that total solution.

Conclusion The augmented reality solutions that have been developed to date, have obviously found a home in more practical engineering and construction firms, requiring information at the point of need. Despite the drawbacks of the current generation of AR glasses, they are good enough for fieldwork. One only has to look at Trimble’s integration of HoloLens and a hard hat, although these are far from commonplace on building sites today. It seems we need some new magical technologies and more billions spent before AR goes mainstream in common usage and here it might well be Apple creating glasses to extend its iPhone ecosystem. But as with all Apple products, these by definition will not be cheap. Hopefully the technology developed will see commodity AR glasses in the next five years, probably the development being paid for by one of this decade’s popular social media platform companies. I think it’s especially interesting thinking of 5G as being such an essential tethering technology to enable lightweight low power mobile devices, which can summon infinite computer power, wherever you are. Well, in saying that, now that I’m living in the Welsh countryside, I actually might have to wait a couple of decades. ■ soluis.com

■ sublime.cc ■ magicleap.com

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Campfire Mixed Reality It takes guts to enter a market where so much has been invested, with little commercial success. Campfire is a US start-up that has developed an AR and VR headset to take on the likes of Microsoft’s Hololens. By Martyn Day

ased in San Mateo, California, the same room, or at remote locations, to which was used by more than 450,000 Campfire is a mixed reality see a design, enabling collaborative AR developers. In many ways, Campfire start-up headed by CEO Jay design sessions. is the culmination and combination of Wright, an industry veteran. Wright has a long history in VR / AR those experiences. Having raised $8 million in venture capi- development. He is the former vice presiAs a product, the Campfire tethered tal, the company has recently emerged dent at mechanical CAD giant, PTC (Pro/ headset (USB-C) is beautifully designed. from stealth mode to give demonstrations Engineer, Creo, Onshape), where he It offers a 92° field of view and can be conof its augmented reality verted from augmented and virtual reality system. reality to virtuality mode The unusual name comes through the addition of a It’s amazing that a company with an $8 million visor to block the AR transfrom the idea of having a team sat around the campparency. The design itself investment could come up with a product to fire, having a conversation, harks back to the low-cost compete against the bottomless pockets of sharing the same experi2 headset design, Microsoft and the billions spent on Magic Leap Meta ence, brainstorming and which offered 2,560 × 1,440 setting the world to rights. (1,280 × 1,440 per eye) resoThe company has a lution. unique approach to delivering augment- looked after the company’s VR and AR The original developer of the headset, ed experiences. It combines a headset, ambitions, especially its Vuforia software Meta Company, became insolvent in with a slick tracking device / target and a development kit (SDK). 2018. In fact, Campfire was originally special accessory which turns smart Wright was also VP of Vuforia at called Meta View, which was set-up by a phones into motion controllers. The soft- Qualcomm, prior to PTC’s $65 million VC firm called OTV, to purchase the IP ware also enables multiple users either in acquisition in 2015, and built the SDK from Meta Company. This included the

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AR headset design and a portfolio of over 60 patents. OTV then head hunted Wright from PTC. The two unique takes that campfire brings are the ‘Console’ and ‘the Pack’. The console is a cross-shaped Target which sits on your desktop. It tracks the headset and also acts as the centrepoint for the holographic overlay. In many ways you could see this as being like the Polycom conference call unit. It acts as the benign focus for augmented reality sessions. The pack is a device which clips to your phone, which turns it into a motion controller and pointer. The downloadable app for the phone provides controls for manipulating the model. This appears to be a sensible use of something which everyone has at hand. The software also supports Zoom and Teams. The system comes with a software package to put it all together, called ‘Scenes’. It can load in over 40 CAD and 3D file formats and is used to author the data prior to the design review session. It can be used to throw up a quick and dirty model for fast feedback, or used to generate slick elaborate designs for customer presentations. Wright describes Scenes as “Google Docs and Powerpoint.” Other Campfire users are sent the authored environment and can then participate using their own Campfire headset, or tablet, phone or desktop. Using the Pack, each user can point to, select and highlight geometry in the scene. Other

session participants can be seen as ghostly avatars with name labels. It’s also possible to add markups within the sessions. The Campfire system is due for launch in Autumn this year and looks like it will be a subscription-based service. It’s currently being beta tested through a ‘pioneer’ program

