Rebar, an Automated Workflow from Modeling Through Fabrication and Field

JEFF COCHRANE: Good morning, everybody. My name's Jeff Cochrane. The title of this class is rebar, an Automated Workflow from Modeling Through Fabrication and Field. That's not what you were expecting to see, then maybe one of us is in the wrong place. As I would just mention-- and we're not going to focus so much today on the actual modeling of the rebar. The modeling of the rebar from my presentation was done in Revit, but what we're going to focus on is taking that information from the model, tracking it through production and out into the field, and finding how we can make the processes talk to each other maybe a little better than they're currently doing.

This is a class summary, I won't read it, it's online. Basically, in a nutshell, it says that while the software industry has made great strides in recent years in improving the processes and the workflows, there's still quite a bit of room for improvement. So today, we're just going to look at some things that are currently being done, and some things that can possibly be done in the future with some emerging technologies that we can make use of.

Learning objectives-- understanding current workflow challenges in the rebar supply chain. Learn how to easily capture and manage a rebar release from your Revit model. Observe how a release is imported into the aSa production system, and how it flows seamlessly through the rebar fabrication. Understand how rebar data can help drive efficiencies and quality in the field. And finally, learn how Reality Capture can be used to collect as-built data that can then be used to validate that the structure was, in fact, built to the design specifications.

Before I go any further, y'all are a good looking crowd. I'm going to take a picture. Post it on my Facebook. Everybody smile. Perfect. So first off, we'll talk a little bit about who aSa is. We are, basically, the leading software provider in the world for the rebar fabrication industry.

We have been in business, believe it or not, as a software company for 48 years. Our corporate office is in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I work from my home right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. We have regional offices around the world, and approximately 70 employees. We have over 800 fabricating sites worldwide, primarily in North America, but we do now have at least one site on six out of the seven continents. We haven't broken into Antarctica yet, but we're on every other continent.

We have 100 plus independent estimators and detailers, and over 7,500 users worldwide. Little bit about myself. I don't even have a slot about me in here-- my bio is online. I was raised working in a family-owned rebar shop right outside of Charlotte, North Carolina. I worked for them up until 1998 when I left to go to work for aSa.

So I grew up working, fabricating, estimating, and detailing rebar. And then when I left that, I went to do software for rebar fabricators, so I never could get quite away from the rebar industry. Been with aSa for 19 years now.

So this is just a little commercial about what all products aSa has. All of our products are modular. Customers can buy just what they need, but I'll have them do-- talk to each other, so if you buy more than one module, they will all interface with each other. So just going to go through this very quickly just to see that is-- we do provide a comprehensive solution. Pretty much everything that a rebar fabricator needs to do, we can provide a tool to help them do that.

So let's start with looking at some of the current workflow challenges in the supply chain. And we're going to back up. Today's focus is going to be primarily from fabrication out into the field, but I want to back up a little bit and start even before that in the design and analysis phase. So this is kind of a flow diagram of the workflow as it is today and as it has been traditionally, and you can see it's very linear.

One step may talk to the next step, but there's really not much communication going on beyond that. So the current structural workflow in most design offices-- the analytical design model interfaces with CAD with a one-time export. The model is built using various, sometimes incompatible, software, frame, foundations, slabs, connections, et cetera, sometimes not even from the same vendor.

It's exported to CAD via 2D DXF drawings. The detail drawing sheets are assembled and referenced on plans and elevations. Changes occur, engineering updates the analytical design model, and the CAD technician updates the drawings, with coordination only being done sometimes by manual redline review process.

Detailers, and contractors, and subs making bids from an independent model. So kind of in a nutshell, the architect creates floor plans, building elevations, wall elevations, slab geometry, column dimensions, and progress drawings. Then, that becomes the deliverable to the structural engineer. The engineer takes that and he creates software model for structural analysis, a model for structural design, model for post-tension design perhaps, material takeoffs, structural drawings, then delivers that back to the architect.

