Good morning. Welcome to PCI's webinar series. This presentation, How to Integrate Precast Pre-Stressed Concrete Design with BIM, is sponsored by Ericsson Software. My name is Royce Covington, Manager of Member Services at PCI, and I'll be your moderator for this session. Before I turn the controls over to your presenters today, I have a few introductory items to note. Earlier today, we sent an email to all registered attendees with a handout of today's presentation. The handout is also available now and can be found in the Handouts pane located near the bottom of the GoToWebinar Toolbox. If you do not have the course handout or cannot download it, please email PCIMarketing at marketing at pci.org as shown on your screen. Note that all attendee lines are muted. The GoToWebinar Toolbox has an area for you to raise your hand. If you raise your hand, you will receive a private chat message from me. If you have a question, type it into the Questions pane or we will be keeping track of them to read during the Q&A period. PCI is a registered provider of AIA-CES, but this presentation is non-CEU and does not contain content that is endorsed by AIA. Any questions about the content of this webinar should be directed to PCI. The program content does not constitute approval by PCI, nor does it necessarily reflect the views or positions of PCI or those of their respective officers, directors, members, or employees. Questions related to specific products or publications will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Our presenters for today are Roy Erickson, President and CEO of Erickson Software, and joining him are panelists Jeremy Castello, Lead Engineer at Erickson Software, and Justin Callahan, Software Developer at Erickson Software. I'll now turn the controls over so that we can begin our presentation. Thank you, Royce. Good morning. Welcome to our webinar, How to Integrate Precast Pre-Stressed Concrete Design with BIM. But before proceeding, we would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks to PCI for hosting this webinar. We are very excited to be able to introduce to you today a new technology that we believe significantly advances the state-of-the-art of designing, detailing, and constructing precast pre-stressed concrete structures. So, without further ado, let's get going. Our learning objectives for today are, 1. Review the current paradigm of reinforcing precast pre-stressed concrete BIM models manually. 2. Understand the new streamlined process of tightly integrating design and detailing with BIM modeling. 3. Assess workflow improvements by automating the reinforcing of techless structures precast concrete models using Erickson SYNC. 4. Learn the metrics of project delivery and quality assurance assessment of precast pre-stressed concrete structural BIM models. 5. Understand the potential improvement in metrics in transitioning from a manual-based BIM reinforcement workflow to an automated, integrated workflow using Erickson SYNC. Now let me introduce you to the presenters of today's webinar and the rest of the team who developed and are responsible for bringing this exciting new product to market. Presenters today will be me, Roy Erickson, Jeremy Costello, one of our design engineers, and Justin Callahan, the lead software engineer. The rest of the team includes Brian Barngrover, principal technical consultant, Jason Cunningham, software engineer and project manager, Becca Alford, software engineer, Joey McKee, technical support, Patrick Pusey, business development manager, and Nicole Rodriguez, marketing manager. This webinar will be 60 minutes long. We'll start out with an overview of the Erickson Enterprise, our commercial design suite, and our new SYNC technology. Then we'll demonstrate both design suite and SYNC. Following that will be a question and answer period. We'll conclude the webinar with a recap of everything presented today. Before we get into the technical details, I first should explain who we are. The Erickson Enterprise consists of a full-service structural engineering firm with a specialization in precast prestressed concrete and special expertise in software development. It began as a single company that was incorporated in 1998 as Erickson Technologies, Inc. In 2012, the software operations were spun off as a separate company, Erickson Software, Inc. In the broadest sense, Erickson SYNC connects Erickson Suite to BIM models. So let me start by explaining what Erickson Suite is. Erickson Suite is our library of structural engineering programs for the design and detailing of precast prestressed concrete structural elements used in commercial construction and their associated connections. It currently consists of four programs, BIM, WALL, CONNECT, and COLUMN. Erickson BIM allows the engineer to quickly analyze and design precast prestressed concrete beams in accordance with HCI 318. All types of horizontal precast members can be designed, including double Ts, inverted Ts, spandrels, and holocaust slabs. Also included are sections that require a principal axis analysis, such as stadium risers. Reinforcement can be any combination of prestressing strand, rebar, and mesh. Multiple holes in both beam webs and decks can be modeled. A general-purpose polygon editor is included for the design of unusual cross sections. BIM's fast and accurate computational engine includes many advanced features, such as crack sections, strain compatibility, concrete stress strain curves, biaxial bending, slender spandrels, and more. Erickson WALL is an advanced software for the analysis and design of precast concrete wall panels. Single panel or multiple stack panels can be analyzed. Reinforcement can be mild or prestressed or a combination. Panels can be solid, composite, or holocore. Support is included for solid zones, reveals, and openings. Handling analysis with rolling blocks or static lift is available. Advanced features include automatic load patterning, partially composite behavior, p-delta, and crack section analysis. Erickson Column is a software for precast column design. The user can quickly design and analyze rectangular reinforced concrete columns in accordance with HCI 318. Reinforcement can be any combination of rebar and prestressing with multiple