On Cloud 9 with BIM 9: Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Lonnie Cumpton – BIM9
Beau Turner – RAND
Bill Debevc – BIM9
Joe Eichenseer - IMAGINiT
Class Code
AB4768
Class Description
Are you wondering how to get integrated design to work when your team members work in different
offices, cities, time zones and countries? The concept of integrated design is very promising and the
benefits are easy to understand. The only question is how do we actually get all the team members in
the same place to work on the project at the same time? We know that sending everyone to the same
location everyday is not feasible. Enter the CLOUD! If you can have all the team members on the same
data network and working on the project files at the same time as if they were in the same office, then
this integrated design thing starts to sound a bit more real. That is specifically what a Private BIM Cloud
does. By allowing all your team members to work on the same project data at the same time, no matter
their physical location, the promise of integrated design has a real chance of becoming a reality.
Learning Objectives At the end of this class, you will be able to:
•
Evaluate if your organization is ready to be on Cloud 9
•
Describe what a Private BIM Cloud is
•
Explain the impact a Private BIM Cloud can have on your team
•
Describe the concepts behind hosting a Private BIM Cloud
On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
About the Speakers
Lonnie Cumpton has over 17 years of experience in consulting, implementing, training and
corporate management at local and regional levels into the AEC community. He has a
comprehensive understanding of building design and construction methods currently
specializing in Private BIM clouds. Lonnie is drawing on his experience with assessing needs,
defining requirements and resolving challenges to deliver the optimized BIM9 solution to gain
the benefits of cloud computing as it relates to BIM. His unique BIM9 strategy provides secure
access to all your design data and applications from your office to mobile users around the
world. You can find Lonnie on LinkedIn at BIM9.com and via email [email protected]
Beau Turner is the Director of Business Development and AEC technology subject matter
expert with over 15 years in technology consulting and design. Beau works with emerging
technologies, programming API’s and blends these together with existing and new workflows to
streamline capabilities through the use of technologies like CAD, BIM, Visualization, Laser
Scanning, Facilities Management, CNC, 3D Printing and Open Source Design methodologies.
He has consulted with 100’s of companies across the US to bring about successful technology
shifts and is a regular speaker at industry events. You can reach Beau via email at
[email protected] or on twitter:beauturner.
Bill Debevc is an expert in Autodesk software and Information Technology (I.T.) specializing in
Private BIM Cloud technologies. He has over 20 years of experience using, supporting, and
customizing Autodesk AutoCAD and Revit software. As a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer
(MCSE) he uses his extensive I.T. experience to implement industry leading I.T. solutions for
the AEC industry. Currently, as Technical Manager for Collaboration Solutions at BIM9, Bill is
now sharing his knowledge about Private BIM Clouds to help the AEC industry reduce costs
and increase productivity. You can find Bill at Bim9.com or via email at [email protected]
Joe Eichensee leads a team of IMAGINiT's dedicated services professionals who ensure that
the people, technology and processes exist to provide the best possible solution for clients
every time. Joe and his team provide leadership to building design firms through the process of
selecting, implementing, and optimizing software solutions. They engineer new workflow
processes that dramatically improve productivity and efficiency. Specializing in the
customization, optimization, and integration of Autodesk building design products, Joe helps
AEC firms navigate the road to Building Information Modeling (BIM) using a logical progression
from 2D to full BIM. His years of experience in the industry make him an able leader in the
management of cultural changes necessary for firms to be successful.
All Speakers are part and members of Club Revit. You can join Club Revit on Facebook,
LinkedIn and at www.clubrevit.com.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Index: Define different collaboration technologies and what they do: This section we help you understand the different levels of collaboration and what they mean.
Private BIM clouds and the design professional How do the concepts of private BIM cloud solve issues in the building design and construction
industry?
Private BIM cloud hardware What kind of hardware does it take to create a private BIM cloud?
Private BIM cloud software What software does the private BIM cloud run on and what software can you use on it.
Internet connectivity What kind of Internet connectivity does it take to host and access a private BIM cloud?
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Define different collaboration technologies and what they do: First let’s start with what does collaboration mean? A common process when building a
presentation is to use Wikipedia to do some research. On the term collaboration we thought the
definition was interesting, so we included it below.
Collaboration: (From the Wikipedia)
Collaboration is working together to achieve a goal.
