New solutions for Construction site layout planning with Infraworks at NCC

SIVA KOPPULA: Welcome to the last day, last session. I see you all managed to survive the AU. And for how many of you is the first time you're coming here? One, two, three, couple of people. So maybe you all are a bit sad that it is coming to an end, or maybe you all are very relieved that it's finally coming to an end, depending on your own experiences.

So yeah. This session is on new solutions for our construction site layout planning. What we have done is we have used InfraWorks to develop these construction site layout plans. And what we'll be doing is we'll be going through about what is a construction site layout plan, how it has evolved over the last couple of years or over the last decade, what is the current practice at NCC, how they do it at the moment, why we thought of a new solution, a new approach, and how we ended up with InfraWorks, and the challenges that we had to overcome in order to develop the solution.

And one of the major challenges was supporting parametric objects inside InfraWorks. So it's not just 3D objects but supporting parametric objects. So we'll explain that. And in our wisdom, we decided to have a live demo instead of having a video. I'm not sure what we were thinking. Maybe a bit lazy to record a video. So yeah. My name is Siva. I work for Autodesk Consulting. I've been working at Autodesk for nearly 10 years now. I'm a civil engineer and urban planner. And I mainly help our customers, which is pretty much all of you in this room I guess, implement our BIM solutions. I specialize more on infrastructure side so that's basically anything outside the buildings. And Lavinius is my colleague. We both will be sharing the presentation in turns. And he'll introduce himself and start the session.

LAVINIUS ARVA: Yes. Hello and welcome. Thanks for staying with us, the last session of the week. So my name is Lavinius Arva. I work at NCC. I work as the chief VDC developer in Sweden. I'm also a civil engineer. And I've been working with NCC for about five years trying to come up with new solution how we can digitalize our industry and work more with being on VDC. So this is one project we have done together. And this would be our learning objectives for the day. We plan construction layouts and see their important during construction management, model construction site for logistic, stepping through the process and workflow and using InfraWorks, and resize Inventor-based parametric objects inside InfraWorks.

So I'll take this I think. So for those of you who don't know where Sweden is, you can see where you are based in Vegas for the conferences and NCC is based in the Scandinavian Nordic countries. So Sweden is our main office. And then we also operate in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and we also have a small operation in St. Petersburg.

A little about NCC. We have a revenue about $6.76 billion US dollars. We have about 18,000 employees across all the countries. And our main areas is residential real estate, commercial real estate, industrial warehouses, public buildings, infrastructure, and facilities. Our vision at NCC, which is very important for the VDC team to have this as a vision, is to renew our industry and provide superior sustainable solutions. And this is at the core of our company. So we really need to step it up when it comes to how we use BIM and models and how we implement VDC and try to digitalize our way of working.

So what is a site layout plan? According to the BIM execution planning for those of you who don't know, it's a plan that has to show the facilities how to use to utilize the space and also placing equipment location on layouts to use the plan to planning the safety work environment, all the logistics of the trucks and deliveries coming in, all the materials, to space out all the equipment, all the cranes, the mobile crane, stationary cranes, site offices and so on. And this is an example of what a traditional site layout planning could look like. For years it's mainly done with just a PDF drawing. You have a drawing and you outline where the construction site is. And you have that as a base when you plan your logistic and your sites at the construction.

Have any of you come in contact with site layout planning before? Yeah. Then you have a good idea how it is. Right.

SIVA KOPPULA: That's pretty much the first thing you need to prepare before you start construction so you can have it on the plan. [INAUDIBLE].

LAVINIUS ARVA: So why do we do site layout planning? So, mainly, it's because we need this plan to communicate the size of the site with the supplier and subcontracts, and all the deliveries and all the personnel on sites. We use it to plan the logistics, as we just mentioned before.

We use it to plan risk and a risk evaluation on sites, work safety environment. And it's come up more and more lately. So that's a very important aspect.

We use it also for visualization and presentation to our clients, especially when it's in big cities, to visualize how we planned the construction site to not take up too much of the road and have the traffic flowing fluently. We have it as a platform for our common understanding, both within the construction team and with clients, and also with the municipality, the government, and also the public and media. And, of course, the most important may be communication with the client.

