AEC Magazine March / April 2019

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

FROM QUANTUM TO PLASMA Autodesk’s vision for seamless collaboration in a federated world

AEC MAGAZ EXCLUS INE IVE

BIM for maintenance

Workstation reviews

Going underground

Designing for safe and smart buildings

Quadro RTX 4000, HP Z2 Mini + more

When structural meets geotechnical

March / April 2019 >> Vol.101 p01_AEC_MARCHAPRIL19_Cover.indd 1

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

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MANAGING EDITOR GREG CORKE greg@x3dmedia.com

CONSULTING EDITOR MARTYN DAY martyn@x3dmedia.comm

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Exclusive: Autodesk Project Plasma 12 We get the low down on Project Plasma and Autodesk’s vision to deliver seamless, collaborative BIM-tofabrication, in a federated world

NXT BLD 2019 18 On June 11, AEC Magazine’s future gazing conference returns to London with some amazing presentations from leading firms including Boston Dynamics and Katerra

BIM: safe and smart maintenance 20 By using BIM, it’s much easier to get people thinking about the maintainability of buildings, write UWE’s Mike Ford and risk consultant Dr Nick Bell

Simulation: going underground 24 Bentley is developing new software that merges the engineering worlds of structural and geotechnical, from design all the way through to operations

Keeping up appearances 27 WHP used advanced structural software on a complex London re-development where a 20th Century building’s historic facade needed to be retained

ISO 19650: part II 31 Rebecca De Cicco explains why the UK is benefiting most from the practical application of the new standard

Para trooper! 32 How a new waterside residential project in England has benefitted from high detail renderings to achieve planning permission for its ‘Paragraph 79’ application

Polytechnical 36 Croatian visualisation studio Polymachine, shares details of four recent projects, focusing on composition, visual accuracy and the benefits of keeping everything in 3D

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 review 42 Nvidia’s new professional GPU is a phenomenal proposition for real-time 3D graphics, VR and GPU rendering

3XS WI4000 Viz 49 This desktop workstation from Scan packs a big punch for real-time viz, VR and GPU rendering, writes Greg Corke

HP Z2 Mini review 50 With a high frequency 6-core Intel Xeon CPU and several GPU options, HP’s updated micro workstation is a great alternative to a standard CAD desktop Also this month: 6, 7, 8, 10 News March / April 2019

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News

Microsoft launches HoloLens 2, enhancing mixed reality for construction ast month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft unveiled HoloLens 2, its much anticipated next generation wearable holographic computer.

Microsoft was joined by Bentley Systems who showed how with its Synchro XR for HoloLens 2 software, users can interact collaboratively with digital construction models to plan, visualise, and experience construction sequencing.

HoloLens 2 features more than double the field of view than the original mixed reality device, which many found to be a significant limitation. There’s also a new visual display system, which Microsoft says makes the holograms even more vibrant and realistic.

The updated device includes new eyetracking sensors that are designed to make interacting with holograms even more natural. For example, when someone’s eyes land on a particular part of a machine, it can call up useful digital information about it.

Interaction with holograms has also been made easier. With natural hand tracking, users can now grab and rotate them as they would a real-world object, rather than having to learn gestures that mimic mouse movements.

HoloLens 2 also includes iris recognition with Windows Hello authentication to make it easier for multiple users to log in and share the device. A new flip-up visor lets users switch easily between physical and holographic worlds.

Comfort has also been addressed.

Microsoft says the new dial-in fit system makes the HoloLens 2 comfortable to wear for ‘hours on end’. Users can also wear glasses with the mixed reality headset because it now adapts by sliding right over them.

In terms of practical applications for construction, Bentley Systems showed how a project digital twin can be visualised with the HoloLens 2 via Bentley’s connected data environment, powered by Microsoft Azure. With the mixed reality solution, construction managers, project schedulers, owner operators, and other project stakeholders can gain insights through immersive visualisation into planned work, construction progress, potential site risks,

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The HoloLens 2 and safety requirements.

Bentley emphasised the features much Additionally, users can interact importance of the cloud to track wider field of view with the model together and all the moving parts on massive and a flip up visor collaboratively experience 4D infrastructure projects. By objects in space and time, as opposed to connecting each HoloLens device on a site traditional interaction with a 2D screen to a master model that’s constantly depicting 3D objects. updating in Azure, it helps ensure that Noah Eckhouse, senior vice president, everyone works from the same shared project delivery for Bentley Systems, said, reality, with the latest information to “Our Synchro XR app for HoloLens 2 sequence jobs, plan crane movements, provides a totally new way to interact with track progress and keep workers safe. digital twins for infrastructure projects.

“The cloud connectivity is critical Users benefit from a new perspective on because in these large projects the amount the design and a deeper, more immediate of information going back and forth understanding of the work and project between the field and the engineers and schedule. Instead of using a 2D screen with designers is continual,” said Eckhouse. a mouse and keyboard, the user can now “And the consequences of working on walk around the model with their body infrastructure projects in the physical and reach out and grab digital objects that world are very real.” appear to co-occupy physical reality. This Meanwhile, Trimble has introduced a is a powerful way to review work that is certified wearable hard hat compatible completed and to prepare for upcoming device, the Trimble XR10 with HoloLens 2, work at the jobsite.” that enables workers in safety-controlled Menno de Jonge, director of digital environments to access holographic construction for the Royal BAM Group, information on the worksite. The company added, “We are currently using Synchro also announced that it is continuing to and HoloLens 2 mixed reality solution for develop its cloud-based collaboration the construction site for a large museum platform, Trimble Connect for HoloLens, project in the city of Rotterdam. The real to help site workers get more value from need for a digital transformation in our constructible 3D models and transform industry is about avoiding rework at our daily work such as assembly and construction site. Using this technology, inspections. we can easily visualise the construction Epic Games also announced that Unreal schedule. Then, we can see if we are Engine 4 support is coming to HoloLens. behind in schedule, we can flag any HoloLens 2 will be available this year at potential problems or issues, look into the a price of $3,500. problems, and get back on track.”

■ microsoft.com/hololens

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ROUND UP FormIt enhanced

Plug-in brings IFC files into Unity’s real time engine

Autodesk FormIt v17, the latest release of the modeller typically used to express early-stage building design ideas, includes an upgraded FormIt and Dynamo experience, the ability to create custom plugins, enhancements to geometry, visualisation, customisation and filtering options ■ autodesk.com/products/formit

Structural health Inspection specialist SGS has teamed up with AIMSight to launch a new structural health monitoring solution for bridges that uses ‘smart crack’ monitoring sensors and data analytics to provide continuous, real time monitoring of assets ■ sgs.com

The skills gap In Newcastle last month, Space Group and Gateshead College gave local school children a taste of a career in the construction industry working with new and emerging technologies.

The learning day was designed to help address the technological skills shortage in the construction sector ■ spacegroup.co.uk ■ gateshead.ac.uk

Geo-tagging assets Indoor Reality’s 3D mobile mapping solution can now automatically assign a latitude longitude tag to an asset in GPS denied indoor environments, a capability that traditionally has been available only to outdoor assets where GPS is readily available ■ indoorreality.com

Cloud rendering Chaos Group, the developer of V-Ray, is looking to take the complexity out of cloud rendering with a new ‘one click’ rendering service that lets artists render an entire animation in the time it takes to render a single frame — without having to track assets, manage licences or set up virtual machines ■ chaosgroup.com/cloud

YII nominations Bentley Systems has announced its call for nominations for the Year in Infrastructure 2019 Awards program.

The awards, which are judged by independent juries, recognise infrastructure projects for digital innovations that improve project delivery and/or asset performance ■ yii.bentley.com/awards

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nity has teamed up with PiXYZ to create a plug-in that allows IFC BIM files to be imported into Unity’s real-time 3D engine.

Unity has published a blog post that shows the workflow from Autodesk Revit (tinyurl.com/unity-IFC), but IFC data can be imported from any program that supports

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the neutral BIM format, such as Tekla Structures, ArchiCAD and Civil 3D. This isn’t the only way to bring IFC data into Unity. Last year Tridify launched a cloud service that uses IFC files to create optimised models, complete with BIM data, for real time viz, VR and AR applications.

■ unity3d.com

eRDS launches COBie-compliant RDS Solutions and Services has launched eRDS Cloud, which it claims to be the world’s first cloud based COBie-compliant building asset database software.

The software is designed to help better manage and handover detailed information

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of thousands of building assets. It combines assets defined in Revit models with furniture, fixtures and equipment and room data and enriches them with COBie information including manufacturer, serial numbers and warranty details.

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Trimble updates Tekla BIM suite rimble has introduced 2019 versions of its Tekla BIM software solutions, which include Tekla Structures and Tekla Structural Designer.

Tekla Structures 2019 places a big emphasis on modelling, offering improved geometry for the detailing of curved structures, such as bent plates and staircases. It also supports a more streamlined communication and information transfer from detailing to production of precast concrete and offers several rebar detailing enhancements, such as rebar rounding at the model, set

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and modifier levels, allowing for more intuitive control and efficiency when detailing reinforced cast-in-place concrete.

There’s a host of other new tools, including Revit Export for greater flexibility when working with RVT files, and the Design-to-Cost tool, which is designed to support faster value engineering and more economical precast solutions.

Meanwhile, the design and analysis tool Tekla Structural Designer 2019 focusses on data transfer with improved interoperability with both Tekla Structures and Autodesk Revit.

■ tekla.com/2019

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News

V-Ray Next makes its way into Rhino and SketchUp IMAGE COURTESY OF FLYINGARCHITECTURE

Ryder on board with NBS Chorus nternational design practice Ryder Architecture has become one of the first firms to produce a specification in the cloud using NBS Chorus.

The specification platform has not only provided Ryder with a new level of collaboration across its teams in Newcastle and Vancouver, but the cloudtechnology has enabled Ryder to develop its specifications in the office, on-site, and even mid-flight from the UK to Canada.

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■ thenbs.com

Ray Next, the next generation rendering tool from Chaos Group, is now available for Rhino and SketchUp. According to the developers, rendering speeds are up to 50 percent faster than before and GPU rendering offers another 200 percent.

Both tools include V-Ray Scene

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Intelligence, which automatically analyses a 3D scene at the start of a render to optimise some of the most common decisions a designer will make.

V-Ray Next for Rhino also works directly with Grasshopper so users do not have to export back to Rhino.

The optimisation tools allow Revit, IFC and other complex 3D models to be simplified with a ‘user guided, automated workflow’ providing users the ability to inspect and customise the results of the optimisation process at each step.

irsquire, a Dutch firm that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to automate construction verification, has received a sixfigure capital injection from venture capitalist henQ. The company’s Airsync as-built survey platform automatically compares 3D models and 3D scans of the physical asset to quickly identify inconsistencies that are hard to locate manually.

■ arvizio.io

■ airsquire.ai

■ chaosgroup.com

Revit model optimisation for AR/MR/VR rvizio has added a Revit model optimisation tool to its MR Studio software platform that allows large-scale, complex BIM models to be rendered on Microsoft HoloLens, Magic Leap, mobile augmented reality devices and a variety of VR headsets.

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Varjo delivers ‘human eye’ resolution VR he hotly anticipated Varjo VR-1 professional focused headset has launched, giving users ‘human-eye’ resolution and eyetracking capabilities that are needed to push VR technology further.

Finland-based Varjo’s first headset has a resolution of more than 60 pixels per degree, which is 20x+ higher than any other VR headset currently on the market, as well as integrated eye tracking, enabling high-precision analytics and interaction with human-eye resolution VR content.

The HMD comes with support for the standard VR engines from Unreal and

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AI construction verification A

Operations & maintenance

Unity with other tools are the pipeline.

Varjo will be at DEVELOP3D Live (develop3dlive.com) in Sheffield on April 17.

emetschek Group, the owner of several AEC technology brands including Allplan, Graphisoft, and Solibri, has launched Spacewell, a new brand for the building operations and management sector.

The move follows the recent acquisition of multi-tenant SaaS provider Axxerion by Nemetschek daughter MCS Solutions.

■ varjo.com

■ spacewell.com

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News

ROUND UP

Revit models into The Wild

Startup competition Cemex Ventures is seeking startups for a competition designed to uncover new innovations in the construction industry. Winners of The Construction Startup Competition 2019 will be invited to present their projects in Mexico to an audience of construction, technology and investment firms ■ cemexventures.com

Construction IQ Autodesk has released a preview of Construction IQ, previously piloted as Project IQ, a machine learning and AI based capability delivering risk analysis of quality and safety data from customer projects using Autodesk BIM 360 ■ autodesk.com

Revit to Excel BIMrx from AECO consulting firm Microdesk allows users to push data from Revit models into Excel so it can be digested by all project participants for editing, measuring and creating reports.