It is a recursive process where two or more people or organizations work together to
realize shared goals, (this is more than the intersection of common goals seen in co-operative
ventures, but a deep, collective, determination to reach an identical objective) — for example,
an intriguing endeavor that is creative in nature—by sharing knowledge, learning and building
consensus. Most collaboration requires leadership, although the form of leadership can be
social within a decentralized and egalitarian group. In particular, teams that work collaboratively
can obtain greater resources, recognition and reward when facing competition for finite
resources. Collaboration is also present in opposing goals exhibiting the notion of adversarial
collaboration, though this is not a common case for using the word.
Structured methods of collaboration encourage introspection of behavior and
communication. These methods specifically aim to increase the success of teams as they
engage in collaborative problem solving. Forms, rubrics, charts and graphs are useful in these
situations to objectively document personal traits with the goal of improving performance in
current and future projects.
Since the Second World War the term "Collaboration" acquired a very negative meaning
as referring to persons and groups which help a foreign occupier of their country—due to actual
use by people in European countries who worked with and for the Nazi German occupiers.
Linguistically, "collaboration" implies more or less equal partners who work together—which is
obviously not the case when one party is an army of occupation and the other are people of the
occupied country living under the power of this army.
In order to make a distinction, the more specific term Collaborationism is often used for
this phenomenon of collaboration with an occupying army. However, there is no water-tight
distinction; "Collaboration" and "Collaborator", as well as "Collaborationism" and
"Collaborationist", are often used in this pejorative sense—and even more so, the equivalent
terms in French and other languages spoken in countries which experienced direct Nazi
occupation.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Collaboration in the building design and construction space: When we think of collaboration technology we are generally referring to tools the allow
us to communicate our data with others on our team. This topic usually brings up some of the
usual suspects like:
•
FTP
•
E-mail
•
Dropbox
When you add the concept of document or project management to the conversation. Then you
get a completely different list. These tools are designed not only to share data with your team
but also manage the flow of that data.
•
Buzzsaw
•
Constructware
•
Vault
•
Newforma
•
Project Centre
The challenge with these solutions is that they all copy your data to share it with others. This is
a fundamental challenge on all projects. It becomes a shell game of who has the latest data.
Each one of these tools tries and handles this in different ways but in the end you end up with
multiple copies of the data and the never-ending question of who has the latest data.
Today if you have this conversation without using the word “Cloud” you would just simply be
lost. Most all of the technologies above consider themselves cloud technology and by default
they would be correct. For what we are talking about today you need to understand the
fundamental difference between data sharing over the internet and data editing over the
internet. The basic question you can ask to understand this is.
Do you move the data to the people or do you move the people to the data? With this in mind we are limiting cloud to tools that allow you to access and edit your data from
any location or any device. The two most popular versions of this are:
•
Private BIM Clouds (PBC)
o A private BIM cloud is a secured shared resource located in your office that users
connect to access project data remotely from anywhere at anytime. A private BIM cloud
is a true hybrid approach to cloud computing, it also does not require you to change your
existing infrastructure or move your data to a data center. A private BIM cloud can be
used as a remote access solution, or for workstation longevity.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
•
BIM Clouds
o
BIM clouds are typically a solution that is hosted in a data center. This solution provides
you space in a data center that you can put your Revit files on, that can be accessed
from anywhere on any device with an internet connection.
The key difference between the two clouds solution is were the data is being hosted. In a private
BIM cloud the data is still on your network and in a BIM cloud the data is hosted from a data
center location. In both solutions the Revit processing is done at the cloud location. This is an
important part of the conversation. This allows you to access Revit with underpowered hardware
but still run Revit with workstation level power. When you see Revit on an iPad this is how it is
being done.
To better understand what collaboration tools you need. You can ask yourself some of the
following questions.
•
How does your team share data?
•
How do you access your data remotely?
•
How do you allow other team members to access your data?
•
How do you access your team member’s data?
As the industry moves forward we see more and more technology using cloud as part of the
name and definition. We highly recommend that you keep your data safe in one location and
allow access to that location. Cloud-based solutions that allow this to happen by default are
what we consider designing in the cloud solutions. Anytime you are looking at technology that
says it is cloud-based you should ask them if the data is being moved or copied from the cloud
locally to be worked on. Even if they have an automated way to save the file back to the cloud
you run the risk of getting multiple copies. Lowering the number of copies of your data the less
risk of people having the wrong information.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Private BIM clouds (PBC) and the design professional: Although every PBC we deploy seems to solve a unique challenge for that company. We have
been able to categorize them into four key areas.