And you can see highlighted, there's potential for basically redundant work going on here. The architects already done some of this work, now the engineers having to redo it. So now, the ball's handed back to the architect. He revises the floor plans, the elevations, the wall elevations. New progress drawings back to the structural engineer. And again, lots of potential for replicated work.

So this process is repeated, potentially many times, through the preliminary design phases. You have owner-driven revisions, architectural revisions, structural revisions, and the cycle just continues until finally, it just-- you end up with just so many revisions that you can hardly tell what the original drawings look like. 'til finally, a construction set is created for delivery to the general contractor.

But looking at it from the fabricators point of view, where is the detailer and the fabricator while all this is going on? They're not engaged in the process yet. Typically, they're only involved post-design after the documents are released for bid, traditionally in paper format, but more recently in PDF, or through some other proprietary viewer.

The design documents are reviewed by the sales and estimating departments. Manual estimating is done item by item. Even if you have access to some sort of automated estimating program, it's still a time consuming and potentially error prone process. Following the estimate, sales department prices the job, success rates on bids may only be as low as 25%. The bid is accepted and the detailing begins.

And then another very similar process starts with the detailer creating the placing drawings, maybe manually CAD-generated, but still, it's sometimes very manual process. And again, even if you have some sort of an automated program, there's a lot of reentry of information, and there's a lot of potential for keystroke errors. Once the job is detailed, it's then released for fabrication. The detailing department prepares the bar list, coordinates fabrication schedule with the shop and the contractor.

And the detailer's responsibilities and tight schedules keep the detailer from truly reviewing the project to add value to the construction process. And in my past life in the rebar business, I did do quite a bit of detailing, and it was always frustrating that I would see things that could potentially be improved, but number one, did not have the communications with the necessary parties, either the contractor or the engineer, to make my voice heard. But also as the bullet points out, I just didn't have the time because I had all these other responsibilities. So I think there's a potential efficiency that can be gained there from engaging the detailer earlier in the process.

So we're going to look at streamlining the process. Again, as I said, we're not going to focus so much on the design and analysis, but I think there is that potential for earlier engagement in communication amongst all the phases of construction. So again, if we go back and look at our linear workflow, perhaps something that might work better would be this type of a proactive team-centered approach, where we have all of the same operations taking place, but they're all interfacing with the 3D structural model with team reviews of the model throughout the process.

We're hearing some very good success stories of some of our customers who are rebar fabricators, who are doing exactly that. They're getting engaged earlier in the process, and they are actually modeling the rebar, and then through the use of IFCs-- who's heard of IFCs? Anybody know what an IFC file is? It stands for Industry Foundation Class, and it's basically a neutral file format that can be used to transfer information between competing and coordinating software products.

So through the use of IFC files, the contractor can create a model that contains just the concrete. And then he can hand that model to the subcontractors, and they can go in and do their trade. They can do the rebar. They can do the plumbing. They can do the mechanical.

And then they can export an IFC of just their part of the business, and send it back to the contractor. And then they're actually having very frequent coordination meetings, where they will get-- all of the players will get in the same room, either a physical room or a virtual room with an online meeting, and they will bring all the models together into one consensus model and start looking for problems. There's a scale of how much it costs to fix a problem, and the earlier in the process you can identify that problem, the cheaper it is to fix it.

And it's not a linear scale. The later you go in the process, it's exponential. Fixing it at this point is the cheapest. It costs the least amount to fix it at this point, and I'll show you an example later on of the worst case of having to fix a problem, and how much the cost is.

So next thing is we're going to look at how to create, and manage release, and export them to aSa for rebar fabrication. And this is just a couple of quick slides. We have an add-in for Revit to export rebar releases to a file format that we've created called RDX. And that stands for rebar Data Exchange, and it's a specially formatted that's XML that contains all of the data necessary to create a valid release in aSa production.