stirrups or spiral ties. Multiple different holes and cutouts can be modeled. The state-of-the-art analysis engine performs biaxial bending with load eccentricities able to be applied in any direction. Erickson Connect allows the engineer to quickly analyze and design precast concrete connections and joints in accordance with HCI 318. Four connection types are included in the program. Beam ledges, beam daps, stud groups, and concrete corbels. Erickson Connect's intuitive and highly graphical interface allows you to quickly and efficiently perform designs. With auto design features, you can change any of the geometric parameters and analysis options and all the results will automatically be recalculated. The powerful 3D rendering engine visualizes your design to help you ensure accuracy, and the one-page analysis report allows for a concise submittal document. Sync changes the current paradigm of how engineers and BIM modelers interact. No longer does the engineer have to communicate with the drafter or BIM modeler via paper summary sketches. Now the engineer can interface directly with the BIM model. This reduces design and engineering time, drafting and modeling time, and of course checking time, and it virtually eliminates errors. Let's take a look at the current workflow in a typical precast engineering and drafting operation. Here you can see that there are multiple steps involved. The process starts with parallel efforts, one for the drafter and one for the engineer. Within the workflow, the engineer conveys his or her design to the drafter using design sketches. This creates multiple opportunities for errors due to interpretation and manual entry of data into the drawings. This process is both labor intensive and error prone. With sync, the workflow is greatly simplified and streamlined. It begins with the BIM modeler elementizing the structure into precast concrete structural elements such as beams and individual wall panels. Once that process has been completed, the engineer can then interface directly with the model using sync. This permits the engineer to import precast member geometry directly from the model into the respective Ericsson design suite program, Ericsson wall, beam, or column. Within a particular program, the engineer analyzes, designs, and details the structural element. Once completed, the reinforcement objects are then sent directly into the BIM model. This greatly reduces design time and virtually eliminates errors. Now let's take a closer look at this process with a demo. Thank you, Roy. As was mentioned before, my name is Jeremy Castello and I am a design engineer for Ericsson Technologies and Ericsson Software. Before we get into the demo, I'm going to do a thousand foot view, an overview of what Ericsson Sync is and what Ericsson Sync can do for you. As the name suggests, Ericsson Sync synchronizes the design software with the Revit model. Now what does that actually mean? Ericsson Sync allows you to pull true concrete extents, true geometries, and locations of reinforcement from the BIM model and put it straight into the design software. In the design software, you can then do your analysis, make sure that everything is running properly and everything is acceptable per engineering, and then you can send that designed reinforcement back into the model. What we have done is we have taken engineering straight into the ticketing phase. Now it goes without being said that Ericsson Sync only works with the Ericsson design suite. This is because the Ericsson design suite was originally made with the intent of connecting up to BIM. So Ericsson BIM can design double T's, IT beams, spandrels, and risers, but since Ericsson BIM also allows for polygonal sections, any cross-section that you can create within Revit, you can have that concrete extent transferred directly into BIM to do your analysis. Ericsson wall creates and analyzes insulated and solid panels. This means that Ericsson Sync can analyze and pull the concrete extents and send back in the reinforcement from our design suite. Same goes for column. It can extract any family and put it into column and then send that reinforcement back. Ericsson Sync works based off of what we call a family map. This family map has to be made before Ericsson Sync for Revit can be used. What this is is basically the roadway between the design software and the families within your model. The family map comes pre-made with a lot of the standard edge families. However, you can adjust, edit, and copy any of the items within that base family map to make it whatever families that you use. One of the great things is that only one person in your company has to make this for all of your families. From there, it can be copied and shared to everybody else in your company. And then if somebody needs to make an edit for the families that they specifically use, they can just copy based off of your base families and adjust the parameters as necessary. Now we start getting into the actual programs and intent of Ericsson Sync. The design part function allows you to pull the concrete extents and geometries from the model. You can extract the data from the model to put it into the design software. This is really great when it comes to design build projects where you have changing geometries constantly and you need to make sure that the new geometry still works with the design you originally had. Another great feature is to do lifting and handling checks. You already have your panel reinforced. You can have Ericsson Sync pull the concrete extents into a new design file and you can check the lifting and handling right there. Next is the reinforced parts function. The reinforced parts function pulls that design reinforcement from your design files. You can pull strand, rebar, and mesh all from the design files and populate the model based off of your families. Everything is using your standard families based off of that family map. Another great thing about the reinforced parts tool is you can set it up for either a fixed rail or to be centered depending on what product you're using. So for wall panels we typically use a fixed rail so that you don't need to copy around and adjust your strand patterns. You can put one design for all of the wall panels