Conclusion Campfire’s primary interest is going to be in attracting users in product design. Although it has aspirations in the AEC market, all the demos we have seen have centred on the design of consumer goods. Based on the colour palette and feature-tree interface of scenes, it is very reminiscent of product design / engineering systems such as PTC Creo and Dassault Systèmes SolidWorks. We have yet to see any BIM models displayed on the device. While there are few details on the business model or exact costs, we know it’s based on subscription. This could be an interesting, and yet another unique, part of Campfire’s go-to-market. We do not know if there is a fixed cost for the hardware and the software is the subscription element, or if it’s the entire ecosystem for rent. We will have to wait till after the

summer to find out. At face value, it’s amazing that a company with an $8 million investment could come up with a product to compete against the bottomless pockets of Microsoft and the billions spent on Magic Leap. However, in knowing something now of Campfire’s origins, it’s clear to see a lot more money has been invested on foundation technologies to get Campfire to this point. While being built on the shoulders and bones of previous investors, it does look like finally we are seeing advances in the AR field, albeit at an enterprise level. AR has been a treacherous coastline for investment and development (see our conversation on AR with Soluis / edify and Magic Leap on page 40), and for that we respect any AR firm that makes it to the productisation phase. ■ campfire3d.com

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edification for the masses Covid-19 may have brought new challenges to the AEC industry, but many remain the same, such as attracting young talent to the industry and then training them effectively once they start. Could VR be the solution? asks Martyn Day

EC firms don’t just face a skills gap, they also face general lack of candidates. Looking at the UK, Brexit has ensured that the free flow of labour to make up the shortfall has dried up. New immigration rules make looking outside our borders expensive and time-consuming. The ONS released statistics in 2019 that show there are nearly 400,000 skilled construction trade workers aged between 50 and 65, all of which are due to retire within the next 15 years. For an industry that has had horrendous trouble in attracting young people to start careers, the deficit in the workforce is only going to get worse. Folks, let’s face it, we are looking down the barrel of a gun. This challenge is not lost on Martin McDonnell, CEO + co-founder at UK start-up edify.ac (as well as founding Soluis and Sublime). He is one of our industry’s biggest proponents for the use of VR and high-end visualisation in AEC. At the launch of edify, McDonnell shows us a video of his nine-year-old son, recorded in 2013, of him collaborating with a friend online using the 3D game Minecraft to design and model a building. “If we want the next generation to come and join our industry, it’s going to have to look a bit like, or maybe be slightly better than, Minecraft.”, he said. “So that’s what edify is intending to be. That’s what we’re building.” Born in the pandemic, edify is a new training platform, built on top of Unity, that combines gaming know-how with VR, video conferencing and user-made content to produce immersive and engaging educational experiences. Teachers can join students online in an immersive virtual environment to deliver lessons remotely or save them for ondemand access. Participants can interact and collaborate within the session. 48

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The platform comes with a wide variety of VR environments, relatable ones such as a lecture theatre, or a lab, a Design for Manufacture and Assembly (DfMA) factory, or even the surface if the moon! Whiteboards can be placed within these spaces and configured to show all different types of data – drawings, PDFs, BIM models, video, images. They can be interactive, such as pulling a 3D model out of a 2D drawing. edify can import BIM, CAD and GIS data, satellite imagery, point clouds, laser scans, photogrammetry and 2D/3D drawing formats, all for use within lessons. The platform has been in beta test from the latter half of 2020, with many major Universities onboard - Oxford, Western Sydney, NU Australia, UCL, Edinburgh and Manchester, to name but a few. There was a strong cohort of Building Environment focussed institutions and departments, which were especially keen to experiment with the software. Students can learn at their own pace and run lessons as many times as they want.