Yearly subscriptions cost $99 and there’s also a free 14-day trial ■ www.microdesk.com/bimrx

Dyson on SpecifiedBy SpecifiedBy has introduced key construction products by Dyson, including the Airblade hand dryer, to its online product selection platform, which uses advanced search capabilities to help users drill down from hundreds of product types to a handful that match specific requirements ■ specifiedby.com

Adapt or die In a recent report from NBS mapping the use of digital technologies across the industry, 70% agreed that those who do not adopt digital ways of working risk going out of business. The free report includes a summary of findings from the NBS Technology Survey and several case studies ■ thenbs.com/ConTechReport

BIM certified BakerHicks, the multidisciplinary design and engineering company, has been awarded the BSI BIM Verification Certification for Design and Construction. The certificate recognises the firm’s capability to deliver BIM Level 2 projects in full compliance with the British Standards ■ bakerhicks.com

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evit users can now send their models into ‘The Wild’, a cloud-based immersive collaboration platform, which enables teams to inhabit, interact with, and present ideas on ‘any virtual or augmented reality device’ from anywhere in the world. The platform also includes 3D conceptual tools that allow participants to design inside the immersive 3D space.

All projects and content reside in the

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cloud for immediate access. Inside The Wild, designers can store, access, and share assets and spaces from The Library, a portal into a persistent storage system that can be accessed from anywhere.

The Wild is cross platform and works on PC, iOS, and macOS as well as in VR and AR. In addition to Revit, the platform offers native support for SketchUp and can import FBX, OBJ, SKP, 3DS, and other common filetypes.

■ thewild.com

Automating steel fabrication management rimble has launched Tekla PowerFab, a software suite for steel fabrication management created specifically for steel fabricators.

PowerFab is being pitched as a complete and connected steel fabrication software solution, providing relevant and real-time information to all project parties. Trimble says it is designed to improve visibility and deliver information on the status of components at every stage

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of fabrication, from model-based estimating to site delivery.

At the core of Tekla PowerFab is Tekla EPM (formerly FabSuite management information system), which has been used

by Trimble customers for some years. By combining Tekla EPM with Tekla Structures and the Trimble Connect collaboration platform, Tekla PowerFab aims to automate fabrication management.

■ tekla.com/uk

Excitech to deliver Heathrow CDE xcitech is to lead a consortium comprising GroupBC and Autodesk technologies to deliver Heathrow Airport’s Common Data Environment (CDE).

The CDE will be Heathrow’s primary

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common information repository and allow for specific controls to be put in place to share information in a controlled manner with suppliers and across Heathrow departments.

The Heathrow CDE will include Autodesk’s BIM 360 and GroupBC’s

Enterprise CDE technologies and will provide information and asset management in line with emerging industrystandards, to help ensure the efficient whole-life management of Heathrow’s critical assets.

■ excitech.co.uk

www.AECmag.com

20/03/2019 19:32

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Feature

From Quantum to Plasma Autodesk seeks to reinvent collaborative BIM In 2016, Autodesk announced Project Quantum, described as a platform technology for “evolving the way BIM works, in the era of the cloud, by providing a common data environment”. The project then went dark but now it’s back and called Project Plasma, writes Martyn Day.

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t Autodesk University seen significant re-engineering, the core lenges in moving forward to the next in 2016, the then sen- element is still limited to running on a sin- generation of BIM. You had to admire ior vice president of gle CPU core, the database quickly swells the decision to basically relook at the products at Autodesk, in size and detail and suffers from an old whole industry, how it works (or doesn’t Amar Hanspal, gave graphics pipeline that is hard to accelerate work) and to realise that yet another the AEC keynote and in an increasingly GPU rich world. monolithic application is really not slightly opened the kimono on a new As Autodesk has moved to the cloud going to map to the current federated technology the company was developing in a major way, the desktop applications industry workflows that silo data, are to tackle crippling issues the industry really need to store the data on the eminently file-based and ultimately faces because of its long history of work- cloud, in BIM 360, to benefit from damage the flow of data. ing in a federated way — replicating Autodesk’s increasing array of cloud Autodesk had decided to look at a datapoor collaboration between firms in the services, such as document manage- centric approach that could include curdigital realm, leaving some of the bene- ment, analysis, collaboration, as well as rent workflows, alleviate some of the fits of BIM on the table. a growing number of cloud-based appli- pain by providing headroom to Revit, Before this keynote connect teams and there was consideraaddress the growing ble debate internally use of multiple In software terms we commonly talk about the next at Autodesk, as to if applications generation; with Quantum / Plasma being developed from designers’ tool sets.in Quantum should the data level upwards, it would make more sense to look have been exposed so Digital Fabrication early in its develop- at Autodesk developing an environment for a new species is coming to AEC and ment. However, the not just at the highbackdrop to this was end. Factories are that many mature Revit customers were cations from third-party developers. being built everywhere to prepare to modasking: what was next for Revit and Autodesk’s products also have a long ularise, pre-fabricate and utilise automatwhere was development going? history of not being able to share data as ed digital fabrication methods. BIM data, Autodesk’s best Revit customers were well as you would expect coming from at 1:100 or 1:50 cannot drive this, not withconcerned at the lack of updates to the the same company. And, looking ahead out being remodelled in a Mechanical core application and the move to to a world of digital fabrication, there Computer Aided Design (MCAD) applica‘Suites’, and subscription had seemingly are fundamental problems with BIM tion such as Inventor or Solidworks. dissipated development to incremental tools optimised to produce co-ordinated, By adding high levels of detail to BIM updates across a wide number of appli- symbolic 2D drawings, as opposed to models, databases swell-up and they cations, when the heart of most firms’ driving CNC machines and robots, quickly become unmanageable. Again, BIM efforts centred around Revit and which require 1 to 1 modelling. with Quantum, Autodesk’s solution introcollaborative workflows.

Quantum, as it was pitched, was an duced a novel approach, where BIM modRevit is over 20 years old. While it has elegant solution to many of these chal- els would ‘hand-off’ at set interface points

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components that needed to be manufactured by better adapted CAD systems.

This meant that different professionals in the workflow could all have different versions of the same model, but they were connected by a common platform. What’s more, live geometry could be pumped around the system in real time for teams to see the model in various levels of detail.

This was indeed a brave new world and it seemingly was a very slick way of introducing a change in the way BIM would touch every player in a federated AEC project. Unfortunately, company politics intervened, Hanspal left Autodesk after the company’s board chose Andrew Anaganost as new CEO, and news on Quantum went dark.

Roll forward to Autodesk University 2018 and in one of those corridor conversations that happen by happenstance, AEC Magazine learned that Quantum had indeed survived but had actually been a victim of its own success.

The technology was deemed to be so useful that the company decided to take a broader view of its potential to all products and verticals (e.g. AEC, manufacturing) and so paused to take in more internal stakeholders into its development as a platform technology. The net result is Project Plasma.

Awe inspiring Earlier this year, AEC Magazine had the opportunity to talk with Autodesk’s chief www.AECmag.com

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software architect, Jim Awe, about the name change and the company’s vision for Plasma and its capabilities.

Awe explained, “What happened was, the idea of quantum, and doing automated workflows in a trusted way gained momentum. As we talked to customers, they definitely supported that idea and that was crucial to moving project collaboration forward. Then when we started to talk to other people around the company, we found that the manufacturing group were facing the exact same problem.

“Autodesk has traditionally been a design-based company and the goal of most of the products like Revit were to produce construction documents and then ‘throw them over the wall’ and have someone figure out how to make it. It turns out, manufacturing had the same issue, that they design everything upfront and then had to figure out which tools on the factory floor were going to make different parts of the assembly.

They did the same thing and would break up the model, divide it up between multiple people who would figure out how to make their part in the process.

“This is a strategic shift. It’s not good enough to just design something, you have to be able to make it and in order to do that, you need a workflow that goes throughout the project life-cycle. This technology [Plasma] should be in the platform and so it became a much bigger, more elaborate, effort. We’re are taking our time

to get it right because it’s so important.”

We asked Awe, how the platform worked, “The best analogy which describes what we’re trying to do here, is if you look at what Apple did with iOS. Apple has a platform, where you can build an App and plug into well-known services of the iOS system and then construct a mobile workflow. The App hands off the GPS location to maps, and photos are integrated into other workflows, all on your mobile device. We need to integrate enough of the pieces so that when you try and move data from, say Revit to a fabrication phase, you are moving the appropriate amount of data and the person on the other end knows where to find it and absorb it into their workflow.

“Carrying on with the Apple iOS analogy, we will definitely build some of our own applications plugged into this and we fully expect some of our Forge partners to hook up into Plamsa in lots of interesting ways.

“All the professional and IP boundaries are maintained with the data that is flowing between collaborators; it’s tracked, it’s scoped, so you’re not just sending the entire model across. In most instances it’s more likely to be a subset of it.”

Autodesk is calling this data exchange a form of a ‘data contract’, so users decide what limited data they want to share with each project participant and the system tracks and approves the exchange, as it goes through a series of March / April 2019

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‘gates’. This means control is maintained by each of the originators in a project, sharing data which can’t be edited, so while the structural engineer can see the architectural elements, she can’t change components that the architect is responsible for and vice versa.

Blockchain. We are currently exploring how to secure the legal part of the system.

“If you look at the progression of how were trying to deliver this, the theory is the legal part. The implementation, so far, has focused on the data interoperability piece, which is what and how do you get the data automated in and out of the application. How do you construct a workflow that will spin up all the right compute nodes and send the proper notifications? The mechanism is now in place, but we have not yet figured out the legal side as to how these transactions don’t get tampered with. We also have to work out what legal exposure Autodesk has in providing this service!

“This is more than just technology, it’s Autodesk looking at who is going to be responsible for that Escrow. There are a couple of options; Autodesk could decide to take responsibility, or maybe create a spin-off entity, or we could put the onus on the owner, or concede it to something like blockchain and have a technology solution, where nobody needs to be responsible as a technology is taking care

prototyped a little bit of logic that lives outside of Revit.

Asynchronous vs synchronous

Plasma can work in two ways, asynchronous workflows and synchronous workflows. One is on user demand, the other is truly dynamic.

Data Contracts and Escrow The asynchronous methodology is While Quantum went through some more akin to current workflows, just changes in the quiet period, Autodesk without all the horrendous data wranhas come back with more detail of the gling. With the plasma architecture conmechanics and concepts of how it works. necting applications in workflows via In many respects, it’s a combination of plug-ins, these apps actually know absocommon data environment (some lutely nothing about each other, they Autodeskers call this a Unified Data only know how to read the Data Environment) with transactional intelliContracts through the Escrow system. gence that is perhaps akin to digital curDesigners are editing their models rencies or banking systems. independently of each other until they The two core concepts in Plasma, are decide to push it through the Escrow serthe Data Contract, and Escrow. A Data vice. Designers get notified when there Contract could be defined as packaging is a change, and the user simply opens up data for the curtain wall fabricator, the gate to allow that change to come into such as the gridlines and some other reletheir work environment. Users have comvant information about the curtain wall, plete control over whether to open that but not sending the rest of the model. gate or not.

Escrow is the neutral place through In a synchronous workflow, the oppowhich you pass all site is true, and the your data, tracking gate is kept open all the exchanges. and the designer Project Plasma is a total rethink of data flows in a cloudThe other pieces live updates in enabled world. It’s Autodesk recognising that one application sees of the puzzle are his workspace cannot be infinitely expanded to solve all upstream and the necessary from project parplug-ins to differticipants who have downstream problems in digital design workflows ent applications. contracted to share These plug-ins work parcels. In know how to push and pull data from the of it. But for right now the mechanisms demos, this seems like an amazing capaapplications as defined by user defined we have in place will work for any of bility, but it could be too dynamic for its Data Contracts. For instance, Revit will those scenarios, but we haven’t decided own good! Humans will probably need to have a plug-in to pull data out of Revit yet how to administer it. That can come a embrace a different work methodology and to receive data back from other pro- little bit later as, for now, we need to for real time collaborative workspaces. ject participants. make sure that in our tests, the data flows The good news is that users can flip at Autodesk will create these for all of its in a reliable, automated way.” will between asynchronous and synchroown relevant applications, but it will also Autodesk is currently trialing Plasma nous work states. Awe agrees, “My guess make some for the most used non- with a lot of internal prototypes, mostly is that most workflows that cross an app Autodesk products and will provide tool- with Revit and other internal Autodesk boundary or cross a discipline boundary, kits for any developer to enable Plasma products, such as Civil 3D, Inventor and will choose an asynchronous workflow. transactions.

