November 30 – December 3, 2004 ◊ Las Vegas, Nevada

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005? David Pothier – Company Name

BD35-2 Autodesk Building Systems 2005 has shipped and it's a great time for you to learn what's new. Explore the new features and functionality in this new release. We'll cover the key features and benefits from enhanced layout and editing tools to engineering analysis. And we'll take a sneak peak at what's coming!

About the Speaker: Dave is a senior applications engineer with Autodesk, based in Manchester, New Hampshire. He has worked at Softdesk and Autodesk since 1990 and has been working with Autodesk® AEC products since 1987. During this time, he has also worked in product design, QA, technical support, and product development. Previously, Dave worked for a consulting engineering firm in New Hampshire. He attended Bridgewater State College, majoring in computer science.

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Productivity—Increase Efficiency by Reducing Tedious Drafting Tasks Autodesk Building Systems offers an easy way to develop and document mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection systems. With intelligent engineering objects—such as ducts, pipes, and wire—that interact logically, Autodesk Building Systems provides many tools that automate tedious drafting tasks, helping save you time and money. You can easily access tools and make changes directly in an intuitive workspace, providing a smoother means of design.

Tool Palettes Highly visual and customizable, tool palettes provide centralized access to commonly used design tools. You can take advantage of the tabbed tool palette interface, transparency, and auto-hide options while working with powerful and familiar tools, minimizing the use of toolbars, and maximizing screen space.

Save time by dragging objects from the current drawing onto tool palettes, automatically creating tools that reference the definitions and properties of the existing objects, so that you can reuse your previous work. Quickly access any Building Systems, Autodesk® Architectural Desktop, or AutoCAD command by dragging buttons from existing toolbars onto tool palettes while the Customize dialog box is open, and customize tools with scripts, cARX commands, and AutoLISP® expressions, automatcreating tool palettes that behave exactly as your toolbars do. Group tool palettes by category for enhanced easeuse and easily switch between palette groups from the ToPalette title bar. Autodesk Building Systems provides a collection of design-specific palettes, including HVAC, piping, electrical, plumbing, architectural, and structural groups. Use the DesignCenter™ feature to access content that is located on local and network drives as well as on the web, and to easily manage tools and tool palettes in a centralized location.

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Schematic Symbol Improvements Quickly and easily produce 2D, not-to-scale, flow diagrams and details of intricate building systems with plan and isometric schematic tools. With intelligent schematic symbols you can connect to schematic lines without the hassles of trimming lines, rotating symbols, or repairing broken lines. Take advantage of the new schematic symbol behavior and style enhancements to quickly convert your own schematic symbols to “intelligent” schematic symbols that interact with Building Systems schematic lines.

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Fewer steps are needed to create accurate isometric riser diagrams by using Isometric Mode to place symbols and lines that automatically adjust to the correct iso-plane, and new schematic symbol grips that enable you to quickly modify symbol location, rotation, and iso-plane orientation on the fly.

Grip Editing Enhancements Now you can make design changes to objects directly on-screen, streamlining the design process by eliminating dialog boxes, keeping you focused on the tasks at hand. Using grips you can now lengthen ducts and pipes, change location of objects, and use basic modify tools, such as stretch, move, rotate, scale, or mirror, to directly manipulate objects.

Sections and Elevations Want to make sure all sections and elevations are current before you plot? With the enhanced Batch Refresh feature, you can update all sections and elevations with the click of a button. This feature gives you the ability to automatically update every section and elevation in a specified directory or every section and elevation associated to the current project. And since the updates are extracted directly from your building model, you can be sure that each drawing is up-to-date. This capability complements the new drawing management features in Autodesk Building Systems because it improves drawing coordination and removes the tedium of manually updating section or elevation drawings one by one.

Isolate Objects Working on a specific area of a complicated design and need to simplify it to make your design modifications easier? With the Isolate Objects feature, you can hide or isolate specific objects such as ducts, pipes, equipment, and even xrefs, without the tedium of manipulating layers.