We made this file format available to anyone-- any software vendor who's interested in using it. We've published it, we have documents available, and anyone who's interested can get a hold of those. We actually wrote a plug-in for Revit to export Revit rebar data into our RDX format. So this is just a screenshot of a simple concrete model.

You can see we're going to go up under External Tools, select RDX Export. Brings up a screen where you have to fill in minimal information. You have to give it a job number, a job name. Control code is an internal thing that we use at aSa-- it's just of a three or four digit sequence of characters to uniquely identify that release. So you just fill in a little bit of minimum information and hit proceed, and it takes whatever rebar you had preselected in the model, and it writes it out to an RDX file that you can then send to any fabricator who uses aSa software, and they can import it directly into their system.

So on the aSa side, this is what it looks like. We go into our import application, we select the file. It brings up and it shows us what's in the file. We can make minor changes here to the heading information if necessary. If there's anything in the file that is not understood, it will flag it right here, and then perhaps some communication can be done between the aSa customer and the Revit user to correct anything if things aren't named exactly as we expect them to be, because Revit gives you a lot of rope.

You can name things whatever you want to name them, and once we get downstream further into our system, we expect things to be named in a certain manner. So if there's any inconsistencies, they can be identified at this point and rectified. Once the release has been imported, it becomes-- it's a standard release in the aSa system that can be done anything with it just as if it had been manually entered into the system.

So on the left side, this is what we call our bar list report-- it's essentially a bill of materials. On the right side, this is our production processing screen. What we do is every bundle of steel that gets fabricated in one of our shops, we print a tag that gets attached to that bundle, and here's an example of one right here.

It's on a tough material that's very difficult to tear, and it has all the information about the job, the customer, and that item to be fabricated. And this tag will be tied onto the bundle to be delivered to the job site. We also provide complete cutting instructions. And in fact, this was the very first application that was written in 1969-- is what we call an optimum shearing program. Basically, takes a bunch of different items that need to be fabricated, you tell it what material you're going to be cutting it out of-- what length bars and that kind of thing-- and it tells you exactly how to cut it in order to, number one, minimize your scrap loss, but also maximize production.

If we zoom in on part of that report, you'll see exactly what I'm talking about. So every time you drop a load of stock bars onto the conveyor table to be cut, it gives you exact instruction. In this case, we're working with number five bars. These actually happen to be epoxy-coated. We're going to drop 18 60 foot bars, we're going to make one cut at 4 feet 4 inches, and we're going to run that out to the 8 foot stop and drop it in bin number three-- that bin should be empty at that point.

We're going to make one cut at 5 foot 1. We're going to run it out to the 10 foot stop-- dump it into bin number four which should also be empty. Then finally, one cut at 50 foot 4, run it out to the 60 foot stop, dump it in bin zero, and then after that, we're going to scrap 18 pieces, 3 inches long. So we started with a 60 foot bar-- we used all but 3 inches of it.

So this is just a little video showing the tag printer that prints these tags. Oops, it didn't automatically play. Hmm, I don't know why that's not playing. Well, let's see if we can move on that one. It is not all that impressive to start with. See if this one will play. If this one won't play, we're going to have a problem.

AUDIENCE: Maybe you could go out of [INAUDIBLE].

JEFF COCHRANE: Yeah, I'm going to try that.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

So not much there. It's just a simple-- it's called a thermal transfer process. It's the same process that the airlines use to print your bag tags. Prints on a very durable material. The print will not fade, it's very durable.

It'll stand up to weather, to salt on the roads, what have you. The next video is just a simple-- what we call a starter bar or a dowel-- showing the process that how that bar is actually bent. And again, I'm going to have to go out of presentation mode.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

To start with-- let me just stop this. This is what's called a shear line. This is kind of the heart of a rebar fabricating shop. Has anybody ever been into a rebar fabricating shop? A few of you? OK. This is the piece of equipment that's used to cut the larger diameter bars. And normally, it's a much higher throughput, much more automated process.

