Structural Engineering BIM: Project Success Via Best Practices and Innovation

MATT SWEENEY: All right. Let's go ahead and get started. I'm not going to read this entire thing word for word, but I do want to make sure we're on the same page before we go too far. Today, we're going to look at some daily BIM workflows of a mid-sized structural consulting firm who's been in Revit for about 15 years. Then we'll look at some of the transitional tools and processes that are impacting how we go about our work. And lastly, a few case studies on where we're able to work in collaboration with one of our software suppliers, ENERCALC, to help implement these tools and processes.

We're not going to get into the Revit analytical model much today. The focus is much more on showing some practical Revit workflows over the lifecycle of a design project. And this was an idea that started last year at AU when I met Seth, and we got to talking about Revit structural design tools and the current state of the industry.

So with that, we're going to do some quick introductions as to who we are. I am Matt Sweeney, the digital design manager at PES Structural Engineers. I've been in the AEC industry about 20 years now, 15 years at PES in two different stints. I am a licensed engineer, a former project manager, BIM manager. Kind went through most of the roles of a typical engineer.

Around 2011, I left PES to do some software sales for a few years. Came back to work on some more out-of-the-box projects from a more remote position. I've since been sort of reinvented as the overall technology guy. BIM and technology-related direction all go through me, troubleshooting, et cetera.

I work with our IT managed service provider on the pure IT side of the company. Almost all of our tools go through me in some way-- CRM, ERP, company data, that kind of thing. So I'm all over the place.

When I'm not in the office, I'm real big into outdoor adventure, family, travel, mountain biking, really any combination of those things. Kind of always trying to push on what we can do together I'm going to turn it over to Seth for a minute to introduce himself.

SETH ROSWURM: All right. Thanks, Matt. So my name is Seth Roswurm. I'm a licensed structural engineer, licensed professional engineer. Prior to joining ENERCALC, spent about seven years doing a variety of different structural designs-- everything from wood frame multifamily developments to concrete post-tension condo towers, long span steel for commercial and military aviation facilities.

My role with ENERCALC is senior structural engineer. That kind of bridges a number of different functions and roles that I fill. On the technical side, I'm the lead developer for the ENERCALC for Revit product line. I also participate in development efforts on the actual computational engine for the main ENERCALC product line, as well as working with the engineering team on update releases, future requests, product improvement lifecycle, and building code updates.

On the more people-oriented side of what I do, I work a lot with customers. I do a lot of webinars and technical training, helping maintain a national presence for ENERCALC at conferences and trade shows, and a lot of work like what we're going to see today, which is project-specific implementation of ENERCALC and ENERCALC for Revit working closely with our customer teams of structural engineers who use our products.

And if I'm not in the office, there's a good chance you can find me building LEGOs with my kids. Those creations have been known to find their way into my LinkedIn content as well. And we definitely like to travel a lot, which also usually turns into me taking pictures of cool buildings everywhere we go. I'll go ahead and toss it back to Matt.

MATT SWEENEY: All right. Thanks, Seth. So PES Structural Engineers, we are a about 55 person consulting structural engineering firm headquartered in the Southeast, Atlanta. We have a smaller office in Hartford, Connecticut and a few remote employees as well. We've been around about 35 years now, all vertical commercial in all types of market sectors from small little banks to light industrial warehouses, up to things like this 35-story concrete frame tower on the right.

We do like to focus on our culture, not just having fun but winning as a team driving for improvement and owning it. And we've generally been a fairly forward-thinking company. We started with Revit back in 2006 and started bringing on DynamoDB and some automation in about 2015. And we've been involved with AU and some other conferences for a while now.

So if you've been to AU, past AU sessions on structural BIM workflows, there are probably a lot about the analytical model, maybe Robot. Not today. Today, we're going to focus a little bit more on some approachable daily workflows of your typical structural design project, and how a structural engineering team can use Revit to deliver a design from start to finish.

