BIM Blog

Global BIM Survey: Dubai is leading UAE into the future

AGACAD is conducting a Global BIM Survey that draws on the expertise of its partners around the world to examine the status and local specifics of BIM in different countries. In this installment, we look at digital construction in the United Arab Emirates through insights provided by BIM experts at Dubai-based Generative Design Solutions Middle East (GDSME). This engineering solutions company has a great team in the UAE, Kuwait, and Qatar that provides innovative technology solutions and services to the construction and manufacturing sectors.

Use of BIM standards in the UAE

Clients and owners are free to specify what standards to use for planning projects in the Middle East. They generally use or take benchmark settings from well-regarded standards like the UK’s Level 2 or the international BIM standard ISO 19650.

The same is true of classification standards, which have not been developed specifically for the region. Many clients take the US-based Uniformat or Masterformat, or Uniclass 2015 from the UK. As for protocols, for now we are taking the Construction Industry Council (CIC) Building Information Modelling Protocol from UK Level 2 and developing that for the requirements of clients here.

Dubai, meanwhile, as one of UAE’s seven emirates, has announced and is following a roadmap to develop its own BIM standard, with a first phase of it published this year and a second phase planned next year, in 2022. Thus Dubai is playing a leadership role, though GDSME stresses that the country as a whole is quite mature in terms of the level and volume of BIM use.

AGACAD Solutions Compatible with Revit 2022

To those who’ve been waiting to hear this announcement – thank you for your patience! Our BIM Application Engineers have been testing the Tools4BIM DOCK* against Revit 2022 to ensure complete compatibility. And now we’re pleased to announce that our BIM Solutions and Tools4Revit Add-ons are all ready to use with Revit 2022!

The Best and Fastest Way to Start Framing in Revit [WEBINAR]

Would you like to be able to design wall and roof frames easily in Revit®? Our Wood Framing and Metal Framing BIM software for Revit empower architects, structural engineers, and framed building contractors to do exactly that and much more. These powerful add-ons give Revit users a wide range of options for modelling framed buildings.

Beginners who are just starting out with our framing tools might feel overwhelmed doing the initial setup for a new project. We have good news – you can speed up framing projects by using best practices, which will help even experienced users. Attend this webinar and you’ll find out the essential steps to kick-start your project, get familiar with the user interface, and see a typical workflow for framing and generating schedules and cut lists.

This free 30-minute webinar will go live on July 15^th. We hope you can join us! Sign up below.

Our powerful Wood Framing and Metal Framing design software for total-precision framing in Autodesk® Revit® is continually improved based on the input of framing professionals all around the world. But even though best practices are built-in, it still takes time to get familiar with the tools. So come and join this free demonstration on how to start framing single and multi-layer timber and steel walls, floors, and roofs for prefabrication and on-site construction. Starting from an architectural project to generating shop drawings. Let’s do this!

The webinar will be held twice, so please register for the session that’s more convenient for you. Content will especially be of interest to architects, engineers, BIM managers, out-of-box Revit users, and designers of timber- or LGS-framed buildings.

Smart Assemblies Now Supports Automated Views for Casework in Revit [NEW FEATURE]

When it comes to tools that automate creating assembly views with dimensions, schedules, and sheets in Revit®, our Smart Assemblies BIM Solution is in a league of its own. And now with the latest update, this powerful tool can automatically rotate an assembly’s origin so that it points the correct direction in views of selected elements. It works for both instance elements and groups of elements.

This latest update of Smart Assemblies also includes a couple of features for element dimensioning and improved ways of working with a few Revit categories like casework, windows, and doors. We implemented these to features to further reduce BIM stress for Revit users around the world.

It’s really easy to create assembly views of an individual Casework (or Millwork) Family. All you have to do is select the casework objects that you want to make assemblies for and click ‘Create’. The tool will auto-rotate the assembly origin to the proper orientation and will create dimensions and views. You can even add more objects to the assembly. Take a look.

Make Holes for MEP Fittings in Revit with Cut Opening [NEW FEATURE]

When it comes to creating penetration holes in Revit, our Cut Opening BIM tool has been one of the best solutions on the market for several years running. And that’s thanks to our expert users around the world who use the software on a daily basis and send in their ideas for ways to improve the tool and streamline its associated workflows.