For the purpose when we were in the shop this day taking these videos-- normally, you're not going to have these guys standing down here. You're going to be cutting a bunch more bars at a time. But this is an automated piece of equipment. It's controlled by this big, red box right here.

So this piece right here is the actual shear-- that's what does the cutting. On the other side of that is the feed table, where they have all of their stock length bars. They dump the appropriate quantity of bars onto the table, and it's an automated conveyor. The guy standing behind this box just presses the toggle switch and it rolls the bars underneath the shear onto the gauge table.

And this table has stops that pop up every-- they're either-- every 1 foot or every 2 feet, a stop can pop up, and then the entire table moves back and forth to gauge the length of the bar. So if I want a bar that's, say, 5 feet 6 inches long, the 5 foot stop will pop up, and then the entire table moves the 6 inches to give me that 5 foot 6 inch length. So then the operator just runs the bars up to the stop, presses another button on the controller, and it causes the blade to come down and cut the bars.

Once that's done, he can then roll the bars further down the line to dump them into one of these bins here. There is a set of what we call "kickoff arms" that will automatically raise up and roll the bars off of the conveyor table. And then you see there's these pockets here-- these are called the "slide arms," and each one of these is hinged on the bottom end.

So this whole series of arms will stand up depending on which bin the controller tells it to dump the bars in-- bin number one, bin number two, bin number three, bin number four. You can see these arms right here are in the up position, so that's where these bars are going to come down. So normally, you would not have this guy right here grabbing the bars and sliding them down. It would all be controlled from what we call the "console."

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

And you would have a lot more bars. These things are capable of cutting, depending on the bar size you're working with, they can cut 20, 25 or more bars at a time. However many bars will fit flat. You don't want a bar on top of another, but however many bars will fit flat on the table, it can cut that many bars at a time. Next, the bars-- again, the larger size bars, they have to be cut and bent in a two-step process. We cut them on that machine, and then we transfer them to what we call a table bender to bend them. And that table bender--

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

--simply has a turntable in the middle with a pin in the middle of the turntable, and then a forming tool that actually moves to put the bend on the end of the bar. So that's how larger sized bars are cut and bent. Smaller size bars can be done on what we call an "automatic coil bender," which is a single step process that takes the material off of a coil-- think of a big spool of thread-- straightens it, bends it to whatever shape you want, and then cuts it off when it's done.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

So here, we can see we're just bending a simple square tie. And you can see that thing turning around in the background, that's where the coil of rebar is sitting, and as it feeds off of it, it just continually uncoils. It runs through-- back here, there's a straightening process that takes that round coil and straightens it into a straight bar, and then forming tool here that bends it into whatever shape, and then there's a little knife right there that cuts it when it's done. So it's just a one-step process.

So I mentioned the item tags. We have barcodes on the item tags that can be scanned throughout the fabrication process to provide several benefits. Number one, easy material receipts. When we receive material in from the mill, there's an industry standard barcode that a lot of the mills have adopted that we can scan that barcode, and automatically receive that bundle into our inventory. Real-time inventory updates. As we use the material, we scan that barcode again, and it then removes it back from the inventory.

This is an important one-- automated heat/cast and material tracking. As we're fabricating the items, we scan the tag of the fabricated item, and it then goes and associates whatever stock bundle is open, and now we've made the association from the stock, which we have the heat information attached to, a fabricated item. So any project in the US that has federal funding, they're required to provide what's called mill test reports, which is basically a document from the mill specifying that these bars do have the correct chemical content, and the correct physical properties to be used on a government job.

So those materials are required. And so it's-- without some system like this, it can become quite a headache keeping track of exactly what heats and material were used to fabricate a job. This makes it very easy. And finally, error-free shipments. Another efficiency-- how many people work on a job site?