Bringing the site to the classroom Allison Watson from ‘Class of your own’ (classofyourown.com) has been working with edify to ‘bring the site to the classroom’. She is using the software to integrate VR learning with project work for the Design, Engineer and Construct (DEC) learning programmes (designengineerconstruct.com) for 11- to 18-year-olds. In one VR project, students experience the stages of redevelopment of London’s Olympic Park. The lesson embeds a range of objectives that helps students understand the space they’re going to design, engineering and construct in. It teaches basic map reading skills, site orientation, measurement and the need for accuracy. It allows them to calculate the slopes (DY/DX) and do the site set-out in VR. The model includes all the infrastructure that’s there already; features such as buildings, roads, utilities, waterways, green spaces and trees. Watson explained, “Students even know what a tree preservation order is, but it was important for them to locate and tag the

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We want to make sure students are able to understand the ambiguity about decisions that are made within AEC, concerning buildability, materials, thermal insulation, sustainability issues and building systems. All of these things could be saved, processed, reiterated in different [building] sequences in VR Linsey Thomson, assistant professor, Heriot-Watt University

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trees affected on site here on the park, just as they would in their own backyard. These are just a few of the features which our students can access on the edify reconstructed app.”

Timber construction Matt Stephenson is founder and managing director of Ecosystems Technologies, a company dedicated to the digital transformation of the construction industry to applied innovation in timber technology (ecosystemstech.com). The company is using edify as a virtual knowledge library, a repository for content that exists across academia and democratise access to that for students and professionals, to support engagement with timber technology. Lessons demonstrated included exploration of the construction of timber building modules, soundproofing technology using 2D drawings, BIM models and interactive whiteboards both in a VR classroom environment and in a simulated factory. In VR it’s possible to show the whole

fabrication process, so workers can really understand how the timber-frame buildings fit together at a component level. Stephenson explained, “With the edify platform, rather than viewing a static position, the individual can actually be there, immersed, ask questions, interrogate and really, really connect.”

Heriot Watt University Linsey Thomson, assistant professor at the Heriot Watt campus in Dubai, explained that the specialist University frequently takes students to building sites across Dubai, up 50 level towers, to see the sort of work being done by contractors, consultants, building services engineers, landscapers, lighting etc. When Covid hit, and site visits were not allowed, they took a 360 camera on site tours, so the data could be shared with the students via immersive technology. In the future, Thomson could see students that are studying architecture, architectural engineering, civil engineering, real estate construction and project management being able to work in multi-

disciplinary groups, using edify and VR to simulate a building under construction, with all the issues that need addressing. “We want to make sure students are able to understand the ambiguity about decisions that are made within AEC, concerning buildability, materials, thermal insulation, sustainability issues and building systems,” she said. “All of these things could be saved, processed, reiterated in different [building] sequences in VR.”

Conclusion While there might not be many upsides to a pandemic, adoption of digital technology which connects AEC teams or students, is seeing much quicker adoption than is typical. With the pandemic dragging on, this is good timing. However, irrespective of the current circumstances, pre-Covid, on-demand learning was already recognised as having huge potential for both educational institutions and within organisations. The crunch point will be how easy or hard it is to pull together the lessons in the system. In today’s universities, it has been an uphill struggle for most to get basic lectures videoed and uploaded, without the complication of 3D models and CAD data. The one benefit this industry has is that BIM models are becoming ubiquitous. If edify has indeed simplified the inclusion of teaching materials and lesson composition, our industry could, if it so wished, choose to be a leader in VR-based learning, which should surely make a job in AEC seem more appealing than business studies and the prospect of a life in Excel spreadsheets! (sorry quantity surveyors) ■ edify.ac

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Feature

12 tools for collaborative VR in architecture From immersive modelling for conceptual design to design review, Greg Corke puts the spotlight on a dozen tools that allow AEC teams to collaborate effectively in the virtual world

Arkio

Dimension10 (Varjo)

Fuzor

Arkio is different to most collaborative VR tools insofar as it focuses on conceptual design and modelling. Collaborators can sketch (pull/push) and markup designs in VR, AR and on mobile devices. Designers can also meet clients in the virtual space to explore design ideas in real time. Program categories can be applied to shapes to help meet client requirements on different floor areas. Models can be imported from (or exported to) Revit, Rhino and other 3D tools.

