KCC 2017: The Exhibitors in Kyoto—Innovation From Asia

At GRAPHISOFT’s Key Client Conference in Kyoto, Japan, in late May, the BIM leader had over a dozen exhibitor companies in attendance to talk to conference attendees about their AEC software and BIM-related solutions. Also in attendance at the event were large multinationals in the hardware arena serving the AEC market, such as Dell, Fujitsu, HP and Nvidia.

While there were some interesting items of note from the multinational hardware companies mentioned above—and I’ll get to one very interesting one from HP at the bottom of this article—the focus of below is squarely on the software companies largely serving the Asian AEC markets. One final note before we look into some of these companies. All of the exhibitors took to the conference stage on day one to discuss their companies, services, and products for the AEC market. This wetted the appetites of KCC attendees and press alike to visit their booths during conference session break periods.

Exhibitors of Interest

AKL FlowDesigner

Advanced Knowledge Laboratory, Inc., is the maker of AKL FlowDesigner, a computational fluids dynamics (CFD) software aimed at the AEC industry. The purpose of this software is to visualize wind flow and temperature distribution, something not easily understood as to its effects on buildings, but vitally important with large or complex structures and especially in urban sites where complex wind flows are generated by nearby buildings.

AKL FlowDesigner has many uses for architects and urban designers, including air flow analysis in urban environments, air conditioning analysis of arenas, indoor condensation analysis, ventilation duct heating analysis, among many others. Models of buildings and environments can be imported into this CFD software using formats such as IFC for BIM models, SketchUp, STL, and 3DS formats. The Japanese made software is aiming to democratize a typically complex piece of engineering software. It simplifies the application of this technology, helping architects bring analysis technology to the front-end of the design process so they can iterate designs in response to the impacts of wind flow.

I saw something like this years ago at AIA National Convention, by Altair Corporation, but it was a demo and not a shipping product yet for architecture. AKL FlowDesigner is today a shipping product for architects. ARCHICAD architects can import their building designs into AKL FlowDesigner using IFC and run numerous analyses and simulations. Moreover, given the strong connection between ARCHICAD and Rhino and Grasshopper, it is worth noting that there is a new Grasshopper component of FlowDesigner as well. To learn more, you can visit them here.

smartCON Planner

Another interesting piece of software is smartCON Planner, developed by Kajima Corporation and distributed and supported by another exhibitor named Doalltech, an AEC solutions provider. smartCON Planner is software for the construction side of the AEC world; it’s for general contractors and other building professionals. Kajima itself is one of the world’s largest construction companies and one of the top 5 largest construction companies in Japan.

smartCON Planner helps eliminate errors by visualizing the construction process itself via 3D models. It works inside ARCHICAD itself and therefore is technically add-on software to the core BIM application. The best way to quickly understand what smartCON Planner does, however, is through watching a demo movie (see below).

smartCON Planner is pretty amazing and helps builders visualize and plan scaffolding, crane lift operations, earth anchor placement, and road deck placement, among other things. It comes loaded with 3D model elements of items builders use in construction for these operations and processes, thereby enabling them to plan and visualize the construction workflow to find and troubleshoot problems virtually, which is so much cheaper than troubling-shooting construction issues in real-time on the job site.

Doalltech is a Korean company and is the distributor of smartCON Planner.

dRofus

dRofus was also an exhibitor at the 2017 KCC in Kyoto and is the newest subsidiary of the Nemetschek Group in Germany. dRofus is a planning and data management tool squarely focused on the “I” in BIM. The application is particularly strong in architecture segments like hospitals and airports. Darren Tims, a principal at HDR | Rice Daubney, Australia, a presenter at the KCC, also discussed his firm’s use of dRofus and praised it for its unique capabilities.

dRofus is a database application, principally. Data can sync between it and BIM tools like Revit and ArchiCAD and run bi-directionally. dRofus also supports IFC workflows. The program features four modules: (1) Rooms, (2) Room Data Sheets, (3) Items, and (4) Systems. The first module is fundamentally an aid in the architectural brief or architectural programming development. Owners, owner reps, users, and the architects and planners can drop in information in the Rooms module, while the “Room Data Sheets” add even more information to specific rooms using a data sheet format which is fully customizable.

“Items” is the third module and helps the user organize FF&E, services, door, window and finishes data and is again, bi-directionally linked to the Building Information Modell (BIM). “Systems” as the fourth module helps organize all data related to components in the MEP and engineering and technical environments. This module is currently only available in Scandinavian versions, but an international version is underway.

To learn more about dRofus visit them here on the web.

next page:  More ARCHICAD Third-Party Apps, Rebro 2016, and Something Special From HP

ADS-BT for ARCHICAD

In Japan, they have complex restrictions on building heights and lot volume rules, shadow regulations, and something called the sky ratio. As a result, architects must do complex analyses and calculations under these restrictions. You can gain a peak at this complexity by looking at this twin diagram here on this product page by Seikatsu Sangyo Laboratory, the makers of numerous software solution plugins for various BIM systems.

This Japanese software maker was showing several solutions related to ARCHICAD but a gaze at this website shows that their technology is also available to rival BIM programs in Japan.

