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Integrated and Efficient Using today's AEC software to make our jobs easier by Luigi Benetton D esigning buildings. Estimating costs. Tracking time. Managing projects. Billing for time and materials. Reporting RFIs. These, along with dozens of other types of paperwork, have long been crucial in the businesses of architecture, engineering and construction (AEC). That all this work once ran on paper alone seems inconceivable given the ever-burgeoning use of digital tools throughout the industry. To understand the current stage in the evolution of software built for AEC, it helps to grasp several modern trends permeating information technology today: mobile computing, cloud computing and collaboration. Mobility "In the past, projects of a certain size had a computer on site, connected to a wireless network," says Patrick Baker, president of Constructive Solutions for Business Inc. "Workers would go to that computer to access information. Now project coordinators, managers and superintendents are bringing tablets into the ield." "People expect to capture information in the ield and bring it back to the of ice, like time and daily ield reports," Baker continues. "They also expect to do checklists, quality assurance tasks and punch lists using a tablet." The spread of tablets in AEC underscores the demise of computing's one-sizeits-all doctrine. Desktop applications still rule in-house, but their limitations elsewhere can be deal-breakers. Web applications are easier to deploy outside a irm's irewalls since they involve no software installs or Terminal Services-type setups. But in the ield, applications now need to it on quickstarting, camera-equipped, easy-to-use tablets. After all, tech-savvy AEC pros already download the tools they want from mobile app stores to piece together their own solutions. "Traditionally, you would capture defects using MS Word," says Lance Tressler, product manager for Meridian Systems. "Today, we can take videos or pictures of defects and annotate them to point out defects and what needs to be corrected." Enthusiasm for tablets doesn't translate as readily to smartphones, since they don't deliver the same user experience. While certain tasks, like punch lists, can work well on limited phone screens, "to ask superintendents to ill out daily reports on a smartphone would be horrible," notes Tressler. Mobile apps are designed for what Shafat Qazi calls 'low friction.' "The app must be really fast, or you won't use it," he says. Qazi, CEO and founder of BQE Software, notes the example of recording taxi cab fare as an expense before reaching the check-in desk at a hotel. "I open the application, take a picture of my cab receipt, add in the expense, and I'm done by the time I get in line at the registration counter," he claims. "Many desktop applications overdo it," Qazi continues. "People don't need 500 things on their screen. They just need a timesheet in which to enter their hours. My system should know what projects I'm working on, what tasks are assigned to me, and when I submit my timesheet it should know who my timesheet should go to." The Cloud Data synchronization points to another trend in modern computing – an increasing reliance on the cloud, or software as a service (SaaS). Cloud systems fall into several 'location-based' categories. Companies can buy systems and host them, buy systems and have the vendor host them, or just rent the software as a service. AEC Software p.40-45software_waterproofing.indd 41 "People are more willing to use SaaS," Baker opines. "They can scale as they get more projects and more people. There's no additional hardware investment required." Hewlett-Packard printers make use of the cloud. HP's Designjet T2300 eMFP connects to the Internet to enable what HP calls 'ePrint and Share,' a set of features meant to save time when sharing and printing documents. For instance, once marked-up blueprints are scanned, they can be sent to HP's online ile centre for sharing with project members in other physical locations. Hand-drawn updates can be converted into vectors and introduced back into the original blueprint. "You can bring marked-up drawings into AutoCAD, or convert it to a drawing exchange ile (DXF) so that you can take printers are available. For its part, Autodesk adopted a strategy common to other software developers when it launched Autodesk 360 last fall. Autodesk's subscription customers can store project documents in the cloud, and take advantage of other collaboration services. Autodesk also offers cloud-based processing power. Customers can delegate tasks like building performance analysis and visualization of Revitbased models to servers in the cloud, keeping their own computers unburdened as they continue working. "After the analysis is completed in the cloud, the user gets a detailed report comparing different designs side by side in terms of energy consumption and costs," explains Joy Stark, industry marketing manager for Autodesk. it into other applications which support the DXF format," says Allen Rothwell, large-format print specialist and channel manager at HP. In a nod to user experience, a smartphone-like touchscreen provides access to these features. The ePrint and Share sof t ware can poll the net work it 's running on to see what HP Designjet AutoCAD WS, a free CAD editor, works within a web browser or as a mobile app to facilitate design changes on the ly. "In the ield, at a construction site, you can pull up design iles and look at where issues might stem from, make changes to the ile, and upload changes back to the cloud," Stark says. Other Autodesk mobile apps include JUNE 2012 /41 5/25/12 11:51:02 AM

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