PGH Bricks has partnered with Australia’s leading BIM content creation provider UNIFI Labs to develop Australia’s most extensive and advanced BIM library for Bricks. The PGH Bricks library has been created natively in both Revit and ARCHICAD formats. Importantly, both libraries have been developed using ‘best of breed’ content creation methods unique to each design authoring software, meaning user experience and BIM project documentation outputs are optimised for both Revit and ARCHICAD users.
Recognising recent advancements in design technology and the increased adoption of BIM workflows by building designers, PGH Bricks have created this library with the objective of making specifying and documenting Bricks more efficient for designers and ensuring visualisation outputs created during the design process are of optimal quality.
Prior to developing the library, PGH and UNIFI Labs conducted research into how designers create and manage BIM content materials libraries and how these materials are incorporated into project models. From a visualisation aspect, this research reinforced the need for the underlying image assets to be high quality, tileable and capable of producing seamless, blemish-free outputs, whilst not being large in file size and a burden on model performance. On the documentation side, it was important that the content incorporated sufficient, consistently structured product data to assist with the creation of project schedules.
Another major factor in setting the library creation scope was understanding how designers would review, integrate and manage materials libraries, especially those sourced from product manufacturers. With this in mind, PGH worked with UNIFI to create highly detailed ‘Content Overview and User Guides’ that provide users with step-by-step best practices for library integration and optimal project documentation outputs. Also included as part of the BIM content library assets are project files that assist with QA processes undertaken by library managers, demonstration of common project documentation outputs and as ‘Virtual Showrooms’ for designers to browse.
General Manager – Marketing for PGH Bricks, Jai Sanderson says, “the frequency with which designers have been requesting BIM content from us has increased significantly in recent times so we are thrilled to be able to make this BIM content library available to our project design partners. We are confident it will help them not only with their project design and documentation processes but with their efforts to evolve their BIM and broader design technology initiatives. The feedback we’ve had to date from designers has been extremely positive and reinforces our commitment to continually evolving our BIM content library as the industry makes progress in this area”.
General Manager for UNIFI Labs AUS/NZ, Luke Johnston says, “to their credit, the PGH team have been uncompromising throughout the development process in their intent to maximise end user experience. This is clearly evident in the quality of the end result. We truly believe this library sets an industry benchmark, not only for Bricks, but for all materials-based products as they relate to BIM content in both Revit and ARCHICAD.”
The PGH Bricks BIM Content library is available for download from the PGH Bricks website.