We've broken this part out into four buckets-- planning, build/coordinate, drawing production, and analysis and design. And that order is not really critical. A lot of these things are happening concurrently depending on who's available, priority of the project, et cetera.

You know, with all those things said, we do know the analytical model is there. We've actually done a lot of work with it over the years. In fact, back in 2007, we actually presented a webinar on round tripping structural system and Revit. So we've sort of abandoned that workflow over time. But we're always constantly working on how to get back into it or when it makes sense.

All of the main analysis tools have their own Revit links. And all of them rely on that analytical model being accurate. Until recently, that was pretty challenging. If you're not familiar with Revit 23, that was totally revamped. We've been looking at it a lot more. And there's really a lot of promise there.

We're really excited about the general data transfer tools, like Speckle or Konstru. But all of them have renewed promise in our eyes. That's really not where we're focused today. But I really, being a structural class, wanted to give it a little bit of recognition.

So let's get into the meat of today. And planning-wise, you really need to start on the right foot. So BIM execution, BIM kickoff, we hear a lot about it. Doesn't always happen as much as it should. But it is really important.

Internally, we like to keep it simple. We're all Revit, regardless of outside factors. It gives us one production tool from a familiarity standpoint, maintaining content, software, workflows. And we really try to consolidate what we have control over. With that said, we still have five versions of this, so we have that to deal with.

Other big topics that need discussed with the whole team are workflow requirements, from does the architect have specific goals and expectations for the model? Are they going to be showing the linked models in their drawings? Are you getting into model coordination? Is it Construction Cloud? Is it Navisworks?

Who's hosting or owning which elements? Is the contractor going to be expecting the model? Do they have specific requirements?

How are we going to share the models and the work? Is it an FTP site? How often are we uploading? Has it been 360 or Construction Cloud, live links, packaging, sharing, consuming? Are there publish expectations?

All of these things need to be discussed. And ideally, you're involving the entire team in these discussions, not just the internal team, but all the consultants and design team. The more the other teams understand about what everyone is doing with the models and how it impacts their work, the more likely they are to buy in.

And we've seen this work really well on a client basis, where not on every project, but once a year or every other year or so we all get together and talk through what we're doing with models or digital information. And there tends to be a lot of really good back and forth. And we turn that into a BXP or a workflow document that really gets everybody on the same page.

So after the early discussions, it's time to start building that model. I'm going to discuss this from how we at PES work. And I know there are different ways of doing things. But this is what we've really found works well for us. Pretty much all the projects are going to start from our template. A lot of time and effort has gone into this over the years.

Once that file's started, we're going to link in the architectural model as a reference. And then we're almost always going to set up the copy/monitor on the grids and levels. Those are your main data elements. It's where we found copy/monitor to be the most useful and reliable.

And then as soon as all this is complete, we're going to set up that work sharing. Open up that file to others internally. And oftentimes, at this point, we're going to go ahead and get that cloud work sharing going. That way, the client can get our model linked, and we can collaborate together as soon as possible.

From here, we're going to start getting into model elements. We got to stay high-level here. And it's also worth noting this can vary by material and project type. But we're going to start big-- columns, walls, footings-- making sure these main supports are as accurate as possible and tied to grid lines. And moving into girders and primary structural members to fill out that main frame.

Then adding infill members-- joists, floors, et cetera. A lot of our placeholder elements that we have to keep track of non-design items have some span to depth context in them so that the client has that context when they get in. And we're also trying to make sure we're communicating work in progress as much as possible to the architects as we go.

And then the last big piece of this is to refine that information, clean up those element properties. This is one that people tend to forget or miss. You're making sure the structural usage is set up correctly. Girders are set to girder. Braces are classified correctly. Double-checking this. This affects your visibility, filtering, automations you might have set up.

We also have some yes/no parameters for lateral elements in our properties that facilitate some of our view templates. So we want to double-check those things. When this is done early on, it really makes the rest of the project a lot easier to deal with when the changes come because they will come.