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Annotation Enhancements with Keynotes and Callouts Reduce the time spent annotating construction documents with the new Keynoting and Callout features that streamline the annotation process. Keynoting tools allow for Section and Elevation objects or components of those objects to be quickly annotated in accordance with project standards. Since Keynotes are managed from Access databases, modifying the note in the Access database will result in the full coordination of your construction documents as the note will be dynamically updated throughout the project. Keynote legends can be automatically created and maintained using the new Keynote Legend Tool. Out of the box, Building Systems will provide a robust Keynoting database in the standard Master Format organization.

Quickly create detail callouts, section marks, and elevation marks that are integrated with the appropriate commands for creating sections/elevations and the Drawing Management system in order to automatically create the views in the proper location, support the placing of resulting views in Sheets and automate the coordination between callouts, sheet numbers, and appropriate section/elevation/detail designation.

Hatch on Duct Eliminate the need to manually add crosshatching to your construction documents to distinguish between construction phases, such as new versus demolition ductwork. With the new “hatch” display component for ducts, you can quickly and easily display hatching on ductwork in plan, section, and elevation views.

Connection Types Change the connection type of building systems objects, such as ducts and pipes, during layout. With an enhanced collection of available connection types, easily swap connection types directly in the Add dialog boxes as you layout a run, and quickly create objects with different end connectors, eliminating the need to make connection modifications through object properties.

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Layer Manager The space-saving design of the new Layer Manager provides greater functionality in a more intuitive interface. You can provide a description for each layer, and you can immediately apply any layer changes without closing the Layer Manager. If you right-click the column headings, you can

quickly maximize columns based on content. Any changes you make to the display of columns remain the next time you access the Layer Manager. One of the most noticeable changes in the Layer Manager is the new Filter tree view control that enables you to group layers using filters. Filters for xref layers are automatically created and displayed in the tree view. Using layer filters, you can easily control layer visibility for all layers in a particular filter group.

Plotting Enhancements Whether you publish your designs to DWF format or to paper, with Autodesk Building Systems you can continue working in the drawing editor while Building Systems plots in the background. You can control background plotting, which is enabled by default, from the redesigned Plot and Publish tab of the Options densure that your plots were successfully completed, Building Systems can automaticallycreate a log file listing comprehensive plotdetails, including start time and date, completion time and date, and final status. Thelog file stores cumulative plot information fmultiple plot sessions. You can specify the location of the log file using the Files tab of the Options dialog box.

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Building Systems offers a simplified Plot dialog box similar to the new Page Setup dialog box. You can display the Plot dialog box in collapsed mode for easy access to the most frequently used plot controls.

Content Browser Search Tool The Content Browser is a central repository for tools and content, such as tool catalogs, tool palettes, blocks, and Multi-view Parts, and provides a central location to disseminate project-based information, ensuring that every member of your design team has access to the most up-to-date tools. Improvements to the Content Browser include new tools that enable the organization, sorting, and searching of valuable project data with the click of a button.

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What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Publish Part Catalogs Looking for a way to quickly and easily share part catalogs with your extended design team? Now you can publish customized part catalogs as web pages directly to local or network locations, including intranet and web sites, with the click of a button. Take advantage of the i-drop® functionality embedded in the web pages to quickly drag and drop parts from the published catalog into your designs.

Accuracy—Streamline Your Design Process with Fewer Errors Designs in Autodesk Building Systems are coordinated with your construction documents, eliminating time-consuming, nonproductive drawing reviews, so you have more time for design. Extensive libraries of industry-based parts and equipment integrated into engineering-specific tools make the documentation process more efficient by helping to reduce errors and omissions. Built-in design calculators and the ability to extract engineering design data for interoperability with third-party analysis applications eliminates the need for manually data transfer, while helping ensure that the work you do in design development is available for immediate use during the documentation process.

Content Autodesk Building Systems provides extensive collections of parts, such as fittings, equipment, and fixtures, based on common industry standards in the box for increased accuracy throughout your designs. New fire protection content helps you lay out fire protection piping, sprinkler heads, fire pumps, and control valves for a more complete building information model. Additional HVAC parts, such as slot diffusers and outlet plenums, plus an enhanced collection of fittings, including 3D plumbing fittings for drain, waste, and vent systems, and a complete collection of ASHRAE duct fittings, packs the box with tons of content. Autodesk Building Systems also includes a rich content library of parts that are formatted for the U.K. market and meet British standards.

