Cad/Cam as a Build enviroment is it fesible?

[dmthurman]

I posted this question in another thread but I thought it might be worth while to post it's own thread. I've been looking at and reading up on what Gehry has been doing with Catia, and I'm wondering if taking that same process and moving it to say a program such as Solidworks would be worthwhile. I went to a seminar on solidworks 2006 and was impressed with it's capabilites in handling large assemblies, which seemed to be a weakness in earlier Cad/Cam programs. I'm thinking in terms of Custom residential light commercial projects in particular.

[derijones]

I've been using Solidworks for 4 years and it's pretty good - by far the best and most intuiative modelling and 3D environment of any package I've used. It's fast at doing prismatic shapes and the parametrics are a very powerful tool if used correctly. However, if you want to use it for complex buildings, with the sort of shapes that Gehry and Foster are producing, it will start to choke quite quickly, as it struggles with curved surfaces and calculating intersections through those.

I use it to design the internal structures for boats - I receive an IGES file of the hull surfaces, create intersections and detail the internal frames, stringers and girders that are required. Solidworks will quite easily use up the full 1.7Gb of RAM available on a couple of hundred parts with surface intersections - scale that up to a full building with all details and at it would seriously struggle to deal with it, even moving to XP64 and heaps more RAM.

I think it all boils down to the kernel used for the modeller and how they treat curved surfaces - I'm in the process of moving over to VX, which is no where near as friendly CAD package, but seems to treat curved surfaces far better - hope it works as having Solidworks running out of memory on a regular basis is a PIA!

Cheers

Deri

[dmthurman]

I think a boat is a very good anology to more complex structures and the requirements. I'm looking at fabrications of custom, framing members that are curved, componemental, composite components, custom windows, custom interior panelized components, complex railing designs etc. I don't think revit is the solution so i've been curious about other programs. hope you'll keep us up todate on VX it sounds interesting. The questions would be the same for VX can it handle large assemblies....

[derijones]

Have a look at my website:

http://www.djaweb.co.uk

for examples of some of the boats we've done - I've been doing kits in steel and aluminium for 6 years - they all interlock and are generally self supporting prior to welding - plasma profiled or laser cut.

I'd love to produce a kit for a building - curved aluminium roof beams in an organic shape would be cool!

I'm not 100% sure about VX yet - the reason I went for it was that the UK rep is about 1 1/2 hours away and charges a sensible amount for writing macro's - ideally I can adapt it to do exactly what I want - a lot of my work is repetitive.

Give me 6 mnoths and I'll be in a better position to know.

[dmthurman]

hey I checked out your site.that's exactly the kind of stuff that I"m talking about. It's along the lines of NOX son-o-house http://www.arcspace.com/architects/nox/Son-O-House/

and SHoP's Camera Obscura

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.11/gehry.html

 

You had mentioned that Sollidworks started to bog down, 2006 is supposed to be a radical upgrade on speed and the way it handles information in relationship to 2005. have you had a chance to check out 2006?

[derijones]

I'm stuck on 2004 (the guy I was renting the software off canned the update agreement - which is part of the reason I'm moving to VX), but the feedback on 2005 on the solidworks usergroup (comp.cad.solidworks) is that it is slower than 2004. From reading between the lines, the major speed ups in DW2006 are with lightweight assemblies and drawings - both very handy if your doing mechanical design with millions of bits, but I don't think it will solve the problems with dealing with curved surfaces and intersections.

Thanks for the links - I hadn't seen the "Son of house" project and glanced at the Wired article before - I'll have a better look tomorrow. We've got the system pretty nailed for boats and doing the plating and shapes for a building would be less material - I'd love to do a building to show what we can realy do.......anybody got any clients fancy giving it a whiz?

[dmthurman]

i'm don't have a client yet......LOL.....well I have clients but this is a bit beyound the group I'm working for. I'm working in a track home development at the current moment......

[Hazdaz]

Well workign with both CAD and CAM for many years - but not necissarily in the architectural field, I say it is totally doable - in theory.

 

Like there is nothing inherent in the software that would stop you from designing a house in SolidWorks (hell, entire airplanes and cars are designed in mid- and highend-CAD software), BUT what are you going to do after you model it?

 

None of the mechanical CAD programs are really setup for making Architectural drawings. Even if you are relying on arch-drawings made in another CAD program, who or what is going to build you the items needed to build the building?

 

Like I am not sure what you think you would be saving or solving by using a program like SolidWorks.

 

It is a great program, but the whole architectural world really relys more on skilled to very skilled labor to build a structure using realitively vague (and many times, inaccurate) drawings, which are used more as a "guide".... which is the opposite of the manufacturing industry which relies on super accurate, super detailed drawings to be followed precisely by unskilled to semi-skilled factory workers.