And this does vary a little bit between steel and concrete. Concrete typically has more to do with joining and overlapping of floors, beams, and columns. Whereas steel is a little bit more about offsets and level or z offsets and things like that, which is going to lead us right into coordination.

You know, Revit and BIM workflows have changed the look in coordination as they've progressed. But they also have the differences of what happens when you introduce BIM 360, live linking. We're not really going to get into the nuances of that in this discussion today.

The coordination we're talking about is going to be mostly visual. And some of that's going to be innate if you leave the linked models visible, even if it's just halftone, which is what most of our teams and view templates are doing at this point. Then you're working in context of that architectural model most of the time.

We also have some view templates to leverage coloring and transparency for even more intentional coordination, as you can see in those images there. Making sure we're linking that MAP model whenever we can get our hands on them for that visual coordination. And sometimes we're even tagging those links in different views to give us that information right there.

Also making sure to leverage schedules in Excel or BIM Link. Putting element information into a schedule or a spreadsheet format can really help things that are harder to see on sheets jump out at you. And finally, coordinating and communicating. When we see something, instead of maybe just putting it in the model, pick up the phone and call the architect. See what they were thinking. Explain your position. And then everyone's kind of on the same page if the timing makes sense.

So once the model is set up, we've got some basic coordination going. It's time to get the documentation going. So at PES, the drawing production starts at the beginning of the model most of the time. The person setting up that model to begin with often creates the primary structural plans and setting up sheets.

A lot of our projects, we're matching architectural plans with structural plans, so we're copying scope boxes where we can. We're setting up floor plans right off the bat. Putting view templates on them and getting them on sheets. We can do the same thing with elevations. Plans, elevations of these large primary structural views all are model elements for the most part. So parametric tags that can be applied are added. Getting these views set up early goes a long way.

You know, then we're going to set up the general notes and schedules from our libraries. Start filling in typical information. Bring in typical sections and details for our general conditions. Getting this document set up early really helps the team not waste time with rework. We can start building on those plans kind of immediately.

The next step is typically moving into the sectioning and detailing. And one of the more common strategies these days has been for the PM or the more experienced project engineer to go around the building, kind of cut or note areas where there's unique conditions that are going to require a section. And someone will go in behind them, cut that section, crop it, apply a view template that shows the architectural link as halftone. We can go ahead and put that on a sheet and start adding detail components and designing. And then being able to have these sections in line with the model make sure that we're capturing everything that the architect wanted, as well as just making sure we don't miss anything.

So there's always this discussion as to how projects and project teams are staffed. At PES, we don't generally have many dedicated BIM modelers or BIM staff, but the few we have are very good. Most of our modeling is going to be done by the engineers themselves. We've really taken the approach that there's value in putting the building together and understanding how it goes together.

But for argument's sake, we'll talk about this for just a second. Starting the project, pretty much anyone can get it started. We have some pretty detailed processes on project setup. So oftentimes, younger engineers are going to get into this, sometimes the BIM staff. For our more complex jobs, the BIM staff is going to be setting this up in case there's any extra steps that need to be taken.

And then the basic model build is pretty open to who does this. We actually have some of our PMs who actually enjoy getting to do this part of it. Helps them understand framing schemes that they want to go with, or even maybe try a few things when they jump in there. But we really focus on using Revit as a tool in our overall process and not just to make drawings.

So the final bit, and some would argue the most important here, is the analysis and design. When most people think of analysis, they're going to jump to full building or global analysis models. And we use a couple of different tools for this-- RAM Structural System or ETABS-- depending on type, complexity.

But for the most part, we're developing these models kind of side by side with that Revit model. We might use some DXFX ports or other minor transfers to help with the setup and coordination, but these are generally not necessarily synchronized. These primary building models, they tend to get all the glory, but it's not necessarily where a lot of the extra effort and kind of process improvement lies.