And why do we do a site layout planning in NCC? So we have a regulation for the Swedish Work Environment Authority. That's AFS 1993.

And, in paragraph 19, it says that all work should be planned. It doesn't say how. But you need to have at least a plan. And, in paragraph 20, it more specifically it says that it's expected for all major contractors, at least in Sweden, to have a more detailed site layout plan.

But we have gone much further at NCC. So we have it internally as our own requirement for all our projects that we have to do this. And we have to do it as detailed as possible.

So a bit about history, about site layout plannings, around 10 years ago, it was mostly based on 2D AutoCAD drawings. And usually these were printed out. And we used just color markings to mark on the PDF drawing, to plan the site, to mark where deliveries and the logistics, where trucks should come in and go out, and where different cranes and facilities should be placed on the construction sites.

And then, a couple of years after that, we had power from the Google engine and Google Maps. We could take some imagery, more detailed imagery to see, use photogrammetry and plan the site with that instead. But it was basically the same principle.

And, about like five years ago when I started at NCC, we had some started using SketchUp for most part to do the site layout plannings. And it was very simple models. But we started doing them more and more in 3D. So I think maybe something like one in every ten projects had a more detailed 3D site layout plan.

And, when we started that journey, we modeled an entire library within SketchUp. That way we had both static objects, dynamic objects. We have our own company colors that we can use to mark different areas with all those lines and arrows.

And, for the last three years, this has gone even further. So now maybe, one in every two projects, at least, if not every project, has some kind of more detailed site layout planning within SketchUp, where we import the buildings. And then we use our library that we have defined to plan the sites.

We use crane with the radius. We can see how far they reach. And those are dynamic components, where you can specify the height of the tower crane and its radius. And then you can see how far it reaches.

So there's both some more complex and some more basic plans, depending on the project. And we also have an example of-- we do this both in our building projects and also for our infrastructure projects. Also a variety of detail, depending on what material we have from the start-- if we do have models, of course, we'll bring them in, IFC models, import into SketchUp.

So, within SketchUp, we have quite a big library at the moment. It's containing of 322 SketchUp objects. Of that, 172 are static, just one object. You can place it out.

And the 150 are what we call dynamic objects. And, with those objects, they might have one or more parameters that you can adjust to adjust the object. And that gives about over 650 different configurations in total.

So what is the difference between a static and a dynamic object? As you can see in the example here we have at our left for you, a static object is just a sign warning for the road work ahead. And, on the right, we have a mobile crane. And that crane is in SketchUp, so we have a dialogue. We change the parameters. And then the arm folds out so you can adjust the angle. And you can see the radius of it as well.

SIVA KOPPULA: So just to emphasize, do you all understand the difference between the static and the dynamic object at this stage? So, with all the static objects, you can scan them uniformly. So they stretch or shrink. But you can't just, for example, in this case, just [INAUDIBLE] without affecting the size of the sign.

It comes as a static object. It's still a 3D object. But it's a static object, whereas the mobile crane, on the other hand, you can change the dimensions of the model [INAUDIBLE].

So, in this case, you are able to just locate the arm of the crane, of the mobile crane. And, instead of other dimensions, [INAUDIBLE] the typical parametric. So that's what we are talking about by dynamic objects. So there are nothing but dynamic objects [INAUDIBLE].

LAVINIUS ARVA: So this is another example of a dynamic object from SketchUp. So we have a climbing platform, a mobile lift, a scaffolding plus scaffolding stairs that you can size, depending on how big you want it, how wide, and its length. And it will automatically adjust all the different floors on the scaffolding, the same with the stair.

We have driveways for trailer turns so you can place out on the sides to see, if we get deliveries from different sizes of the trucks, can they make it into the sites and make the turn and leave. So those driveways are different sizes to fit different size of trucks. Concrete pump tracks that we can place out and see, does it reach to the fourth level, all the way we need it? Stationary tower cranes, mobile cranes of different varieties, and a trailer light sign, where you can change the parameters to reflect different signs on the trailer.

SIVA KOPPULA: OK. So, while NCC had this solution based on SketchUp, so they were able to create 3D models. These are some of the examples. And they were able to use dynamic objects or parametric objects.