Dimension10 focuses on collaborative design review and offers workflows for IFC, Revit, Navisworks, Interaxo and BIMsync for issue handling. The Norwegian firm was recently acquired by VR/XR specialist Varjo and will play a key role in advancing the Varjo Reality Cloud, which has a new take on collaboration. It uses the LiDAR scanner and cameras built into Varjo’s XR-3 mixed reality headset to scan a construction site and instantly teleport others to that same physical reality (see page 12).

Fuzor is a Virtual Design and Construction (VDC) tool with a very broad range of functionality to support design through to construction. It includes a bi-directional link to Revit, Archicad and others; annotation and issue tracking; clash detection; point cloud support; design viz with animations, content library and physically based materials; 4D scheduling and construction simulation; Microsoft HoloLens support. And, of course, multi-user VR collaboration, plus lots more.

■ arkio.is

■ dimension10.com ■ varjo.com

■ kalloctech.com

Revizto

The Wild

Theia BigRoom

Revizto supports collaborative VR, but the primary focus of the collaboration platform is on model co-ordination, BIM data insight and optimised issue tracking — from design to construction. Revizto works with VR headsets, but is now leaning more towards immersive workspaces like the Fulcro FULmax or Igloo Vision, which Revizto feels are better suited to true AEC collaboration. Revizto is compatible with a huge range of CAD/BIM tools, from SketchUp and Revit to Tekla and OpenRoads.

The Wild was designed from the ground up for distributed AEC teams. It’s cross-platform, so collaborators can join from VR, desktop (macOS and Windows) or AR (iOS). There’s native sketching for ideation; annotation and voice notes for design review; ‘Tours’ to help tell a structured story during presentations; and integrations for SketchUp, Revit and BIM 360. New features coming soon: performance improvements, new software integrations and enhanced support for desktop and mobile.

Theia BigRoom is designed to transform the traditional multi-media planning room into a virtual space for distributed teams. Built on Unreal Engine, there’s a big emphasis on visual quality. Users can join by desktop or VR. BigRoom is currently in beta, so details are thin on the ground, but the software should launch later this year. Features include scale model tables, presentation boards, live video monitors, material configurators, sketching tools, task lists, Post-It notes and more.

■ revizto.com

■ thewild.com

■ theia.io/bigroom

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n the AEC space, VR has quickly evolved from a solo experience to one that can bring together distributed teams in a deeply immersive collaborative environment. For many AEC firms, this has proved particularly beneficial during the Covid-19 pandemic. VR enhances design understanding and communication by enabling technical and non-technical folks to experience building and infrastructure project designs together in a true-to-scale environment. Most collaborative VR applications focus on design/review, with markup

tools increasingly being linked to issue tracking through integrations with third party software. Meanwhile, we are also starting to see the rise of 3D modelling in VR for collaborative conceptual design. VR headsets have also evolved at pace. Workstation-tethered devices like the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and HP Reverb remain popular as they can handle the largest models at the highest quality. However, the practicality of the standalone Oculus Quest has helped push out VR to a much wider audience - and with the Oculus link cable draw on the power

of a workstation when required. Of course, collaborative VR doesn’t have to be done with headsets. As Covid restrictions begin to lift, immersive workspaces like the Igloo Vision or Fulcro FULmax give the benefit of face to face interaction. They support a range of tools including 3Drepo, Navisworks, Solibri, Synchro and others. Furthermore, you don’t have to use VR hardware at all. A growing number of collaborative VR tools are multi-platform, so all sorts of users can join with desktop PCs or mobile devices.

Prospect by IrisVR

Resolve

Prospect by IrisVR was the first VR tool we saw and we were instantly impressed by its optimised Revit to VR workflow. Since then it’s evolved to add multi-user meetings, integrations for Navisworks, Rhino and Sketchup, and collaborative issue tracking. Earlier this year, Prospect was acquired by The Wild (below left), but both products are still being actively developed with a view a delivering a ‘fully integrated XR collaboration platform that serves the entire AEC project lifecycle.’

Resolve is a collaborative VR tool that is proving popular with owners of industrial facilities for design review. According to the developers, this is because it can handle very complex BIM models on standalone VR hardware without the need for manual model clean up or downsizing. For example, it can take a 500M polygon model from BIM 360 and open it on the Oculus Quest, by only streaming in the relevant parts of the model from the headset’s permanent storage.