So when you get into the element-based or substructures, this area has a lot more variability than the global analysis parts and pieces that were not part of the main frame. Maybe there's unique loading conditions. Sometimes we have projects that don't have the global analysis model, canopies, out of plane members, just backtracking other tools. There's a lot of design tasks that end up in this bucket.

We have a lot of tools for these things, but the one we end up kind of turning to the most often tends to be ENERCALC. There are some ways that we typically help with the bookkeeping on this. Utilizing the mark parameter to help keep track of what calculation goes to what members. Encouraging teams to use comments for other analysis notes.

Up until recently, this has been a pretty manual process. Getting member information. Generating your load combinations, your loading conditions. Documenting, then inputting that information into the tool. ENERCALC's been automating some of how that works. And Seth's going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute or two.

And then coordinating these things with Revit, the full building models, that's been a fairly manual process. Sometimes exports or DXFs are overlaid in different views to help us input the information into the element properties for reactions, cambers, studs, sizing. It's usually done once, spot checked, verified. And then any minor changes get coordinated over.

And then component-based, a lot of teams are using that Design View, where we actually have specific views set up to show those marked parameters with design tags. Trying to input information into the Revit elements so that they can coordinate back with the calculation. ENERCALC for Revit has been introducing some new ways for us to keep this information all in one place and streamline that whole document and design process, which I'm going to turn this over to Seth now to talk a little bit more about those things.

SETH ROSWURM: All right. Thanks, Matt. So yeah, I want to give just a little bit of general background for context about ENERCALC as a company-- who we are, what we do for structural engineers, and how our tools interact with these design workflows that Matt's been describing. And then we're going to go ahead and dive into ENERCALC for Revit, which is the Revit integration of ENERCALC's tools. And from there, we're going to go ahead and transition to three different case studies of real projects that PES Structural produced during the last year, where I had the opportunity to actually work closely with the PES team, and help facilitate the project implementation of some ENERCALC tools on those projects.

So like Matt said, that's a collaboration that started about a year ago when we connected at Autodesk University last year. And I was really excited at the opportunity to work with PES in particular on this effort, first of all, because, like Matt said, PES has been in the Revit game for a long time, 15 to 20 years. And also have been ENERCALC customers for our design and analysis tools for almost 30 years. So there's a lot of opportunity to collaborate on this project.

So some background about ENERCALC. ENERCALC is a structural engineering software provider founded in 1982. So we've been around for quite a while. And our primary focus is structural calculations, software tools for low and mid-rise structures. And ENERCALC basically consists of a suite of about 40 individual calculation modules for common analysis and design tasks that structural engineers face every day. And this is accessible to our customers via either a desktop-installed application or in the cloud as a browser-based application.

So we're going to go ahead and quickly look at a little background about the ENERCALC workflow. What ENERCALC looks like. What it can do for structural engineers. So first of all, diverse calculation types and materials, whether that be analysis, beam and column design, foundation, wall design, and a variety of configurations, earth retention structures, and miscellaneous things, like AASC based plate, finite element driven base plate analysis, and so on.

In terms of the user experience, every ENERCALC module is driven by this concept of easy tabular navigation. You have this very horizontal layout, inputs and outputs side by side, and tabular navigation that moves you through both creating and navigating your design. And a lot of rich responsive graphics that help you tangibly visualize the design that you're creating, whether that be working with concrete beam, section geometry, whether that be multistory sheer walls with openings and perforations. Whether that be, for example, a shallow foundation, where you're laying out Rebar mats. You're laying out pedestal geometry, overall thickness of the foundation. All these visuals help walk you through that design and visualize it as you go.

And then when it comes time to actually work with your design outputs and evaluate the outcome of your design, detailed calculations are really key, whether that be summary results, whether it be maximums and minimums, station results along an element, envelope reactions. Customizable reports have a lot of granularity, so you can check on and check off what you want to include or not include in a given printed report, whether that be for an authority having jurisdiction, a peer review, internal documentation, and so on.

