China calling - Archicad taking root

CISDI Engineering - China

CISDI Engineering Co. Ltd. (CISDI), a leading Chinese engineering firm pioneering in engineering design, is increasingly finding a role for Archicad and virtual modeling.

With annual revenues of $400 million, the CISDI Engineering Co. Ltd. (CISDI) falls within the Top Five of China's 100 leading engineering companies. For 50 years, it has provided over 100 clients, home and aboard, with its winning technologies and designs. Among more than 1,000 engineering services, 200 patents have been authorized and 200 prizes awarded from national, ministerial or provincial authorities. With the efforts of its 1,600 employees, by integrating advanced technologies, CISDI is in a drive to become a top-class international engineering company. Nowadays, 3D modeling has been accepted as a critical technique for the future.

Archicad wins head-to-head

Located in downtown Chongqing, the youngest municipality in China, CISDI covers an area of 11 hectares. In addition to a large amount of industrial construction designs, CISDI also takes on hundreds of civil architecture designs, which cover urban planning, public buildings and civil & living buildings. Such a wide range of design activities coupled with an ambitious expansion plan, called for a strategic rethink of its modeling CAD tools. After three months' comparison between Archicad® and Revit®, CISDI opted to integrate Archicad among its technology platforms.

The challenge for CISDI was to view the functionality and features of both applications on a large project. They hoped to see a whole set of construction documents and drawings for a practical project in China, but only Archicad proved to have the capability of handling a 40,000m2 building (51 drawing sheets) to their satisfaction.

Apart from this large teaching complex of the Anshan Technology University (above), another huge project demonstrated Archicad's strength in this respect - the Eureka Tower, the world's largest residential tower in Australia.

This head-to-head analysis impelled the Civil Architecture Engineering Department of CISDI to choose Archicad. "What impressed us most was the visualization ability of Archicad. Now architects can easily resolve complex spatial problems, and optimize the design more effectively. Since we only worked with 2D drawings in the past, we need to have other people draw the perspective drawings. With Archicad, our architect can be more creative," said CISDI architect, Hu Aihua.

 
Chongqing Yubei Broadcasting & TV Office Building:
8,971m2 and 7 floors. Designer: Zheng Tong.

Modeling "a must" for the future

"Design clarity and documentation simplicity of the Virtual Building is taking root in our thinking within CISDI," said Zhang Hongchuan, Director of the Civil Architecture Engineering Department. "There's no doubt that virtual modeling is a MUST for us looking forward, because the powerful design advantage will lower costs and better satisfy customers."

This Civil Architecture Engineering Department of CISDI engages in various types of architectural disciplines, including urban planning, public buildings, residential buildings and industrial plants. By using SketchUp®, 3DMax® and Archicad, integrated modeling in 3D is achieved, and we are enjoying the benefits from 3D.

 
The students' refectory and activity center of
Chongqing Medicine & Sanitation College:
14,787m2, 3 floors. Designer: Hu Aihua.

"3D solutions can solve various problems which we encountered on 2D blueprints during both the design and construction phases," explains Hu Aihua. "My very first Archicad project proved the value of the Virtual Building. I had started a large students' refectory plan using AutoCAD® - getting some floor-plan and elevation drawings. After modeling the building from these DWG drawings in Archicad, we immediately found shortcomings in the 2D design. And naturally, 3D modeling solved the problem of the building's monotonous and unrealistic appearance."

Continues Zheng Tong: "With Archicad, the drawings are generated automatically from the building model. So we spend less time in the construction documentation phase. The more visual images, fly-through movies and VR scenes give us much more confidence and convenience in showing our design for bids or to customers."

A structural advantage

Another great advantage of Archicad comes with its integration into various structural engineering tools. CISDI is the biggest customer of XSteel® in China. "Now we will look to sharing and delivering information among all of our sections," explains Hu Aihua. "Many of our projects use XSteel in engineering design, so the engineers hope they can get data directly from the Archicad model. It will save a considerable amount of modeling time, and avoid possible errors."

CISDI has also successively undertaken the supervision of projects, including: Panzhihua Airport, the Chongqing Changjiang Egongyan Bridge, construction supervision for part of the Chongqing Light Railway, the Chongqing Flood Prevention Command & Dispatching Center, the steel structure of the Shanghai Jinmao Building (88 floors), and projects connected to the Three Gorges Dam.