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David Chan avatar image
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David Chan asked Fernando Rodrigues answered

Looking for comment from FlexSim user architects

Hi I am looking for building architect over in this forum to comment.

One architect company is looking for justification to use FlexSim in their design process. Surely I can tell them that they can validate their design before confirmation. However their concern is the use of simulation might actually lengthen the design process as the designing tool and simulation tool are not on the different platform. As such they will need to re-create the model in FlexSim for simulation, (or the most they can import the BIM drawing into FlexSim). Changes in the design is not possible to export back to the BIM tool. They will need to spend time to change the BIM design again. Hence the time is actually longer.

What is your comment on such a claim? How you have overcome such issue? Looking forward to your comment.

David

FlexSim 20.1.0
flexsim 20.1.0bimarchitect
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Ben Wilson avatar image Ben Wilson ♦♦ commented ·

Hey @Cliff King and @Brittany Evans,

You guys know a bunch of architects that use FlexSim, right? Could you point any of them to @david.chan's post?

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Fernando Rodrigues avatar image
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Fernando Rodrigues answered
As an Architect that spends a lot of time in front of users/client trying to gain validation and consensus over a design recommendation and/or preference, I believe that simulation is the most effective tool I have found so far. Like 3D visualization offers an enormous advantage to help communicate design ideas and solutions, when it comes to complex operations in healthcare environments only simulation can bring our BIM models to life with the fidelity of a well-supported model of care that closely relates to the layout. I agree with the fact that experienced medical planners don’t need to simulation to be able effectively design, but I have been surprised with the ability of measuring performance of one concept over the other and been able to justify and quantify advantages of a superior solution. Mechanical design merged simulation in their design process decades ago. Program driven architecture will require the same level of sophistication to be able to include measurable design performance as quality success factor. There is a lot still to be done to help integrate BIM, simulation and visualization tools. Fortunately the technology and the applications seem to have reach the point that all that it is needed is robust interoperability and better understanding of the design workflow.
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Cliff King avatar image
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Cliff King answered Cliff King edited

We used to hear these sorts of concerns a lot in the beginning, but I think two things have changed the market recently (last 3 years):

  1. The architects finally realized they spent more time having to go back and make changes to their design because their design wasn't functional or didn't meet their client's needs than they would have if they had chosen to validate their designs with simulation.
  2. The clients (ie. hospitals) of the architectural firms started demanding them to simulate.

The second item is of course the most important factor contributing to our increased sales to architectural firms. Architectural sales were surprisingly difficult in the beginning, but times have changed and now they're trying to play catchup!

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Patrick Cloutier avatar image
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Patrick Cloutier answered Patrick Cloutier edited

I have not seen any uses of FlexSim for the design of buildings BUT I have done many simulation projects for an engineering firm which manages the construction of large buildings (hydro power plants).

One of the constraints of such projects is the availability of space on the construction site. Hundreds of large deliveries are made to the site over the course of the project and its not easy to predict ahead of time when space will be a bottleneck.

Such planning is made with a Gantt project plan which does not feature any ability to model space usage. To compensate, the engineers were creating multiple CAD drawings of site layout space occupation at multiple days in the future by looking at the enormous Gantt. This took days to do.

In the simulation, I import the Gantt data, generate parts at the appropriate dates, draw them to scale on the layout and create a movie of the site occupation. It's a construction site logistics model.

They loved it so much I did 12 projects for them. They were saving a lot time.

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