Fusion. Perhaps, oddly, the development And users will only react when you reach This is very similar to how financial team is especially excited with the certain milestones.” systems work and we wondered if potential of links to Excel, where they While users don’t have to give all of Autodesk was looking at using block- are finding a lot of potential workflows their geometry in the process, it should chain in this ecosystem? Awe replied, “We because users can do workflow author- be noted that once geometry is shared in have discussed blockchain, and the ing, as opposed to workflows authored Escrow, there is a permanent record of it Escrow part of the process could definite- by developers. and you can’t take it back. ly use blockchain, but we have not decidMost workflows for Plasma will So, it seems that Plasma is transactional ed to do that just yet. It may be overkill for require programs, either applications or live but offers incredible fluidity to the what we’re trying to achieve with Plasma. developed by Autodesk, or third-party design process with increased granulari“There are new emerging technologies developers, but end users can develop sation and a control mechanism. In fact, that may do what blockchain does in a their own tools in products such as Excel Plasma is a living breathing view of a more straightforward and lightweight and Dynamo which can process extracted model’s development. It’s possible to tag way, such as Amazon, which just data and export it out via a Data Contract the Data Contract with a status such as announced what they call the Ledger or vice versa. Autodesk has developed a ‘work in progress’ or a Milestone but also Database, which basically behaves like number of internal examples where they allow designers to exchange data more fre-

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BIM Product of the Year ARCHICAD 22 delivers design tool improvements and also introduces enhanced design workflow processes.

These represent significant performance improvements as well as productivity enhancements to its core design processes as well as to multidisciplinary collaborative workflows.

For further information on ARCHICAD 22 contact GRAPHISOFT at graphisoft.com or call 01895 527590.

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quently. If a user hits Undo in Revit, it will only Undo the work they have done in their model, but users can roll back to a previous version of the Data Contract.

Users can see what receiving versions of the Data Contract had on their model. It’s possible to play through all of the decisions in the lifecycle of a design and even go back to a previous version of the Data Contract and start modelling from there or replay through all the data that came through those gates.

According to Awe, Branching and Merging are built into the underlying database technology, “We do use it in the Escrow system and the contract definition,” he says. “However, if users want to have that same technology in a core application like Revit, then that’s a different story. Revit wasn’t built that way.

Revit could start making use of that facility in the database and we’ve done some experiments, but we haven’t decided if we are going to go back and re-engineer those applications.”

theory out, ten years down the road, ideally Revit would also be able to decouple every system in the building and say I don’t need to model the entire thing myself, I just need to coordinate with someone else who’s modelling that piece.

“You could basically divide Revit up into more specialised modellers for the specific systems but still coordinate between the different disciplines. But right now, Revit is taking on that responsibility and doing all the coordination itself. Plasma enables the single version of the truth. However, it is essentially distributed. Each app, each persona in the ecosystem is able to maintain the model that makes the most sense to them and then communicates the part that needs to have a collective sense of the overall model for collective co-ordination.”

Conclusion

Our initial hopes of Quantum being the next generation of Revit in some ways have drowned in the sea of automated collaboration. However, we now realise that the whole concept of applications, especially desktop ones is somewhat mute in the world of cloud-based workflows. Not unlike the end of The Avengers: Infinity War, we see desktop apps and workflows turning to dust in slow motion.

Project Plasma is a total rethink of data flows in a cloud-enabled world. It’s Autodesk recognising that one application cannot be infinitely expanded to solve all upstream and downstream problems in digital design workflows – an outlook that in its previous life, Autodesk tried to drive home every nail with an AutoCAD shaped hammer.

Timeframe Plasma retains the elegance of both While Quantum was first aired in 2016, catering to current workflows and toolin 2019 the development seems to be pro- sets, while providing collaboration gressing but there is a lot to do. Awe said through a common data environment, that Autodesk is not committing to any which is highly user controlled and flexSpeeding up Revit? delivery dates and with a new VP of ible in its usage. However, ultimately In our initial discussion, one of Quantum’s Cloud Platform, Sam Ramji, there monolithic applications that try to be aims was to take the load off Revit. As it appears to have been a re-evaluation of everything to everyone and attempt to has become Plasma hold the co-ordinaand become a plattion in a single dataform technology Our initial hopes of Quantum being the next generation of base on a desktop there seems to have only continue to Revit in some ways have drowned in the sea of automated will been less emphasis silo project data and collaboration. However, we now realise that the whole placed on this. Awe never solve the colconcept of applications, especially desktop ones is explained, “All things laboration issue. are possible! The way We get the feeling somewhat mute in the world of cloud-based workflows we’ve specifically that Plasma is still approached this, is years off from meetthat if we have to stitch together a work- what the company had developed so far, ing its prime objectives, but some eleflow across the project ecosystem, you the systems architecture and what will ments of collaboration and exchange will have to be able to include all tools that and won’t be delivered. be available earlier than the complete already exist, without major modifications.

Autodesk wants to avoid pre-announc- system. Over time, and when it makes “We have enabled AutoCAD with a sim- ing early technology and return to being sense, new applications will appear for ple ARX plug-in, so it too can participate, more conservative. In fact, internally performing discrete and industry-specifbut those other apps which we have built Autodesk has qualms about letting ic functions, removing the need for Revit from scratch on this platform have lots of Project names slip into the open, Awe said to handle coordination and to concenadditional new capabilities. Revit too can that Autotodesk refers to this style of data- trate on authoring. It’s great to hear still participate without any changes. The centric workflow across the project lifecy- Autodesk is looking to remove the need theory is that every application out there cle as a ‘Plasma Workflow’ and hence the for drawings when design to digital fabrithat’s available today has to be able to con- project name, but in time we have been cation makes sense. nect to the workflow. As you adopt more told it will likely appear as just a capabiliIn software terms we commonly talk and more of these new data platform fea- ty of the Forge Data Platform in the future. about the next generation; with Quantum tures, they get richer and richer, but it’s For the time being, the company has / Plasma being developed from the data not required. It’s up to us and up to cus- done a lot of internal prototypes with level upwards, it would make more sense tomer demand as to how much Revit Plasma Workflow and it has a number of to look at Autodesk developing an envievolves, but it doesn’t have to evolve at all construction firms who are willing to ronment for a new species. to have just bare minimum participation. try it out on something; small elements “Right now, it’s a much bigger challenge of projects, like wall framing bounda- An extended version of this article, with more to decouple workflows from Revit, ries, from design to robot installation, information including data quality control, because Revit is already doing that design without the need of paper. The develop- target customers and how Project Plasma has coordination between structure and the ment team is working through these impacted Revit development, will be available rest of the building. But if you play the instances case by case. soon on aecmag.com

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NXT BLD 2019 preview On June 11 AEC Magazine’s future gazing conference and exhibition returns to London with some truly amazing presentations. There’ll be autonomous robots from Boston Dynamics, highly optimised digital fabrication from Katerra, robotic construction from Melike Altınısık Architects and lots, lots more

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XT BLD (Next Build) June, experts from Boston Dynamics will technology and innovation to change the returns to London on 11 talk about the development of the construction of her projects, including a June at the Queen SPOTmini and how autonomous robots fantastic Robot Science Museum in Elizabeth II Centre in the can be used in construction for a variety of Seoul, which will be built using robots heart of Westminster. The use cases. Check out this amazing video at and drones and the futuristic 369 metreAEC Magazine team is planning another tinyurl.com/Boston-robotics. tall Çamlıca TV and Radio Tower which stellar array of advanced technologists uses a unique facade design and novel and designers for this year’s voyage into Katerra construction methodology. the not too distant future of design and The rumours are that the US-based firm construction.

Katerra is on a mission to change every Arkio.is With rapid deployment of end-to-end aspect of building design, materials sup- Arkio.is is a brand new firm which was digital workflows, significant challenges ply and construction. The design and dig- founded by Johan Hanegraaf who spoke must be overcome to realise the at our inaugural event two benefits of digital fabrication, years ago and demonstrated a AI and automation. With a bigExperts from Boston Dynamics will talk VR-based architectural design ger venue, NXT BLD 2019 will (see tinyurl.com/AEC-VR1). about the development of the SPOTmini tool feature two simultaneous Since then he has been very and how autonomous robots can be used busy and, with the help of a streams of presentations and an expanded exhibition, so this in construction for a variety of use cases programming team in Iceland, year you might want to bring a is about to start a whole new colleague. application category of his ital fabrication specialist has been called own. We can’t say any more, you will have Topics and speakers the Tesla of construction and we will have to come and see!

With our expanded focus on digital fabri- key players from the firm explaining its In addition to these incredible firms, cation, NXT BLD 2019 will be at the fore- advanced digital fabrication process, as you will see the latest in computer graphfront of the debate bringing the most well as highlighting its software develop- ics, Augmented Reality, rendering, workexciting technologies and some ‘firsts’ for ment to help the rest of the industry. stations and many more advanced technolthe AEC market. ogies. We are currently working on comMelike Altınısık Architects pleting our conference lineup and more Boston Dynamics Melike Altınısık, principal and founder information will be on nxtbld.com shortly.

Many of our readers will be well aware of of Melike Altınısık Architects will be The event is going to be seriously good Boston Dynamics and its incredible coming from Istanbul to highlight her fun and we promise not to mention Brexit. research into autonomous robots. This methodology and approach to using ■ nxtbld.com

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Early bird tickets We are currently offering a limited number of early bird tickets for £40.

The price includes full access to the conference and exhibition, refreshments, lunch and drinks at the networking reception.

Early bird tickets will be available until April 12. After this date full price tickets will be available for £65. nxtbld.com/buy-tickets

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nxtbld.com

London 11 June 2019

Melike Altınısık, principal and founder of Melike Altınısık Architects will highlight her methodology and approach to using technology and innovation to change the construction of her projects, including the fantastic Robot Science Museum in Seoul, which will be built using robots and drones Images courtesy of Melike Altınısık Architects

The rumours are that US-based design and digital fabrication specialist Katerra is on a mission to change every aspect of building design, materials supply and construction. We will have key players from the firm explaining its advanced digital fabrication process, as well as highlighting its software development to help the rest of the industry

www.AECmag.com

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BIM: designing for safe and smart maintenance By using BIM, it’s much easier to get people thinking about the maintainability of buildings, write Mike Ford, digital / BIM manager at the University of the West of England, and Dr Nick Bell, risk consultant

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hat does BIM have to do with building maintenance or safety? Often the answer is, not enough! As we are making the migration to the digital BIM workflow, we’re building a mountain of valuable graphics and data; the challenge is, how to squeeze all the value from this new resource? Could it be that BIM might be the solution to some of the ageold problems, like engaging with building users, operators and maintainers?

Constructing a building is no easy feat, there are lots of competing interests to consider and lots of processes to manage.

It’s little wonder that sometimes we don’t have enough time to think about maintenance. The case we’d like to set out here, is that using BIM makes it much easier to get people thinking about maintainability.

We’d like to run through a very simple example of a difficult to maintain element and make an argument for why a modelbased construction design and manage-

ment (CDM) walkthrough may have given the opportunity to design out this issue.

Annoyingly, a light in the atrium, as shown in figure 1, has failed. Is that a big deal? It’s just one light at the University of the West of England (UWE) Bristol where we have 300,000m² of internal space and do around 2,000 lamping replacements a year.

As it happens, this particular fitting does cause a fair amount of upheaval.

The only way to access it is using a spe-

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cialist spider mobile elevated working pack of hundreds of drawings, such as Who should attend? You could run a platform (MEWP) – see figures 2 and 3. the one in figure 6, does this stand out? workshop with just the maintenance To spread the load of the MEWP and We’re all humans used to seeing the team, but I think it’s better to have repreprotect the tiles, wooden boards need to world in a certain way and in figure 7 you sentatives from the design team, the proplaced under its feet but, even then, some can see what a difference a third dimen- ject manager and the main contractor have still cracked. sion makes. Additionally, with a 3D present (if appointed). The design team Of course, this comes at a cost. model, when we put our ‘building main- will be able to offer immediate insight Replacing a standard light fitting (figure tenance’ hats on, even inexperienced per- into the design intent, perhaps there has 4) costs £15 (0.6 hours of labour at £25/ sonnel start to ask very sensible ques- already been a lot of thought on a certain hour), whereas replacing the light in the tions about building maintainability. issue and the design has already been atrium space (figure 5) costs £750 (£450 to optimised for maintainability. hire the MEWP and two operators at Collaborative thinking The main contractor can use this as an £150 each). It’s clear that there’s a strong A virtual CDM walkthrough of a building opportunity to comment on buildability case for using lower level lighting to light should take place during RIBA stage 4 and may be able to draw on their experithe atrium space.