that you're using that same strand pattern for and it will not add reinforcement if it falls outside of the concrete extents. The next function is the add lifters to part function. It's pretty straightforward. It adds the lifters. It adds the families that you use for your lifters at the locations of your design file. So if your design file says to put it at 0.2 L or two feet from the end, you can set up your settings so that it will populate your lifters depending on how you had it in your design. The next function is a new function. For those of you that have seen our demos previously, this is something new that we have added. The assemble part tool will turn your families into an assembly to make it ready for ticketing. The family map knows what's top and form. So with the click of a button, we allow you to turn your concrete extents into your assembly. You have two options for this. One, you can either turn your concrete extents only into the assembly and then you can manually add the reinforcement and plates that fall within the boundaries or you can two, allow Ericsson Sync to create the assembly and grab everything within the concrete extents. This will make your assembly ready for piece ticketing. The last function of Ericsson Sync is really what I consider the heart of this. This is the database of Ericsson Sync. The design manager allows you to do bulk edits to the model. You do not need to pan around and go through and view everything in the model. You can do all of your editing in the design manager. You can set designs, add reinforcement, add lifters and design parts all within the design manager. Now we're going to get into the real heart of this demo. We're going to go through three different models. The first one being a wall panel project. The wall panel project, we're going to create a new wall file using design parts and then I'm just going to pull the information from a previously made design file. I'm going to reinforce that wall and then I'll show you how to reinforce all of the walls using that same exact function. Then I'll add the lifters to one of the walls based off of that same design file and then show you how the assemble parts function works. From there, we'll go to the parking garage. I'm going to use a pre-made double T file and then I'm going to reinforce a bay of double Ts using the design manager. Then I'm going to go to the design parts function and create a new file for the columns. Again, I'm just going to pull the information from the design file from one that's previously made and then I'll show you how the reinforce parts function will pull all of the information, all of the reinforcing from that column file into the model. Then lastly, we'll go into a riser model. It's a very small riser job. I'm going to show you that there's a previously made design file and there's already a riser that's reinforced without using sync. The assemble parts tool is then going to turn that family into an assembly and pulling all of the reinforcement into that assembly. First up, we have our standard wall panel project. This is a pretty small wall panel project. It's solid wall panels on the exterior of a steel building. The wall panels here have the steel that is actually bearing onto it, so you would know you would have a load bearing design and a non-load bearing design to do. However, we're going to just walk through one design. I'll show you how to do a design using our design parts function. So you click on the design parts function, you choose which wall you wish to use, and then you hit finish. You'll see that there is no design selected yet. The reason for this is you have not set a design for this model. What we're going to do is actually make a brand new file that will be the typical wall file for this project. So we're going to press the browse button and I'm going to call this typical wall. Well, you'll see that it has now linked up to a new file called typical wall, and I have the modify associated design file checked. What this means is you're actually going to be modifying the file on disk. However, if you unselect this, you can create a temporary file. This is great for when it comes to doing quick checks or lifting handling checks, whenever you just want to get a quick answer of something without modifying the true design file. But again, we're going to be making a typical design file for the rest of the project, so I'm going to hit run. And what it's doing is it's extracting the concrete extents, all of the reveals, the openings, the locations of everything, the size, the length. It's getting all of that, extracting it, and putting it into a version that Ericsson wall can read. So now we have Ericsson wall opened up with the true concrete extents from the BIM model. You can see it even grabbed the core opening down at the bottom, down at the base of the wall. So you can get everything with true concrete extents and reveals and openings all transferred directly in. If you wish to break that, break the connection between the Revit model and Ericsson wall, you can click this button here and it'll transform all of this information into the grid style that you typically see in Ericsson wall. So you can then adjust all of your reveals and openings by hand as you wish. But this saves a ton of time to get the exact concrete extents into Ericsson wall. Next, we go to the structural model and we're just gonna run through a quick design on how to do this. Put a restraint at 30 feet up, add a wind load, and I'm gonna change this to a pressure load, and you'll see it automatically sets it to the width of the panel. It's 25 pressure and 30 suction. Now we have our non-load bearing restraints here, non-load bearing wall design file. I'm gonna go in and add just some quick locations for lifting. This is a pretty long panel, so I'm gonna choose a four-point lift, but I still wanna set to a two-point transportation. And then I'm gonna set the erection to your stripping location and use the edge lifter. So we have one, three, and end for erection. We have all four facelifters, and then we have a two-point transportation check. Next, we'll go to the reinforcing and we have options for strand, rebar, and mesh. You can just have the quick button here where it will add the