BIM finally starting to pay off for AEC firms

In surveying Giants 300 firms about BIM, we went right for the jugular: Is BIM paying off—through cost savings, higher quality, or client satisfaction? Here’s what they told us.

By Robert Cassidy and Tim Gregorski

AutoCAD WS : My Take

Today, I had a situation where I could not access AutoCAD on my desktop and had to find an alternative to use a CAD drafting tool which will work on a browser. My hunt began and I settled with using AutoCAD WS. At first, I found it easy to login with my Autodesk ID. Also could quickly upload my existing drawing which I wanted to modify on the fly. I had to acquaint myself with the location of the tools and the interface, but it took only a few minutes to do that. I uploaded my dwg and began to modify the drawing and add / remove the information as required. At times I did not find some tools and the command prompt was useful in prompting that tools like fillet aren't available as yet. I was happy to see Array, Extend and others work quite neatly. I could proceed to work with the familiar contextual tabs and the easy shortcuts available on hovering or selecting the objects. It was simply a breeze!

Since I was on a slow internet connection and one which would drop many times, I think what would be helpful is that WS should allow working offline and could synchronize the drawing once the internet is available again. This can really be helpful considering that most Autodesk applications would eventually find their home in the cloud! Extracting PDFs didn't work in my case. I downloaded the DWG and then used Trueview to print to PDF using my pre-installed CutePDF.

I think it's a great effort from WS team to have the most widely and familiar drafting application be available on a browser. Though its bandwidth hungry, I think this would be a sure thumbs up to the On-the-move community of designers and professionals, including the ones who'd prefer Android and iOS going ahead!

Right here, Right now!

This is a documentary film shared by Manan Vasa. Thanks Manan! 

This shows the cause and effect relationship very well. Thought provoking how our small little reactions create the world around us. A lot of distinctions at Landmark came alive for me when I was watching this part. How our actions are perfectly correlated to the way the world occurs to us. Watch it when you are totally free. Don't break in the middle. Its a short film, around 30 mins. Watch the first part first. The last scene of second half is really beautiful, don't jump there directly.

Enjoy !

PART 1

 
PART 2

Do share with others...

Structural Steel Design in India - BIM and Design Build Process

Really worth watching how Thornton is using BIM to its fullest for Structural Design

Digital Architecture - Showcase 01

Back to School

Late June, last year, when my friend Prasad asked me if I was interested in teaching in a college, I looked at him and said "are you serious?"

After graduating from an architecture college, I have largely pursued my passion of technology in the job that I took up, the post-grad that I went ahead with and the business that I started. I had no clue when it came to teaching in a mainstream architecture college! My reaction to Prasad was that all I can think and talk about is technology and unfortunately architecture colleges have hardly any infrastructure. And our discussion went on with the thought that what would be available if we could teach something to budding architects without having to deal with too much infrastructure in college and yet have the course geared towards technology. So thats how my journey of creating a course to delivering it began. Labelled as "Digital Architecture and later modified to "Integrated Practice in Design & Construction", I began delivering it at IES College of Architecture in Mumbai as an elective subject.

With a batch of  20+ 4th yearites who are ultra busy with moving the entire college ahead with them, I can say that my journey with this bunch of budding architects has been quite pleasant and fulfilling.

So with that, I'm going to post links to some of their works, here, for all of you to see. Please take a moment and give your valuable feedback. In a few months, they'll be part of the professional industry. And I'm sure they'll be adding alot of value to our profession.

Case-Studies
1. Autodesk AEC Solutions Division Headquarters

More links to follow.

A Gift to myself

Its been quite a while that I gifted something to myself. And this gift was on my mind for a while now. I wanted to register and use the domain dedhia.com about 3 years back, when after registering the domain, I got to know that someone else registered it almost the same time and it went to him! So I kept this idea in the back burner for all these years. 

This month being my birthday month, I wanted to make it special for myself. So I went ahead and registered chiragdedhia.com ! And I made it Live! As of now, its my blog. I plan to make it a full fledged website and share my life.