Getting the Best View of a Tower on the Gulf Coast: Visicon Lets MUEngineers See it All
Florida-based structural engineers use Visicon on their projects to gain confidence during design and coordination.
On almost every one of MUEngineers’ projects – from large multi-use facilities to even small residences – BIM has become the norm; and on every project with a model, they use Visicon. “It lets us see the big picture really quickly,” explains Marcus Unterweger, President of MUE. “Whenever we get an updated model from an architect we immediately view it in Visicon as it’s so much easier and faster to understand. And if it’s a public project going through review – where we may not get an updated model for months – the first thing we do is use Visicon to immediately get refamiliarized with the project.” He continues, “It can also immediately identify what’s changed: like floor configurations, and column offsets. Without Visicon, this would be really tedious to do with PDFs.”
“…it lets us see the big picture really quickly…it’s so much easier and faster to understand.”
MUEngineers point to a residential tower under development in Pensacola Beach, Florida as a prime example. Post-tensioned floor slabs and cast-in-place concrete shear walls and columns will support 21 floors of parking, office and residential space. MUEngineers uses Visicon extensively on this project to continually ensure proper coordination between their structural model and the multitude of models they receive from the architect and the MEP engineer.
“On this project we are using RISA® and ADAPT® for structural analysis and design, and are using Revit® for document rendering,” according to Yusuf Rangoonwala, Project Manager. “With Visicon, we can merge 3 separate Revit models (architectural, structural, and mechanical) and combine them with the tendons from ADAPT to perform an item to item comparison using Visicon’s boolean operation.” He continues, “Along with tracking geometric changes made by the architect, Visicon can quickly identify all required slab and wall openings for ductwork or pipes to see if any would cause structural concerns. It helps us to easily identify all of the changes, whereas it would be very difficult and time consuming to do this manually.”
“Visicon saves my firm valuable time and increases my confidence in our project delivery.”
“Visicon is also a great tool to communicate with other project stakeholders, including the building owner,” adds Unterweger. “It’s so easy to pass along 3D views which can then resolve a lot of questions – it’s priceless.” He concludes, “Bottom line, Visicon saves my firm valuable time and increases my confidence in our project delivery.”
About MUEngineers, Inc.
MUEngineers is a full service structural engineering and inspection firm founded by Marcus Unterweger in 2010 and is based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Areas of focus include – but not limited to – building design and inspection, new construction, renovation, and remodeling. Past projects span widely from luxury residences and multi-residential construction, hotel & resort properties, to commercial and institutional projects.
About Visicon
Visicon is a 3D model review solution used by AEC firms worldwide as an easy and powerful way to understand, check and control their project models. Beyond providing a robust suite of model viewing and comparison functionalities, Visicon is also used by customers to automate their model checking and management tasks, saving them time and increasing project quality. Learn more at www.visicon.com