When your designs require manufacturer-specific content, take advantage of the i-drop® technology bdownloading the part you need strafrom a manufacturer’s website into your design. The i-drop functpermits a fast, simple consistent means of accessing standard ancustom content to increase your productivity. And if your designs require custom content, Building Systems provides in the box content creation tools, including the Content Builder, that enable you to create custom parts, such as fittings and equipment on the fly.

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What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Spaces and Zones Automatically generate engineering spaces from architectural floor plans or design drawings to produce room information, complete with square footage, volumes, and engineering design data, such as air flow and temperatures. Use grips to easily manipulate the space to create an accurate representation based on door, window, and opening locations, unique room shapes, and interior versus exterior walls. By defining loads, design temperatures, and airflow rates, and grouping into zones, engineering spaces can eliminate the need for manually transferring design data for load calculations and building energy analysis.

HVAC Load and Energy Analysis Take advantage of intelligent design data stored in engineering spaces and zones and eliminate tedious manual data transfer by extracting engineering data dfrom your model in standardformats, such as gbXML and application programmin(API), for interoperability with third-party applications for heatinand cooling load calculations and building energy analysis. For minformation about the availathird-party applications compatiblewith Autodesk Building Sys2005, visit www.autodesk.com/ buildingsystems-par

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What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Duct Sizing Want to size ducts during layout? With the new duct sizing calculator added directly to the Add Duct and Modify Duct dialog boxes you can quickly size ducts automatically during layout based on CFM requirements. Customizable design parameters determine whether duct sizes are calculated based on equal friction or equal velocity.

And if you are looking for a complete system sizing tool, export your duct system layouts to standard file formats, such as ddXML, for interoperability with third-party duct sizing applications. Autodesk Building Systems also provides additional tools to resize your duct systems based on the results of the external sizing calculations. For more information about availability of third-party applications compatible with Autodesk Building Systems 2005, visit www.autodesk.com/ buildingsystems-partners.

Fire Protection System Design The addition of fire protection content, such as sprinkler heads and control valves, enables you to layout fire protection systems with Autodesk Building Systems. Extract design data directly form your model in standard file formats, such as application programming interfaces (API), for interoperability with third-party fire protection pipe sizing applications. Resizing tools enable you to update your system layout when changes are made, helping to create an accurate model of your design.

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Wire Sizing Efficiently size wire on the fly while maintaining design requirements. The new instant wire calculator provided on the Add Wire and Modify Wire dialog boxes enables you to size wires automatically when connecting devices and panels based on customizable engineering data, including conductor sizes, material, insulation, and temperature ratings.

Coordination—Work Effectively with Extended Design Team With Autodesk Building Systems you can see a true representation of the constructed system during the design process, resulting in better coordination between your extended design team. Since your designs are linked to your construction documents, coordinating changes is easier, reducing design cycle time and helping avoid costly design changes in the field. Because Autodesk Building Systems is interoperable with other Autodesk building design solutions—such as AutoCAD® and Autodesk Buzzsaw® —data sharing among the extended design team has never been easier, resulting in better coordination between engineers, architects, and builder.

Tables Tables are a fundamental part of any set of drawings, and with the new table functionality in Autodesk Building Systems, you can increase your productivity by automating the tedious task of creating and maintaining tables. The new Table objects are flexible in their appearance, and are based on table styles. With an interface that is similar to the Dimension Style dialog box, the Table Style dialog box enables you to set the current table style, create new table styles, and modify or delete existing table styles. Populating tables is easy with intuitive keyboard functionality that enables you to enter data and navigate around the table, and grips provide a quick and easy way to modify the table location, column width, and row height.

Tables are also interoperable with Microsoft® Excel and other database spreadsheet applications. Table data can be directly copied from Excel and converted into a table object while maintaining

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What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

formatting from the original spreadsheet. And if you want to use the table data you create in your drawings in other applications, you can easily export the table data to a comma-separated value (CSV) file format.

Export Design Data Need to know the amount of material required for a project? Now you can easily export scheduling data in Autodesk Building Systems drawings to Microsoft® Access, where it can then be viewed, sorted, queried, and even imported into other applications to perform specific tasks, such as cost estimation.

