Category Archives: Construction/BIM

Category Archives: Construction, BIM (Building Information Modeling), Geodesign, CAD (Computer Aided Design), 3D Technology & More.

Forty-five feet below its final resting place, the top of the steel roof of Deep Space will be covered by layers of concrete and earth.

Raising the Roof

A survey company changes its tactics to monitor an auditorium roof before, during, and after its lift into place, using teamwork and true professionalism. American Surveying & Engineering, P.C. (with corporate headquarters in Chicago, Illinois) was approached by JP Cullen (a contractor with headquarters in Janesville, Wisconsin) with a challenging project: a particularly tricky auditorium...

This heavy excavator (left) resolves orientation via GNSS antennas on the counterweight, and a series of tilt sensors calibrated to the moving sections of the boom provide highly accurate feedback to the operator (inset) as to progress of the bucket towards design grades per the 3D model uploaded into the controller. Another level of productivity gains comes from the telemetry fed into the site-management software and its virtual-reality viewing tools that provide real-time visual status of all equipment on the site.

The Digital Site

The complete digital site is more than just machine-controlled heavy equipment. Recent advances in heavy civil have been profound in connectivity, automation, and visualization. How long has automation played a role in heavy civil construction? As far back as the late 1980s when early GPS-guided (or informed) systems began to reach the market. But it...

Autodesk + Leica Geosystems

Two tech giants embark on a collaboration and education outreach. At June 2015’s HxGN LIVE (the annual user conference for Leica Geosystems and other divisions of Hexagon), we spied something rather surprising: an Autodesk booth. What’s more, someone at the booth was using Autodesk software for construction layout on a consumer tablet, driving a Leica...

GPS-controlled robots can measure a site fully automatically and precisely anchor screws for the foundation of a solar plant.

Robots

Above: GPS-controlled robots can measure a site fully automatically and precisely anchor screws for the foundation of a solar plant. Measuring and Anchoring As a child I used to watch a program on BBC television called Tomorrow’s World. Once in 1981, I sat in awe as it showed a snooker-playing robot. My dreams were filled with...

The geospatially aware Jackal robots are configured with different imaging and navigation systems depending on the needs of the autonomous application.

Robot Revolution

Clearpath Robotics CEO Matt Rendall discusses unmanned systems, land survey, and robotic industry trends.   The robot revolution is hitting a big milestone. Robotic use is expanding beyond research activities, aerial applications, and industrial manipulators through a new kind of deployment: the service robot. These robots are autonomous, they’re geospatially aware, and they can manipulate...

25 Tips for BIM

Expert Recommendations for Better As-built BIMs Creating as-built building information models (BIMs) has been greatly facilitated by the introduction of 3D laser scanners and modeling software, but the process still has its challenges. Four experts were asked to put their decades of combined scanning and modeling experience into this list of the best tips, tactics,...