Have you ever gotten an incorrect shipment of rebar?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF COCHRANE: Always perfect. Hey, good for you.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF COCHRANE: There's a lot of room for error in getting the correct stuff fabricated, on the right truck, and delivered to the job. In fact, the most common errors in a fabricating shop-- number one, it's fabricated wrong. Number two, it's not completely fabricated. Remember that two-step process where we have to cut it on one machine and bend it on another? It's not uncommon for it to be cut and then put straight on the truck, skipping that bending process.

Number three is it doesn't get loaded onto the truck at all. Number four is it gets loaded onto a truck, but the wrong truck. The typical-- a large fabricator might have 10 or 12 loading bays with a big 40 foot trailer in each bay, and they're just loading bundle after bundle onto all these trucks. And if you don't have some way to keep track to make sure that you're putting the right bundle on the right truck, it's very easy to send something to the wrong place.

So we can use barcode technology to help in a lot of those cases. In the case of a fabricating machine where that machine is stationary and doesn't move, we have an industrial strength touch screen computer that we have an application running on that takes-- that tracks everything. And then in the case of the loading operation where you need to be a little more mobile, we have handheld units that run a similar application.

So we're going to go through-- if I can get my scanner to work, we're actually going to jump into a live demo just to show you a little bit about how this process works. So let me minimize that. So I'm going to have in the background here-- this is an application that you would typically run in the office on an office computer, and I'm just doing an inquiry on this release to see what it's fabrication status is. And right now, I can see that the only thing that's been done on it is tags have been printed, but no fabricating process have taken place yet.

This is the application that you would normally run on that industrial strength touchscreen tablet that's out in your shop. So we're going to walk through the process of how we track the items through the shop. I'm running it on the laptop, but again, it would normally be run on that tablet out in the shop. So the first thing I'm going to do, I have several pages full of barcodes up here, I'm going to scan my employee barcode to log into the system.

[BEEP]

And it moved over onto the other screen. So here we are. I'm now logged in. User Jeff C, that's me. And you can see the machine that I'm currently on is a shear controller. Now, normally, you would not be switching machines from one step to the other, because you would have a separate device located at each machine, so you would not be switching operations like I'm going to be today. Next thing I'm going to do, I have some item tags here just printed on a piece of paper, I'm going to scan one of the item tags to indicate that I have now cut that bar.

[BEEP]

Well, it's telling me that, wait a minute, you can't do that yet because you don't have an inventory tag open. We have an option turned on that says I have to open an inventory tag-- a stock tag prior to scanning any fabricated item tags. So I'm going to go now and scan a stock tag.

[BEEP]

I've just now opened a coil of number three, grade 60, and now I'm going to go back and scan my item tag again. And it says, wait a minute, you're trying to fabricate a number seven bar, but you've told me that you're working with a number three bar-- you can't do that, so we're going to prevent you from fabricating something from the wrong bar size. So I will now go and open the correct inventory item--

[BEEP]

--and let's close that number three. So now, I have a bundle of number seven bars open, so now I should be able to cut this number seven bar.

[BEEP]

And in fact, it does say "scan successful," and it also-- you see down here at the bottom, it's now associated that heat of the stock bundle that I had open with this fabricated item. So it now knows not only is that item done, but it was done using this heat of material from this vendor. So now, we have that traceability back to them the stock bundle that was used to fabricate that item. You can also see in my inquiry up here that's running in the background that it has now designated that that item has, in fact, been cut. Let's go ahead and cut one more.

[BEEP]

And now, we're going to switch machines-- we're going to switch to our table bender where we're going to bend those items.

[BEEP]

OK, machine changed successfully, so now I'm going to scan this first item that I cut.

[BEEP]

Now, look what it's telling me. It says the double scan operation started. We've designated that bending the bars is a double scan operation. You scan the tag once when you start, you scan the tag a second time when you finish, so then not only do we know that the item was completed, but we also know how long it took to do it.

It also says instructions ready. What we can do now is hit Transfer-- this button right here-- and it will download to the machine that we're connected to the instructions to bend that item. So it eliminates the user error of potentially programming the machine incorrectly. So we're going to make sure that the user fabricates it correctly. When we're done, we scan it again.