minimum reinforcement for your wall panel, and it'll place it evenly along the width, or you can go in and manually adjust it, hit the add strand button, and place all of the strand as you wish with the correct size. You can also do the same thing with welded wire mesh. We have the add sheet set to four-by-four mesh, but again, everything is completely adjustable. And then we go to the design criteria, and this is really where all the project-specific information is. Instead of running through all of this here, though, to get this exactly to what the project is, I already have a design file that I know is basically 100% of the way there. I might have this from a previous wall project that I did, or I just had it prepared for when we got to the point of reinforcing. I'm gonna open that file up. So we're going to do a typical wall check. Now we have this design file open. I have all of the project information already in it along with a strand pattern that works with the geometry that was provided. So now I'm gonna hit the sync button, the sync across projects button, and I want this design file to have its information transferred into our new wall file. But I don't want to overwrite the concrete extents. These concrete extents were from the BIM model, while the file that I'm working with right now was one that I had previously made with some estimations. Now, all of that information from your original file, from your estimated file, is now in your actual BIM created file. So we have true concrete extents along with any reinforcing and lifting and handling checks that you wish. I'm gonna hit save. And now we have our design file ready to start populating the model. So the next button we're going to press is the reinforce parts button. What this does is, as it says, it'll reinforce the model. So we already have this wall family linked up to the design file we just made. I'm going to hit run. And now, since this was the original design file, it didn't have much comparison to do, but I'm gonna quickly show you how to reinforce this entire model using that same exact function. We're gonna hit the reinforce parts button again. And I'm just going to select all of the walls. You'll notice that it won't select any of the steel. You will only select the precast wall panels. You hit finish. And now, everything is linked up to that typical wall. You hit run. And now, it's going through comparing that wall file, the wall geometry from that file, and setting a fixed rail, pulling out all of the reinforcement that fell outside of the concrete extents, and then placing all of your strand and mesh correctly based off of that fixed rail. Later on in the presentation, we'll go over more of how to set these datums for reinforcement placing. But for now, you can think of this as setting either a left fixed rail or a right fixed rail. And you can adjust this throughout the model. When you go to reinforce and you say, I wanna flip the rail, you can just go into your settings and flip it. Now that we have all of the reinforcement in the model, we have all of the plates in the model, and we have a design file set, next thing on the list is to add the lifters. So again, I'm just going to stick with this wall file. We want all of our facelifters and edgelifters on this one wall family. We're gonna hit the add lifters button, select that one file, that one wall family, hit finish. Again, we'll still have that wall file linked up to that one family. Then just hit run. And we have now added the lifters to the model. We now have edgelifters and facelifters already set up and in the correct location per your design file. You can go in and you can adjust this as needed just to avoid or miss any reinforcement. And then from there, you can just go in and do a lifting and handling check if it was, if engineering wise, you consider it a large enough check to require a new design file. We have all of our reinforcement, all of our geometry, all of our plates, and all of our lifters already in the model in this one family. This is now ready to be turned into an assembly and made into tickets. So we've added this assemble parts tool. You click on the assemble parts tool. And again, you select that one family that you wish to turn into an assembly. You hit finish, and it'll give you the option to turn either just the concrete extents into the assembly, and then you can manually add all of your plates into it, or you can select to include all of the elements contained within that concrete extents. This will grab everything and put it automatically into the assembly. You hit run, and now it has created the assembly ready for the views to be made and turned into ticketing with labeling and detailing. Now, keep in mind, all of this is using your standard families. There isn't anything here that doesn't automatically fit within your standard workflow. All of your families and views, along with the assembly data, should be based off of whatever you've previously been doing. Everything here should fit seamlessly into the projects that you've been working with already. Now we're on to our second assembly. This is our second model. This model here is a three-story, three-bay standard parking garage, but this is just the shell, so we only have the concrete extents in here. What I'm going to do is show you the beam design for the double T that we had previously made. So you might have this design from the seed files that you made for Ericsson Beam. You could have this design from estimating where they needed a design early on to estimate the number of strand and reinforcement that was needed, or you could just have this design from a previous project, one with very similar geometries that you know you just want to use. You can go through, run your design, check it, have this design ready before anyone even starts on the model. So under the reinforcements tab, we have our strand and we have welded wire mesh. We have the flange mesh running down the length, and then we have stem mesh for the end five feet only. So what I'm going to do is pull this data and put it straight into the model from this design file. So I want to choose just a couple of Ts here. So we're going to go into the manage parts function. Remember, I said this was the database. This