And that was a key requirement because you don't want to model a separate 3D object for every configuration, right? If you want to lift the arm, then you don't want to model the subject, the 3D object. You just want to be able to change the parameter. So that was a key fundamental requirement.

But some of the things that they wanted to do-- and this is particularly more on the infrastructure projects, so when it's not limited to a route and when you are working on large, linear projects-- is you want to be able to show the context. You want to be able to show the background. You want to be able to show where, in what context you are putting your roads. So you want to show the surrounding area or surrounding land use and things like that. So you could show a very crude aerial imagery in SketchUp.

But that is not sufficient. That pixelates. And it really spoils the objective. So that was one of the drivers, that they were looking for how can we do that. How can we have that?

Also, while SketchUp does support multiple formats-- in particular, it supports IFC-- but NCC, they are using quite a lot of Autodesk products there. And they wanted something that can directly [INAUDIBLE] or directly [INAUDIBLE] over 3D, particularly again on infrastructure projects because you got all your surfaces modeled in 3D. You got all your corridors modeled in 3D. You've got your roads or pipe networks and so in 3D. And you want an easy way of getting them into a modeling environment where you can also do the site layouts.

So those were other drivers. In addition, we wanted to create some adding some structural data and also have data from drones, like you want to capture the existing conditions. The traditional approach is you send a survey team or you pay for the aerial imageries, whatever. Each has a varying cost and time implication.

But these days the trend is to just fly your drone and get the data very quickly. So how do you incorporate data from drones? So these are all the things that NCC were thinking how to-- I know I could get all the data from these different sources into InfraWorks. And they also had a wish list, like how we wish we could, for example, add some more sketching to it, how it would be very nice to just draw a road to serve as a temporary road, or maybe have a temporary structure, a temporary waterworks, or whatever. So they wanted to have some sketching ability, more in the context of InfraWorks, or our infrastructure.

And also one of the overriding requirements was it has to be easy to use. And one of the best thing about SketchUp is it is easy to use. It is very intuitive, too. And they wanted to retain that ease of use in whatever solution we come up with. So that was one of the big-- like our big requirement.

So these are all the things. And, going forward, it would also be good to have some analysis tools, such as traffic analysis, if you're working on a road project. As part of the construction, you're planning to close up a lane. And then you want to know the impact of that on the traffic. So some tools like that-- they wanted to have some tools as well, or access to some of those tools.

So these are all the drivers and the reasons why NCC was looking for a solution. And then they contacted us, ordered as consulting, to come up with a solution for them. And we, in turn, investigated quite a few of our technologies because there are quite a few Autodesk technologies which could be used here. And we finally decided to use InfraWorks for the solution, and mainly because of the drivers I explained earlier. And the primary thing overall, it has to be the ease of use and then be able to support several other things that are required on a typical infrastructure project.

And some of the other compelling reasons why we used it is the usual benefits of using InfraWorks model. How many of you here have used InfraWorks? So five have? Quite a few of you.

So you all know the list of uses that I've listed on the slide there, its ease of use. You can aggregate data, both 2D, 3D, 2.5D, whatever. You can bring into InfraWorks-- its useful visualization its useful design options, and so on. And this picture that you are seeing there is the project that we are going to demo. It is a road project of 70 kilometers.

And so one of the big challenges to use InfraWorks was it ticked most of the boxes, except for one box, which is support for dynamic objects, or the parametric objects. So those of you who have used InfraWorks, you all know that you can include any 3D object inside InfraWorks. And then you can use it. You can put a SketchUp object or any other object and use it.

But the problem is it doesn't support parametric. It comes as a static object. That comes as a dead object. It has no attributes to it.

And, yes, some of you might be thinking, I know there are some parametric elements in bridge. And that's true. There are some parametric components when you're doing color design. That's true. But you don't have a generic parametric object like the objects that we have shown here.

If I want to have a mobile crane, there's an option. You can't just get in an Inventor object into InfraWorks. You can get it. But it will lose all its parametric behavior. It will become a static object.

So that was a challenge. So that's the thing that we had to overcome. So that's when we came up with this custom solution.

