Delivering high-performance buildings, small and large, on schedule, on budget, and error free is the challenge facing practitioners today. Integrating design, analysis, fabrication, and construction in multiple disciplines through all phases of work
Architectural Features
Building information modeling
- Comprehensive and dedicated tools for every type of building component
- Parametric, dimension-driven creation and modification of building components
- User-definable attribute schemas (property sets) for any type of building object
- Inherent component attributes and properties significant for design, documentation, analysis, construction, and operations
- Embedded parameters, rules, and constraints to capture design intent
- Relationships and associativity between architectural elements for rapid design changes
- Flood-option for automatic generation of spaces, floors, and ceiling slabs
- Automated placement of finishes to walls and columns
- Suspended ceiling tools with space height detection option
- Terrain modeling, roof, and stair builder tools
- Support for international steel section tables
- Powerful solid modeling for easy creation of virtually any form
- Double-curved surfaces and solids for accurate construction information and smooth rendering
Ease of use
- Work in plan, elevation, isometric, or perspective view
- AccuDraw function
- Choice to work in 2D plans, 3D models, or both – with a single set of tools
- Storage of "most recently used" input
- Enforcement of national, corporate, and project standards
- Multiple filtering options (e.g., by level, by symbology, by attribute, by selection set)
- Customizable interface and workspaces
- Floor management tool for floors and floor reference planes
- Online help
Construction documentation
- Creation of coordinated floor plans, sections, and elevations
- Automatic coordination of architectural design and construction documentation
- Automatic resymbolization of 3D objects to 2D symbols
- Material-dependent hatching/patterning, annotation, and dimensioning
- User-definable labeling of building objects and spaces
- Incremental doors and window numbering
- Room and component schedules, quantity and cost calculation, specifications
- Compatibility with office automation tools for further processing and formatting
Design visualization and 3D output
- High-end integrated rendering and animation tools, including radiosity and particle tracing
- Export to STL to support rapid model making and prototyping with 3D printers, laser cutters, and stereo lithography machines
- Support of 3D Web formats, such as VRML, QuickVision, panoramas
- Publish AECOsim Building Designer models to the Google Earth environment
Support of 3D within Adobe PDF
- Creation of Adobe PDF documents directly with embedded 3D navigational models
- Include DGN and DWG drawings, project documents, renderings, and interactive and animated 3D models
- Navigate models in PDF using hyperlinks and bookmarks
Support of international and custom standards
- Create, manage, verify, and enforce company and project standards
- Support for U.S. and other national CAD standards
- Support of DGN, DWG, DXF, PDF, STEP, IGES, STL, and other major industry standards
- Import/export of IFC 2x, the emerging standards for sharing building information
- Viewing of ADT multiview blocks
Interoperability with building engineering, analysis, and facilities management
- Full integration with other disciplines, Bentley Facilities, and more
- A shared multidisciplinary model for team collaboration and coordination
- Interference detection across multiple files and disciplines
- Simulation of construction schedules in conjunction with project management applications, such as Microsoft Project or Primavera P3
- gbXML export/import for creation of analytical model for energy analysis via (beta)
Integration with managed environment
- Integration with Bentley ProjectWise, Bentley’s comprehensive collaboration server
free for rental