(Technical Design). The sooner you find ence to offer suggestions for how to solve That isn’t to say that high level lighting problems with the building design that maintainability issues. is always the wrong solution; our argu- can be designed out, the cheaper it will be The maintenance team will know how to ment is that best practice maintain a building and should always consider which issues have caused issues like working at The client ends up with a better building, design them headaches in the past. height and design out It is the project managchanges can be made, there is less criticism at risks wherever possible. er’s responsibility to find The conversation needs handover and the maintenance team are already the best possible middle to be had with the person ground between beautiful aware of difficult to maintain areas responsible for maintainhigh-quality spaces and ing the building. If the clispaces that are practical, ent accepts that high level working is to change the building design. However, cheap, safe and easy to maintain. acceptable, then there needs to be a con- the earlier you hold a model walk-through, This has, of course, just been one examversation on how to make the building the less developed the model is. You cer- ple of an issue and method for resolution/ easily accessible to MEWPs and how to tainly want to carry out this process before consideration. We chose this example ensure the floor and its finish is suitably construction begins, perhaps BSRIA BG6 mainly because it was very easy to illusrobust to take the load. The problem is, 2018 stage 4ii (coordinated generic design) trate. Other typical issues that have been how easy is it to pick up this as being an is the best time, as items are correctly discussed are: removing roof plant at end issue? If you’ve just looked through a located but not yet fully specified. of life, safe cleaning of glass balustrades,

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Feature safe roof access, high level window cleaning, plant room configurations, etc.

All things considered, this process means that the client ends up with a better building, design changes can be made, there is less criticism at handover and the maintenance team are already aware of difficult to maintain areas.

and less errors on site. However, this also means that fewer people are looking at the 2D drawings. According to our site managers, 2D drawing use has dropped to around 20% where 3D models are available using tablets.

As an industry we need to rapidly change the way we record risks. BIM brings much more functionality to the table than we’ve been used to in the past.

A 3D hazard symbol can also appear as a 2D symbol on the floor plans, as well as the sections, elevations and details.

erated from the 3D model, changing the model updates the risk assessment and updating the risk assessment updates the model. A single source of information for risks! Now using the 3D model on site is ensuring that everyone has access to relevant risk information; it’s graphical and relevant to the area they are working in. It is also far easier than it Managing risk has ever been to get to the relevant inforIf you have come across PAS1192-6 mation; they just need to tap on the haz“Specification for collaborative sharing ard symbol on their tablet. and use of structured Health and Safety 3D hazards are good for the client as information using BIM” you well, especially if the conmay have experienced the tractor has applied 4D concept for highlighting speto the project In an ideal world we would see the building, sequencing cific risks in the model using risks. Using this method, model and risks all handed over to the client risks should be able to pop three-dimensional warning symbols – see figure 8. in and out of existence at the and all maintained, updated and added to This is a very important right points in time. For over the building’s life concept within BIM. In the example, the risk of being past we’ve communicated impaled on reinforcement risk using hazard symbols on 2D plans This way, no matter where you’re look- bars doesn’t exist when the foundations and risk assessments. It used to be the ing for construction information, the are being dug or after the concrete has case that risk assessments were too often risks are there. been poured. As the project progresses being ignored, but at least everyone had The best thing about BIM in our biased the risks change. Why is that good for the to look at the drawings in order to con- view, is the information contained within client? Well, any risks remaining at handstruct the building. the modelled elements. This is a real win, over are residual risks that the client On our building sites at the University, for managing risks. All of these 3D sym- needs to manage. In an ideal world we we’ve now enabled our supply chain to bols can hold all of the relevant risk would see the building, model and risks use 3D models on site. This is seen to be a information, including mitigations and all handed over to the client and all mainvery positive step forwards and it leads links to other documents, such as meth- tained, updated and added to over the to far better BIM deliveries for us as a cli- od statements. building’s life. ent, not to mention better communication Now the risk assessment table is gen- ■ uwe.ac.uk/estates ■ nickbellrisk.com

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Going underground Bentley Systems is developing new software that merges the engineering worlds of structural and geotechnical, from design all the way through to operations.

The aim is to streamline workflows, improve accuracy and deliver digital twins that can even predict failures before they happen, writes Greg Corke.

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D modelling in structural design is applications. Elements like piles and neer] will go to the geotech [engineer] and widespread but the same can’t be anchors can also be defined. But now the geotech will say, ‘you can use these said for geotechnical engineering, Bentley has big plans to expand the soft- kinds of foundations with these kinds of which is still dominated by 2D. This ware’s capabilities much further. loads and get these kinds of estimates.’ presents a big challenge when it comes to Then the engineer takes it and tries to data exchange as the two disciplines don’t When two worlds meet mimic that through some kind of simple play together as well as they should.

Bentley is well known for its extensive spring or something in their structural One application that does embrace the range of structural analysis applications, model and then they come back and they third dimension is Plaxis 3D, an advanced including Staad and RAM. Adding say, ‘well, the real forces that I got are geotechnical design, simthis; does it still work ulation, and engineering with what you told me?’” tool, which Bentley Marrying the two, previously independent worlds Bentley has already Systems acquired last developed an initial of simulation, is an obvious path for Bentley to year. workflow through its take, but arguably the biggest prize will be in Plaxis 3D uses finite synchronisation softelement methods for ana- applying geotechnical engineering to digital twins ware Integrated lysing complex geotechStructural Modelling nical projects such as (ISM). It allows an engimetro stations, bridges, airports and tall Plaxis into the mix not only fills a geo- neer to bring a Staad or RAM model buildings. It’s particularly relevant in technical gap in its portfolio but gives it directly into Plaxis 3D. “You can start to inner cities where new projects are often the foundation on which to develop an see the interaction between the soil, the built in and around existing infrastruc- integrated analysis application that can stress and displacement and the structurture, presenting much bigger geotechnical handle both linear structures and non- al model,” says Karp. design challenges. linear soils at the same time.

But this is just the beginning. The aim is Importantly, Plaxis 3D is not just When the development work is to fully integrate the two and create a sinabout soil mechanics; it also hancomplete it should give Bentley a gle simulation environment that includes dles soil-structure interaction so unique capability for geotechnical both the superstructure and the soil. So, if engineers can predict what will engineering, not dissimilar to a mul- you start moving your geotechnical design, happen to the soil and how it will ti-physics system used in mechani- Staad will start changing the design of the react to the structure once it is built. cal engineering that combines struc- structure on top, or vice versa.

Structural geometry can be importtural analysis with fluid dynamics.

“We want to get to a point where we ed from CAD and analysis Currently, a typical workflow can consider everything together in a sinbetween a structural and geotechni- gle model,” says Karp. “That will be truly cal engineer is very disjointed and ground breaking.” involves a lot of e s t i m a t i o n Digital Twin and back and Solving workflow challenges for the forth, as design phase and increasing the speed Raoul Karp, and accuracy of the simulation is not the B e n t l e y only reason that Bentley acquired Plaxis.

Systems VP It also has big plans for geotechnical engidesign engi- neering as part of its digital twin strategy neering anal- maintaining a digital representation of the ysis, explains. infrastructure and of its geotechnical con“ G e n e r a l l y, text over the lifetime of the asset. what happens “When you think about the concept of is, the struc- the [digital] twin, it’s really going to come tural [engi- into its own in the operations phase of

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any asset,” says Jan-Willem Koutstaal, Bentley vice president of local account initiatives, and the former CEO of Plaxis.

“Fundamental to any decision you’re going to make on a change in that asset is going to be the geotechnical engineering.

“You use software to assess the initial ground conditions, to understand what you are going to be building on top of, but then throughout the lifecycle of the building you are doing regular observation through sensors in the foundations or building, or surveying with drones.”

The idea here, is that by embedding sensors into the asset or creating reality models through ContextCapture, data can be continuously fed into the software so it can automatically re-analyse the asset based on its changing conditions over time. Such changes could be dictated by subsidence, seismic activity or weather, but there could also be changes in owner requirements or structural strategies.

Importantly, the digital twin could also be used to help predict what might happen in the future. Koutstaal explains that in such a system a green light could denote “you’re OK at the moment,” but if the movement carries on at a certain rate

you’ll get orange, a critical state.

This type of predictive analysis could be augmented by deep learning, based on what has happened in the past, either on the same structure or on different structures.

The software could then put forward multiple “what if” scenarios, leading to recommendations for pre-emptive action to be taken. In the most extreme cases this could help prevent catastrophic failure.

Conclusion Bentley is long established in the engineering of structures above ground. Now, with its acquisition of Plaxis, it’s looking to do the same below, introducing advanced geotechnical engineering technology to its global customer base.

Marrying the two, previously independent worlds of simulation, is an obvious path for Bentley to take, to streamline workflows and to deliver more accurate results, but arguably the biggest

prize will be in applying geotechnical engineering to digital twins.

The concept here is that the asset owner will not only have a digital twin of the infrastructure itself, but of the geotechnical conditions that surround it. And over time, the owner will be able to assess the impact of the changing environment and predict well in advance when maintenance or critical action might be required.

It’s a bold vision, and one that becomes even more compelling when you consider that it could save lives.

■ bentley.com

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Case study

Keeping up appearances Engineering design consultancy Wentworth House Partnership (WHP) used advanced structural software on a complex London re-development where a 20th Century building’s historic facade needed to be retained while the internal structure was replaced

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he Knightsbridge Estate is a designs, allowing for clash detection and London Underground assets, with £150m re-development project reducing the amount of re-work Knightsbridge Underground station in the heart of London’s prestig- required on site. included within the planned re-developious shopping district. Designed “The Knightsbridge Estate project pre- ment works, the location was an added

by Fletcher Priest Architects, the 340,000 sented many challenges, such as the site difficulty for WHP to consider. square ft project is set to restore and invig- location and sheer size of the façade,” adds “Due to the height of the façade, the orate the premium city block. When com- Vaughan. “For example, the structural retention scheme had to penetrate plete, the development will deliver a mix arrangement and pavement conditions through the pavement,” says Vaughan. of high-end retail, contemporary office around the perimeter of the site meant that “However, considering the site’s proximispaces and 35 luxury apartments, all there were at least six different framing ty to the London Underground services arranged around a courtyard garden, as arrangements required. However, consid- we were restricted in terms of workable well as a stunning rooftop restaurant, ering the size and continuity of the façade, design solutions - for example, we were complete with panoramic unable to pile in proximity to views of the city. the live London The project is located withUnderground assets.

In addiThe design for this project was deflection in the Hans Town tion, we also had to design critical, meaning that the deflection of Conservation Area so the the load transfer structures horizontal trusses, vertical frames and exisiting building’s impresaround the street level sersive 20th Century façade had vices, ensuring that they transfer systems had to all be considered to be retained. were considered within the The architectural ambition model too. of restoring the façade to its former glory with the whole site covering an area of 3.5 “We relied on Tekla Structural presented a major challenge as the inter- acres, the retention frames couldn’t be con- Designer extensively, as it was critical nal structures needed to be demolished to sidered in isolation and therefore it was that the transfer systems were designed make way for the new development. important that the modelling software in a way that meant the load path was There was also the added difficulty of included them all in its calculations, which viable, while at the same time avoiding coordinating the temporary structure Tekla Structural Designer was able to do.” the extensive live services. Tekla around the existing street level services Structural Designer enabled us to proand London Underground assets, located Going underground duce a detailed analysis and design of the beneath the site.

Being in the centre of one of London’s retention structure, taking all of these Due to the complex nature of the project busiest shopping districts and adjacent to factors into account.” and the numerous site constraints, the Wentworth House Partnership (WHP), an engineering design consultancy, used Tekla Structural Designer to design and detail the façade retention scheme. “[The software] allows us to model complex geometry for façade retention, saving valuable time on site and producing a more accurate analysis when compared to using a 2D method,” explains Stuart Vaughan, director of Wentworth House Partnership. “We have also recently combined Tekla Structural Designer with Tekla Structures to enable us to produce coordinated construction information and fabrication drawings.”

Working in 3D has proven to be vastly more effective than 2D, making it easier to produce complex, layered framework

‘‘

’’

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Case study

Minimising movement Another issue faced by structural engineers when designing a façade retention scheme of this scale is deflection, as too little stiffness could result in the excessive movement of frames, and consequently even structural damage to the façade itself - a serious concern when the building is located in a busy London shopping district and falls within a conservation area.