•
Branch Office
•
Remote Access
•
Hardware Maximization / Workstation Longevity
•
Integrated Design
As companies are looking at a PBC they are usually focused on one of these areas. Most find
that they are able to take advantage of more than one of the categories, some even use all four,
once the PBC is installed.
Branch Office:
With the introduction of BIM and the concepts of single model design tools, the issues of having
multiple offices and practicing of workshare have become more evident than ever. Whether you
are using Revit, Autocad or another design technology you need to be able to share you BIM
information with everyone on your team including staff in other offices. This situation is most
visible with teams using Revit’s single model design concept. How do you get your team
members from different offices to work together on the same model at the same time? The
common answer to this question is to take the data to the user. Making copies of the data and
synchronizing it to different servers over a Wide Area Network (WAN), this concept is a
challenge for most companies. As files get bigger and internet connectivity costs increasing the
concept of a WAN gets more difficult everyday. A PBC allows your users from offices all over
the world to connect to one network without the need of a massive internet connection at each
location. This gives the team access to all the office data as if they were physically sitting at a
desk in the main office, without the need of making copies of the data. We call this bringing the
people to the data without physically moving them to the location. A PBC is a solution that
allows you to gain the benefits of cloud computing and keep your data on your local network
while giving secure access to everyone on your team. A PBC not only allows your other office
locations to securely access your local BIM data but also anyone that you want to give access
to at anytime on any device with an internet connection. Remote Access:
In the building design and construction industry connectivity is one of the most important parts
of any project. From the CEO to all the members of the production team the most current
information needs to be available to everyone at all times. With a PBC connectivity is taken to a
new level. You can be working in the office, get called to the jobsite and open up your laptop
and access the same project data you were just working on. From the jobsite you now have to
head off to the airport to catch a flight for a design meeting. You need to have some changes
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
made so while you drive to the airport the production team is at the office making those
changes. While waiting for your flight you can access the current project data from your iPad
and see the new changes. After your meeting changes need to be made again and ready first
thing the next morning. Unfortunately, the production team has already gone home for the
evening. With a PBC that’s ok they can log in to the cloud from their home computer and make
those changes and have the new prints sitting on the plotter when you walk in the door the next
day.
Hardware Maximization / Workstation Longevity:
Each year, software companies roll out their latest software versions delivering new features
and functionality. But in order to fully take advantage of these new tools, the newest versions
often come with increased hardware requirements as well. Balancing these upgrades with their
ever-increasing system requirements seems to get more and more challenging each year.
A new CAD/BIM power workstation typically costs anywhere from $2,500 to $5,000 depending
on the processors, RAM and brand. With the typical requirement of one physical computer
workstation for each user/employee in the company, the costs can really add up. Making
matters worse most computers sit idle for most of the day.
With this reality the question becomes, “How do we maximize our hardware investment by
utilizing that idle computer power?”
With a private BIM cloud!
A PBC allows multiple users to access the same physical hardware at the same time finally
giving us access to 100% of the processing power the system has to offer. By allowing other
users to access all of the resources that typically sit underutilized, AEC firms can greatly reduce
the number of physical computers required to deliver the same level of performance to the end
users without impacting speed or performance.
This ability to utilize our full hardware investment presents a number of cost saving benefits:
•
Workstation Longevity:
With constantly increasing hardware requirements, most companies typically upgrade/replace
their CAD/BIM workstations every 2-3 years. Not only is this costly and time consuming, even
with the constant upgrades, many users still complain about system speed and performance.
Shifting these hardware investment dollars to the deployment of a PBC immediately extends the
life of the already outdated systems currently sitting at the user desk by several years, often
doubling or tripling the useful life of an existing system.
•
Reduced Hardware Upgrade / Replacement Costs:
Since a PBC can support multiple users simultaneously, these reductions in hardware
investment costs add up quickly. For each new physical computer workstation purchased, 3 – 5
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
users receive a performance upgrade without replacing their existing hardware. This benefit
alone can typically reduce hardware investment costs to less than $1,000 per user.
•
Increased Performance:
With this level of hardware cost savings, it becomes much more cost effective to refresh the
cloud more often ensuring our users always have the power to fully exploit the full capabilities of
the latest CAD/BIM software applications.