was kind of the heart and core of Ericsson Sync where you can do mass edits. So I'm going to show you an easy way to sort and find the products that you want. We're going to sort by type, and then I want to sort by family. So now you see beam, column, and wall. Under the beams, you'll see the three different beams, the three different beam families that you can choose from. So I want the double Ts. Now in the model, I want to select a couple of them that we want to use, but say, I just want to select the one. This'll get me in the range near where it is in the design manager. So we're going to scroll down, and it's a two-way communicator. So you can see this file is selected. Now I want to select this one and then say, these couple of double Ts near it. You can see it's now selected in the model, and I'm going to hit the reinforce parts function. Now you can set your design file in here in the reinforce parts function, or you can set your design in the design manager itself. Being able to set it in the design manager means that it doesn't need to have all the same design file in order to reinforce it. You can reinforce your spandrels, double Ts, wall panels, IT beams, all at the same time, as long as the design manager is set up with the correct design file. So I'm going to hit run. And now what it's doing is it's comparing all seven of those double Ts to the design file, and then cutting the mesh and reinforcement so that it fits. We can go in now and check the model. So you can see we have the stem mesh for the end five feet. We have the flange mesh placed within the flange, and we have all of the prestressing strand running down the length of it. So all of these double Ts have now been reinforced. Once all of the plates and everything are in it, you can turn it into an assembly, and this is ready for piece ticketing. Next, we're going to go to the columns, and I want to check this geometry and compare it to a design file I'd previously made. So we're going to use the design parts function, select the column, and we're going to create a new column file. I'm going to call it this with PCI. So you can choose either to modify the new file that you're creating, or you can make a temporary file if you're just using it to check a couple of stresses or just to make sure that things run properly. Now what it's doing is it's pulling the concrete extents. It's getting all of the parameters from the family and putting it into the design software. There is no longer a need to figure out where all of the pockets go. It will extract all of that information properly straight from your Revit model. But now you can see we don't have any reinforcement in here. This is just a hollow shell of the concrete extents. So I'm going to open up a file that I made previously as a preliminary design, a quick check, or again, you could have this made from another job or from estimating. So here we have all of our ties in it and we have our number 11 bars down the length. I want to extract all of this information and put it into the new design file. We have this sync data across projects button. I'm going to click that, transfer it over. But since we're using the concrete extents from the Revit model, I don't want to overwrite that. But I do want all of the loads, the handling, the reinforcement and the project information. Click okay. And now we can go in. This is our brand new design file. All of the reinforcements are in it. You can make adjustments as needed for the stirrup spacing to adjust for pockets. And now we hit save. Once we're good to go, you've checked your design. You know this is the reinforcement you want in your column. You can go through and hit the reinforce parts function. Reinforce parts function will already know that that column is linked up to that design file we just made. You hit run and now it's comparing it. But since this was the exact file, it was pretty fast. So you can see all of the stirrup ties are already in the model. All of the reinforcing, the number 11 bars is already set up. So now with all of the plates and everything in it, you can go up and you can use our assemble parts function or you can assemble it however way you've typically done before. Everything here was made using the families that you set up in your family map. So everything should be based off of whatever system you've been using previously. Lastly, we're moving on to the final project, the riser job. So now we have our riser model. As you can see, it's really small riser model. This is just really to show you the concepts of everything. So we're going to start off by going into the beam file. I'm going to show you that we currently have this already designed, already ready to go. We have all of the main reinforcement and it's doing the same thing. We have all of the main reinforcement and it's doing the principal access check for us. So we know this design is acceptable, it's safe, it's good to go. So now we go into the model and we already have this one riser reinforced. Someone already went through, they've interpreted the drawings, they've interpreted the design and put the reinforcement already in the model. So we can still use our assemble parts tool this was not created using Ericsson Sync. So I'm going to choose to assemble the part, finish, and you have two options. Way it is right now, you can grab just the concrete extents and turn that into the family and then manually add the plates and rebar to that assembly or you can include the elements contained within the part. What that's going to do is actually grab everything within the concrete extents, all of the families, all of the plates and rebar that's within the concrete extents of that family and put it into the assembly. And hit run, you see that the operation was successful and now we have an assembly. It has created the assembly based off of all of that information and the family map. So it's in the correct order that you need for ticketing. This can have views made and it's ready to start labeling and detailing and putting into the piece ticket. Thank you, Jeremy. My name is Justin Callahan and I'm the lead software engineer. Today, I'm going to be going over some additional details that answer some of the most common questions that we receive