[BEEP]

And now the bundle is closed. That item now is designated as being bent. Now we'll switch machines once again. We'll go to one of those automatic coil benders.

[BEEP]

And you can see I have no inventory bundles open, so I'm going to open my bundle-- my coil number three bar.

[BEEP]

And then I'm going to scan an item tag for a number three bar.

[BEEP]

Now the item tags open. Again, double scan operation started. Instructions ready. You can download directly to the machine to program the machine, because all of those, especially the automatic coil benders have computer controllers on them, where you just program the bar that you want in the bend, and it bends it for you.

So the ability to download instructions to that machine, number one, it saves a great deal of time, but number two, it prevents the user from programming the machine incorrectly.

[BEEP]

Now that bundle is closed. Now let's move on to a loading operation. So I'm going to scan the tag to indicate that I'm now going to load. I'm going to choose the trailer that I want to load on, and then I'm going to scan my first item tag. This tag has been fabricated, I'm now ready to load it onto the trailer.

[BEEP]

Wrong trailer-- OK. Scan the tag of the correct trailer.

[BEEP]

Scan it again. That items now successfully loaded. Also, it shows me a list of everything from this order that has yet to be loaded. So if I need to know what else is supposed to go on this trailer, there's a list of everything that has to be loaded on this trailer. So now, let's go grab that tag of number three bars that we just bent.

[BEEP]

It's loaded. And then finally, we have one more item of number seven bars.

[BEEP]

Whoops, we didn't bend that one. We cut it, but we didn't bend it, so it's telling me now that this item must be bent. So let's back up and we'll go in that one. But first, what would happen if we tried to let this load leave the shop before everything was loaded on it?

My last barcode here is what we call a load tag. One of these tags goes with every load that leaves the shop. If I scan that barcode to indicate that I'm ready for this delivery to leave the shop--

[BEEP]

--tells me that it's incomplete, so there's something missing off of that trailer. So let's go back to our bender.

[BEEP]

Let's scan the item tag.

[BEEP]

Double scan operation started. Scan it once more.

[BEEP]

Bundle closed, bending complete. Now, if we go back to the load operation--

[BEEP]

--load that final bundle.

[BEEP]

Now, it tells me that loading for this order is complete, so now I can scan--

[BEEP]

--the load tag. And now, it's updated the system to say that this load has now been-- it's left the shop-- it's out for delivery.

So the four common things that can go wrong with a rebar shipment. Number one, it's fabricated wrong. Well, we're doing everything we can do to prevent that by downloading directly to the machines to avoid user error. Number two, a step is missed. We're preventing that from happening by not letting them load it until all of the process that are supposed to happen to that bar have, in fact, happened to the bar.

And then the third and fourth ones either it gets loaded on the wrong trailer or not loaded at all. At the loading process, you can see we're preventing that as well. So that concludes the live demo. Now we'll hop back into the PowerPoint.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF COCHRANE: Yes?

AUDIENCE: Is your load tag already prepopulated then? Like, your load tag already knows everything that needs to be on there? [INAUDIBLE] that you were putting on there? So you're tracking what, essentially, is in that load tag.

JEFF COCHRANE: Right. So the question was, is the load tag prepopulated? We have a tool called load building where it lets you go and choose every load. You can have more than one order on a load. You add all the orders to that load, and even the order that they need to be loaded, because you don't want things that are going to be delivered to the first-- think in the case where the truck is making multiple stops, you don't want the first off to be on the bottom.

So we have to load it not only on the correct trailer, but in the correct order. So we have an application called load building that builds the load for you, and then lets you determine the unloading order. So then that load tag would be printed by that application. So we're just going to skip over all these because that's the live demo that we just did. And let's come down to here.

