Software tools have become the standard for detailed design. Software has also made significant inroads into many aspects of construction. In contrast conceptual design still relies for the most part on "pencil and back of the envelope". It turns out that creating a successful conceptual design tool is significantly more challenging than detailed design. Fifteen years ago Sketchup (now Trimble Sketchup) was introduced, It was the first conceptual design tool, primarily for buildings, that attracted significant interest, but it wasn't enough to keep Google's interest who had acquired the software from the original developers. In 2012 Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler (now Autodesk Infraworks) was introduced to address concept generation for linear features, primarily roads, but also rail. Sketchup and Infraworks have attracted adherents, but they have not become the de facto standards that AutoCAD and Revit have become. Now Bentley has introduced preliminary design design tools for rail and for road. At the Year in Infrastructure 2017 (YII2017) in Singapore the results of an interesting exercise in conceptual design were reported. Bentley staged the exercise to demonstrate how successfully their new conceptual design for rail tool is able to address the challenge of conceptual design.
The fastest growing transport mode is rail, which represents over 50 % of all transport projects currently under development. Rail is quite complex because it involves many other systems beyond the track system itself including communications and signaling, tunnel systems, electric power, heating and cooling, ventilation systems, stations, lifts/elevators and escalators, and others. In addition rail systems require efficient pedestrian and road systems to deliver passengers to and from rail stations.
To be successful, a conceptual design tool has to satisfy several requirements which together support what Bentley refers to as "conceptioneering". Chief among these are that it has to be easy and fast to use, it must be rapid to learn, it must support rapid "optioneering", must be able to enforce design standards or rules, and must be capable of photo-realistically rendering design output. In addition it should be able to incorporate sustainable design, should be flexible enough to accommodate a range of existing conditions, and be able to generate deliverables that provide a foundation for detailed design.
Bentley's conceptual design tool for rail is called OpenRail ConceptStation. To develop some marketing capital among the engineering design community for this tool's ability to address the challenging requirements of conceptual design, Bentley came up with a novel idea. Six teams from well-known construction companies: Arup, BBMV, Costain, Kier Bam JV,Network Rail, and Mott MacDonald were each given two hours of training on the software. Using that training they were then asked to #designinaday a new mass transit system involving both rail and road in a real world community, Oakland, California. Their challenge was to design a mass transit rail system that was environmentally sympathetic, that connected with existing transport networks and community facilities, and included upgrades to existing road and rail infrastructure. Oakland suffers from the malaise that plagues many secondary urban areas in the U.S.: poor connectivity from existing rail and freeway networks to local roads; substantial walking distances from residential areas to local amenities, schools and hospitals; derelict and run-down areas; and high traffic congestion on both highways and local roads.
The winning design was submitted by Jake Sarjant, Serena Gosden, Hiu Chow, and Alicia Winter, who composed the Mott MacDonald team. The winning team, comprising three civil engineers and one carbon and sustainability specialist, reported that in the context of the one day design competition they had found the software easy and fast to use and that they appreciated its ability to automatically ensure that designs met rule-driven standards. Overall they found that it was well suited to optioneering and preliminary design processes. An additional advantage that they found really helped was that it could be easily used with other software, in this case a carbon portal which made it possible to rapidly calculate emissions for alternative scenarios. They did report that hardware with high processing power was essential.
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