■ irisVR.com

■ resolvebim.com

Trezi by SmartVizX

Unity Reflect Review

VREX

Trezi is an ‘immersive design collaboration platform’ with a focus on connecting designers with building product manufacturers. Virtual meetings can be scheduled just like Zoom and participants can join in VR or desktop mode. BIM models can be furnished with building products, such as furniture and lighting, taken from virtual 3D catalogues, then different materials applied - all in VR. In the future Trezi will be accessible on mobile devices, and there is also strong potential for AR and MR.

Unity Reflect Review for design review allows users to collaborate on models from Revit, BIM 360, Navisworks, SketchUp, and Rhino through a very broad range of platforms, including VR, AR, Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Unity recently added annotations so teams can track outcomes and improved the visual fidelity with an enhanced real-time engine. Models are now ‘automatically optimised’ with data prep technology from Pixyz to improve general performance.

VREX is focused on OpenBIM workflows for collaborative design/review, from concept to construction. It supports IFC, BCF and JT and has integrations with Bimtrack, BimCollab, Navisworks and others to help track issues and clashes. Everything is managed through a web app so there’s no file sharing, which helps reduce admin and protect project data. Support for point clouds is coming soon and VREX is also exploring VR streaming for very large projects with Nvidia Cloud XR.

■ trezi.com

■ unity.com/products/unity-reflect-review

■ vrex.no

Mindesk allows teams to collaborate on the same Rhino CAD project through a multiuser VR session. This could be for design review, or for brainstorming new ideas. With a live link to Rhino there’s no need to convert model files. The software offers VR-based editing and supports NURBS and 3D Bézier curves for exploring organic forms. For users of Grasshopper, sliders can be used to directly edit the script in VR, to evaluate and compare parametric designs. ■ mindeskvr.com

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IMAGE COURTESY OF KUKA GROUP MINDESK. 3D MODEL COURTESY OF TURBOSQUID AND ARTIST KRISTIJAN ILIC, KASIOPY STUDIOS

Mindesk VR

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Software

Concept collaboration with Arkio The hype-cycle for Virtual Reality is over; it’s now time for practical applications to benefit the way we work. What would happen if an architect could design a VR system to solve some of today’s design and collaboration problems? You no longer need to ask that question, writes Martyn Day

esearching interesting technol- SketchUp, Rhino and Revit, as well as The Enterprise option costs $85/month ogy to show at AEC Magazine’s supporting common formats such as and adds support for Autodesk BIM 360 NXT BLD event is always an CSV, Open 3D street map buildings, 2D (import and export). enjoyable part of the year for street maps, OBJ and PNG/JPG. This I suspect most users will go for the Pro me. A few years ago, I came across a means you can assemble VR environ- version, as they will want to work with video of a very embryonic design system ments from a number of sources and cre- geometry imported from their design from a young Dutch architect, Johan ate datasets for any collaborative design weapon of choice. Revit support, as you Hanegraaf, who had taught himself how requirement. would expect, is especially strong and to program in Unity and had developed There are three configurations to there is a Revit plug-in which eases an immersive VR modelling tool for choose from. The entry point is free; just export and optimisation of geometry architects. from Revit to Arkio. What impressed me was Once your session in not just the functionality, Arkio is complete you can but also the intuitive user Being originally conceived by an architect and export the geometry back to interface. We’ve had Revit as native geometry widely beta tested by architectural and Hanegraaf back at the conand families. construction firms, it’s safe to say that ference each year to demonThis is not to knock the strate how the original idea functionality will always be pertinent to users free version; it is a great has developed and proplace to dive in and learn the gressed towards an actual ropes. While there are deskcommercial product. The result of this is download and start modelling using top versions, the real experience is to go called Arkio (arkio.is) and it launched Arkio’s tool palette. You can import imag- immersive and here the Arkio team reclast month. es and street maps (up to 25 MB). You can ommends the Oculus Quest 2. Arkio is a modelling and collaboration even host a 1:1 meeting for up to 20 mins. application which runs across multiple The free version also acts as the viewing- The experience platforms – PC, Mac, iOS, Android, only licence when invited to participate The first thing that strikes you about the Oculus Rift and Oculus Quest. It is also in a collaborative session. Arkio environment is the controllers, available on Steam. It can run standalone The Pro licence is $55/month and, in which are represented by virtual hands or as a real-time collaboration platform recognition that no one person will be holding virtual Oculus controllers. By for interactive design analysis, customer using it all the time, is ‘floating’ so can be twisting your left hand, wrist up, the meetings, or for the assessment of multi- used by any team member. Arkio Pro can menu system appears. This can then be ple design possibilities. host meetings of up to 24 people and re-positioned anywhere in the 3D space While it has a fun and easy-to-use import 3D geometry from commonly and its sub-menus can be satisfyingly modelling system, it supports the import used design packages (excluding BIM ripped off and placed in the workspace. of content from Autodesk BIM 360, 360). There is no file size limitation. Object snapping is automatically

