ODA DevCon ’19—Coming Full Circle in The AEC Industry

THE OPEN DESIGN ALLIANCE (ODA) IS NOW OVER 20 YEARS IN EVOLUTION. ODA was started to create an open industry standard format around (.dwg)—originally named OpenDWG Alliance. Now new opportunities and developments are in place targeting today’s many pressing AEC and MCAD data needs.

A World-Class Software Organization

With 4 offices and 90 internal employees and programmers—including some of the best mathematicians in the CAD/BIM industry—and 1200 members, the ODA appears to be a healthy and growing non-profit organization. The conference itself also showing growth even while in Milan and with a registration fee for the first time. The conference grew 50% over 2018 with over 150 attendees.

Today, the ODA is tackling much more than (.dwg), the CAD file format that initiated its origins. The current ODA offerings to standard members include a “technology stack” (a unified collection of high-level SDKs) which ODA President Neil Peterson introduced as Drawings, Architecture, Visualize, Publish and Web.

In addition, SDKs for BimRv (Revit), BimNv (Navisworks), C3D Modeler, Civil, Map3D and Mechanical are also available at an additional cost. Several of these technologies were presented at this week’s conference with more information below.

New Partnership with buildingSMART (bSi)

The ODA DevCon’19 Conference in Milan started with a significant announcement: buildingSMART (bSi) and ODA were forming a strategic partnership around technology supporting open standards for BIM. IFC and RVT support have been a recent top request of ODA membership and this year ODA has responded. IFC is a part of an interoperable workflow solution for BIM across software applications and platforms.

A central part of the strategic alliance between ODA and bSi is to establish a strong process and production standard that ODA can help develop and test prior to final standards are set and an ISO standard is completed. The standardization and implementation of IFC historically have been problematic across individual software with many solutions competing and conflicting. This will not be the case going forward with IFC4.2 (currently supported with ODA) and with a more robust and standardized IFC5 published within the next 1-2 years for both bSi and ODA.

Opening the BIM workflow involves a 2nd generation of building software tools where the ODA has become a critical enabler for the industry. These SDK tools become parts of manufacturer software tools and design software authoring solutions. In addition to these direct BIM workflow tools, ODA is creating a significant pathway for today’s cloud-based efforts as well. Several developments supporting BIM and cloud-based workflows were presented during the conference with timelines for additional improvements over the next year. (see next pages on cloud).

next pages: Modeling Developments, Open Cloud, Revit and Navisworks

Modeling Developments — Points, Kernels, Facets, and Solids

Point cloud format support is a new part of the ODA. Based on the Autodesk ReCap (.rcs) format, this support creates smoother workflows with point cloud data between disciplines such as civil, architecture and construction and can be part of an as-built confirmation of the built condition. As 3D scanning technologies have become more capable, cheaper and more popular, this development will be very important as part of the ODA SDK offerings. At the conference, significant work in LOD (level of detail) methodologies was demonstrated for efficiency. This is quite important as the files can quickly be 100s of MBs and larger in size. One demonstration during the conference showed a 25 GB point cloud file opening in ODA’s Visualize viewer in an impressive 4 seconds.

Developments in BIM workflows with standardized translations and libraries require strong fundamentals in 3D modeling. While strong modelers have been available for decades, new modeling capabilities need to be built straight into BIM products for consistent, complex form generation, and documentation. ODA is building support for both faceted and solid modeling which it presented at the conference.

One ODA member C3D (see: Architosh, “C3D Labs Unveils B-Shaper for AEC and BIM Developers,” 18 July 2019) is helping with the more complex solids and boundary representation (B-Rep) shapes. Basic modeling functionality, built on C3D’s own mathematical kernel, is also available to all ODA members. Interestingly, the C3D kernel also provides a new alternative for modeling that isn’t reliant on Spatial’s ACIS or Parasolid—two of the dominant existing modeling kernels—which require licensing from Dassault or Siemens, respectively, at this time.

BimRv, the SDK workflow to read and write Autodesk’s Revit (.rvt) format is quickly moving forward as well. Several aspects are in beta but with multiple releases planned over the next calendar year for iterative production implementation.

Complementing the BIM workflow further, BimNv SDK adds Navisworks file capabilities. Already capable of reading NWD, NWC, NWF, and visualization, planned releases over the next year will include partial loading, multi-threading, geometry editing, and data streams.

It is interesting to point out what the specific components of Revit and Navisworks technology are that are being staged for incremental implementation. Be sure to click on the two thumbnail images above to see the timeline and the components of implementation, as it gives you a sense of direction and progress.

next page: ODA’s Exciting Open Cloud Technologies

And to an Open Cloud

Open Cloud, ODA’s brand for common data access (CDA), or a common data environment (CDE), describes industry efforts for an end-to-end single-source, cloud-based project delivery tool, combining all the multiple technologies supported by ODA already but then extends these to the cloud. Interestingly, as several ODA technologies are embedded in additional software solutions, the new ODA Open Cloud capabilities are being adopted by end-users as well.

Currently, AWS has been supported and Microsoft Azure was presented and supported currently as well, but ODA indicates that any cloud OS, public or private, will work, even self-hosted servers using ODA provided REST API. Again, the ODA Technology Stack provides Open Cloud with an integrated solution to several CAD and BIM formats (ODA authored and supported) for access, viewing, properties, markup, automation, editing, versioning, and collaboration.

One impressive developer demonstration by Robert Graebert of Graebert GmbH also included an optimization technology by ODA for online graphics (VSF visualized stream format for Open Cloud) loading a 40 MB (.dwg) file on an iPad. The VSF capabilities provide partial indexing for low memory import and low RAM requirements creating online hosted capabilities of large geometric datasets realized.

In Conclusion

The ODA has prepared well for the moment of the oncoming demand for a common data environment, or CDE. They call it Open Cloud. And in ODA form, it’s an open CDA or CDE independent of platform or hardware. It can be owned by a firm, business, or software developer…only ODA membership required.

Your data is yours, on or off the cloud. The ODA has built their technology stack to include base AEC formats like DWG, DGN, IFC and web support. On top of that going forward RCS, RVT, and NWF are included as well.

This technology picture begins to add serious teeth to advancing technology democratization for end-users in AEC through broader universal toolsets and common workflow architectures making strong use of de facto or agreed-upon industry standards for files and data. It will no doubt enable ODA members to accelerate plans to engage the cloud further, or for the first time, as well as facilitate greater interoperability potential for their end-users. We see this work being done by the ODA as playing a critical part towards driving at streamlining workflows and activating the potential to drive at capturing productivity gains in the AEC industry, something sorely missing for three-plus decades.

As for the next evolutions for the ODA beyond this? The ODA will take steps to push into the manufacturing CAD space (MCAD) with the STEP interoperable format (similar structure to ICF in some interesting and convenient ways and the new glTF format (GL Transmission Format based on JSON). The ODA continues to create access and opportunity for open collaboration and innovation—moving toward the digital twin but without proprietary controls or formats.