ENERCALC uses project-based organization. So every project you create is a self-contained group of calculations. And within each one of those projects, you can add and organize as many calculations as you need to. Sort them and order them as you see fit and add a lot of customization to it.

So with that baseline understanding of what ENERCALC is, how structural engineers use ENERCALC, I'm going to go ahead and slide over to talking about inters for Revit. So ENERCALC for Revit takes the familiar capabilities of ENERCALC itself and brings them directly into the Revit BIM environment, where structural engineers can use ENERCALC calculation on the fly natively inside Revit. So you're going to be able to launch calculations from Revit geometry, work with those calculations, and make design decisions in your calculation environment, and then push this design information back into the Revit model.

So that whole workflow starts with a Revit-based interface. Right on the Revit ribbon bar in the same place as Revit users are used to finding things, like their Structure tab, their Annotation tab, Collaboration Tools, and so on, you'll find the ENERCALC tab, where you have all the tools that you need for creating, managing, and over-viewing your ENERCALC calculations within the Revit environment.

So the process of actually creating a calculation, we refer to as basically a one-click launch process, where you start with simply selecting the element that you're going to launch a calculation for. Select which kind of calculation you're going to launch. And then the Launch Wizard will walk you directly through the process of easily starting that calculation with things like, for example, specifying supports, which are then used to establish span geometry. Specifying connective relationships and tributary framing conditions so you can establish the loading conditions of a beam. And then what you end up with in the ENERCALC interface is a fully built calculation that's ready to perform design work.

Now, once you've progressed through that design work, and you're ready to move information back to your documentation environment, that could be, for example, you finished your loading conditions. You've changed section size. You've reviewed your deflection criteria and found that your stress ratios are adequate.

A simple Save and Close is going to push this design information back to the Revit environment. We're not working with any kind of an import/export. We're not working with a file exchange process. It's just a simple one click to push this information back to your Revit model. So in this case here, we see our updated section size.

Similar to what I mentioned a moment ago with organizing calculations in a project-oriented manner, you have a lot of capabilities inside ENERCALC for Revit to organize and manage your calculations. For example, titles that you can assign, those can be tagged and displayed if you choose. They can also be seen in tabular views for internal reference for coordinating within your team, so you can easily know which physical element corresponds to which calculation.

And as far as over-viewing and managing the big picture of your project, obviously, Revit is a really rich visual environment. So ENERCALC for Revit opens up the ability to have a lot of graphical overview capabilities through color coding, slide out legends that give you at-a-glance statistics and insight about the completion state of your model and pass/fail conditions. And then, obviously, the tabular views we talked about a moment ago, which have correlating color coding, as well as the titles of the calculations and granular detail about the status.

And it's worth noting that the element manager has two-way navigation, where you can select any calculation in the calculation table. See the physical element that corresponds to it or vice versa. If you pick any physical element, you'll be able to see the calculation associated to it. And obviously, access to calculation reports is critical and is a huge convenience to have directly inside the Revit model. So anytime you're working with a calculation inside your project, you can easily click and access that calculation report at a glance without having to leave the Revit environment.

So now that we have a baseline about ENERCALC capabilities and the ENERCALC for Revit fundamental workflows, I want to go ahead and transition to looking at our case studies that we were actually producing. These are three different real projects that PES Structural produced during the last year when I had the chance to work with the PES team. We're going to go through each one of these and look at a number of different use cases that show different ENERCALC for Revit capabilities, and kind break down how ENERCALC and ENERCALC for Revit facilitated the workflows that Matt has been describing throughout our session today by just seamlessly integrating with the PES Structural workflows.

So our first case study we're going to look at is Oaks at Whittaker Glen. This project is located in Raleigh, North Carolina. It's a three-story skilled nursing facility, about 110 dwelling units, 96,000 square feet. And the construction cost on this project came in at about $20 million.

