How Smart Can a Detail Be? Part 2

“Hypermodeling” back-to-the-future.

In the June 2 - “How Smart Can a Detail Be?”  I’d really intended no Part 2, but only days after the ink had dried; I was introduced to “HyperModeling” by an old acquaintance and new friend - Rob Snyder.  The term hyper-modeling immediately conjures up intensive and manic models with all their detail built 3-dimensionally.  For someone that has bet the farm on an important continuing role and need for 2-d details, this is a really scary thought, not just for me, but all those that would be expected to do that “hyper”-modeling (and naturally with no added fee).

But fortunately for all of us, the name implies the polar opposite of what it really is.  Assuming I understand it correctly, it is Bentley’s new technology aimed at placing multiple forms of information contextually in 3-dimensional virtual space.  In other words not only might it be a computer generated detail, but it could be scribbled on a napkin, scanned, and located in both the Building Information Model and the drawing sheets referenced with a call-out.  That detail could take many digital forms, pdf, dwg, dng, dxf but apparently not rvt or rfa.

(Now this is where an image and link were supposed to go of Bentley's way-crazy-cool Hypermodeling project. But the video links and a PowerPoint presentation have either disappeared or become broken.  I will check back to fill this gap.)

So what could have been a marriage made in heaven, maybe just an old fashioned shotgun wedding - Hatfield’s and the McCoy’s – Revit and Bentley – or at least ARCxl’s 40,000 details and Bentley’s sexy new place to put them, well let’s just say it looked like the wedding might be called off because of a little file format problem.

Not one to give up easily, I see that Hypermodeling does accept these other file formats.  ARCxl could produce these other file formats.  So why not produce other file formats?  They won’t have all the functionality of our native Revit details but there are still plenty out there using various cad programs that could also use a well made .dwg file. Click on the detail image below to enlarge.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

The AutoCAD detail above is an export of an ARCxl detail made with Revit.  In other words, it's a detail from a new technology, exported to an old one (done with near perfect layering standards), that can also be used in the latest technology of a competing product.  So now do you get my Back to the Future analogy?  How about the chalkboard photos of a lecture by Christopher Llyod on time travel and Einstein's lecture on the space-time continuum? No?  If not I probably should have ended at part 1.  As you know sequels are rarely as good as the original.