about Ericsson Sync. First, we're going to discuss the family map within Ericsson Sync. The purpose of the family map is to create a map or a link between your custom family and Ericsson Sync. So throughout Ericsson Sync we're constantly trying to access information within your family. Sometimes we're trying to read that information and sometimes we're trying to set that information. So an example of this would be when we're getting reinforcement from the model and populating a design file, we need to be able to see a family, identify it as strand or as mild reinforcement, and pull out all of its properties. Similarly when we're in reinforce part we're going to want to go the other way. So we're going to want to know what families you have available so that when we try to put in a number seven mild bar we can go in and find a family that suits our desires, right? So something that has the right diameter, area, and conditions, the right length, that type of that type of information. Now this family map can be accessed from the settings within Ericsson Sync and it's just all the way at the bottom under the supported families. This does require a little bit of setup but it's not something that you have to do every single time. Generally speaking a company is going to set it up once and store it centrally on a server and they'll just share the same family map because everybody at a company is working on the same models, they all have the same families, so therefore the family map can be the same as well. So it's just something you have to set up once and then it's also really easy to import and export individual entries. So if you have somebody, maybe you're a consultant and you're working with a precaster who has their own families and they've also used Ericsson Sync, you can get their family map entries from them so they automatically work correctly out of the gate. It is also very easy to copy entries from this to create a new but similar entry. So maybe you did a spin-off of a pre-existing double T family that you had, you could just copy your existing family and then just go in to edit, edit the few parameters that may have changed within it and go from there. What you saw before was a list of all the supported families currently in Ericsson Sync. However, if you click on one of those and you press the edit button or you can pick a concrete element in the model and press the edit family map button in the Ericsson Sync ribbon, it takes you to the actual family map properties window. In this window, you can specify the family name, the type name, you can specify if it's precast or if it's reinforced, and if it is precast you can specify what design software you want to use with it. Now the type name isn't mandatory but if you leave it blank, what that does is it makes it the default family if a type is not found. So if you're looking for a certain double T family, it will first try to find something where the family name and type name matches. If it can't find one with a type name matches, then it'll look for one where the family name matches and it will use that instead. And it will always just use the first one that it finds that matches. Now below that top section is a list of all the parameters that we need for the given type of family. Those range from everything from orientation information, which the top two are those two family axes, which we'll cover at the end. And then also geometric information, so all the things that define the geometry of the section. Now all these values can either be a constant value or a variable type. What I mean by that is if it's a constant value it is always that value for that family and that type. So I see a lot of wall families where the thickness for this case is a constant, it's always an eight inch thick wall. So for that case you would just check the is constant box and enter eight inches in your appropriate column for that row. Now variable types, what it expects is the name of the parameter within the family. Now that can be a family type parameter or one of the type values inside of Revit. But just enter in the name of where we store it and that just tells us where to go to get that information. You also have the option to leave the center column blank. Now what that does is if it's blank and the is constant check box is not checked, it tells it to skip that value. There's a few times when you'd want to use that. The main one that comes up pretty often is when you're working with strand. We look for debonding information but most families for strand do not contain debonding parameters within it. So if you just leave the debonding parameters blank it will see that as blank and not look for them but still return it as a positive match. It's just not going to set any values. One section up top that was just skipped was the category input. Now what that is, is for precast elements you're picking what your section type is and if you're doing a reinforcement family you're picking if it's a bar, a strand, a stirrup, or a mesh entry. Now when you change this entry the grid down below is going to update automatically with the new required parameters. When this grid updates it's pulling in everything we need for that new category type that came through. You won't often be changing this input it's more just on the initial setup because usually if you're trying to make a t-beam in this case you're not going to press new and go in and edit a value coming from an insulated wall panel like we're doing here on the screen. Instead you're going to pick a double t that you already have that's close to the new type you're trying to support and you're just going to copy that entry and edit it in place instead. The top two parameters for every geometry's family map are orientation parameters. So just assist us into making sure we orient this member correctly for inserting reinforcement and for pulling this concrete extents into our design software. Now both of them are going to ask for two things they're all family maps for two things they'll ask for the length axis and the width axis. Now we only take in two because the third value the thickness axis we actually get from just using a right-handed coordinate system and wanted to remove that burden from the user