In addition, a PBC is easily configurable allowing you to reallocate system resources to respond
to changing system requirements needed by each user to perform specific design, analysis, or
visualization tasks as the project workflow dictates. You have a user that needs to do a lot of
rendering over the next few weeks? No problem, give them access to more RAM and
processors as needed to ensure maximum productivity.
•
Increased Fault Tolerance:
With each physical system typically supporting 3 – 5 users, hardware reliability is a natural
concern. However, with the hardware cost savings delivered by a PBC, you can easily afford a
spare server providing rollover failure recovery in the unlikely event one of the PBC servers
fails.
•
Reduced Mobile Hardware Costs:
Because the computing power needed to run the software applications resides in the PBC the
system requirements and cost of laptops, notebooks and other mobile devices is also greatly
reduced. No longer do we need to pay the premium for CAD/BIM capable mobile devices, much
more cost-effective mobile systems will do the trick.
•
Reduced Ongoing Hardware Costs:
Again, because the computing power needed to run the software applications resides in the
PBC, the system requirements and costs of replacement desktop systems are also reduced.
They no longer have to support the ability to run CAD/BIM software locally, a simple system
costing as little as $500 is sufficient.
•
Maintain Current Network Infrastructure:
Best of all, a PBC provides all of these hardware cost savings without the need to modify your
existing network Infrastructure. A PBC sits on your network just like any other workstation
having no more impact on your network infrastructure or file servers. When your users are ready
to access the PBC, it’s as simple as creating a secure connection from inside or outside your
office.
Integrated Design:
Building Information Modeling (BIM) has made many promises over the years and in most
cases it delivers on those promises. Unfortunately one of the most promising things to come
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
from BIM “Integrated Design” has yet to come to fruition. Or has it? The challenge of Integrated
Design working effectively is you need everyone on the design team in the same network,
working on the same data at the same time. PBC’s solve that challenge, delivering the promise
of Integrated Design today. Companies that have a PBC can have all of their extended design
team working in the same network at the same time without changing the users physical
location. As an example a project in Cleveland can have an Architect in Los Angeles, MEP
Engineer in Omaha, Structural Engineer in Tampa, Civil Engineer in Dallas and the client
headquarters in New York. With a PBC they can all be working on one network accessing live
real-time design data without ever leaving their offices. Security of the PBC is easily
administrated with standard IT procedures allowing you to create secure space for each team
member. Just think no more uploading and downloading of models. Working on old data just to
find out it has already changed, could be a thing of the past. A PBC can bring your team
together allowing for Integrated Design today.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Private BIM cloud hardware A PBC has all kinds of benefits to the industry and most people think that it requires very
specialized hardware. The truth about PBC hardware is that it is very flexible; depending on
what core technology you use to create the PBC. We recommend Microsoft’s Hyper V
technology. One of the primary reasons for this recommendation is hardware flexibility.
A PBC is a computer or computers that have been virtualized allowing multiple users to access
the same system at the same time from any location with an internet connection. The computers
that make up the PBC can be workstations, servers or any multi core system that has an
abundance of RAM and allows processor virtualization.
The hardware that you use for your PBC has a direct reflection on the number of users that can
access that one physical system.
PBC Math
•
Processers:
o
•
(# Of cores) x 2 / 1.5 = (The number of users that can run Revit at the same time)
RAM
o
(Amount of RAM) / (The number of users) = (The amount of RAM per user)
Or
o
(Amount of RAM needed to load your Revit project) / (Amount of RAM on the
system) = (The number of users you can get on that system)
In most situations you run out of RAM before you run out of Processers. Below are a couple of
sample hardware specs and the user counts.
i7 Processor system
•
I7 - 4 Core Processer (We recommend 3.0 GHz or better)
•
RAM 24GB or 32GB (1st gen i7 maxes out at 24GB, 2nd gen maxes out at 32GB)
•
512 GB of hard-drive storage (We recommend 2nd gen SSDs or multiple 9600RPM
drives with raid 0)
•
Video Card with 1280MB of RAM (only needed with Remote FX)
•
DVD Drive
•
Keyboard and Mouse
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
These i7 boxes can support 1 to 6 users based on the amount of RAM you need for each user.
