13 Dec 2017

BuiltWorlds BIM 360 Hackathon Results

BuiltWorlds

Combining Hard Hats and Hoodies at the BuiltWorlds AEC Hackathon!

Autodesk Forge and BIM 360 partnered with BuiltWorlds to sponsor the AEC Hackathon held at Chicago’s MHUB December 1-3.

Over 200 registrants including makers, developers, and industry professionals from various ENR 400 construction companies came together for this two-and-a-half-day event. $4K+ in prizes were on the table for the developer team that came up with the most creative and applicable solution to solve common construction industry challenges.

The Forge and Construction Industry teams joined forces to demonstrate how Autodesk has committed to support the developer community and the digitization of the construction industry. Keep reading to learn about the challenge, the winners, and Autodesk presence at the BuiltWorlds AEC Hackathon.

Autodesk: The Official Construction Software Challenge Partner

The Challenge: View 2D Drawings in a 3D Hybrid Model

Description: One of the biggest challenges of getting individuals or construction companies to adopt BIM is due to poor model quality. Companies and individuals are constantly struggling with the model not delivering the level of detail and data needed. Frustration ensues and models are then pushed aside in favor of 2D drawings.

The Challenge: Create a way to view 2D drawings in a 3D in hybrid mode. In other words, all of the 2D sheets are in the same project space as the 3D model and in their relevant position. If you turned the 3D model off from the view you would effectively have a ‘house of cards’ made up of sheets at their correct elevation levels etc. The user would be able to select a 2D area in the existing 2D/3D split screen or in a single hybrid view and have it filter the 3D data to only show the elements selected on the 2D sheet. This ability to help users understand what is/is not in the model would be a huge help for them to understand how much they can trust/utilize the model for other purposes – thus increasing the overall adoption of BIM across the industry.

So how did it go?

  • Developer teams worked for two days to “hack” some of the top workflow and technology issues in the industry.
  • Before the event, the Industry Marketing and BIM 360 Product teams collaborated to nominate four challenges for the industry to vote on. With over 40 responses, our social media crowdsourcing exercise yielded one clear winner. 
  • While some dev teams chose this challenge, others decided to look at other ways they could solve major industry issues.

And the winner of the software challenge is...

Team Otter

TEAM OTTER! Their hack? A solution that “reinvented” the way architectural drawings are reviewed and using the Forge platform to develop their detailed model-viewer solution.

Two of the participants from the winning team were from Perkins+Will who commented, “We couldn’t have done this without the Forge platform and the support of the Forge team”.

Several other teams utilized BIM 360 APIs and hardware solutions to solve other challenges in the industry. It was truly incredible to see what these teams, some of whom were still in high school, came up with.

We've posted their final presentation - check it out!

Special shout-outs to the following individuals for supporting this event: Kristen Sylva, Mikako Harada, Augusto Goncalves, Jaime Rosales Duque, and Jim Quanci.

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