So the basic approach is we have the huge library of objects inside SketchUp. We used Autodesk Inventor to either import the SketchUp objects into Inventor or to recreate them with all the parametric behavior. So we had to build an entire library inside Inventor. And then we wrote a custom tool that allows us to import all of those Inventor objects inside InfraWorks, inside InfraWorks style library.

And then, when you start placing those objects inside InfraWorks and using our tool, you can actually view all of its properties, all of its parametric properties, and then change them as well. And then, when you change them, you see the changed, or the new object, inside InfraWorks. So we will have a live demo of that as we go through.

So there are some of the examples from the project. So what you're seeing there is the project as a live project. And the objects you see there are the static objects, at the moment, all of those. In the distance, you can see a crane as well, which is a dynamic object.

Another view of the model in InfraWorks-- so you could clearly see the difference. Earlier you saw some models from SketchUp and how the look and feel of those objects. This is the same site layout plans now using InfraWorks. And you can see just the visual look of it.

It's completely different. And it's way more appealing, as well as you see a much better context here. So it's a clear differentiator in that sense, compared to SketchUp objects.

So this is an example of how the SketchUp object works inside InfraWorks. So we have placed the object. And then, when a user clicks on the object, it comes up with this dialog box, which has got the object parameters.

And, as we enter the parameters-- in this case, I'm trying to change the mast angle-- and then, when the user presses OK, you see the changed behavior inside InfraWorks. So that's actually an Inventor object that we brought into InfraWorks. And then we are able to change the behavior like that.

Another example-- in this case, we are trying to change the number to 400. And then we are also trying to change the sign on the road distance to 2. So what you see done is you see the change in number. So, some of you, we know there is a limitation that there's no text. You can't label things inside InfraWorks.

So this is another way of overcoming that limitation. So you just add a dynamic text here. And then you see the change there.

And you see the other object on the ground. So that's not by error. That is by design. So the purpose of that is, when you take a top view, you are still able to see the sign, and not just from the side view. So that's the purpose, why we have it.

So now Lavinius will run through the demo and try to show you the tool.

LAVINIUS ARVA: So let me just switch to InfraWorks. And let's see. I have to duplicate maybe?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah.

LAVINIUS ARVA: No. So the [INAUDIBLE] seems to be working without the duplicates. So I'll try to look at a screen, see if I can manage.

SIVA KOPPULA: Now that will be a pain.

LAVINIUS ARVA: So this is-- no, I can't.

SIVA KOPPULA: It's not working when you duplicate the screen?

LAVINIUS ARVA: No.

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah?

LAVINIUS ARVA: Yeah. That's good. So this is the project that we have currently run it on. It's a project in Sweden. And it's we're trying to build a new road about 70 kilometers long.

So that's the beauty of InfraWorks. It's very easy to use. It looks very, very good, the visualization of it. And you can have one entirely very, very large model within this model, so everything in one model.

So you can see here the size of the model. And there is a limitation in InfraWorks that you can only use a size of about 200 square kilometers. So that's why we have cut it as you see here because, if you just took a huge box around it, it would be more than 200 square kilometers.

SIVA KOPPULA: So, just to clarify on that, what Lavinius means is not the model's size. The model size can be whatever you want it to be. But, when you are using a feature called Model Builder inside InfraWorks, in a given instance, you can specify an area of 200 square kilometers at the moment.

LAVINIUS ARVA: Right. And the good thing about InfraWorks, that's where it has its strength, is also we have, in this project, we have brought in the drone data that the municipality, the client, has then flown over and scanned the terrain and also taken pictures. So we can bring them in and make the model look more detailed and better. And then we have done all the road design inside the model.

So here we can see, for one example here, you can see slightly where the old road is. It's running through here. And then they're going to build a new road. And they're going to build a connecting bridge that runs over.

So, during this phase of the construction, they need to divert traffic for one part of the construction. So they need temporary-- and they need a site layout plan to have per project. But, for every major intersection, they need site layout plans for every intersection on every bridge. And there is about 17 bridges along this road in this project.

And you can see here that we have some objects placed already. Most of these objects are now static. You just place them. And you can have a very good-looking visualized visual picture of the project.

