Construction Simulation! For marketing or for managing your project?

Lately I am getting involved with VICO more and more...

I am loving it actually!

Great tool for integrating cost and time to BIM Models.

We were discussing using Vico in one of our client's project recently but all of a sudden I noticed that they are interested in creating a pretty animation showing how columns, slabs are built etc only, nothing more.

Well if you are looking for a pretty presentation you can do it in ArchiCAD by using Construction Simulation Add-on which is free.

It absolutely does the job of creating a pretty animation!

But does it really help you managing your project?

If you are looking for a solution to help you optimize your schedule...

or

If you are trying to impress your client by finishing the project 6 months earlier rather than showing him animations just to show off...

Then the solution I would recommend it is VICO!

Because VICO understands location based quantities drives the schedule. So 5D comes before 4D and makes a lot of sense! At the end of the day changing durations without an affect on resources does not make much sense, right?

Here comes a short video about it:

There is a very nice discussion started by Holly on LinkedIn about this actually. You might want to have a close look;)

"I recently spent a long weekend with my two-and-a-half year old nephew. I was told that when he gets fidgety to ask him to sing the A-B-C’s and practice counting one to ten.

I wasn’t too concerned when letters of the alphabet started disappearing. But for the life of me, I couldn’t get him to include a 4 in his counting. I tried using his flashcards; I tried lining up his stuffed animals for the roll call; but 4 was mysteriously absent.

We have a similar situation at Vico. When everyone learned to count 3D, 4D, 5D BIM, we went and changed the order. We count 3D, 5D, 4D.

Quantities drive the schedule and the estimate, but with Vico Office, the estimator takes the lead in the workflow. Here’s how it works:

With Vico Office Takeoff Manager, we automatically examine the model geometry to generate construction-caliber quantities. Now with the quantities, estimators use Vico Office Cost Planner to create multiple iterations of the 5D estimate as the models’ level of detail increases. "

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