What does that have to do with a 3D model? The title of the class had the word model in it. What did all that have to do with that? Well, let's understand how that information that we've just gathered can help drive efficiencies and quality in the field. So far, we've modeled the rebar, created release, and exported it.

We imported it into our fabrication software, optimize it for production, we tracked it through the production process, capturing critical fabrication related information along the way. You've probably heard a lot about the cloud this week. What if we took all that information and made it available on the cloud, providing unprecedented capabilities to the job site?

So these are some screenshots from a prototype application that we're working on. We call it our aSa BIM explorer-- it may or may not be the final name of it. But basically, it allows-- this is running on an Android tablet. We would like to move it into a web platform so that it can be platform neutral, but right now it's running on an Android tablet. So we have a model here that has-- you can see it has-- all of the yellow in here is rebar.

So we've got kind of four ideas for things that we can do with this information that we-- all that stuff that we just gathered during the fabricating process. Number one, where's my steel? I'm out on a job site and I'm waiting for my steel, and I want to know where it is.

Well, rather than trying to get the right guy on the phone back at the fabricator, how about if I could just identify and say a footing, hit an inquiry button, and it could go out and hit this fabricator's database, giving me live, real-time information on the status of those items? So you can see in this case, these items have been sheared, they've been bent, they've been loaded, and they're out for delivery.

So just avoiding that step of having to constantly make phone calls to get the information that you need. You're out on the job site, and the information you need is elsewhere, making it easier to get it to you. And second thing, now we've received our delivery of steel, and we've got all of these bundles laying on the ground, and now I want to know where do they go?

In the past, you go back to your placing drawings. We're still using 2D placing drawings for field placing of rebar. How about if I could just-- remember we have these tags and these tags have barcodes on them? How about if I could just use the camera from my tablet, scan the barcode on the tag, have it find and show me where in the model that bar goes?

Next thing-- remember I talked about those mill search? It's a document that is provided by the mill, the company that produced the rebar, spelling out the chemical composition of the bar and the physical properties. Its tensile strength, is malleability, and all those things, and that is required on any job that has federal funding. You're required to provide those documents. So the way that works now is every shipment of steel that you send out on a job where they're required, you've got to send all these copies of however many heats were used on that truckload-- you've got to send copies of all of those documents.

What if we could just, again, identify the bars in the model, hit a button, go out and pull up a PDF of that mill search rather than having to send all this paper along with a delivery? And then the last item-- certain fabricators, particularly on the East Coast, are what we call FOB fabricators. They fabricate this steel, they deliver it to the job, and then they're done with it.

But on the West Coast, and moving more into the East Coast, but primarily on the West Coast, the company that fabricates the steel also installs it. So they're fabricators and placers. So they've got their employees out on the job site installing these bars. They need to know what bars have been installed and what bars haven't so they can do their accurate progress billings.

So again, highlight a piece of concrete or a group of bars in the model, bring up another app, update the items status so that those bars have now been installed, and it can go back and update the database back in the fabricators office to that effect. So the next thing-- and these are two new sections that I actually just added to the presentation this week based on some things that I saw on Monday-- virtual and augmented reality, bringing the 3D model to life. Anybody ever had any experience with virtual and or augmented reality?

I think it's an emerging technology, and there's a lot of exciting potential that I see for it. So let's start with what's the difference between virtual and augmented reality?

Well, virtual reality devices like the Oculus Rift and on the other end of the cost spectrum-- anybody ever heard of Google Cardboard? It's like-- remember those old View-Masters where you would put that little-- a lot of y'all don't look old enough for this-- there's a little round disk. You put it in it, and you look through it, and it gives you stereoscopic vision, and it looks 3D? You can get this thing on Amazon for like $12. Put your phone in it, and you can get apps on your phone that will split the view into stereoscopic view, and give you 3D on your phone.

