A new era of design begins now

A screen shot of Autodesk's Revit software

When the U.S. Green Building Council’s big-tent GreenBuild conference sprung up last month in sprawling Atlanta, attendees spied the increased presence of technology.

It didn’t come in the form of wireless gadgets shown off by young techies in wire-rimmed glassed and mock turtlenecks, nor as pyrotechnic shows for keynote speakers storming the podium. The technology most radically transforming green building today comes in the form of design software.

Autodesk, regarded as the global leader in this realm, was a sponsor of this year’s conference. The company is also exploring collaborations with the U.S. Green Building Council and its LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) green building evaluation system.

I recently dropped in on the Autodesk offices in San Francisco for a demo of the company’s Revit software. Much has changed since the days when I was an aspiring architect. I recall early mornings in high school sitting at a drafting table trying to design mansions with a mechanical pencil, rulers and stencils. Computer-aided drafting was just taking root, and while it seemed revolutionary, it seemed to pale in comparison to Atari.

Building Information Modeling, or BIM, is a term Autodesk claims to have invented just recently. “What we’re talking about here is a lot more than 3-D,” said Phil Bernstein, vice president of Autodesk’s building solutions division and a Yale University School of Architecture lecturer.

Of course, Autodesk can’t take all of the credit for Revit — the software was developed by a Waltham, Mass., startup Autodesk bought five years ago. Now priced at $4,695, Revit advances computer-aided drafting much like today’s video games have advanced Atari (and Autodesk makes video games too). But unlike video games wrought with gunfire, guts and blood, these high-tech powers are meant to be acted out literally.

The software, used on high-profile projects such as New York’s Freedom Tower, not only carries all the data required to build a structure, it “understands” the data. It quantifies building materials so designers can move walls or punch in windows and instantly have the building’s data on energy performance, daylighting, and perhaps most importantly, cost, shift accordingly in realtime. On a whim, designers can test the life-cycle performance of brick walls versus concrete walls. The digital representations “behave like buildings and not just drawings,” Bernstein said.

“Trying to design in a sustainable way is at its core an information management problem,” said Bernstein. “It’s essentially an analytical problem.”

Revit can be used for green buildings or less-than-green buildings, but the gains for environmental design are clear. For starters, it makes the work more holistic and less laborious. By enabling run-throughs of countless “what if” scenarios, it fosters an integrated approach between architects and contractors. Said Bernstein: “Green building falls right in the middle of that.”

Company officials say the next generation of Revit software will compute how much waste is caused in a building’s construction activities — cutting studs, for instance. Because the schedule always reflects exactly what’s in the design model, designers can order precisely the amount of building materials needed. Reductions in waste, transportation and construction defects are automatic.

Revit can be paired with GeoPraxis (which, recognizing a trend, recently changed its name to Green Building Studio) to analyze a building’s detailed energy performance. It can also be bundled with AutoCAD to help designers transition.

Bernstein described three eras of design. The first is two-dimensional hand-drawing from the pyramids to 1985 (or perhaps a few years later at my high school). The second involves about 20 years of computer-aided drafting and the advent of the personal computer — “but it was replicating the old hand drawing,” he said.

The new era begins now.