So I want to start by just breaking down the overall structural system for the building. And then I'll zero-in on the specific areas of the building where our case study is focused. So the first thing to note about Oaks at Whitaker Glen is it is a podium-style project. So the first elevated floor in the building is post-tensioned concrete on concrete columns.

And then launching up from the podium level, we have the proprietary infinity system-- 2-inch concrete over 3 and 1/2 composite deck with cold form bearing walls launching up, so light gauge on slab on deck for all subsequent elevated floors above the podium level. And then we have some special conditions at the elevated floor dining area common areas, as well as some external canopies outside the building, where we have some conventional wide flange steel framing. And that's the specific area where we're going to be zeroing-in for our case study today is those special miscellaneous conditions that don't fit into the overall global system the same as everything else.

So the first thing we're going to be looking at is this exterior canopy on the west side of the building. And this is a really nice example of using ENERCALC for Revit, not just for design but also to eliminate repetitive model management work. So the repetition and inconvenience comes in where when we look at the floor plan, we can see the edge of the building is stepping in and out. And that creates two different conditions for our typical canopy beams on the outside of the building.

So we have a short trib condition, where we're closer to the edge of the building. And then we have a long trib condition. And these calculations have been already set up in this example here.

But what we're going to be looking at is the ability to easily manage all of these other 8 by 10 beams that haven't been sized yet. So our short trib has already been sized to the 10 by 12. And our long trib condition has already been sized to the 10 by 19, but the rest of these beams are not yet sized.

So we're going to quickly see here how the design team was able to quickly and easily assign sizes all across here using what we call parent-child groupings or parent-child associations. So if we pick our short trib condition and add child elements, we can pick all of the other beams that have that short trib condition. And then we can go back and do the same thing for everything that has the long trib condition by adding children for the long trib calculation.

And as soon as we've made those parent-child associations and grouped those beams together, we can go straight back to our plan view and see that those section sizes have been assigned automatically via that parent-child association. So all of our long trib beams that are further offset from the building now have that 10 by 19 size. And all our beams that are closer to the building now have that W 10 by 12 size.

So now that this association has been set, we'll see that the design team has not just a one-time time savings but now an enhanced ability to manage the model over time with any changes or evolutions that happen within the project. So for example, if we go back to our long trib condition, and we need to apply some kind of a change, let's say, for example, we have a loading condition that's changed. For the sake of this example, we're going to go and put some snow load on this canopy.

Once we apply that load, we'll see our deflection criteria now need attention. We're going to need a larger section size. So if we go to our section picker, we're going to go ahead and toggle to a W 14 by 22 larger section size. But now, when we Save and Close, we're going to see that new section size has been applied not just to the main beam but also to each of the individual beams that were tied to that main beam via parent-child groupings. So all of the long trib conditions where we were further off the face of the building have now been automatically changed with no need for the BIM team or the engineering team to go back, back-check these, manually change them, et cetera.

So now, we're going to go ahead and turn our attention to the elevated floor common areas at the interior of the building. This is a cool application of ENERCALC for Revit for a couple of reasons starting with the use of area loads. In the previous example, we didn't have any area loads in play, but in this example, we're actually using area loads on the floor. And I'm going to go ahead and fire up the calculations so you guys can see how the area loads actually map into line loads in the ENERCALC environment using automatically detected tributary width on the fly.

So if we zoom in here and examine this calculation, first of all, we'll see that we have our dead and live loads. We have our 100 PSF live load, occupancy live load on the floor, and then our 87 PSF dead load, which includes the collateral and the slab and self-weight. And when we go and open this calculation for editing, we can see that these loads have mapped into the ENERCALC environment.

We also have a special condition at the right end of the beam, which is an additional superimposed load because of the thickened slab at the patio area. And so we have two different types of loads-- loads that we're mapped automatically and loads that were applied manually by the design team. So you can see the flexibility of the workflow there.

