Automation of shop drawings with AGACAD’s Smart Assemblies, a BIM solution for Revit, has given this Western Australian firm a competitive edge in its design-and-construct projects for mixed-use high-rise buildings.

Hanssen Pty Ltd, established in 1992, is a project management and construction company based in Perth, Australia. It specializes in mixed-use residential and commercial high-rise buildings. The firm has in-house design and engineering teams, and manufactures precast panels, steel fabrication and windows for its projects.

Mott MacDonald’s Sydney team achieved outstanding results for a major infrastructure project by using AGACAD’s Cut Opening software to design penetration holes in the Revit® models.

Mott MacDonald is a global engineering, management and development consultancy focused on guiding its clients through many of the planet’s most intricate challenges. Its network of experts, active in 150 countries, have taken lead roles in the world’s highest profile infrastructure and development projects.

This U.S. design firm identified AGACAD’s wall framing solution for BIM as the only software on the market that fully meets its needs for flexibility, complexity and productivity. It also says support is “prompt and remarkable”.

Automated custom shop drawings were the main reason this international engineering firm got AGACAD’s software for modelling precast concrete elements in Revit. But it now says the benefits are much bigger, and have been welcomed both by the members of its team and its customers.

Client Profile

Norconsult AS is a top engineering consulting firm based in Norway which has worked on projects in more than 150 countries over the past 50 years. The company is steadily growing thanks to its focus on quality and bringing creativity and innovation to every project stage.

Business Need

Norconsult aims to boost both productivity and quality through the use of innovative BIM technologies. In that context, it needed an efficient way to design precast concrete elements in a Revit® environment. “For the sake of collaboration within the company, we wanted to use Revit for precast projects. But we were struggling with a great deal of manual work, especially for creating shop drawings from the models,” notes Henrik Thingbø, a structural engineer at Norconsult. The solution had to automate the creation of shop drawings that were in line with Norconsult’s own preferences and standards. It also had to be user-friendly enough for use by any team member without need for special training.

This South Australian MEP contractor bought AGACAD’s Smart Hangers to do clash-free construction grade design work. They found the software not only does that extremely well, but also enables quick precision layout on site. Clients are happier and costs are lower with the elimination of a lot of rework.

Client Profile

Smith brothers Group is one of South Australia’s largest plumbing and pipeline contractors. Innovation is key in its resolve to be No. 1 for service. That’s why BIM technologies are at the heart of the group’s design and engineering work.

Business Need

New projects required Smith brothers Group to place seismic hangers on pipework with construction grade (LOD 400) detail. They needed to place complex equipment in very limited overhead spaces and ensure a clash-free model. The solution had to be compatible with Autodesk® Revit® and support the incorporation of Trimble points for on-site positioning and layout. And the company always prefers innovative solutions that offer a competitive edge.

This Nordic engineering firm says AGACAD’s BIM software has brought big efficiency gains for its precast concrete and wood framing projects, helped it win new clients, and enabled the company to handle more complex projects.

Client Profile	JPS-Konsult AB, based in Vrigstad, Sweden, specializes in the design of precast concrete and wood-frame buildings, mainly for residential use.
Business Need	While upgrading itself from 2D to 3D design, to be more modern and competitive in the market, JPS-Konsult ran into productivity issues with its new Autodesk® Revit® software. Revit required so much time-consuming manual work that the company was tempted to go back to AutoCAD®. “We tried to make shop drawings with plain Revit, and soon realized that there had to be a better way,” recalls CEO Johannes Svensson. So the firm began looking for ways to get all the great benefits of BIM for its precast concrete and timber projects, but without having to waste so much valuable time. Specifically, it needed automated view layouts, dimensioning and material take-off, plus ways to quickly insert elements to achieve greater detailing. This functionality had to be easy to learn and use. Svensson says he did a major search and concluded that AGACAD had the most powerful solutions for his needs. It’s also the only one with a software portfolio broad enough to support both wood and concrete projects.

AGACAD’s Wood Framing Suite proved to be the perfect fit for a prominent producer of timber frame homes based in Sweden. That, and AGACAD’s custom development expertise, enabled its Nordic business partner AEC AB to win and successfully complete a major BIM implementation project.

Client Profile:	Trivselhus AB is a prominent Swedish producer of timber frame buildings known for design excellence and energy-efficiency. Besides Scandinavia, it’s also active in the UK and Åland.
Partner:	AEC AB is Sweden’s leading supplier of IT software and services for the building industry. It’s an agent and business partner of AGACAD in the Nordic region.

This regional office of a major engineering consultancy which does a lot of MEP work was struggling with poor sprinkler-design functionality in Revit^®. AGACAD’s Smart Sprinklers software proved to be an ideal solution, saving the company a great deal of time and enhancing its overall BIM capabilities.

This European maker of ventilation equipment seized an opportunity to boost sales by enhancing its product-selection software and enabling exports to Revit®. The custom integrated tool that AGACAD developed not only added that functionality, but was so advanced it gave the company a new competitive edge in being able to respond to customers’ needs more quickly and flexibly.

This engineering company turned to AGACAD for training and advice during its strategic transition from 2D to BIM several years ago. That gave rise to ongoing BIM project consulting and software development work, in a relationship that exemplifies AGACAD’s slogan of “Building BIM Together!” Baltic Engineers, now a leader in its home market, is also successfully growing internationally.