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1 2 Arkio’s Intuitive user interface, with floating menu system, here adding some of the built-in 3D content. The model is located on a map layer, with two collaborators in the active session 3 Arkio is not just for VR. It also runs on PC, Mac, iOS, and Android

switched on (although it can be toggled off) and lines from the controllers vibrate as they cross over geometry snap points - this can be turned on or off for more detailed modelling work. I have to say I absolutely love the user interface of Arkio. It’s so graphical and easy to understand and surprisingly deep. For a first release, Arkio has a lot of depth and capability. Arkio has also implemented the experimental hand tracking capabilities of the Oculus. Sensorily, this means in the future users will be able to just use their hands without the need for controllers, which would give a much more intuitive interaction. The virtual world consists of an infinite gridded floor with blue sky. Up front is a handy table workspace, on which your designs are to be modelled and edited. Using the controllers in combination with controller buttons, it’s possible to scale, zoom, pan, teleport anywhere within the modern space and, if you’re not too careful, off the model space! The menu allows editing, deletion, painting, sketching, moving, measuring, 3D creation and splitting. You also have control over the camera and the position of the Sun (which casts wonderfully Minecraft-like shadows). You can create sections, maps and set saved views. Arkio comes with a small selection of materials, architectural textures, landscape, interior textures, as well as content like some funky turquoise trees, people and interior furniture. It’s also possible to import content. Arkio’s built-in assets are mapped to work with Enscape, so the models should play nicely when rendered in Revit with Enscape. The built-in geometry creation is mainly based on primitives, biased towards rectilinear forms with squares and triangles, which can be glass or www.AECmag.com

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solid and are fairly smart once placed near other objects. Using the controllers, it’s possible to create negative space (cut outs) within solids, to build more complex structures. It’s also possible to move the controller to touch planes and geometry to select edges and faces. At all times Arkio displays coordinate measurements of selected geometry, for handy feedback while modelling. Using

the controllers to create geometry is definitely a skill to be acquired. However, it does come with time. I would suspect it would be easier for many to use the desktop version of Arkio with a mouse to create more intricate 3D shapes. Over time, I imagine more complex modelling capabilities will be added. The upside of the current workflow is you can bring in more complex geometry from SketchUp, Rhino or Revit. The July / August 2021