So now that we've looked at the setup of this calculation and the loading conditions that we're taking advantage of, we're going to go ahead and see, similar to the example we looked at a moment ago, how ENERCALC for Revit is enhancing the design team's ability to respond to changes and manage the evolution of the Revit model over time. So in this case, we're going to be looking at actually shifting a column line, the column line that supports this beam that we just designed.

When we make a geometry change to this column, we'll see a pop-up warning from ENERCALC for Revit telling us that we've made a change that impacts our calculation we just finished. When we approve that change, we see a warning status indicated by orange highlighting on the beam. We can go to our element manager and see granular detail about that warning. It tells us that our geometry and support conditions have changed.

And now, we can directly reopen this calculation for editing. We can look at our new conditions. We can look at and verify our loading. We see our just over 30 foot span now, which is increased from a moment ago.

We can come through here back to our section selector and quickly iterate through. Find a section size that is appropriate for this new geometry. And when we Save and Close, just like before, we're not having to make a manual change, but we're going to see this change applied automatically. So first, we see our green highlighting that tells us we're passing unity. And then we can go directly to our plan and see that our 24 by 55 section size has been automatically applied to the model.

So our second case study project we're looking at is the Lake Club at Heritage building. Lake Club at Heritage is located in Alexander City, Alabama. This is a two-story clubhouse facility for a golf course country club, definitely a mixed-use facility. There's offices, assembly dining type area, as well as fitness center and so on inside the building, so about 10,000 square feet. And again, coming in at about $20 million construction cost.

So just like we did before, I want to start by just breaking down the structural system. Getting an overall picture of the makeup of the building. And then we're going to zero-in on a couple specific areas for the case study that we did.

So at the main level of the building, which is the club level, we have composite beams, so steel wide flange beams with headed studs, slab and deck. And then going up a level from there for our mezzanine level, which is largely for mechanical support, we have dimension lumber framing. And then topping out the building at the highest level, we have a lot of manufactured wood trusses.

So for this particular case study, the work that we did between ENERCALC and PES was really focusing mainly on these first two items-- the composite steel beams and the dimension lumber framing. And we're going to go ahead and break that down here. So for the first example, we're going to go and start with the club level composite beams.

And this is a really interesting case for a couple reasons, mainly just due to the numerous factors that make composite design so complicated because you're worried about not only the beam properties. You're also looking at slab mechanical properties. You're looking at slab effective width. You have to worry about the sequencing of your loads, which ones are pre-composite, which ones are permanent, and so on.

And so we're going to look at how ENERCALC for Revit can let you easily perform complex designs of this nature using a combination of both physical model geometry and taking advantage of Revit's native parametric framework. So for the composite example at the club level, we're going to start by just looking and examining the calculation. We're going to quickly see how these loads that are already modeled can easily be assigned the sequencing or the staging that they need for composite design, so our live load. Occupancy live load is going to be post-composite only. Our dead load will be pre- and post-permanent load.

And then our 25 PSF construction live load will be pre-composite only. We can easily set those just using checkboxes in the Properties pane. And then we can go directly on to assigning a manufacturer deck profile for the deck. And then we can go directly to our native Revit Properties pane and set the mechanical properties for the slab.

So once we do all that, we're ready to directly launch this calculation. The calculation launch is going to look very similar to everything we've seen so far with the exception of the fact that because it's composite, ENERCALC for Revit is actually detecting from physical geometry in the model your slab effective width geometry, including the span direction, parallel versus perpendicular, and the effective width on each side of the beam. So once that launch process concludes, we have a fully built composite beam calculation fired up in ENERCALC and ready to do design work.

So now that we're in our calculation, we can see the breakdown of our pre-composite, post-composite, and permanent loads. We can see our staging of those loads visually, and then we can see the tabular view. We have our occupancy live load. We have our permanent dead load. We have our pre-composite construction load, all neatly tabulated.

And we can go directly into our making design decisions, including how we're going to manage our stud designs. We can look at our effective width geometry graphically in a 3D view and also see it tabulated. And then when we select our stud design approach, we can go ahead and look at the results of that. And then Save and Close and push our design information back into the Revit environment. And again, that Save and Close is happening automatically, not through any kind of a manual import/export process.