“The design for this project was deflection critical, meaning that the deflection of horizontal trusses, vertical frames and transfer systems had to all be considered,” says Vaughan. “Thankfully Tekla Structural Designer was able to model and analyse all of these conditions, enabling us to consider the 3D frame effects of the retention scheme, rather than relying on a simple 2D analysis. Working in 3D, we were also able to optimise the weight of the retention structure, reducing the amount of steelwork required and saving both time and money.”

porary structure is absolutely imperative,” explains Vaughan. “However, this can prove difficult, as many of the retention scheme connections are unique and will involve the design of non-standard elements and supports. It is therefore critical that they are correctly understood by the modelling software when detailing.

“Fortunately, Tekla Structural Designer was able to analyse the steel frame and load paths while also ensuring positional coordination with the existing façade, reducing the risk of clashes or need for re-work on site.”

Furthermore, WHP was able to easily update and analyse the model whenever changes were required by the client, both during and after the design process, ensuring that the overall structural system wasn’t compromised by any such changes.

Tekla Structures was also used on the project, with information easily coordi-

nated and transferred between the structural BIM tool and Tekla Structural Designer. This compatibility enabled WHP to prepare fabrication drawings in Tekla Structures using data generated

by Tekla Structural Designer, ensuring that the steel connections used in the retention scheme would be accurately manufactured in accordance with the design and eliminated the approval cycle that would have occurred had the fabricator prepared the drawings.

“Using Tekla Structural Designer and 3D modelling helped us overcome the numerous challenges and constraints that this prestigious project presented,” concludes Vaughan. “It helped us accurately and precisely analyse highly complex and variable frame, ensuring viable load paths in a complex location whilst also minimising weight and ensuring coordination with the existing façade.”

■ tekla.com

Clash detection One of the well-documented benefits of BIM and Tekla Software is its automatic clash detection. Rather than hand-drawn 2D drawings where clashes could pass undetected until construction had begun, resulting in costly re-work and delays, 3D modelling can alert engineers to clashes at the design stage, helping mitigate errors and streamline the design process.

As well as considering clashes within the retention structure itself, the retention steelwork on the Knightsbridge Estate project also had to be precisely coordinated with the existing building façade.

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or centuries, construction has been done in much the same way: brick by brick, girder by girder, slab by slab—first by human hands alone, then with the help of machines. Even as our structures and our design ambitions have soared, the processes used to make those designs real have remained stubbornly stuck in the past.

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Opinion

ISO 19650: going global part II In the second and final installment of this article on ISO 19650, Rebecca De Cicco explains why the UK is benefiting most from the practical application of the new standard We have seen much momentum since the release of both the international and British versions of ISO 19650. This is an exciting time for our industry as finally a global solution for BIM is now available.

Regions with little or no guidance are beginning to utilise new BIM processes and adopt a common language. With the British standards being used as a foundation for the development of the ISO, there is much to look forward to when it comes to its future use in the UK. What excites me the most, is that we have a world of opportunity ahead of us as a global industry, where we’ll see regions with little to no standards trying to adopt new processes they know very little about.

The uptake on the use of PAS 1192-2 and 3 in regions such as Australia and China for example, was an excellent start, which can only grow further now we have the ISO. However, even though there is an understanding of the importance of the standards, no official mandate exists in these other countries like it does in the UK therefore gaining mass buy-in will be challenging – but we’re ready to take on that challenge!

It will be an interesting journey to see the implementation of ISO 19650 across the world and although we don’t have clear visibility across every region when it comes to BIM implementation, we still understand that consistency in language, process and information delivered intelligently is crucial.

Here is my observation of where we are globally and why the disadvantages of other regions are proving to be a massive advantage to the UK, with expertise export opportunities now on our doorstep for UK BIM professionals to support other regions in their BIM adoption journey.

UK domestic strength It is known that the UK is more advanced than many other regions of the world in its BIM delivery thanks to the BIM manwww.AECmag.com

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date. Therefore, due to our understanding and regular use of the 1192 suite of standards, the transition to ISO (it is presumed) will be a smooth one. This is also supported by the fact that the UK is the first region to release the British Standards / CEN version of the ISO and to develop the very first regional annex.

The same ease of ISO implementation sadly cannot be said for a global roll-out.

Much of the regional development in BIM outside of the UK is being haltered by jurisdiction as well as historical context and we’re seeing a very disjointed approach toward the uptake and use, as well as understanding of BIM according to ISO 19650. There are small pockets of BIM enthusiasts driving the BIM agenda in many different regions, however a formalised incentive is needed.

ISO 19650 international adoption

regions. This is why we believe uptake in the US will initially be slow when it comes to the use of the ISO but for Canada things are a little more positive. Canada is already using UK methods and products such as the NBS BIM Library and this is very much true for Australia too.

There are also huge opportunities in China, as we see Hong Kong leading the way nationally with the development of local BIM standards and certification for BIM professionals. These projects have been influenced by the local authorities (Construction Industry Council in Hong Kong) which have taken much of the guidance from British Standards. Much work is now being undertaken to internationalise these products with the release of ISO 19650. UK businesses will begin to see the benefits of the ISO being implemented globally as specialised knowledge and skill will be required to support these types of initiatives.

BIM knowledge is extremely varied from region to region with a distinct lack of consistency in process. However, appetite New opportunities is growing, and the ISO is just the very The construction industry is currently in beginning. a state of development and change. Not For us, the key was to start promoting only due to the implementation of conthe use of the ISO even before it had been sistently applied methods for BIM and released. Our work with both private cli- Digital Engineering, but also the way ents and government in regions such as technology is influencing every part of Australia and China has been governed the way we design, build and operate. An and supported not international standonly by British ard for BIM creates Standards but also great opportunities the knowledge that for global trade and Rebecca De the ISO was on its translation of skills Cicco is the way. Although much and resources director and of the work outside of across the world. founder of the UK in terms of We will see the UK Digital Node, a BIM-based conBIM process and still act as global sultancy workstandardisation is leader when it ing with clients specific to a region, comes to BIM all over the the opportunity for according to ISO world to educate, manage and support the global trade in 19650 purely based implementation of a clearly defined proregions such as on historical concess, underpinned by technology.

Australia and China text and the whole is enormous.

BIM journey which There are also many organisations has provided advancement in a region with offices all over the world and in par- where innovation leads the way. ticular in Australia that have been pushWhich is why other regions will be ing and mandating PAS 1192-2 as a solu- looking to the UK for leadership and tion. Therefore, these companies are guidance. already open to new ways of working.

This is a great time for the construction We are seeing that local standards are industry, and we are certainly in a state of hindering the development and use of a positive change globally. ISO 19650 has consistent process; therefore, the adoption been long awaited by all those paving the of the ISO will have the ability to wipe this way for a future built environment where out. For example, in the US and Canada information flows freely and is accessible local BIM standards are very much when required. Now it’s time to use the new unique to the language, history and pro- tools we have been given to make it work. cesses defined and developed in these ■ digital-node.com

About the author

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Designviz

Para trooper!

Stephen Holmes discovers how a new waterside residential project in England has benefitted from high detail renderings to achieve planning permission for its ‘Paragraph 79’ application 32

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Visualisation expert Visual Trick went into extreme detail for a recent project in leafy East Sussex as the project set out to add a new build to this rural lakeside location.

The developer of Hook Place was looking to secure ‘Para 79’ status (shorthand for the special circumstance set out in criterion of (e) paragraph 79 of the NPPF 2018) to allow new isolated homes to be built in the countryside, subject to certain requirements. www.AECmag.com

20/03/2019 10:35

‘‘

Para79 buildings must take great attention to the natural beauty of the area, the countryside has to be considered the fundamental in every stage

’’

As a result, photorealism in presentation of the structure, showing how it would blend with the surrounding landscape and vegetation was of the highest importance.

The plant species to be used, their relationship with the countryside area, the choice of the materials and the appearance of the building in this particular context all had to be on the money.

Visual Trick began the project like it www.AECmag.com

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does all others — the client was asked to send over all the drawing, surveys, photographs and sketches necessary to understand the projects and the needs, but also to advise the best route to take.

A 3D model of the elegantly curving structure was created in SketchUp, allowing for camera framing to take place early and to establish the final composition for each visual.

Completing the scene and adding in the

multiple other assets was done in Autodesk 3ds max, giving the foundation for the rendering engine, and allowing Visual Trick to utilise the Forest Pack plug-in from iToo Software.

Described enthusiastically by Visual Trick founder Paride Giancaterino as “One of the most stunning plug-ins on the market”, it allows for the dynamic creation for vegetation of any kind.

The lighting formed a key stage for the March / April 2019

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Gallery

project, as the position of the lights proved fundamental to the sculptured shape of the model.

“Special care was taken in order to respect the real light conditions where necessary, without compromising the final result and in relation to the position of the camera,” explained Giancaterino.

The exterior was lit with image base lighting, using a dome light along with an HDRi image, while the creation of textures 34

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was a more hands-on affair, with each manually made from scratch, with Visual Trick justifying that having bespoke textures helped to achieve the photorealistic quality needed for this type of project.

Rendered using V-Ray Next, the scenes were then transferred into Photoshop for post-production, giving the early autumnal setting a crispness, and adding a smattering of fallen leaves.

Every element of the image had to be

studied to convince the planning department of the quality of the architecture.

“Para79 buildings must take great attention to the natural beauty of the area, the countryside has to be considered the fundamental in every stage,” concludes Giancaterino.

Everything, from the light to vegetation, had to respect this rule; everything had to follow a natural look.”

■ visualtrick.co.uk

www.AECmag.com

20/03/2019 10:36

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Gallery

Polytechnical

Hrvoje Cop, CTO of leading Croatian visualisation studio Polymachine, shares details of four recent projects, focusing on composition, visual accuracy and the benefits of keeping everything in 3D

These images are part of a larger project we did for a manufacturer of designer furniture, and the purpose was not only to produce marketing imagery, but also to create a library of high-quality 3D models for the entire product range.

Needless to say, accuracy of was of paramount importance, so no effort was spared to get the proportions and materials as close to the real thing as possible. Once that phase was completed, we tried to create an environment which brought out the best from the products themselves while trying not to overpower their presence in the final images.

Special attention was given to the background forest which is fully 3D modelled, because we felt compositing a photo would neither do the space justice, nor feel natural in the overall composition

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Gallery

(Above) This image is part of a product catalogue for light fittings. Much like the previous two images, the biggest challenge here was to figure out a way of creating a flattering environment, but still have the product stand out. Once again, after the scene was finished, we decided to model the background building in 3D as well.

With shots that rely on camera depth-offield, however subtle it may be, keeping everything in 3D allows for a much more balanced, and visually pleasing result

(Right) Close-ups are always great fun to work on, because you can focus on details which are usually not visible in wider camera angles. With less elements to the image, composition and the relationship between the individual elements play a vital role. Today’s render engines make a spectacular job of capturing the subtle nuances of surface materials, and close up shots like this can use that to great effect

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Gallery

(Above) Every once in a while a project comes along which is especially challenging for some reason, and this beach resort in Beirut, Lebanon was definitely one of those. We could not gain access to aerial photography of the plot for the desired views, so we ended up simulating a large stretch of the sea. Since fluid simulation is much more often used in movies than architectural visualisation, it was a great chance to learn and explore aspects of CG which are rarely used in our daily work

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(Below) We were tasked to produce a large series of images for a project on the island of Hvar, Croatia – a very popular tourist destination.

The sheer amount of geometry and vegetation in this series of images required us to think of a new, optimised way to work with large datasets, to be able to quickly iterate and update these massive scenes. Another thing of note is that to ensure the coastline was as accurate as possible, we used aerial photogrammetry to capture almost a kilometre of the coast, and recreated it in 3D in a very detailed manner

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Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 Nvidia’s new Quadro GPU is a phenomenal proposition for real-time 3D graphics and VR and, with the potential it has for GPU rendering, it would be a real waste not to harness its power for ray tracing as well, writes Greg Corke Price £808 Ex VAT pny.eu

which could be used for 3D graphics or other parallel processing tasks such as ray trace rendering or simulation.

Quadro RTX still has thousands of CUDA cores, so it can do all the things that Pascal and Maxwell could do (albeit faster), but it also features two additional sets of cores: RT Cores, which are optimised for ray tracing; and Tensor Cores, which are optimised for deep learning.