And so then we have our library. If I go to the style palette, and 3D model, we can switch it to a list. And then we have some additional folders here.

And we have some static objects that we have done. And we have the dynamic objects as well. And then we have a library of SketchUp objects that we didn't need to do a dynamic version of. So we just exported them from SketchUp and brought them straight into InfraWorks. But if I look at the dynamic objects, we have quite a few here.

And this is just a part of the library. I don't have the whole library in this example. But we have a lot more objects. So we have all our turns here. We have different mobile cranes and tower cranes and different containers and site offices, trailer signs, trucks, and so on.

So the way we have done it is that we have our library. We have the tool. Siva's going to talk more about in detail how we created that. And then we can just place them. We have chosen to place them by city furniture. So here I can search for a crane. Does it show now?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah, it's smaller. The resolution, unfortunately, it's very small actually.

LAVINIUS ARVA: I searched for a mobile crane here, for example. I got some different options. So I can choose one of them. And, as we have shown in an example, I can place it wherever I want. We can adjust it, maybe like that.

And then we have the added dynamic tool functionality. I need to have the object marked here. And then I just press it. And, unfortunately, the UI scaling in InfraWorks is not that good.

SIVA KOPPULA: So that's where the--

AUDIENCE: So all of these objects, you're not going to have to export it to Inventor, right?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah.

LAVINIUS ARVA: Done through Inventor, yeah?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yes, yes.

AUDIENCE: That's where you got to have parameters?

SIVA KOPPULA: Sorry?

AUDIENCE: Invent parameters for--

SIVA KOPPULA: Yes, yes, so yes, exactly. So we have this custom icon on the screen. So, when we use the custom icon and click on the object, that dialogue box comes up. And the parameters that you see there are the parameters in the Inventor object. And the user can decide which ones to expose to InfraWorks. So you don't have to expose everything to InfraWorks. So you can decide which ones you want to expose in InfraWorks.

LAVINIUS ARVA: So I have it very poorly here because of the UI scale and the resolution. But mast heights, mast angles, so the height is how far up the mast should go and the angle and in which rotation-- the mast position, how far out you should pull the mast, and then support legs, on and off. And then we click OK.

SIVA KOPPULA: And you see the new object there.

LAVINIUS ARVA: And then we have the new object reloaded.

SIVA KOPPULA: So, depending on the complexity of the object, it can take a couple of seconds to maybe tens of seconds, depending on--

AUDIENCE: Where is that change happening?

SIVA KOPPULA: As in?

AUDIENCE: The change of the [INAUDIBLE].

SIVA KOPPULA: It's happening inside InfraWorks. I'll explain the back end of the story after this, so how we came up with a solution, how it works, afterward.

AUDIENCE: So these [INAUDIBLE] in the road and all that, you built that in 3ds Max? Or is that--

SIVA KOPPULA: No, this is all in Inventor. The objects we are showing you now?

AUDIENCE: Not the objects-- I mean, on this side would be just grass and trees.

SIVA KOPPULA: No, no. That's out of the box.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah, so InfraWorks has, by default, a huge library of objects. So all this grass, the roads, everything else, it's just part of the InfraWorks library. You can just--

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah, you just drag and drop.

AUDIENCE: And I think you mentioned when you recorded some drone data also?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah.

AUDIENCE: So--

SIVA KOPPULA: So the way to import drone data is the output from drone could be up on cloud data, could be aerial imagery. Or it could be a surface. So, in most of the times, we are trying to import the aerial imagery because that's the latest and the most accurate one. So, the aerial imagery, we try to replace the default ones. So we started with Model Builder. So that gives us the default aerial imagery. Not a very accurate one, but you have something. And then we replace that with the one that we get from drone. So that's just a normal JPG or GeoTIFF.

AUDIENCE: So you've got to scale it to get the--

SIVA KOPPULA: No, the images? They are [INAUDIBLE] referenced images. You just bring it in.

AUDIENCE: Once you import the data, you have to go back and configure another recording system [INAUDIBLE] track it on, unless it does have an [INAUDIBLE].

