Things Are Looking Horizontal
Long time, no post. It's been an edgy few months. It's almost certainly too soon to say this but things are looking better than they have for several months. The constant slow decline has parked itself on a plateau for the time being. We have design work and it's oddly in a market we thought was aready overbuilt - multi-story/multi-family residential. The trade-off seems to be location, location, location. We have a 16-story retirement building that is now on-hold as the architect regroups as the developer pushes to add antoher three floors to the building. Another is a 19-story building a couple blocks from a soon-to-open courthouse/jail facility that's in the low to mid-price range for apartments. Another is a highrise student housing project of +200 residences. One more is a mid-rise structure out of state for a university of +100 residences. Our concern now is what the future holds after the first of the year as 2010 comes into view and whether the backlog will continue. Still not sure which way the economic slope will go.
The very nature of those buildings cries out for the use of 3D CAD to complete the design. The sad fact is that over the past year we've had at least four projects "start" with the use of Revit MEP Suite. Not one of those projects are active. They're still around but not progressing. Of the projects mentioned above, a couple will use 3D CAD but for now the scheme is to use AutoCAD MEP instead.
Of course, I'm not familiar with either Revit or AMEP. Training that we've had seems to be badly lacking in real-world information. The CAD distributor we worked with before provided Revit MEP training at our cost that turned out to be of not much use. They told us that keynotes (or key notes or keyed notes) were not possible wih Revit MEP. My computer and AutoCAD experience told me they were seriously ignorant in one area of the Revit MEP program. There was simply no way that program could be at the 2009 release and not be capable of keynotes. A quick Internet search revealed the answer and I shared it with our staff. Not a difficult process albeit different from our usual method. At least with the Revit method, Keynote 6 would be the same throughout a set of drawings. The training turned out to be worthless anyway. We never actively used the program on a project so what knowledge was learned became a lost memory. Having to cut loose four of the eight people we sent off drained us of what knowledge they may have had.
The 19-story apartment building has 302 condensing units for individual cooling control in residences, amenities and support spaces. 289 of those are on the roof of the building. Nothing like yet another crazy condenser farm on a building. I've got mixed feeling about that design scheme. Individual cooling is acheived without the cost of a central chilled water plant which keeps the cost down. It puts the onus of energy cost directly onto the renter, which also includes the electric heating in the fan coil unit. Oh, yeah. It's going to be LEED Certified, too, and the owner is looking to have a photovoltaic array on the roof.
There's been a big discussion on the use 3D CAD. A lot of work is shown for the Design Development package that wasn't expected to change when moving on to the Construction Documents. Another issue is the cost of time spent doing 3D CAD. The owner doesn't want to pay for 3D CAD so the contractors buried the cost into their pricing. The general contractor wants 3D CAD to simplify construction by reducing their coordination headaches. The mechanical contractor cut $100K out of their price to eliminate a good chunk but not all of 3D CAD. We as MEP consultants want money for 3D CAD work. A lot has to be worked out between now and the end of the year when the design is due. That includes me learning AMEP or Revit MEP. Books will be ordered this week.
All things considered the work load for us for the rest of the year looks like it will be of greater intensity than in many months. I might need to put in time for a few weekends to keep progress rolling while learing the 3D CAD methods and commmands. I've always designed with a 3D element in my head and have successfully pointed out problem with building design that otherwise would have resulted in construction conflicts in the field. Not always that goog but I've done fairly well. I hope that learning new methods and software will be not too difficult as I move through my latter years of design.
The very nature of those buildings cries out for the use of 3D CAD to complete the design. The sad fact is that over the past year we've had at least four projects "start" with the use of Revit MEP Suite. Not one of those projects are active. They're still around but not progressing. Of the projects mentioned above, a couple will use 3D CAD but for now the scheme is to use AutoCAD MEP instead.
Of course, I'm not familiar with either Revit or AMEP. Training that we've had seems to be badly lacking in real-world information. The CAD distributor we worked with before provided Revit MEP training at our cost that turned out to be of not much use. They told us that keynotes (or key notes or keyed notes) were not possible wih Revit MEP. My computer and AutoCAD experience told me they were seriously ignorant in one area of the Revit MEP program. There was simply no way that program could be at the 2009 release and not be capable of keynotes. A quick Internet search revealed the answer and I shared it with our staff. Not a difficult process albeit different from our usual method. At least with the Revit method, Keynote 6 would be the same throughout a set of drawings. The training turned out to be worthless anyway. We never actively used the program on a project so what knowledge was learned became a lost memory. Having to cut loose four of the eight people we sent off drained us of what knowledge they may have had.
The 19-story apartment building has 302 condensing units for individual cooling control in residences, amenities and support spaces. 289 of those are on the roof of the building. Nothing like yet another crazy condenser farm on a building. I've got mixed feeling about that design scheme. Individual cooling is acheived without the cost of a central chilled water plant which keeps the cost down. It puts the onus of energy cost directly onto the renter, which also includes the electric heating in the fan coil unit. Oh, yeah. It's going to be LEED Certified, too, and the owner is looking to have a photovoltaic array on the roof.
There's been a big discussion on the use 3D CAD. A lot of work is shown for the Design Development package that wasn't expected to change when moving on to the Construction Documents. Another issue is the cost of time spent doing 3D CAD. The owner doesn't want to pay for 3D CAD so the contractors buried the cost into their pricing. The general contractor wants 3D CAD to simplify construction by reducing their coordination headaches. The mechanical contractor cut $100K out of their price to eliminate a good chunk but not all of 3D CAD. We as MEP consultants want money for 3D CAD work. A lot has to be worked out between now and the end of the year when the design is due. That includes me learning AMEP or Revit MEP. Books will be ordered this week.
All things considered the work load for us for the rest of the year looks like it will be of greater intensity than in many months. I might need to put in time for a few weekends to keep progress rolling while learing the 3D CAD methods and commmands. I've always designed with a 3D element in my head and have successfully pointed out problem with building design that otherwise would have resulted in construction conflicts in the field. Not always that goog but I've done fairly well. I hope that learning new methods and software will be not too difficult as I move through my latter years of design.
posted by Sketcher | 12:45 PM
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