GC and Prostructures

Hello Nguyen Duc Hoa,

Means of interoperability between GenerativeComponents and DGN-based Bentley applications as well as non-DGN applications or involving extraneous data were discussed in last month's GC SIG workshop, the February 2018 workshop about "Teamwork with GC (1)" (recording to be posted soon in the LEARNserver GC SIG learning path). 

Beyond these general and broad capabilities in GC, there are no specific mechanisms or other provisions we have in place for interoperability with ProStructures like the ones we have been developing for direct interaction with AECOsim Building Designer's BIM element types and data. 

HTH,

     Volker

Dear Mueller,

Thank you so much and Bentley support forum. About the webinar, can you send me the link this webinar? 

Br,

Hoa

Hello Hoa,

I'll add the link to this thread as soon as I have processed the webinar and it has been posted on the LEARNserver. I expect to get this done within the next week.

Regards,

     Volker

Phong said:

 interoperability GC and ProStructures for example: make concrete, rebar , control the drawing,etc. Please add your idea in this topic.

GC nodes for Prostructures would be great... it would be interesting to understand from Volker what would need to be done to enable this. I understand that the initial entry point for ABD was its Triforma COM API. Not sure if Prostructures has something similar. There is a dotNET API so maybe it should be do-able without too much ado?

In the meantime, It would be good to understand from PS users like yourself how exactly you would benefit most from GC integration.

At the moment, PS seems to be seen as a  back-end tool aimed at adding rebar information. Solids modeled in Mstn and Aecosim would be referenced into PS, which can automatically update its parametric rebar objects based on the changes in the Aecosim model. Since, Aecosim is integrated with GC, you would be able to leverage GC-ABD for concrete work by using GC for form-finding. Not sure if the same links are available for Aecosim's steel objects. It would make sense to target those links first.

OTOH, I can see that for a lot of PS tasks, where repetition is a big deal, having GC integrated will be the way forward. It is worth noting here that AD's ACAD-based Advance Steel already has Dynamo integration. Especially since PS -like AS- is positioned at the back-end where fabrication is the focus. Revit/ABD for the frontend; AS/PS for the backend.

Here, GC's geometry-rich scripting tools will be a big help. CATIA provides a good sample of the type of benefits and workflows that GC-style scripting can provide at the backend, where big files and lots of detail need to be handled. Scripting as opposed to more common constraints, feature-history based tools like Revit or Inventor are favoured as they are more scalable at the back-end; where constraints solving is too slow. CATIA is pretty awesome as it can accomodate both paradigms seamlessly, more or less.

Dynamo has deep integration with the Revit BIM database; which allows it to be used a visual programming interface to automate Revit. Dynamo Player can provide access to the many 'trivial' tasks that add up. One man's party trick is often another's bread and butter tool on the Long Tail.

GC has a lot of similar hooks into Mstn via dotNET, but these tools are not exposed very well. Looking at the recent SIG on GNT's,GC can only 'compile' geometric nodes and so can not offer a comprehensive visual programming interface for Mstn/ABD. Something Dynamo can do for Revit and presumably ACAD.  GC also struggles to provide objects that can retain their parametrics smarts once placed in Mstn / ABD (headless mode)... forcing the need to generate and manage static Compound Cells. 

Hopefully, integrating with a second 'companion' app like PS will help push GC forward.

Hi,

Thank you for your sharing.

I see workflow GC-ABD-PS. For now Trimble Tekla can support by Rhino (grasshopper) for modeling steel and concrete, not for rebar. Autodesk have Dynamo. If GC can support PS for make steel, concrete, connection, rebar, drawing and etc,... I think it very strengh and more benefit for Bentley BIM workflow from concept, detailing and fabrication.