In order to take advantage of these optimised cores, software has to be specifically written to do so. And while there is widespread commitment from the industry, including Chaos Group (V-Ray), Solidworks (Visualize) and Luxion (KeyShot) to name but a few, it will take time for commercial software to be released.

So where does this leave us? At the moment, anyone investing in a Quadro RTX GPU can only use it in the same way they have used previous Quadro GPUs – just using its CUDA cores.

But the good news is, because the new Quadro RTX GPUs are a significant improvement over previous generations, this will be reason enough for many. Then, when Quadro RTX-enabled software finally starts to ship, design viz folks will be able to generate photorealistic output even faster.

workstation. This is done through NVlink, a proprietary Nvidia technology that is supported on the RTX 5000 and above.

Those who can afford two Quadro RTX 8000s, for example, can effectively have a GPU with a colossal 96GB. With this amount of memory, Nvidia really can start to compete with the massively scaleable CPU architecture.

As you can imagine, the higher up the range you go, the more cores you get (CUDA, Tensor and RT). All GPUs are rated by FP32 performance, a measure of their single precision compute capabilities (TFLOPs), based on their CUDA cores alone. This figure can be compared directly to previous-generation Quadro products.

Nvidia has also introduced two new metrics to help users differentiate between its new GPUs. The first is RTX-OPS, which takes into account general processing power as well as the GPU’s ray tracing and deep learning capabilities. The second is Rays Cast, a specific ray tracing metric measured in Giga Rays/Sec. It’s important to note that the Quadro RTX GPUs are more power-hungry than the Pascal Quadros they replace. The max power consumption for the RTX 4000, for example is 160W, compared to the 105W of the Quadro P4000. The top-end RTX 8000 can go all the way up to 295W. DisplayPort 1.4 is standard across all four Quadro RTX GPUs. Also included is VirtualLink, a new open standard that can deliver power, display and data for nextgeneration VR headsets through a single USB Type-C connector.

Ever since Nvidia unveiled its Quadro RTX ray tracing GPUs last year, the design viz community has hotly anticipated their arrival. And that’s hardly surprising: the Unreal Engine demos, featuring stormtroopers and a Porsche 911 Speedster concept car, were quite breathtaking.

Producing a single ray traced quality photoreal image used to take seconds or even minutes, but this was now being done in a fraction of a second on a desktop workstation, albeit one with two very powerful GPUs. Nvidia had shown it could make photorealistic visualisation completely interactive and while there was almost certainly some smoke and mirrors, it marked a massive The Quadro RTX family advancement.

Nvidia has launched four Quadro RTX Fast forward six months and design viz GPUs, from the mid-range to the high end. artists can now start to see what all the We imagine Nvidia will launch lower-end fuss was about — well, kind of. Quadro Quadro RTX GPUs later this year, but we RTX might finally be shipping, but as it is don’t know this for sure. a completely new type of GPU technology, The Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB GDDR6), Quadro RTX 4000 it also needs special software to take RTX 5000 (16GB GDDR6) and RTX The Quadro RTX 4000 is probably full advantage of its ray trace rendering 6000 (24GB GDDR6) are essentially the best fit for AEC Magazine’s ’s key capabilities. And these audience of engineers applications simply and architects, and is aren’t commercially The Quadro RTX 4000 is hugely impressive for the focus for this review. available yet. the price and firmly cements the role of the GPU It costs under £1,000 But before we get but offers incredible as a multi-functional processor and not just a ahead of ourselves, it’s performance for the price. graphics card for interactive 3D worth taking a step back It’s a single-slot card, to look at what makes so will be available in a Quadro RTX different to wide range of single-CPU all GPUs that have come before. replacements for the Pascal-based and dual-CPU workstations.

Quadro P4000 (8GB GDDR5), P5000 If you’re thinking of upgrading your The ray tracing GPU (16GB GDDR5X) and P6000 (24GB current machine, you’ll need to make sure Quadro RTX is based on Nvidia’s new GDDR5X). There’s also a new ultra your PSU can handle its 165W power Turing architecture, designed from high-end model, the Quadro RTX 8000 requirements. You’ll also need an 8-pin the ground up for ray tracing and (48GB GDDR6), which is essentially the power connector. deep learning, a subset of artificial RTX 6000 with double the memory. It’s intelligence (AI). designed specifically to overcome the On test Previous generation Quadro GPUs, challenges of using the GPU for really To test the Quadro RTX 4000, we such as Pascal (Quadro P2000, P4000 high-end rendering where datasets can be compared it to the Quadro M4000, etc.) and Maxwell (Quadro M2000, incredibly complex.

P4000 and P5000, as well as the AMD M4000 etc.), featured thousands of Users can also double the addressable Radeon Pro WX 8200, which has a similar general-purpose Nvidia CUDA cores, memory by using two GPUs in the same price point.

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14/03/2019 10:38

Review

Our test machine is a typical mid- delivers very high-quality graphics in the range workstation with the following viewport and uses elements of ray tracing specifications: for real-time global illumination.

Enscape, the company, provided two • Intel Xeon W-2125 (4.0GHz, 4.5GHz real-world datasets for our tests: a large Turbo) (4 Cores) CPU residential building and a colossal • 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 ECC memory commercial development. The GPU • 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD memory requirements for these models • Windows 10 Pro for Workstation are quite substantial. The residential building uses 2.8GB @ FHD and 4.5GB @ For Nvidia GPUs, we used the 416.78 4K, while the commercial development driver, so it could be compared directly to uses 5.5GB @ FHD and 6.9GB @ 4K. This existing results. For the AMD Radeon Pro was fine for our tests, as all five GPUs WX 8200, we used the 18.Q4 driver. feature 8GB or more.

As touched on earlier, there are no The Quadro RTX 4000 beat all of the commercially available applications other GPUs by quite some distance (see that fully support Nvidia RTX, so for charts 1 & 2). The biggest lead came at this review, we tested with a range of 4K resolution, when it delivered almost professional applications for 3D CAD, double the frame rates of the Quadro real-time visualisation, VR and ray P4000 and the AMD Radeon Pro WX trace rendering. Wherever possible, we 8200. It was also significantly faster than used real-world design and engineering the Quadro P5000. datasets.

At this point, it’s important to note the relevance of Frames Per Seconds (FPS).

Interactive 3D Generally speaking, for interactive design For real-time visualisation, frame rates visualisation, you want more than 24 FPS were recorded with FRAPS using a for a fluid experience. While all the GPUs 3DConnexion SpaceMouse to ensure the achieved this at FHD resolution, only the model moved in a consistent way every RTX 4000 came close at 4K. time. We tested at both FHD (1,920 x The 20 FPS it delivered was impressive 1,080) and 4K (3,840 x 2,160) resolution. but, at times, the model stuttered, particularly when transitioning from the Enscape is a real-time viz and VR tool interior to the exterior of the commercial for architects that uses OpenGL 4.2. It development. However, as with most www.AECmag.com

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applications, you can dial down the visual quality in Enscape to increase performance. For example, when set to draft, which still gives very good visual results, we achieved 36 FPS and everything was silky smooth.

Autodesk VRED Professional 2019 is an automotive-focused 3D visualisation, virtual prototyping and VR tool. It uses OpenGL 4.3 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, as it smoothes the edges of body panels, but AA calculations use a lot of GPU resources, both in terms of cores and memory. We tested our automotive model with AA set to ‘off’, ‘medium’ and ‘ultra-high’.

The Quadro RTX 4000 was significantly faster than all of the other GPUs, but its advantage over the AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 became even clearer when real-time AA was enabled (see charts 3, 4 & 5).

At 4K, with AA set to medium, the RTX 4000 was the only GPU to give what we would describe as a fluent experience, only a touch below the ideal minimum of 24 FPS. However, when AA was set to ultra-high, even the RTX 4000 struggled, and the model was quite choppy in the viewport. In these types of automotive styling workflows, where visual quality is of paramount importance, you’d traditionally March / April 2019

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need to look at a multi GPU solution, with the P4000 and P5000, and taking dataset, the MaunaKea Spectroscopic although we wonder whether the Quadro into account its comparative performance Explorer telescope, an assembly with RTX 6000 could deliver this on its own. in VRMark, we would imagine it will be a 8,000-plus components and 59 million very good card for pro VR. triangles. Using the standard Solidworks We also tested with VRMark, a dedicated graphics engine, performance was quite virtual reality benchmark that uses both The Quadro RTX 4000 is complete poor — between 3 and 4 FPS. But this has DirectX 11 and DirectX 12. It’s biased overkill for most 3D CAD / BIM nothing to do with the capabilities of the towards 3D games, so not perfect for our applications, including Revit and RTX 4000. You’ll get a similar experience needs, but should give a good indication Solidworks, which tend to be CPU- with any half-decent pro graphics card of the performance one might expect in limited and often work just as well with and will need to rely on ‘Level Of Detail’ ‘game engine’ design viz tools, such as an entry-level or mid-range GPU like the optimisations to increase frame rates and Unity and Unreal, which are increasingly Quadro P1000 or P2000. stop the viewport being choppy. being used alongside 3D design tools.

However, CAD / BIM is one of the main However, with the new OpenGL 4.5 In the DX 11-based Orange Room test, reasons one would choose a professional beta graphics engine, which should make the RTX 4000 was its way into Solidworks actually slower than proper by the 2020 the other GPUs, but At the moment, because there are no apps that fully release, the Quadro we wouldn’t place too RTX 4000 delivered support RTX, anyone investing in a Quadro RTX much importance on a phenomenal 58 FPS these results, as the GPU can only use it in the same way they have used at 4K resolution with scores were away above Shadows previous Quadro GPUs – just using its CUDA cores RealView, what one generally and Ambient Occlusion needs for VR. In the enabled. more demanding Blue Room test, which is GPU over a consumer GPU, as these In short, the RTX 4000 should be designed for next-generation VR headsets, are certified and optimised for a range more than adequate for any CAD or BIM it had a small but significant lead. of CAD tools. This means there can be application. If that application is CPUIt even managed to beat the AMD stability and performance benefits and limited, then you almost certainly won’t Radeon Pro WX 8200 in the DX 12-based access to pro features such as RealView in find any GPU that will give you better Cyan Room, a test that AMD usually does Solidworks and OIT (Order Independent performance. On the other hand, if it isn’t well in because AMD’s Vega architecture Transparency) in Solidworks and PTC CPU-limited, then it should be able to is designed to perform well with low-level Creo, which increase performance and handle anything you throw at it.

APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan (see charts visual quality of transparent objects in GPU rendering 6, 7 & 8). the viewport.

We didn’t test the RTX 4000 in VR itself, In testing with Solidworks 2019 SP1 GPU rendering is nothing new; we’ve but from what we have observed previously we went straight for our most demanding been writing about it in this magazine for

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1

1

2

Enscape 2.4

Complex model @ 4K

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

13

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

Autodesk VRED Professional 2019

15

20

0

0

5

Autodesk VRED Professional 2019

20

5

10

15

Car model (medium AA) @ 4K

Car model (ultra high AA) @ 4K

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

23.2

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

7.9

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB) Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

25.3

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

3

0

5

10

34.0

15

20

25

30

March / April 2019

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35

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

0

15

20

5.4

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

20.7

10

3.8

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

14.7

5

1.7

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

10.2

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

2.8

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

4.5

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

17.8

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

7.9

20

Autodesk VRED Professional 2019

Car model (no AA) @ 4K AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

44

10

16

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

20

5

12

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

15

0

6

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

12

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

4

12

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

6

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

3

Enscape 2.4

Residential model @ 4K

25

8.0

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

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14/03/2019 10:38

Review ten years now. But 2019 could be the year that it really comes of age. While most of the renderers built into CAD and BIM applications still rely on the CPU, there are a growing number of impressive GPU renderers. These include V-Ray NEXT GPU, Solidworks Visualize, Siemens Lightworks, Lumiscaphe, Catia Live Rendering or any renderer that uses Nvidia Iray. Even Luxion KeyShot, a die-hard CPU renderer and one that is particularly popular with product designers, was recently demonstrated running on Nvidia GPUs.

we used Solidworks Visualize 2019 SP1 instead. This version doesn’t support Nvidia RT cores and can only utilise the GPU’s Nvidia CUDA cores.

Even though the Quadro RTX 4000 was not being used to its full potential, it was still incredibly fast at rendering. We started with the stock 1969 Camaro car model at 4K resolution with two different quality settings: first, at fast quality with 100 passes (see chart 11), enough to get a good test render; second, at accurate quality with 500 passes, which delivered significantly better results.

with Solidworks Visualize. However, this could change in the future, as AMD recently demonstrated a technology preview of Solidworks Visualize accelerated on Radeon Pro GPUs. Solidworks Visualize 2019 may not be able to harness the full capabilities of the RTX 4000 GPU quite yet, but it does have some tricks up its sleeve. The GPU can be used for artificial intelligence (AI) denoising to significantly reduce the time it takes to produce rendering output.