2021 will be a big year for Cut Opening, as new features, functionalities, and a novel workflow are in the works to make it even more robust. In April we released a software update that lets you copy parameter values from elements to which an opening belongs.

And now we’d like to reveal that Cut Opening can work with a whole new category of elements:

FITTINGS

Smart Views Activation Instructions for Current Users

News of interest for current users of Precast Concrete, Wood Framing, or Metal Framing: our new Smart Views tool is included, gratis!

If you have one or more licenses of any of our products listed below (Revit version 2022, 2021, or 2020), then Smart Views is included:

New Smart Views Tool Released for Revit Users

AGACAD has a brand-new tool available that makes project documentation easier for architects, MEP engineers, and structural engineers who use Autodesk® Revit®. Our newest product – Smart Views – lets you create any number of views with automated dimensions for selected elements in Revit without creating an assembly.

Smart Views is especially suited for Revit users who need to make drawings of sections and elevations of any building element, all the way from preliminary design stages through to a detailed design. It could be for a cast-in-place concrete wall with MEP openings or just a casework, a wood-framed wall or window, an elevation of selected walls, or a section of a particular connection.

So whether you’re an architect, structural engineer, or HVAC engineer, Smart Views is here to make your documentation tasks in Revit easier. And faster. That’s why we made the tool: to remove some stress out of your daily work.

Great news for current users!

If you are a current user of our Precast Concrete, Wood Framing, or Metal Framing design software, we have included Smart Views in your existing license(s), free of charge! See the ACTIVATION INSTRUCTIONS.

Not a current user of AGACAD’s Revit and BIM tools? We warmly invite you to out Smart Views for free – please scroll down for instructions.

BIM Tree Manager: More Control Over Your Revit Project [WEBINAR]

In this free 30-minute webinar on June 17^th we will show how to use BIM Tree Manager, a feature of our Smart Browser BIM Solution that helps architects, structural engineers, and HVAC engineers in their daily project management tasks in Autodesk® Revit®.

Project organization is time-consuming, and it’s easy to overlook details, especially when dealing with thousands of elements. All the same, this work has to be done to get deliverables and ensure project success. Thankfully there is a tool dedicated to this task: BIM Tree Manager.

A relatively unknown and untapped aid in the world of Revit project and family management tools, BIM Tree Manager was developed to meet the needs of the most advanced Revit professionals around the world. And we want to show you how useful it is in this webinar.

The webinar will be held twice, so please register for the session that’s more convenient for you. We especially invite BIM managers and BIM coordinators. Webinar content will also be of interest to out-of-box Revit users.

Wall Reinforcement Now Supports Fabric Sheets in Revit [NEW FEATURE]

BIM solution Wall Reinforcement got another update – one which had been Number 1 on our Precast Concrete users’ wish-list: the ability to automatically place fabric sheets of rebar. This feature lets Autodesk® Revit® users model sheets much faster than previously was the case.

Like the other features of our Wall Reinforcement Revit tool, the Fabric Sheets feature is flexible and easy to set up. You can choose your fabric sheet type and define all parameters available in Revit, like sheet alignment, Lap splice length, etc.

What’s great about the fabric area configurations is that you avoid the headache of having to enter additional offset values for each fabric area. Drawing the boundary for the fabric area boundary is also automated to match the shape of your wall layers, which is essential if you have sandwich walls with wythes of different heights.

Let’s look at the configurations.

Latest Advances for Wood & Metal Framing in Revit [WEBINAR]

During the past year, we made over 40 updates to our Wood Framing and Metal Framing BIM software for designing walls, floors, and roofs in Revit®. We’ll go through the most significant ones in this free 30-minute webinar on June 3^rd.

Meeting the needs of framing professionals around the world drives us to continually improve our BIM tools. It’s how we build BIM together. The enhancements you’ll see in this webinar include new features, enhanced sample families, and requests made by clients that bring benefits to a large part of our user base who design prefabricated timber and light-gauge steel-framed buildings.

Although we hosted webinars as features were released during the course of 2020, we’re pulling it all together in this one so that you can have the rundown in one convenient place.

The webinar will be held twice, so please register for the session that’s more convenient for you. Content will especially be of interest to designers of wood-framed buildings or LGS-framed buildings, architects, engineers, BIM managers, and out-of-box Revit users.