BIM Coordinator Program (INT) April 22, 2024
Find the next step in your career as a Graphisoft Certified BIM Coordinator!
Collaboration with other software
About model and data exchange with 3rd party solutions: Revit, Solibri, dRofus, Bluebeam, structural analysis solutions, and IFC, BCF and DXF/DWG-based exchange, etc.

Ideal Structural Collaboration

smith74
Participant
I'm trying to figure out what I expect from the ideal structural collaboration process in ArchiCAD.

(I'm not even sure I could convince our structural designers to collaborate with us on a higher level.)

At the moment we always receive 2D drawings back from them (dwg) with a list of changes, what we manually apply to our ArchiCAD modell.

Are there others in the same situation?

I'm dreaming of the following:
-export the structure from ArchiCAD to a file
-send this file to the Structural company
-continue working on the Architectural model
-get back a file from the structural company
-compare the two models and decide on all the changes to accept/deny
-do a second round if necessary... (usually yes)

::paul.co
12 REPLIES 12
smith74
Participant
Laura wrote:
manual clash detection
That must take quite a lots of time. How often do you face changes and have to decide ?
Laura Yanoviak
Advocate
smith74 wrote:
Laura wrote:
manual clash detection
That must take quite a lots of time. How often do you face changes and have to decide ?
It's no different from what we did with 2D CAD, and is part of the coordination process as far as I'm concerned.
MacBook Pro Apple M2 Max, 96 GB of RAM
AC26 US (5002) on Mac OS Ventura 13.5
NandoMogollon
Advocate
smith74 wrote:
I'm more-less confident on what we can do now, I'm just curious how others imagine an ideal solution.

::paul.co
My 10 cents...
On the project I'm currently working on, a big building (170.000 square meters with no typical floors).There is what we have done:
We send DWGs from our model so the structure and other consultants M.E.P, security, and others can work on their software (mostly Autocad),and receive DWGs. All 2D. Then Some people in our own office is in charge of having the structure model, Services model (MEP) and others up to date according to the consultants latest information. All of those models (structure, services, site, etc...) are teamwork separated files (PLPs). The rest of the office is working on the architectural design, on a different teamwork file.
The way we "share" the different files is trough Hotlinks, which is a little bit tricky, because of the attributes, but it works.
The rest of the process, Documentation, is as follows: Views are created on the PLP files, mostly on the Architectural teamwork file, and exported as PMK files, and then placed on the Layouts in separate PLN files.
Because We do not have solibri or Navisworks, we just have meetings to detect and redline the clashes on the model.
It's far from the ideal solution, but is a practical one.

Best regards!
Nando
Nando Mogollon
Director @ BuilDigital
nando@buildigital.com.au
Using, Archicad Latest AU and INT. Revit Latest (have to keep comparing notes)
More and more... IFC.js, IFCOpenShell
All things Solibri and BIMCollab
Learn and get certified!