AI denoising works by rendering a scene with fewer light ray bounces, resulting in a grainy Solidworks Visualize image, then using deep For our tests, we focused learning to filter out the GPU rendering is nothing new; we’ve been predominantly on noise. Having learnt from writing about it in this magazine for ten years Solidworks Visualize. thousands of image pairs now. But thanks to GPUs like the RTX 4000 The name of this GPU(where one of each pair is accelerated physically- 2019 could be the year that it really comes of age noisy and the other is fully based renderer is a bit rendered), it essentially misleading, as it works predicts what the final with many more applications than the The RTX 4000 delivered its 100 image would have looked like if it had been CAD application of the same name. It pass render in a mere 35 seconds. But left to render with more bounces. can import Creo, Solid Edge, Catia and it took 500 passes to really see its true DS Solidworks reckons that if a scene Inventor models, as well as several potential over previous-generation GPUs. routinely needs 500 passes without the neutral formats.

It completed that job in just over half denoiser, then you may be able to achieve At Solidworks World in February, the time it took the Quadro P4000 and the same rendering quality with 50 passes there was a demo of a tech preview of just under a third of the time it took the with the denoiser enabled.

Solidworks Visualize 2020, which will Quadro M4000 (see chart 12). Adding a To see how this impacted performance, have full support for Nvidia RT Cores to second Quadro RTX 4000 to the same we turned on the denoiser, then rendered improve rendering performance when workstation also cut the render time in the same scene with 10 passes at fast using Nvidia RTX GPUs. But this is not two. We didn’t test the AMD Radeon Pro quality (see chart 13), and at 50 and 200 yet publicly available, so for our tests, WX 8200, as it does not currently work passes at accurate quality (see charts 14

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’’

6

7

VRMark Professional Edition

8

VRMark Professional Edition

VRMark Professional Edition

Orange Room

Blue Room

Cyan Room

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

Frames Per Second (bigger is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

180

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB) Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

91

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB) Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB) Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

183

0

50

100

150

6

0

200

9

10

20

30

50

60

Render time (smaller is better)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

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50

150

200

Radeon ProRender for Solidworks

127

102

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

160

100

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

150

200

358

143

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB) 100

163

100

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

162

76

0

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50

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

153

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

1

Render time (smaller is better)

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

137

0

10

V-Ray benchmark 1.08

99

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

54

40

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

44

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

46

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

152

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

33

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

189

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

16

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

185

AMD Radeon Pro WX 8200 (8GB)

41

99

0

50

100

150

March / April 2019

200

250

300

350

400

45

14/03/2019 10:38

Review & 15). This threw up some interesting Visualize with RTX done on a tech preview, so performance is results. When the scene was rendered Solidworks Visualize 2020 should offer full likely to change by the time the software with 10 passes, the RTX 4000 took support for Nvidia RT Cores, but what kind ships, but we reckon enabling the RT cores nearly twice as long as the P4000 (23 secs of rendering performance might we expect in Solidworks Visualize 2020 should compared to 12 secs). from the RTX 4000 once it is enabled? It’s cut render times by about 35%. And that With 50 passes, it was faster than certainly not going to be real-time. In fact, performance increase will be exclusive the older GPUs and that lead got we don’t even imagine a Quadro RTX 6000 to the RTX GPUs. You won’t get that with bigger with 200 passes, but we never will be able to deliver anywhere near that Pascal or Maxwell. found it delivered the same percentage promise for typical viz workflows. But it GPU memory performance advantage over the other should be notably quicker.

GPUs as it did when denoising was Nvidia has published some preliminary For real-time visualisation, the Quadro switched off. benchmark figures, comparing the results RTX 4000’s 8GB is probably plenty for We put this to Nvidia and are still from Quadro RTX 4000 (with RTX most mainstream workflows. However, awaiting a response, but when it comes to GPU it would appear that the rendering, it can be denoising calculations Memory In almost all of our tests — pro viz, game engine restrictive. in Solidworks Visualize requirements viz, VR and GPU rendering — the Quadro RTX with the size of theincrease 2019 simply take longer model, 4000 even beat the Quadro P5000, which is a the HDR images and the on Nvidia’s Turing architecture than they do class above and still retails for well over £1,000 textures, as well as with on Maxwell and Pascal. output resolution. In How this might impact Solidworks Visualize, if your productivity would depend entirely acceleration in Solidworks Visualize you run out of GPU memory, it simply on how you set up your renders in terms 2020) and a Quadro M4000 (in won’t run on the GPU and all the of passes and resolution, but it’s an Solidworks Vizualize 2019). What it hasn’t calculations will fall back on the CPU, important consideration, as it could mean provided is a direct comparison between which is significantly slower even with a the RTX 4000 doesn’t give you as big the Quadro RTX 4000 in Visualize 2019 big multi-core CPU. a performance increase as you thought and Visualize 2020.

To test what we could and couldn’t do it might. Of course, this is a moot point To get an idea of what this might look with the RTX 4000, we switched to a if you don’t intend to use AI denoising. like, we first replicated Nvidia’s render workstation with more memory – the Scan What’s more, everything may change test on our own machine, obtained a very 3XS WI4000 Viz, which we review on page in Solidworks Visualize 2020 anyway, similar render time and then adjusted the 49. The spec can be seen across the page. when we imagine the software will be figures slightly.

The RTX 4000 handled the able to harness the Quadro RTX’s Tensor It’s a little rough, of course, and it’s 1-million polygon 1969 Camaro car model Cores for the AI denoising. important to note that Nvidia’s testing was with ease, maxing out at 5.1GB when

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11

11

12

Solidworks Visualize 2019 SP1

1969 Camaro car model @ 4K // 100 passes, fast quality, no denoising // render time (smaller is better) Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

Solidworks Visualize 2019 SP1

1969 Camaro car model @ 4K // 10 passes, fast quality, with denoising // render time (smaller is better) Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

24

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB) Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB) 35

2 x Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB) 5

10

25

15

60

20

March / April 2019

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25

80

100

Solidworks Visualize 2019 SP1

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

111

60

80

100

120

800

1000

Solidworks Visualize 2019 SP1

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

412 223 196 35 142

2 x Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

36

40

600

1969 Camaro car model @ 4K // 200 passes, accurate quality, with denoising // render time (smaller is better)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

49

20

400

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

55

0

200

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

62

2 x Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

134

0

15

1969 Camaro car model @ 4K// 50 passes, accurate quality, with denoising // render time (smaller is better)

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

23

23

0

46

40

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

12

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

20

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

13

278

2 x Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

23

0

14

452

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

35

2 x Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

513

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

50

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 (8GB)

901

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

52

Nvidia Quadro P5000 (16GB)

13

Nvidia Quadro M4000 (8GB)

90

Nvidia Quadro P4000 (8GB)

Solidworks Visualize 2019 SP1

1969 Camaro car model @ 4K // 500 passes, accurate quality, no denoising // render time (smaller is better)

23 79

0

100

200

300

400

500

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14/03/2019 10:38

Nvidia Quadro P4000

Nvidia Quadro P5000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 5000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 6000

Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000

GPU architecture

Maxwell

Pascal

Pascal

Turing

Turing

Turing

Turing

Memory

8 GB HBM2

8 GB GDDR5

16GB GDDR5X

8 GB GDDR6

16 GB GDDR6

24 GB GDDR6

48 GB GDDR6

CUDA cores

1,664

1,792

2,560

2,304

3,072

4,608

4,608

Tensor cores

-

-

-

288

384

576

576

RT cores

-

-

-

36

48

72

72

RTX-OPS

N/A

N/A

N/A

43T

62T

84T

84T

Rays Cast

N/A

N/A

N/A

6 Giga Rays/Sec

8 Giga Rays/Sec

10 Giga Rays/Sec

10 Giga Rays/Sec

FP32 Performance

2.6 TFLOPS

5.3 TFLOPS

8.9 TFLOPS

7.1 TFLOPS

11.2 TFLOPS

16.3 TFLOPS

16.3 TFLOPS

Max Power Consumption

120 W

105W

180W

160W

265W

295W

295W

Display Connectors

DP 1.2 (4)

DP 1.4 (4)

DP 1.4 (4), DVI-D (1)

DP 1.4 (3), VirtualLink (1)

DP 1.4 (4), VirtualLink (1)

DP 1.4 (4), VirtualLink (1)

DP 1.4 (4), VirtualLink (1)

NVlink

No

No

No

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Form factor

Single Slot

Single Slot

Dual Slot

Single Slot

Dual Slot

Dual Slot

Dual Slot

Price* (Ex VAT)

N/A

£675

£1,399

£808

£1,832

£4,200

£5,558

rendering at 10k resolution. We then imported the MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer assembly, hit render, and it immediately fell back to CPU. In fact, this model is so big that we couldn’t even get it to render on the 16GB Quadro P5000.

There are no hard and fast rules here as to what the RTX 4000 will be able to handle in Solidworks Visualize or other GPU renderers, but if you’re currently pushing the limits of other 8GB GPUs, such as the Quadro M4000 or P4000, then you’ll probably need to look at the 16GB Quadro RTX 5000 or even higher.

Alternatively, you’ll need to get smarter about how you optimise scenes.

Multitasking One of the big challenges of giving the GPU more responsibility, and the ability to perform graphics and compute tasks at the same time, is that different applications will start to fight for finite resources. If you’re running a GPU render in the background, for example, but also need to spin a model in the CAD viewport, something has to give. Compared to AMD, Nvidia hasn’t historically fared so well in multitasking workflows like this, but has this changed with the RTX 4000?

To find out, we set a render going in Solidworks Visualize, then loaded up the colossal MaunaKea Spectroscopic Explorer telescope assembly in Solidworks 2019, using the new OpenGL 4.5 beta graphics engine. When panning, zooming and rotating, everything felt really responsive, which wasn’t always the case with the Quadro P4000. Viewport performance did drop — from 41 FPS to 25 FPS, but this didn’t impact our experience in any way. We upped the ante with Autodesk VRED, which demands even more from the GPU, but again everything www.AECmag.com

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*price taken from scan.co.uk on 15/02/19

Nvidia Quadro M4000

felt fine. With AA set to ‘off’, it dropped almost all of our tests — pro viz, game from 35 FPS to 22 FPS, and with medium engine viz, VR and GPU rendering — it also AA, from 21 FPS down to 14 FPS. beat the Quadro P5000, which is a class It was only when we set AA to ultra- above and still retails for well over £1,000. high that the RTX 4000 struggled, Its lead in Solidworks Visualize was going down from 9 FPS to 3 FPS. GPU outstanding, delivering rendering output memory possibly had an influence here nearly twice as a fast as the Quadro as both individual processes P5000. Things look set to only — rendering in Solidworks get faster. With our estimated Test Visualize and real-time viz 35% performance boost when machine #2 in Autodesk VRED — would RT cores are put to work in Scan 3XS have pushed GPU memory Solidworks Visualize 2020, usage to well over 8GB. this represents a significant WI4000 Viz In short, it looks like the boost to rendering workflows. (see page 49) RTX 4000 should be able But the RTX 4000 isn’t to handle multitasking flawless. It doesn’t maintain ■ Intel Core i9 9900K CPU workflows with relative ease. such a commanding lead (overclocked to 4.9GHz) (8 cores) when AI denoising is enabled, V-Ray / Radeon ProRender ■ Nvidia Quadro RTX especially when rendering with 4000 GPU (8GB We also tested the RTX few passes. In some cases, it’s GDDR6 memory) 4000 with two other GPU slower. Considering the RTX ■ 32GB (2 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance rendering applications. In 4000 is all about deep learning, LPX DDR4 3000MHz the V-Ray benchmark (see we found this very surprising. memory chart 9), it was an impressive As far as AI denoising is ■ 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME 25% faster than the P5000, concerned, we can only M.2 PCI-E SSD although this is all about raw presume the GPU will come ■ 2TB Seagate ray tracing performance, as into its own when its Tensor Barracuda Pro HDD the benchmark doesn’t take cores are put to full use in RTX■ Microsoft Windows 10 Professional advantage of the AI denoising optimised software, but for now, (64-bit) capabilities of V-Ray NEXT. it’s certainly too soon to judge.

