A new technology that uses videogrammetry—overlaying stereo video feeds—to deliver 3D views as big as a building and derive real-time digital measurements of nearly any object with 15-mm precision is being refined and readied for commercial use by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.
image courtesy of The Materials Project The Materials Project is documenting all known materials in a database. A research partnership between Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has launched an online tool that lets researchers virtually mix, match and compare chemical compounds by calculating the resulting properties through the magic of supercomputing. The goal is to help registered users find substitute materials to replace existing components of objects and improve them—whether the item is a concrete column, a battery, an alloy beam or even a teddy bear.The effort to develop the site, called the Materials Project, sprang
Image: ENR N/A Two years after a Hill International Inc. employee left the Marlton, N.J., firm, the IT department is still trying to retrieve data from his mobile phone. Why? Although the data belongs to the company, the device belongs to the employee.That conundrum is exactly what's keeping a lot of construction companies from adopting bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies."Whose data is it, really?" asks Shawn Pressley, vice president of project management systems at Hill. "If [the employee] paid for the [phone service], they could call it his data. We might not have the permissions to wipe it off our contacts. The
Going live on Nov. 22, the U.S. Green Building Council's new App Lab features an initial eight computer applications that aim to support the green building movement.USGBC's third-party LEED automation partners developed and contributed each application in this new searchable database.Making the application mobile is a sensible course to follow, says one of the partners. "As the need becomes more mobile, so will our product," predicts Dave Weinerth, executive vice president of business development at SCIenergy, San Francisco. Other automation partners agree, although only one app is currently available in Apple's App Store.The council says the potential number of apps
Rendering courtesy of NIBS Common BIMAn overview of one of the standard building information models released to the public. To help users benchmark the performance of building information modeling software and applications in a common environment, the Washington, D.C.-based National Institute of Building Sciences' buildingSMART alliance has released a reference set of BIM open standards.Three models created by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Engineer Research and Development Center, Champaign, Ill., include an apartment building, a medical clinic and an office building. Each model includes architectural, mechanical, electrical and plumbing information.“These common BIM files are a very good step forward
Courtesy of Pile Dynamics Inc. A view of the thermal readout, or heat map, produced by Pile Dynamics' field device displays the location of the thermal wires and the shape of the shaft. Nine cubic yards of wet concrete will release the energy equivalent of 400 lb of TNT as it cures. Researchers at the University of South Florida are now partnering with industry to deliver a new device and software to monitor the heat distribution in curing cast-in-place concrete foundations, such as drilled shafts and bored piles, as a new quality-assurance tool.The method, called Thermal Integrity Profiling (TIP), is
PHOTO BY TOM SAWYER / ENR PROPERLY ENGINEERED The U.S. Embassy in Haiti survived the devastating 2010 earthquake with minimal damage to its building systems. Seismic Design Group Inc. claims its new software will help users meet code requirements for non-structural seismic bracing for piping and other building utilities typically found in ceiling plenums and mechanical rooms. The SCoPe: Seismic Calculation Program is intended to help trade contractors choose the proper anchoring and suspension systems for a given seismic zone. The software is designed for use by the construction engineers of mechanical, electrical, plumbing and fire protection system contractors.The program
Courtesy ClearEdge 3D Courtesy ClearEdge 3D Automating 3D model creation from laser point cloud data has been a dream for anyone who has modeled millions of points into 3D objects. One company now has released improved software that automatically recognizes flat surfaces, edges and cylindrical objects from point cloud data.EdgeWise Plant 2.0 from ClearEdge 3D Inc., Warrenton, Va., lessens the need to manually trace objects such as pipes, walls and joints. It uses algorithms to identify surfaces among millions of points of data collected by light detecting and ranging devices (LiDAR), such as laser scanners. It discards irrelevant data and
Many construction companies are adopting tablets on jobsites and raving about saving time and money in the process. Gartner Inc. predicts that the iPad will retain more than half the tablet market until 2015. But what about tech support in the field when the stuff breaks down? Who is helping to train users on the software that runs on the devices so that time saved with the technology doesn't turn into time spent to support it?These are some of the themes behind the tablet's rapid rise, according to recent interviews with major construction firms during a conference sponsored by field