You can mix and match the amount of RAM per user, but if you equally divided it up you would
get these options
•
•
24GB of RAM
o
3 Users = 8GB of RAM Per User
o
4 Users = 6GB of RAM Per User
o
5 Users = 4.5GB of RAM Per User
o
6 Users = 4GB of RAM Per User
32GB of RAM
o
3 Users = 10GB of RAM Per User
o
4 Users = 8GB of RAM Per User
o
5 Users = 6GB of RAM Per User
o
6 Users = 5GB of RAM Per User
You can also replace the i7 Processer with a single Xeon class processer and get the same
number of users. If you need more users you can simply add more boxes to the PBC. You can
also add more users per box by moving up to a Dual Xeon processer system. These systems
typically max out at 192GB of RAM, but some go much higher. They can often support 10 to 20
users on a single box. When a company wants to support 30 or more users on a PBC this type
of system starts to make financial since.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Private BIM cloud software The virtual system that your users access when they login to the PBC is called a Virtual BIM
Workstation (VBW). The operating system of the VBW needs to be Windows 7 ultimate or
enterprise, to meet the Microsoft licensing and feature requirements. Once you have the VBW
up and running you can install your company’s applications the same as you would on any other
workstation on your network. The PBC concept was built specifically to run Revit and other BIM
related technologies, but almost any software works on the system. We have found that
applications that rely on video playback technology run a bit choppy on a VBW, without Remote
FX turned on. Also AutoCAD based applications have a curser bounce that some users find
frustrating. Autodesk is aware of the curser situation and is working to improve it.
We often get questions about how a PBC and Revit Server are different or if they work together.
Revit Server is a great solution for connecting Revit files in multiple offices to a single Revit
Server file. It does this by replicating the central file to each office and then synchronizing those
back to the Revit Server Central file. When you are using a PBC to connect multiple offices
together the process is fundamentally different. The PBC does not replicate the central file to
the other offices it simply allows the users in the other office to access the Revit file the same as
the users do in the primary office. The use of a PBC may eliminate the need for Revit Server,
but the two technologies work together perfectly. In some situations the two technologies
together can overcome obstacles that neither technology can solve alone.
Apple and a PBC Many companies in our industry prefer Apple hardware and operating system. As you know
Revit does not run on the Apple OS natively. You can however access a PBC from the Apple
OS. This has provided many companies with an opportunity to use Apple hardware and the Mac
OS for operations other than Revit. When they need to use Revit they simply login to the PBC
from the Apple device and use Revit as if they were using windows natively. This applies to
mobile devices as well as desktop devices. This is how we are able to run Revit on an iPad.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
Integrated Design with Private BIM Clouds
Internet connectivity A key part of any cloud-based technology is internet connectivity. The PBC was designed
specifically to keep the internet connectivity or bandwidth costs as low as possible. To
understand the connectivity requirements you must first understand the difference between the
Host Location and the Guest Location. The location of the PBC is known as the Host Location. It
is important that the PBC is hosted from the same location or network that your Revit / BIM data
is on. The Guest Location is the places were the user is connecting from. You can connect to a
PBC with any device that has a standard RDP client available.
Connectivity Requirements:
•
Host Location
o
o
•
400kbps of Upload bandwidth per consecutive remote user

If you have 4 Users that need to access the PBC at the same time you
need 400kbps x 4 or 1.6MB of upload bandwidth at the host location.

This is independent of all other internet traffic

Latency should be under 50ms to the remote location.

RDP compression technology can reduce both bandwidth and latency
requirements when needed.
Users that connect to the PBC that are in the same building as the PBC do not
require Internet connectivity; they will simply use the standard network office
network for PBC access. In this case we recommend at least 100MB from the
workstation to the PBC.
Guest Location
o
400kbps of Download bandwidth per consecutive user

If you have 4 Users that need to access the PBC at the same time from a
single location 400kbps x 4 or 1.6MB of download bandwidth at the guest
location.

This is independent of all other internet traffic

Latency should be under 100ms to the PBC server.

RDP compression technology can reduce both bandwidth and latency
requirements when needed.
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On Cloud 9 with BIM 9:
Deliver on the Promise of
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
A 3G connection has enough bandwidth typically but the latency is too
high. RDP compression technology will allow you to connect to the PBC
over 3G with great results for a single user.
Internet connectivity varies widely based on the type and provider of your connection. Speed
testing is a requirement before investing into a PBC. We suggest using www.speedtest.net to
validate your upload, download and ping speeds. Make sure that you take into consideration the
other internet traffic that you will have when determining if you can host a PBC. If you barely
meet the minimum speeds, something as simple as a user at the office watching youtube or
streaming music can affect your remote users performance on the PBC.
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