"Fast Track" Is No Sweat with ArchiCAD Heym Associates,
Boston, USA
Converting to an entirely new CAD solution is a daunting prospect when
your firm's livelihood is at stake. But when faced with an outdated
computer system, one Boston, USA, based architectural firm viewed it as
the perfect excuse to end a ten-year relationship that had long-since lost
its luster.
"We got in fairly early on the ground floor in 1989 with desktop
technical drafting using DataCAD, before many other larger firms were
tackling CAD," explained Philip Dowds, a principal architect at Heym
Associates. Their drafting department was working on PC, with the rest of
the office on Macintosh OS. "By 1998, we had equipment that was starting
to become ancient and we were falling behind. We knew we had to do
something in the way of a major upgrade, so we stuck our necks way out and
went all 'Mac.'"
They had been in touch with their local ArchiCAD reseller for some
time, and, after comparing it with several other CAD solutions, decided to
outfit their newly upgraded computer system with ArchiCAD. "It's a leap of
faith," Dowds admitted. "Until you have worked with a program for several
months, you don't really know if you made the right decision. There's no
other way to do it, though, except to give it a try."
They made the switch at a time when they were just about to begin
several projects, and were coming to a natural close on numerous others.
They brought drawings that were still needed into ArchiCAD in DWG format
so they could continue working with them. And after about four months with
ArchiCAD, they confidently "pulled the plug" on the old system and sent it
away forever.
"It was painless!" Dowds related. "The drafting department was somewhat
resistant to the switch, because their hard-won skills on DataCAD were
being thrown away. But after a while, they conceded that as a drafting
tool, ArchiCAD was a wildly better program." Dowds also noted that no
one in the office found the new program difficult to learn. "Most of the
operations needed for technical drawings are much simpler to perform in
ArchiCAD than they were in DataCAD, including fewer keystrokes, and more
logical command sequences."
After more than a year using ArchiCAD, Dowds credits ArchiCAD's
TeamWork functionality with dramatically increasing their productivity.
"One of the things that always disturbed me about DataCAD and computer
drafting in general was that, except when you looked at plots, it was very
hard to tell what the state of the drawing was. And even then, it was
sometimes hard to tell."
What Dowds missed about manual drafting was the ability to look at the
work that was being done on drawing boards, and review it on the spot.
"Computer drafting generally doesn't work so well. You can't look at
somebody's computer and understand what they are doing because a lot of
the pertinent information is not showing on the screen."
But with TeamWork, Dowds is able to see what his colleagues are working
on, as he has the ability to be in the same file at the same time. He also
finds himself much more involved in the drafting process, because he is
able to easily 'get in and get out.' "I feel like I am in control of the
drawings again."
In business for almost a quarter of a century, Heym Associates
specialize in mostly elder care, nursing homes, retirement housing and
health clinics. One of their current projects is a 102-unit assisted
living facility in Providence, Rhode Island, where the construction is
taking place even as they are working to finish the drawings.
The facility had been in the works for several years as a site plan
project, but Heym Associates didn't actually begin the drawings until
January 1999. They were able to complete a full set of construction
documents - not fully coordinated but good enough for pricing and to start
the foundation - by early July. "We were able to finish under the
construction design phase budget, so we were very pleased."
Because they had to "fast track" the structure in order to get the
steel ordered early, they relied on ArchiCAD's DWG conversion capabilities
to exchange files with the structural engineer. "They were careful
geometricians, as were we, in a building that includes angles, so we used
their column grid and their column representations as a way of
double-checking and controlling our own floor plans. Trading drawings was
very simple, even though they were AutoCad-based.
"It's also been very easy to make on-the-fly construction sketches that
isolate just the elements that the contractor is interested in, and issue
them as field condition sketches. This is especially useful in a context
when a full set of coordinated drawings isn't available yet."
Dowds said they've exploited ArchiCAD's 3D modeling capabilities to
better communicate with clients - "I'm convinced that many of our clients,
no matter how much they nod and smile and say 'yes,' have a very poor idea
of what they are looking at in architectural floor plans" - but they also
use it to ensure accurate construction documentation and dimensioning.
"If you understand plane and solid geometry, and truly know how to work
in three dimensions, you can also use it to control very complicated
things like hipped-roof intersections on angles," Dowds explained. "If you
set your geometry right, the 3D modeler is also a very accurate
dimensioning tool and a precise way of mapping out what the roof plan
looks like."
In addition to being more accurate, flexible and productive, Heym
Associates also experienced one of their most profitable years after
making their bold conversion. "The costs were more than recovered within a
few months." |