Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc. and Synchro Software Ltd. have joined forces to provide truly open and flexible collaboration between architectural modeling and construction planning BIM tools. Both companies are committed leaders to the proliferation of open BIM workflows in design and construction and work to improve the efficiency of the industry through the successful implementation of open standards-based data exchange. In addition, both companies support the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) file format as an interoperability solution for their customers.
“We believe systems interoperability is as important as supporting 3D data in our 4D BIM for construction planning and scheduling solution,” said Tom Dengenis, CEO of Synchro Software Ltd. “Our support for IFC dates back to 2008. We decided back then for clear strategic reasons to focus on Vectorworks, the clear leader in IFC, to guide our import and synchronization capabilities. From the start, and to this day, we singularly focus on developing and testing our capabilities with Vectorworks as the authoring system.”
“A core tenet of Vectorworks is to provide designers with creative freedom, and interoperability is essential as those designers work with other collaborators to transform their creative visions to a built reality,” said Jeremy Powell, director of product marketing at Nemetschek Vectorworks, Inc. “We’re excited to work with Synchro Software, a company that is clearly committed to supporting open standards for the benefit of all professionals involved in the design and construction process. We look forward to continued collaboration with Synchro in the future as we strengthen our partnership.”
One recent example of a large BIM project using Synchro and Vectorworks software is the construction of two metro subway stations in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The Consortium Heleno & Fonseca and the TIISA made use of BIM technology as a support for studies and planning of the stations Eucaliptos and Moema, both part of the expansion of line five of the Sao Paulo metro. Vectorworks Architect software was used for the generation of the BIM models of the stations and for accurate estimations of volumes and areas of different building elements of the 3D models. Synchro was used to associate the elements of the model to the schedule activities, as well as to generate the 4D analysis.
Some of the resulting benefits of the 4D analysis included more speed and accuracy in the generation of the studies of the construction schedule alternatives, greater versatility and speed in decision-making, the creation of informative presentations of the work for external stakeholders through short videos, and visualization of the structures and equipment in different phases of the project.