to make sure they're giving us a valid coordinate system so that value is just computed. Now for all of these entries you have three options you can either define front to back, left to right, or bottom to top. And these entries just come from your family within Revit. If you see an element in Revit you want to support that's not currently in the family map you just double click it and you can pull off that information from the view cube. So here you can see that the length axis goes front to back and the width axis is the left to right direction. So just setting those will guarantee that we can actually pull out the correct concrete extents for any orientation. So if this member is rotated up at any angles for slopes for parking decks or is rotated down about its length as well for warping or anything like that we'll be able to handle that as long as you provide us the correct orientation for its base geometry. Now we're going to talk about how reinforcement is positioned when you run the reinforce part tool in Ericsson Sync. It's important to go over this just because the more you understand the process the easier it's going to be for you to use that tool effectively. Now the first thing we do is pretty simple we just pull all the reinforcement out of the elements corresponding design file. Once we have all the reinforcement we determine its location from a datum that the user selects in the settings. Now then we go into the model and we locate the same datum in the element and locate the points relative to that. At this point we adjust the location based on some placement options and then we try to initialize our reinforcement. What we're doing is we're going through the family map to looking for a corresponding family that matches all the required parameters that we have for that given reinforcement entry. From then we just create an instance of that family insert it into the model and if the object is already assembled insert it into the assembly as well. There's three different types of datums that the user has control over in Ericsson Sync. Those are the width datum, the thickness datum, and the length datum. The first one we're going to go over the width datum. All of these datums have four different options for the width. It's the left edge, the center line, the right edge, and the nearest edge. For the left edge, center line, and right edge the process is pretty simple. We just locate that edge in both our design file and in the model and place the reinforcement relative to it. For the nearest edge it's a little bit more involved. All we do though is we determine if that entity of reinforcement is closer to the left edge or the right edge in the design file and then from there we locate the same edge and both and place it relative. So an example of how this would work and what it would be used for is if you're inserting mesh for all of your walls what it would do is just re-inspect your side covers. So if you have mesh that in the design file has a two inch cover on the left edge and the right edge it's going to respect that two inch cover for any wall width in your model as well. The next datum we're going to review is a thickness datum. Now this is very similar to the width datum. Again we have four options but for this case it's the bottom edge, the center line, the top edge, and again the nearest edge. For the nearest edge for this case it functions the same or when it goes to insert a reinforcement entity it's just going to determine if the bottom edge or the top edge is closest in the design file and then use that for its datum. Now what this is most often used for is again things that slabs right where things are going to be relative to the top and bottom edge respectively but more often it's used for sandwich panels where you really want the reinforcement relative to its position and its own width. So what this is going to do if you have a 3-4-3 all the reinforcement and the bottom width is going to be relative to the bottom edge all the reinforcement is and the top width is going to be relative to the top edge. And what this allows you to do is if you have any thickness changes throughout your model it's still going to place your reinforcement in the center of your width. So if your insulation is changing in your model for a multitude of reasons if it gets thicker or thinner insulation it's still going to position your reinforcement correctly in the corresponding widths. The final datum we're going to cover is the length datum. Again this datum is very similar to the other two datums. It still has the four options. For this case it's the start edge, the center line, the end edge, and the nearest edge. The nearest edge for this case works just like the others. It's going to determine if an entry point is either relative to the start edge or the end edge and then use that as this placement datum. This is actually the most common used method for your length datum across every type of design type, beam, walls, columns, and for every type of reinforcement. Now that is because what this allows you to do is if you pick nearest edge it allows you to change the length of your member and still have the reinforcement be put in correctly. So again this is going to respect your end covers, your start cover and your end cover for mild reinforcement. For strand, strand is typically full length so it's not going to do anything for strand anyways. But for mild reinforcement for both mesh and bars it's going to respect those end covers as you move to pieces of different lengths. Once the placement datums are all set it's going to first map that point from our design software space into model space. Once that point is located in the model it's then going to account for the other two location modifiers. The first of those is the mirroring options. Now what the mirroring options does is provide a set of options for the three different center lines. The length center line, the width center line, and the thickness center line. And it provides an option for if you want to mirror it about that center line. So that's pretty straightforward if you were two inches to the left of the width center line you're now going to be two inches to the right of the width center line. Now this is most often used