So now that we've done that Save and Close, we can take the next step. Again, like Matt was referencing earlier, where we're not just working with modeling we're progressing into documentation. And ENERCALC for Revit can really help the design team accelerate that process because of the information that was pushed back into the Revit model.

So if we go to our plan view, we can simply take this default tag, toggle it to a more detailed tag that's exposing the design information that was pushed, and we can see we have end reactions. We have stud quantities. And then we can access the beam and see that those are stored in the Properties pane, meaning that they're in Revit's native parametric framework. They could be tagged. They could be scheduled. And the design team always has granular control over how those reactions get displayed using these preferences that we see here, whether that be thresholds for ignoring reactions, rounding tolerances, and so on.

So now we're going to take a step up to the mezzanine level of this building. This is mainly for our mechanical support. And this is where we see the dimension lumber framing that I made reference to earlier.

And this is similar to what we're looking at with the composite design process, looking at how ENERCALC for Revit can take a painful process and make it simple and straightforward for the design team. Simple control over NDS design classifications. We're working with multiple-ply dimension lumber instead of single-ply, so there's a few extra moving parts. And then we're going to springboard from what we saw previously to a slightly more advanced usage of parent-child groupings.

So if we go ahead and take a look at this mezzanine right here, the first thing to do is to assign the actual NDS design properties to one of these beams. So ENERCALC for Revit has a wizard that makes it really straightforward to do that, to choose an NDS table, to choose a species, to choose a commercial grade. And once you've assigned those, then you're ready to go ahead and do a one-click launch like we've done in the past.

Now, you'll notice during the launch process that ENERCALC for Revit has detected that there's a beam system in use here. And so we have the option on-the-fly to assign parent-child groupings during the calculation launch. And that'll come in handy in just a second. We'll circle back to that.

So now that we have our calculation fully loaded, we didn't have any loads that came from the Revit model. But we have two-way inter-op between Revit load objects and ENERCALC load assignments. And so we can assign loading conditions right here in the ENERCALC interface. And we'll see those reflected in the Revit interface. And now, we're ready to evaluate capacity and go ahead and make some design decisions.

So now that this calculation is all set up, it becomes apparent that our two-gang 2 by 10 is not going to get us there on capacity, but we can easily toggle to a two-gang 2 by 12 and go ahead and Save and Close. And as soon as we get back to the Revit model, of course, not only are we going to see our green highlighting that tells us we're complete and passing unity, but we can pick each one of these and see not only has the parent beam but also each of the child beams have been assigned that two-gang 2 by 12 section size. We could go ahead and tag that. We could finish our documentation.

Now, when we created that parent-child grouping, I also used the checkbox that says to copy reactions from the parent to the children. And so what that means is we're ready to go ahead and take advantage of that more advanced use of parent-child groupings because each of these beams already has a stored reaction that will basically let us springboard into a one-click design for the header that supports these beams. So if I go ahead and launch a calculation for the header that supports these beams, ENERCALC for Revit automatically detects that those beams are framing in.

And when we approve that association, we can automatically associate those reactions. We can see their appropriate span relative locations, the magnitude of each of those reactions. And we're essentially finished with our header design in just a few seconds instead of having to manually transfer or transcribe or manually assign those loading conditions.

So our third and final case study is the Towneplace Suites project located in Jacksonville, Florida. Towneplace Suites was a five-story hotel, 132 keys, 85,000 square feet, and expected construction costs around $15.5 million. So just like we have on the previous ones, I want to start with some context looking at the overall structural system of this project.

It is a bearing wall project, load bearing CMU walls. Because of the standard geometry that you see in hospitality type structures, we have these load bearing CMU walls at fixed intervals, or regular intervals I should say, across the building. And spanning between those walls, we have hollowcore precast planks.