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Software

geometry you create using Arkio are con- collaborators, including yourself. If detailed models to see how performance verted to mass families or generic shapes someone is pointing out something changes with load. when imported back into Revit. Design they’re saying in the model, it’s possible I’d like to see all sorts of modelling requirements can be loaded into the sys- to click on the menu and jump to their enhancements, like workplanes and custem from Excel. This can be used to cre- view, as well as being able to bring every- tomisable, cylinders, grids and curves, ate modular massing elements which body to your location. Obviously users on but I don’t think the intention is to really align and snap together when assembled all types of supported devices can take make this a modelling tool which would in the model space as masses can be part in these collaborative sessions. replace Rhino or anything similar. exported back to Revit or Excel. I also hope Arkio can become an ecoOne of the important things about ear- Conclusion system for all types of analysis tools. As ly-stage design is being able to look at a Arkio is a unique take on VR-enabled the geometry is collated together in a fast variety of design options. It’s easy to design and collaboration. It’s really fun to environment like this, it would be great save models and start new sessions by use and easy to learn. For a first release it to see companies like Test Fit able to duplicating previous designs, to come really does have a strong set of capabilities drive generative designs and have more up with a different variation. There is and is remarkably stable. The Free version complex simulations running. also a history mode which By concentrating on createnables you to go back in ing a strong link to Revit, time through each design Arkio is setting itself up as a Arkio is a unique take on VR-enabled design fantastic adjacent seat, or edit, so it’s impossible to totally screw up! adjacent headset. It would be and collaboration. It’s really fun to use and to automatically easy to learn. For a first release it really does great Collaboration always have an Arkio verhave a strong set of capabilities I guess it’s possible to sion of a Revit model so if define Arkio as a common you needed to look at it, at data environment. It can any time, you could simply import from most popular design tools is very generous and the Pro version, with view it in Arkio VR without having to and be used to assemble in situ models floating licence, is great value for money. wait around. for project analysis. By supporting up to Given the low cost of the Oculus Quest Company founders Johan Hanegraaf 24 people, meetings can handle quite a headset, it’s something that most architec- and Hilmar Gunnarsson will be at NXT crowd! If you have a Pro or Enterprise tural and construction firms could easily BLD this Autumn at London’s QEII licence you can be an editor of the rollout across design teams. Centre (nxtbld.com). Who knows what model. Those with the Free version can With a very strong opening version, additions will come to the software in the view and navigate without editing derived from extensive testing, I look next few months? rights. Each collaborator appears as a forward to seeing the next iterations of ■ arkio.is head-form in the virtual space and audio the product. Being originally conceived is also handled by the system. by an architect and widely beta tested by Pre-Arkio demo at NXT BLD Starting a collaborative meeting is architectural and construction firms, it’s ■ tinyurl.com/nxtbld-VR straightforward. You create a room, safe to say that functionality will always which can be password protected and be pertinent to users. It will be interest- Last year’s demo of Arkio at NXT BLD invite your team. There are tools to mute ing to stress test the system with ■ tinyurl.com/NXTBLD-VR2

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Hands on with the Oculus Quest 2 The Oculus Quest 2 is the second version of the ‘untethered’ VR headset. It’s battery-powered and standalone, which allows you to roam around a user-defined physical space, with a digital wall which alerts you should your arms or head leave the reserved area. The Oculus Quest 2 comes in two versions: one with 64 GB of storage, priced at £299, and one with 256 GB, priced at £399. We have yet to see a good reason to go for the bigger memory, it just depends on how many applications

you want to store. It’s incredibly easy to set up and just needs to connect to the local WiFi. The most difficult part of set up is ensuring the goggles are in the right place to give the best image to your eyes. The sweet spot is very small and getting the head straps right, and not too tight to be uncomfortable, is a skill which needs time to acquire. The headset features a microphone, has speakers in the straps and comes with a spacer to help those who wear glasses. There are built

July / August 2021

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in cameras so you can see the real world in greyscale if needs be. The 1,832 x 1,920 pixel resolution per eye display is pretty sharp and smoothly tracks head movements and the two hand controllers. The screen refreshes at 90 Hz and there are rumours of a 120 Hz firmware update coming soon. Typically, the battery lasts 2-3 hours, but you could strap a portable battery to your head to extend this, as it can charge and

run at the same time. Overall, the Oculus Quest 2 is a very impressive piece of kit for the price. For pairing with Arkio, it was brilliant and we would highly recommend it for a collaborative design session. The one issue is the whole Facebook thing. To use the

device you have to register with your Facebook account, and it just makes you wonder what kind of data they are logging in your usage. Not something you’d want to leave switched on! ■ oculus.com/quest-2

www.AECmag.com

22/07/2021 16:08

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AEC Magazine July / August 2021

Articles inside

Concept collaboration with Arkio

Archicad 25

The death of architecture the rise of a new one

Waiting for AR

Industry news

VR in architecture

BIM and the Notre-Dame de Paris resurrection

tools for collaborative

Graphisoft gets MEP