when your file is identical to the element in the model, when your design file is identical, but it's just mirrored about one of its axes. So an example of when this would be true is if you have two walls coming in at a corner and one's mitered on the left side and one's mitered on the right side. They're going to be the exact same design but mirrored about the width center line. Similarly you could have asymmetric man doors or if you have double Ts you could have a dap on one end but not the other end. In that case you don't want to be mirroring about the length center line. There's lots of options for when you'd want to use this. It's not generally something you're going to turn on once and forget about. It's more used on a case-by-case basis though. The final option in Ericsson Sync to modify the placement position are a set of rounding options. Now you can set different rounding options for the width placement, the thickness placement, and the length placement. Now for these three different options there are a few different ways you can round. You can either tell it not to round. You can round typically which is rounding up or down whichever is closer. You can round up, round down. You can always round towards the start of the member or round towards the end of the member. Now this start and end is relative to the position so for width that's actually round towards left and round towards right. For thickness it's round towards bottom and round towards top. If you are rounding you also have input for how much precision you want. For the precision you just simply enter the number of inches you want it to round to. So for this case if you wanted to round a half an inch you just put 0.5 into the box and it's going to round to the nearest half inch or round up to the nearest half inch or down to the nearest half inch so on. Now the rounding options are the final thing that gets done. So first we account for datums from then we account for any mirroring options and then from there we're going to round the placement position. This option is great for when you're trying to get mild bar sizes that are the actual length you're going to cut these to as well. For mild reinforcement there is an additional option to round the piece length. So then what this does is instead of getting some weird irrational number for your bar lengths you can tell it to round it down or up to the nearest eighth inch, half inch, full inch, whatever you want. Ericsson Sync also supports any blockouts or reveals or anything else that would cut into the reinforcement. For this any mild reinforcement any bars are going to automatically be cut when they leave the member as shown here by the red dashed lines. What Ericsson Sync does is it draws a line from the start placement position to the end placement position and anywhere where that line leaves the concrete it's going to split it into two line segments. So if as many times as this bar gets cut it's going to split into that many sub bars. Now any bar that just blatantly falls outside of the member in this step is also going to be thrown out for insertion, but any strand is not going to be cut. So if these center elements were strand they would still span full length and they're not going to be cut into sub strands just to keep the linear feet of strand accurate. Let's recap the purpose and main features of Sync. Sync connects Ericsson Suite to your BIM model. This permits engineers to now interact directly with the BIM model. This process sets up a two-way communication link between the programs of Ericsson Suite and the BIM model. This greatly improves collaboration on a project. Rather than the engineering team doing their work separately and independently, they now have the opportunity to work together on a project. doing their work separately and independently, they now have a seat at the BIM table. This improves the efficiency of BIM model development and in the process eliminates unnecessary error-prone steps. The global objective of our tools is to fully populate the BIM model with reinforcement objects including pre-stressing strand, rebar, and mesh and key structural items such as lifters, which sets the stage for the shop ticketing process. Many helper tools are also included within Sync to assist with model creation and development. These include tools to create and manage BIM objects and to apply designs to multiple structural elements in bulk. AI technology is utilized to apply the design of a particular structural element such as a wall panel to other similar wall panels in a group selected by the user. Sync has the intelligence to apply the essence of the design of an element to other elements. Develop a range of design types, then apply those to the rest of the elements of that type in the model. Reinforce say 100 double Ts with just a click. By now the benefits of using Sync should be quite evident. Sync greatly simplifies the modeling and engineering processes and streamlines the workflow. This reduces engineering time, BIM modeling time, checking time, and errors. Within Ericsson Technologies, our engineering services affiliate, we are seeing time reductions of 25% or more on typical projects. Sync has now become an indispensable tool for our engineers. Communication of design details to the BIM modeler via archaic paper sketches has become a thing of the past in our practice. Our engineers now communicate directly with the BIM model. Not only does it save substantial time and effort, but it also virtually eliminates human error. We hope you have enjoyed our webinar and that a main takeaway is that there is much room for improvement of the design and detailing process of precast, pre-stressed concrete structures. We certainly have appreciated the opportunity to share with you the possibilities for improving your workflow. Please feel free to send any questions you may have to us. We'll be sure to answer all questions received. You can reach any of us at Ericsson Software via the email address shown. Please visit ericssonsoftware.com for additional information and technical details. This concludes our webinar.

webinar

integrate

precast pre-stressed concrete design

BIM

Ericsson Software

Royce Covington

Roy Erickson

Jeremy Castello

Justin Callahan