So back to where I was. Virtual reality, you're looking at a completely computer generated environment. You're totally cut off from the real world. And that might be neat in, like the design phase, where you could just like put this-- the Google Cardboard, or the Oculus Rift, or there's several other devices out now-- put that on and get a live-- a walkthrough of your model from the safety of your office. But out on a job site, can you see that-- can you imagine that happening?

Somebody is out there with his completely immersive experience. He's walking around and walks off the edge of this building. So augmented reality is different from virtual reality in that the user looks through a lens of some sort-- a glass-- and is observing the real world, but the device is projecting augmented reality onto the glass. So it's the-- your model in this case would be projected on the inside of your viewing glass live, life-size and in place.

So Google Glasses, it was like the first augmented reality, but there's a company here this week called DAQRI. I don't know if you've ever heard of them, but they have a device-- they have two devices now. One is called Smart Glasses, and it's just like a pair of glasses. But this one is actually an ANSI certified hardhat called the Smart Helmet with that augmented reality device built right into it. And I attended a presentation that the CTO of this company did on Monday, and a light bulb went off.

What if-- currently, the way that the people in the field who are installing the rebar, they're using 2D placing drawings, and that's just like-- that's a dinosaur. When are we going to get away from 2D placing drawings? So there are companies-- Skanska is one-- I think there's several US companies doing it, where they are doing away with their 2D placing drawings, and they're doing everything using tablets in the field. And that's very progressive and I commend them for that, but it's still-- not very many people doing that.

But think if we could take it a step further, and we could put the model on this virtual reality device? And so instead of having to look at your tablet to see what the bars look like or your 2D placing drawings, this thing is going to show you the model-- again, life-size, in place. So wherever you look, you see what's supposed to be there. So if I'm installing bars, I'll look down and it shows me my grid of bars in my device. I just lay a bar down on top of every one of my virtual bars to install the reinforcing.

So I think that's something that-- again, I just added this to the presentation yesterday, and it's a technology that I'm really excited about, and I'm going to be watching closely. So I said, they are exhibiting. If you'd like to learn more, they're I think in booth 117 down in the exhibition area. And this is another video. Let me see if I can get it to play. I just captured this right off of their website yesterday.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

And there's supposed to be sound. I don't know why my sound isn't working.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF COCHRANE: Hmm?

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

JEFF COCHRANE: Yeah. Be the coolest guy on the job site, right? If we go back, this was what really-- this is what made the light bulb go off. When this guy's walking through this job and it's showing him virtually all of the piping that's supposed to be up here in place, life-size.

When I saw this, that's when the light bulb went off. We can do the same thing with rebar. World's most successful AR app device, Pokemon GO. The CTO from DAQRI put out a statistic, and as of July of this year, one year since Pokemon GO was launched, it had grossed $1.2 billion in revenue.

AUDIENCE: Well, the augmented is part of it is actually done in Norway. I've done some testing in the shop-- [INAUDIBLE] assemble the rebar for [INAUDIBLE], and he had on the glasses, and he said he looked [INAUDIBLE].

JEFF COCHRANE: Really?

AUDIENCE: Yeah. And he had the parts ready [INAUDIBLE].

JEFF COCHRANE: So they're pre-assembling things in the shop? I'd be interested in talking to you about that.

AUDIENCE: He just makes and assembles the column on top of the--

JEFF COCHRANE: On top of the virtual one-- right. I'd love to talk to you about that. So the final piece of the puzzle here is Reality Capture, bringing data from the real world into the modeling environment. So this is, again, something that I just added this week. I visited a couple of vendors down in the exhibition area yesterday and looked at some of the technology they have for capturing real-world data and bringing it back into a 3D model. One more video. This is actually-- I captured right off of Autodesk's website.

[VIDEO PLAYBACK]

This is their-- they call it ReCap.

- For any design or renovation project, you need to capture existing conditions, but traditional methods of surveying are painful, time consuming, and tedious. Multiple trips to the job site and manual capture methods can lead to schedules overrunning and base information that's often incomplete or inaccurate. And inaccurate data costs time and money.