A study by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has determined that a lack of interoperability during the building design phase costs the USA 16 billion US dollars every year. Estimates indicate that Germany is also paying a high price because of inconsistent data. Nemetschek Allplan's software deals with this problem and supports end-to-end design processes.
"With Allplan Engineering, we are reacting directly to the need for greater interoperability in the construction sector," says Clive Flynn, Head of Product Management for Engineering at Nemetschek Allplan GmbH. "As an integrated system for all design partners that supports all common construction methods, Allplan Engineering could not be better suited to interdisciplinary cooperation."
High performance in general arrangement and reinforcement design
Allplan Engineering was designed for open, interactive general arrangement and reinforcement design, with particular benefits for individually designed building projects with complex geometry. Users can create a spatial building model, working in the floor plan, isometric, elevation or section displays, as required. If changes are made to the general arrangement or reinforcement, these are applied automatically and consistently to all designs and schedules. Interaction between object-oriented general arrangement design, automatic shell-edge recognition, predefined reinforcement groups and intelligent fixtures create a high level of practicality.
Perfect interaction between CAD and structural analysis
"Round-trip" engineering makes it possible to use Allplan Engineering to transfer components to Friedrich + Lochner's structural programs. It is even possible to transfer an entire building model to the Scia Engineer structural software and quickly derive the analysis. Frequent design changes are no longer a problem. Allplan Engineering's update mechanism ensures that load-bearing components can simply be retransferred from Allplan to Scia Engineer. The structural analysis software lists the differences between the previous and the current status and displays them graphically. Users can decide which changes they want to accept. Immediately afterwards, the structural analysis calculations can be restarted for the amended system.
Efficient communication with design partners
Smooth data transfer is incredibly important in everyday design work. Allplan Engineering supports all common CAD formats such as DWG, DXF and DGN. Plans can also be easily imported from other CAD systems, re-exported and archived permanently as two-dimensional PDF documents.. Regardless of the CAD system used, the correct layout, scale information and layers are retained. Design partners or clients can be provided with the complete building model or details thereof in a graphical format as a three-dimensional PDF file. For interactive viewing, you only need the free Adobe Reader software.
Engineers can also use the certified IFC 2x3 interface to exchange intelligent building models worldwide with partners who do not work with Allplan.
Impressive design documents
As part of an end-to-end product line, Allplan Engineering also provides the full range of layout and design tools. They can be used to create graphically pleasing design documents with textures, color gradients and transparencies, they can also contain pixel images and impressive visualizations. Impressive design documents of these kinds help an engineering company to distinguish itself significantly from the competition, making it possible to better demonstrate the value of their work to clients.