In Radeon ProRender for Overall, Nvidia has done Solidworks (see chart 10), an an excellent job with its nextapplication where benchmark generation pro GPU. Even scores are usually dominated without the promise of RTX

by AMD, which develops the acceleration, it’s hugely software, the RTX 4000 was impressive for the price and about 20% faster than the AMD firmly cements the role of the Radeon Pro WX 8200.

GPU as a multi-functional processor and not just a graphics card for Conclusion interactive 3D. As it currently stands, the Quadro RTX While it looks like it may still take 4000 should be considered a GPU that can Nvidia some time to truly deliver on its do all the same things as its Quadro P4000 real-time ray tracing vision, it’s certainly predecessor, but much faster. In fact, in on the right path.

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14/03/2019 10:38

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Review

Scan 3XS WI4000 Viz This desktop workstation packs a big punch for real-time viz, VR and GPU rendering, and it’s no slouch when it comes to CPU-intensive workflows, writes Greg Corke Price £1,463 Ex VAT hp.com/zworkstation

The CAD workstation has had a pretty standard template for some time now — high frequency quad-core or six-core CPU, mid-range pro GPU, 32GB of RAM and an SSD. Of course, this spec is fluid and can be adjusted as required. For workflows that include real-time viz or VR, for example, you’ll need a more powerful GPU; for quicker ray trace rendering, a CPU with more cores. And if you do both, a bigger investment in both areas.

With the rise of GPU rendering, however, things are starting to change.

Firms can now put the lion’s share of their budget into the GPU to solve most of their computational demands and stick with a relatively cheap CPU. This is all great in theory, providing your ray trace rendering software of choice runs on the GPU. But this still isn’t always the case. Most renderers built into CAD and BIM tools still run on the CPU. Scan’s new 3XS WI4000 Viz workstation finds some middle ground, coupling the relatively low-cost eightcore Intel Core i9 9900K CPU with the phenomenally powerful Quadro RTX 4000 GPU. The result is an incredibly fast desktop workstation that can do most of what your average product designer will need for real-time viz, VR and GPU rendering, and all for under £2,000.

Eight-core power Until recently, eight-core CPUs came at a big premium, but the new Intel Core i9 9900K delivers this spec for a very palatable £417, a mere £84 more than the CAD-standard six-core Intel Core i7 8700K. Out of the box, the Core i9 9900K has a base frequency of 3.60GHz and a Max Turbo of 5.0GHz, but Scan has applied its overclocking expertise to deliver all eight cores at a phenomenal 4.90GHz. For single-threaded CAD and BIM applications, it doesn’t get much faster than this. In Solidworks, the machine felt www.AECmag.com

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lightning fast and set a new over an hour, it only produced Product spec record of 75 secs in our IGES a gentle hum. That said, the export test. What’s more, it also fans did rev up and down a ■ Intel Core i9 9900K CPU impressed in multi-threaded little, which some may find (overclocked to 4.9GHz) (8 cores) rendering benchmarks, annoying.

■ Nvidia Quadro RTX completing our 4K KeyShot Everything is arranged 4000 GPU (8GB scene in 255 secs and the really neatly inside. You GDDR6 memory) V-Ray benchmark in 60 secs. get easy access to the single ■ 32GB (2 x 16GB) Corsair Vengeance To provide some context, this 2TB Seagate Barracuda Pro LPX DDR4 3000MHz is more than twice as fast as HDD, while there’s a 500GB memory the Dell Precision 5820 we Samsung 970 Evo Plus ■ 500GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVME reviewed in June 2018, which SSD hidden beneath an M.2 M.2 PCI-E SSD had a quad core Intel Xeon heatsink. A second M.2 SSD ■ 2TB Seagate W-2125 (4.0 GHz to 4.5GHz). can be added, if it’s required.

Barracuda Pro HDD That CAD-focused workstation One of the nice features ■ Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit clocked 628 secs for KeyShot of the Asus Prime Z390-A ■ 460mm (h) x and 133 secs for V-Ray. motherboard is that it can 211mm (w) x 455mm (d) Scan’s overlocked Intel support up to three PCIe x 16 ■ 3 year warranty – 1st year onsite, 2nd Core i9 9900K is still some GPUs, so if you really want and 3rd year RTB way behind the 32-core AMD to go hard on GPU rendering, (parts and labour)) Threadripper 2990WX (116 simply add a couple of secs for KeyShot and 27 secs additional Quadro RTX for V-ray) but because it runs at 4.9GHz, 4000 GPUs, which cost £835 a piece. it will absolutely trounce AMD’s monster This configuration, however, would CPU in single-threaded workflows. require a more powerful PSU, as the Corsair TX550M 80-Plus Gold is only Star of the show rated at 550W. While the Scan 3XS WI4000 Viz is no The Scan 3XS WI4000 Viz comes with slouch when it comes to CPU rendering, 32GB (2 x 16GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX the star of the show is arguably the DDR4 memory running at 3,000MHz, new Nvidia Quadro RTX 4000 GPU. with two free slots on the motherboard We review this in detail on page 42, should you wish to upgrade later. but the long and short of it is that it’s a phenomenally fast GPU for real time Conclusion viz and VR. In terms of performance, we Overall, Scan has delivered an impressive found it to be anywhere from 53% to 109% new workstation. It may have a mainstream, faster than the Quadro P4000 it replaces, sub-£2,000 price tag, but there’s nothing an impressive GPU in its own right. But ordinary about the performance. the icing on the cake is its performance in What you can get out of the Quadro GPU renderers. In Solidworks Visualize, RTX 4000 GPU is quite phenomenal, but for example, it delivered a very good this machine also has plenty of grunt for quality 4K render in 278 secs, and, when CPU-centric workflows, both single and AI denoising was enabled, an equivalent multi-threaded. image in a breathtaking 49 secs.

In summary, it’s a fantastic all-round This is faster than any other GPU we workstation that can handle many have tested, but the Quadro RTX does different viz workflows and one we’d appear to be bottlenecked somewhat highly recommend. when using AI denoising in Solidworks Visualize 2019. We don’t know if the same would be true in V-Ray NEXT, which also supports AI denoising.

Few would argue that the performance of this GPU is phenomenal, but it will get even better when RTX-enabled applications start to ship. If you haven’t considered GPU rendering before, now is definitely a good time to do so.

The workstation itself is trademark Scan. It’s relatively quiet in operation, thanks to its dual-fan Corsair H100x hydrocooler, which needs to disperse even more heat than a standard nonoverclocked 95W Intel Core i9 9900K. Even after rendering in KeyShot for March / April 2019

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Review

HP Z2 Mini G4 With a high frequency 6-core Intel Xeon CPU and several GPU options, HP’s updated micro workstation is a great alternative to a standard CAD desktop, writes Greg Corke Price £1,463 Ex VAT hp.com/zworkstation

In late 2016 HP broke the mould with a desktop workstation that was significantly smaller than any other from a major manufacturer. The HP Z2 Mini delivered pretty much everything you’d want from an entry-level workstation for CAD or BIM workflows, but the stylish, angular chassis was only 216mm (w) x 216mm (d) x 58 mm (h) in size.

HP’s space saving workstation looked great on any desk. It could also be mounted under a desk, behind a display, or on a wall, housed in a metal sleeve. It was ideal for small spaces and you could also take it home or to meetings. Read our full review at tinyurl.com/z2-AEC. The second-generation HP Z2 (actually called the G4 Edition to get in sync with other HP Z Workstation release cycles) includes some small, but significant tweaks, mostly around the kit that’s inside.

The big news is the inclusion of the new “Coffee Lake” Intel Xeon E-2100 CPUs, which feature up to six cores and clock speeds of up to 4.70 GHz. Four CPU cores has been the standard in entry-level workstations for over 10 years, so the move to six cores is a big step up for engineering or architecture firms that rely on CAD or BIM software, as well as multi-threaded ray trace renderers.

The flagship CPU on offer is the Intel Xeon E-2176G, which features six cores, a base frequency of 3.70 GHz and a Max Turbo of 4.70 GHz. This is pretty much the fastest Xeon processor you can get for single threaded applications, such as 3D CAD. It’s also a significant step up from the HP Z2 G3’s top-end Xeon E3-1245 v5, which has four cores, a base frequency of 3.50 GHz and Max Turbo of 3.90 GHz. The additional 0.8GHz will make a noticeable difference in CAD / BIM and the six cores should cut render times considerably.

The HP Z2 G4 also offers several 8th Generation Intel Core processors and, for those on a really tight budget, an 8th generation Intel Core i3 and Pentium.

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In total, there’s a choice of level GPU. Frame rates Product spec 14 different CPUs, though peaked around 10 FPS at FHD not all of these are currently resolution and the machine ■ Intel Xeon E-2176G CPU (3.70GHz, 4.7GHz available on HP’s UK store. became pretty much unusable Turbo) (6 cores) The other major news is an at 4K resolution. In short, the ■ AMD Radeon Pro WX 4150 GPU (4GB expansion of GPU options.

HP Z2 Mini should only really memory) With the G3 Edition it was be considered for 3D CAD and ■ 16GB (2 x 8GB) Intel Integrated or the Nvidia BIM or very light real time viz DDR4 2666 SODIMM NECC memory Quadro P620 (2GB). Now, work at FHD resolution. In ■ 256GB HP Z Turbo there’s a choice of three saying that, if you do want to Drive 2280 TLC SSD discreet GPUs — two from get more 3D performance out ■ 1TB 7,200RPM Nvidia, the Quadro P1000 of this tiny machine, you could SATA 2.5inch HDD (4GB) and Quadro P620 potentially plug in an external ■ Microsoft Windows 10 Professional (4GB), and one from AMD, the GPU, such as the Sonnet eGFX 64-bit Radeon Pro WX 4150 (4GB).

Breakaway Box with a Radeon ■ 216mm (w) x These are mobile MXM GPUs, Pro WX 8200, which connects 216mm (d) x 58mm (h) rather than standard desktop over Thunderbolt 3.0.

■ 3/3/3 (material / labour / onsite) graphics cards, so they can fit In our CPU tests, the HP warranty inside the compact chassis.

Z2 Mini was very impressive.

In addition to the promise of The machine exported our better raw 3D performance, the additional IGES test model from Solidworks in 2GB of GPU memory should make a 80 seconds and delivered good scores difference in some applications. in our single threaded Revit 2019 tests Other than some minor tweaks, maintaining a clock speed between 4.60 including faster memory (DDR4 GHz and 4.70 GHz. 2,666MHz vs DDR4 2,400MHz), optional In our multi-threaded rendering tests Intel Optane memory and optional the additional two cores made a huge Thunderbolt 3.0 / USB 3.1 Type C, the core difference. It completed our KeyShot of the machine remains the same. render in 425 secs, significantly faster than the 733 secs it took the 2017 HP Z2 The test machine Mini G3, with a quad core Intel Xeon E3Our test machine featured the top end six 1245 v5 (3.5GHz, 3.9GHz Turbo). core Intel Xeon E-2176G CPU and an AMD For the first 20 seconds of the render Radeon Pro WX 4150 (4GB) GPU. On paper we got 4.20 GHz out of the Xeon CPU, this is a good solid combination for entry- but this soon went down to 3.90 GHz. level to mainstream 3D CAD, BIM and Impressively, it managed to maintain rendering which was borne out in our tests. this frequency for over an hour with only moderate fan noise.

With 16GB (2 x 8GB) of DDR4 memory, our test machine is only really equipped for moderate 3D datasets, but the Z2 Mini can be configured with up to 32GB. For storage, there’s the classic combination of 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD (HP Z Turbo Drive) for OS and applications and 1TB 2.5-inch HDD for data.

Conclusion In Autodesk Revit and Solidworks, 3D performance was pretty good. In these notoriously CPU bound applications, the HP Z2 Mini benefits from the high frequency CPU, which pushes up frame rates. And you wouldn’t get much better from a more powerful GPU. Switching to the new beta graphics engine in Solidworks 2019 generally gave a very fluid viewport experience, even with fairly large assemblies.

However, when pushing the GPU much harder in the viz-focused Enscape, performance was less impressive, but that wasn’t unexpected for such an entry-

The HP Z2 Mini G4 is a worthy successor to the G3 edition. You get the same stylish, space saving design at a similar price point, but with potentially 50% more CPU cores at higher frequencies. This leads to clear benefits in single threaded CAD / BIM software and multi-threaded rendering software.

The HP Z2 Mini is not the only micro workstation out there (we’re also big fans of the minuscule Lenovo ThinkStation P330) but it’s certainly the fastest. It offers similar levels of performance one can expect from a Small Form Factor tower but with much less bulk. www.AECmag.com

14/03/2019 10:47

P O WE RT O

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