What Seikatsu Sangyo Laboratory (SSL) develops principally is a product named ADS, a family of products with 30 years behind it. The current family of ADS products is at version 9. While they have a stand-alone application, called ADS-win, their ADX converter program can bring in data from ARCHICAD, Revit, and Vectorworks. It can also bring in data from SketchUp and JWW.

At the Kyoto conference, the company was primarily touting ADS-BT, an ARCHICAD add-on application that brings the technology of the ADS-win app into ARCHICAD directly. This product works on both Windows and Mac platforms. A video of it is shown below.

With this tool, ARCHICAD architects in Japan can efficiently maximize buildable volumes on any type of building site (lot). They can deal with regulatory limitations for shadow time, calculate sunlight, create shaded time charts and produce useful data necessary for Japan’s sky rate regulations.

MassPlan for ARCHICAD

This application is unique to just ARCHICAD and is another add-on application. With it, you do volume studies and perform area tabulations and area tables for walls, slabs, curtain walls and automatic functions related to the Morph and Zone element in ARCHICAD.

MassPlan does several other things too, including tabulating areas based on zone classification and doing interference checking. This add-on is also available on Windows and Mac.

Finally, this company makes a few more add-ons for ARCHICAD. One is a quotation tool called the Quadrature tool for ARCHICAD. From what I gathered it makes speedy work of quadrant drawing calculations. To learn more about this family of products go here: www.tokyo.epcot.co.jp

Rebro 2016

This is a mechanical design BIM application by NYK Systems of Japan, a company that was only established in 2007. It is a fully BIM-centric mechanical engineering BIM system with an attractive, logical user interface. From what I gathered in my discussion with the representative from the company, it is an Open BIM friendly application that works with IFC for data interoperability and is built to support multi-core processing and is fully 64-bit. The rep said it has the power to handle very large models (projects).

Rebro 2016 has a direct inbound link from Autodesk Revit, but ARCHICAD users bring in their data (model) using IFC. Rebro than can take its data model out with IFC to Navisworks and Solibri but has some dedicated export functions to Japanese market solutions.

I asked if Rebro, which is also now in China, was going to come to the United States or Europe. The rep said they would love to take it there as they have an English-language version in the works. But they need reps to sell it, and so at this time, it seemed unlikely. The English-language version is supposedly for the Chinese markets like Hong Kong. To learn more visit them online here: www.nyk-systems.co.jp.

HP’s Cool Weapon—HP Remote Graphics Software on Z-Workstations

HP was also at the Kyoto conference, as were other hardware vendors as noted above. But HP’s new tiny mobile workstation appliance, the HP Z2 Mini Workstation, which is shown below in the image, is the device that needs to be brought to the attention of Architosh’s readers.

Now the reason why this device is key to bring up is two-fold. Firstly, we can view it for what it is as a tiny workstation made specifically for the CAD markets. And secondly, we can talk about its freely included HP Remote Graphics Software solution. With that tech, users can enable remote access to the HP Z2 from multiple devices.

So at Kyoto at the HP booth, the HP Z2 wasn’t just demonstrating how well this PC workstation could run ARCHICAD 20—and it can run it very well—it was also showing how the HP Remote Graphics Software works. Sitting next to the HP Z2 was an Apple Macbook Air and on its screen was ARCHICAD 20 running remotely back at the nearby HP Z2.

HP RGS transfers the HP workstation’s screen images at up to 60 fps (frames per second) for HD (high-def), and it looks really good on Apple’s 4K display Macs. With the HP RGS Reciever software for Mac, Linux or Windows, an Apple Mac user can access any of HP’s powerful workstations and run both Windows and Linux applications remotely over the Internet to their Mac.

The Mac ArchiCAD User Case

While many ARCHICAD firms user Macs, all Macs or a mixture of Macs and Windows machines. Those who invest in an HP Z2 or another HP workstation can use it to provide access to Windows and Linux apps to their employees, in the office or at home or the road, via HP RGS Receiver. You can also collaborate with multiple people at once by sharing the screen via the Receiver software.

Take a look at the video below.

In Kyoto, I moved the mouse on the Apple MacBook Air, and the BIM model moved in ARCHICAD on both the MacBook Air and the HP Z2 at the same time. This was pretty neat stuff, and architects can imagine many users for it. Additionally, you can share access to the screen with multiple parties all at once. This means remote clients, consultants and team members can collaborate around an HP RGS solution.

To learn more about this technology go here. For a dedicated page on HP Remote Graphics Receiver for Mac go here.

Closing Comments

Like the other press members in Kyoto at the GRAPHISOFT Key Client Conference, I wasn’t aware of the many ARCHICAD add-on software solutions developed for and in very active use in the Asian AEC markets. It is very good to see this development support, and it bolsters my existing impression that in Japan GRAPHISOFT has a very strong position within the overall AEC software market.

There were several other companies exhibiting at GRAPHISOFT’s KCC, such as sister company Bluebeam and others…many already known to the western AEC markets. What this article was aiming to do was to add exposure to these excellent Asian technology companies offering products and services around GRAPHISOFT in Asia.

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