Part Five: Monoliths of the Millennium
The movement to taller and broader apartment buildings has impacted every component manufacturer. One such project may occupy estimators and designers for weeks at a time, may overwhelm production, and may confound shipping. It may crowd out smaller orders. It will challenge the entire component operation, and such challenges invite disrupters like Katerra, Inc. How to cope? By leveraging the best design tools now available AND by providing more labor saving components.
The increasing complexity of large projects calls upon the full capabilities of truss programs. In the layout phase, intricate plan details, such as shared bearings and notched supports, may be applied to multiple trusses of varied profiles en masse. In similar fashion, interior openings for mechanicals or living areas may be applied across multiple truss types, maintaining proper alignment throughout.
Advanced multifamily-specific features have added further design efficiencies to layout programs. Identical units may now be replicated across a project, but remain linked to a master unit. Or they may be unlinked and modified to include special conditions. If a change is made to the master unit, it will be applied to all linked units. Trusses are labeled, and may be accurately counted, across the entire project.
An additional tool, MREF, has arrived to manage the sheer scale of these large monoliths, reminiscent of the XREF feature within AutoCAD. This powerful feature within SapphireTM Structure enables a large project to reference fully framed external units (shown on left). This minimizes the file size of the project and enables more than one designer to work on the project simultaneously.
And finally, Kenny Shifflett, owner of ACE Carpentry, summarizes the future of the component manufacturer when he advocates “building everything possible in the plant.” To Kenny, that includes wall panels that incorporate all necessary blocking and detailing. In the future, that may mean installing insulation, windows, or even finish items in the plant. These added elements further enhance the 3D model and enable more efficient extraction of accurate Bills of Material (BOM).
In summary, CMs are uniquely positioned to add increasing value to large multifamily projects by employing the most advanced design tools in the building design community, and by adding components that save labor on the jobsite.