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah, yeah. The same thing with the surface as well.

LAVINIUS ARVA: So we have both our dynamic objects and also a lot of static object. So I could choose from the list. There's a bunch of objects. We have also imported all our colors, NCC colors we can use.

For example, we have different signs we can place. So you can see them both from 3D. And you can see them from top. And these are not dynamic yet. So we have to create them like all the different options.

For example, we have the speeds on this sign from one way and then the other way. So we have to create-- the SketchUp library is quite huge because we need to make all the options of the variation of that object. So, if we can have that as a dynamic object instead, that limits the library size drastically. And you can, instead of having 20 objects, you have one object with a few parametric options in it.

SIVA KOPPULA: Maybe you can show one more dynamic object.

LAVINIUS ARVA: Yeah, let's see if I can find a--

SIVA KOPPULA: So, with this one, you can literally have any object as a parametric object inside InfraWorks. It could be a street light with two arms, four arms, eight arms. So you just have one object for that. And we are showing it in the context of a construction site layout. But you could easily apply that for an oil and gas platform or anything else really.

LAVINIUS ARVA: So this is a mobile lift, for example, as well. You can place it. And you can adjust the height and see how far it reaches, and just rotate it to fit your place in the site layout. And so we have all our containers.

You can open the doors on containers. You can choose the spatial of the containers. I can show maybe one of those as well-- and also the site offices. Let's see. Container, 20 foot, 40 foot containers-- I'll grab a small one.

SIVA KOPPULA: So these are the temporary site offices or accommodations.

LAVINIUS ARVA: So this is just a blue container. I can adjust the spacing, like one meter apart. And we want five containers. And the door should be open. And now the terrain is sloping a bit.

And this is what I've done also with all our containers, all our site offices. You can just specify how many you want, the spacing between, how many levels, and stuff like that, and just place and change the parametric options. And you press OK. Right?

SIVA KOPPULA: OK, yeah.

LAVINIUS ARVA: Let's go back to the presentation and see if I will explain a bit more about the solution and how we have done it.

SIVA KOPPULA: So you saw how the solution works. It's pretty easy for end user [INAUDIBLE] to placing any other 3D object. So the user can choose it as a city furniture object or a point of interest object.

And you just drag and drop and click. And it comes with a dialog box. Specify the parameters. And you see the new object.

So now I'll explain the back end of the story, so how the solution, we developed it and what went into developing the solution. So does the pointer work here? Is this the pointer?

LAVINIUS ARVA: Yeah. I have to stand on the other side.

SIVA KOPPULA: So what we did here is the first step was to import the SketchUp objects into Inventor and recreate the dynamic element, or recreate the parametric properties. So that was the first step. And, for that, we, of course, in terms of the requirements, we needed someone who has Inventor skills for that to happen. And the output from here is you end up with dynamic objects inside as Inventor objects. So that is step one.

Then we need to import the Inventor files into InfraWorks style library. So that is step two. So once the parametric objects are created-- so this could be parametric or static objects-- so the step two is to import them into InfraWorks. So the user needs to know how to do that.

InfraWorks, the biggest selling point of InfraWorks is its ease of use. And it's not that complicated software. So that's not that complex task. And then we end up with dynamic objects inside InfraWorks style library.

Once we have that, we have to write a custom script. And the way it works in InfraWorks, for those of you who know, is it hasn't got a full-fledged API, Application Programming Interface. So we have to do it using JavaScript. So we had to write a JavaScript that allows the user to modify the dynamic objects as you saw it. So that's what we had to do.

AUDIENCE: So each object is a script?

SIVA KOPPULA: Not each object. There's one script that is for all the objects. So the custom script that we wrote, when a user clicks on the object, the custom script knows which object the user is clicking on.

And it reads the parametric properties of that object and displays it on the screen. And, when the user specifies the changes that they want, it submits the changes to the server. I'll explain that.

So I think it's a bit complicated. So, to make the story simple, when you have InfraWorks, what most of you probably don't know, is it comes with something called a headless Inventor server. So, basically, it has some hidden bit of Inventor inside InfraWorks. So that's not known to end users.