Need instant access to building model and resource information? Now you can also convert pertinent design data contained in Autodesk Building Systems drawings into informative and interactive facility maps using Autodesk MapGuide® software. With this tool, engineers can provide additional support to other industry professionals, such as facilities managers, who are using Autodesk MapGuide software to give them quick access to building areas and their corresponding resources.

Standard File Format Support Through standard file formats, including XML formats such as ddXML and gbXML, and open application programming interfaces (APIs), engineering data can be extracted from Autodesk Building Systems models for interoperability with third-party applications, and also your own applications in Microsoft® Visual Basic®, Excel, and Access, helping to ensure the accuracy of your designs. For more information about the availability of third-party applications compatible with Autodesk Building Systems 2005, visit www.autodesk.com/buildingsystems-partners.

Interoperability with Architectural and Structural Objects Since Autodesk Building Systems is built on top of Autodesk Architectural Desktop Software’s object technology, and includes the latest version of architectural features conveniently located on separate tool palettes and menus, coordination among design teams has never been easier within the building design process. You can use structural members to visually check for interferences in your model, improving the accuracy and integrity of your designs. And with the new MvPart Convert feature you can now convert 2D blocks, such as Architectural Desktop plumbing fixtures, into Building Systems parts that logically connect to your designs, enabling you to

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

effectively use 2D architectural drawings.

Drawing Management Enhancements Drawing management tools ensure consistency throughout all aspects of the project. You can be assured that everyone on your design team is accessing the most current documents— from project templates to sections and elevations—from a centralized location. Anow with the new Sheet Set functionality integrated in the Project Navigator, plans, elevations, sections, details, schedules, sheet numbers, sheet indexes, callouts, and general annotations are coordinated and resulting sheets can be fully managed, plotted, published, electronically transmitted and archived.

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Installation and Deployment Improvements An improved Network Installation wizard now gives you the flexibility of pointing content and support files to a centralized location, for both network and single-user installations, making it easier to control and manage content. The wizard gives you the option of installing content and support files to a central location, various locations, or directly on the computer where the product is being installed, according to your best practices. Additional desktop shortcuts can also be created during installation including an AutoCAD-only shortcut for those users wanting to launch Autodesk Building Systems as basic AutoCAD.

Sharing Drawings New publishing tools provide an efficient way to distribute and share your design drawings with your extended design team. Since Autodesk Building Systems is built on the same technology as Autodesk Architectural Desktop, it includes the latest version of AutoCAD so you have all AutoCAD software’s functionality, including Autodesk’s industry leading DWG compatibility, for seamless exchange of legacy drawing information.

The Export to AutoCAD feature “flattens” the your Building Systems designs to basic AutoCAD entities, making it easy to collaborate with those members of your design team who may not be using Autodesk Building Systems software.

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What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

You can also use the new Publish feature to publish individual drawings in their current state without first having to save the drawings. The Publish dialog box enables you to include a plot stamp, specify the number of copies, and you can even preview your electronic plot before starting the publish process.

By publishing DWF™ (Design Web Format™) files now you can view non-graphic information as well as design graphics, making your design intent clear to anyone who reviews the document. With the click of a button, you can view pertinent non-graphical data such as a door’s fire rating or a room’s square footage using Autodesk® Express Viewer. Since it is DWF format, members of your design team can review and redline the files, making DWF an efficient means to distribute and share data. And with Autodesk® DWF Composer and the new Markup Set Manager feature you view and manage the DWF files directly inside Autodesk Building Systems enabling you quickly and easily verify design corrections.

What’s New in Autodesk® Building Systems 2005?

Productivity—Increase Efficiency by Reducing TediTool PalettesSchematic Symbol ImprovementsGrip Editing EnhancementsSections and ElevationsIsolate ObjectsAnnotation Enhancements with Keynotes and CalloutsHatch on DuctConnection TypesLayer ManagerPlotting EnhancementsContent Browser Search ToolPublish Part Catalogs

Accuracy—Streamline Your Design Process with FeweContentHVAC Load and Energy AnalysisDuct SizingFire Protection System DesignWire Sizing

Coordination—Work Effectively with Extended DesigTablesExport Design DataStandard File Format SupportInteroperability with Architectural and Structural ObjectsDrawing Management EnhancementsInstallation and Deployment ImprovementsSharing Drawings