Case Study: Visicon made life easy to compare two versions of Structural Models

I am working for Technical Troubleshooting almost for last 23 years. Even during my initial 6 years of career in Sales and Market Development I always liked to be hands on and technically independent while bringing the numbers. Later I fully shifted to Technical Support and Services.

Always it remained a challenge when users claim that they created to identical model but received very different results. So first I had to start on relying what the client declare as changes between the models. If an issue is identified it is good, else it used to take hours to track the real issue after checking all parameters carefully, comparing the internal data files and even turning off and on different items in phases.

The life was same whether it is about the model created in STAAD or in ETABS or in ADAPT for last so many years.In STAAD it was easier as they had a text data file for frame analysis. But for robust solutions like ADAPT or even ETABS there are several things to check like Material Criteria, Model Connectivity, Modeled Tendon and Rebar, Loading, Design Criteria etc. etc. Complexity used to increase when it was required to compare two models created in two different solutions or to match it with a drawing file or Revit Model.

The day I saw the Visicon BIM tool, it was a pleasant relief from these pains! The beauty of this tool is that it allows user to import not only the models created in same solution, it also allows to import any two models from ADAPT, ETABS, Point Clouds, Wavefront or IFC. Even user can import a drawing file in a Revit model as a overlay and import here to compare whether the structural model coincides with other disciplines. Besides being an excellent BIM tool, it has a simple and unique tool called Compare Models. This function with all supported file formats are shown below.

Here is a quick case study which our Technical Services team and few users used when they receive two ADAPT models mostly in the following situations:

• Validation of results for two different schemes of structural model
• Receiving the updated model after implementing the comments during proof checking or peer review
• Results drastically changed after some modification and it is difficult to recall what are things added, removed or modified

The route was simple to create INP file from two different identified stages and using Compare Models tool import them one by one.

Almost instantly it scans the models and provide a comprehensive list containing detailed list of items which are only in first model, only in second model, exactly identical and conflicting. One can quickly browse through the tabular result.

The list can be exported as nested Excel table for further reference and screening.

Just in a click both the models can also be imported with all issues where engineer can view the differences with different user defined color coding. It becomes easy to see the changes graphically.

User can quickly run the issues which generates the list. Selecting an item in the list immediately highlight the component with the details listed below it. Engineer can remove the low severity comments if required and also add comment(s) if any.

For our technical support work no more taking things in good faith or checking data for hours! It saves considerable time and allows us to revert the user much faster.