And that is required in InfraWorks because, like I said when I was explaining in the beginning, that there are some parametric objects already in InfraWorks, especially the bridge components. So they are parametric. The culverts, they are parametric. And, for them to work, it needed to have some piece of Inventor installed as part of InfraWorks. So we are making use of that part of the installation in order to extend that capability to any Inventor option.

So the custom script that we wrote, what it does is it identifies the object. It reads the Inventor properties and then submits those to the Inventor server, which is part of InfraWorks. And that Inventor server creates a new object. We then load that object in the InfraWorks model. So that's what is happening.

And, in order to develop the solution, we were involved. NCC was involved. And, in order to create that huge library of Inventor objects, NCC outsourced that to Jilbee. So we have a server from Jilbee in the room as well. So they created all these huge Inventor objects.

So, of course, it was a choice. If you've got in-house resources, then you can do it in-house. Otherwise, you can outsource. And then it's a one-time activity.

So, in this case, all the objects were modeled in Inventor. But it was all done by Jilbee. So two products are involved in the solution, so all the end result, or the end user, needs to have only InfraWorks. But you do need to have-- you need to model the objects in Inventor for us to use.

You could ask, couldn't you use Revit objects inside InfraWorks. Or does it have to be Inventor? So the solution could be developed using any parametric software. So we could, in theory, develop it with Revit as well because Revit also does parametric objects.

But Revit is more used for creating parametric objects in a building context. But you saw most of the objects we showed you were more mechanical in nature, far more complex than what you normally see in our building context. And also we wanted to keep the customization to a minimum and liberate the native strengths of the software. And InfraWorks natively was shipping with this headless Inventor server. So we didn't want to impose additional cost on the users that you also need to have Revit to use the solution.

So the solution that we had developed doesn't require end user to have anything other than InfraWorks software because everything else is part of InfraWorks software. So that's the reason we chose Inventor. And also the solution is fully aligned with the product development. So the last thing you want to do is redevelop a solution and then the next release you see the solution doesn't work because product has changed. That's the last thing you want.

So we had to, when we were developing the solution, we had to make sure it is future proof, that it does work with the future versions of the product as well. And this is a very good way I think. To be honest, I think maybe, in the next two or three years, we may have increased a lot more support for parametric objects out of the box in InfraWorks as well. So the solution that we have developed is fully aligned with the product development so that whatever we're investing now also works in future.

So I'll just take you-- so this is the Inventor. So we have this object. Do you know what's that object, Lavinius?

LAVINIUS ARVA: [INAUDIBLE]

SIVA KOPPULA: So let's say we modeled the object in Inventor here. And these are the parametric properties inside Inventor. So you can see a much bigger list here.

So, for those who are familiar or not familiar with how Inventor works, is Inventor is a fairly complex bit of software to use. And most of the modeling there is parametric. It's all relationship-based. And there are many, many relationships there. And they are quite complex as well.

And you don't necessarily want to expose the full list to the end user. You just want to expose the controlling parameters. And those are listed here. So when you see a check box there, so all those that are checked will appear in InfraWorks.

AUDIENCE: So it falls in line when the user [INAUDIBLE] structures?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, whatever you checked here, those are the ones that you see when you click on an object inside InfraWorks. So that's where you decide those things. Otherwise, whatever you see here is actually a parametric object inside Inventor. So that's how the object is when inside Inventor. So that is like the step one, if you want to use a new object, if you're trying to create a new object.

Then the step two is to import that object inside InfraWorks. So that's there. And it's a fairly simple process to import objects in InfraWorks. And, once you have done this, and if you want to share this with another user inside your company, they don't have to repeat the process.

You just export a JSON file from here. And then whoever needs to have the library, they just import that one file, a JSON file. And the entire library appears in their InfraWorks model.

AUDIENCE: So, when you were in Inventor, did you publish to InfraWorks? Like a [INAUDIBLE] the import?

SIVA KOPPULA: Sorry, say that again.

AUDIENCE: When you were in Inventor, did you publish to InfraWorks, like you published to InfraWorks and said, we're going to use that tool?

SIVA KOPPULA: No, no, no. So, no, it doesn't work like that.

AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]

SIVA KOPPULA: Yes. So you export it as an IPT file. So you save the IPT file somewhere on your folder. And then you, using our tool, you import the IPT files.

AUDIENCE: InfraWorks can display IPTs directly?

SIVA KOPPULA: No, so InfraWorks doesn't display IPTs directly. So the tool that we wrote, it converts into a format that InfraWorks understands. It's a SFF format. So that's the native format of most of the model objects that you see inside InfraWorks.

So the program that we wrote takes the IPT file. It converts it into SFF file and brings it into the style library. So, once it's in the style library, we have this tool, which actually-- and so we have customized it in a much better way--

LAVINIUS ARVA: Yeah, we got the tool from Autodesk that created it for us. And then we used our own in-house team to package it and to deploy it to all the Nordic countries. So, in this case, we have a Swedish flag as you can see. And we have the tool.

So, when you run InfraWorks and you want this capability to use parametric or dynamic object, you have to start InfraWorks through this tool. So we have packaged this. And also we have created an update function.

So, if we add to the library, which is on the central server within NCC, we can add objects to the library. We can remove objects. We can replace objects. The user only needs to run the update, the dynamic tool functions. And they will get the new updated library.

SIVA KOPPULA: So the rollout is really easy. So all that you need to tell is that we have added some new objects to the library. Can you just run that day tool? And, once they run that day tool, they'll start seeing the new objects in the library. That's fairly streamlined for rollout as well.

So, once you have the library, the way it works in InfraWorks is you use this option, I option. Then you go to the tool for adding features. And then you can use either city furniture or point of interest. You can access the dynamic, all the objects that we have created, from these two areas. And then a custom icon appears on your screen called edit dynamic object.

And then you start placing the object. So that's either using city furniture or point of interest. And you can filter the records here. Or you just type in NCC or dynamic objects. And you can see a full list of those things.

You select the object that you want. You place it in InfraWorks. And it will appear there. And, next, using this dynamic tool, you will click on the object.

When you click on the object, it displays this dialog box. And the parameters that you are seeing here are the parameters that were checked in the Inventory object. So you control it that way.

You can set a default value. So it will remember the default values. So maybe that is the most common configuration of the two. So it remembers the default value.

What you can also have is a drop down box so you don't have to always type in a value. You can also have a pull down box, a drop down box, and then select a value from that. So that helps you for a better quality control, so people don't end up entering random values. And you are controlling what is allowable values.

So you could have a pick list as well. And there are several objects in the library that have a pick list as well. So that's possible. And, once user submits the changes, you see the changed object as you saw in the demo. So this is how the tool is deployed.

So there are some one-time activities. And there are some repeat activities per project. So the activities that you see here are the one-time activities, which is basically creating the objects. You do that in Inventor.

You create the style catalog, or basically import the objects into InfraWorks. That's also a one-time activity-- and then install the tool again. So this is something you need to do once.

It's not once per user. You just need to do it once. So, once you do it, then you can roll out the configuration to other users.

So, at the end of this stage, you will have our JSON file for importing the style library. And you need to share that JSON file with whoever needs to have access to the library. That's all it is after that.

And, once the user has gotten access to the style library, then they create the InfraWorks model in the usual way. Whatever details they need to add, they do it. And, when it comes to placing dynamic objects, they go to the style catalog, click on the folder that has got the dynamic objects, place it in the model, click on the object, using the tool, modify the properties, and then add other properties as required, and then publish it for other use.

So it's a fairly simple use case for the end user because this is the only thing they are involved with. And they only need to use InfraWorks. They don't need to have Inventor installed on their machine. So you're not consuming additional licenses or anything like that. The only thing--

AUDIENCE: The parameters to the same object and get new parameters [INAUDIBLE]?

SIVA KOPPULA: Sorry?

AUDIENCE: If I have two cranes, can I have all the parameters returning?

SIVA KOPPULA: Yeah, yeah, of course, yes. You can have multiple instances of the same object in your program. And also, when you are creating multiple instances, the software actually remembers them. So, if you want to use the same configuration in another place, it won't be recreating the same object. It will just reuse the object. So it stores every configuration in the cache so that you just optimize your performance and things like that.