I recently attended Trimble Dimensions in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was an excellent convention; Trimble has put together a significant offering of products and staff. They did an excellent job presenting the various product lines. I believe the attendance was just fewer than 3,000 people.
Automation, communication and dynamic use of data seemed to be a common theme through the conference. Technology advances in construction never ceases to amaze me. The challenge is to effectively put it to use, because changing the way we do things costs in time and money. There must be a return on the investment.
My main purpose for attending was to gain insight on the latest advances in data for the construction site; particularly developing data for automated machine control. Trimble Business Center – Heavy Construction Edition was my main focus and most of the sessions that I attended were directly related to TBC-HCE.
TBC-HCE v2.20 was introduced at Dimensions and it appears that they are working hard to add the features that will help take us to the next platform for developing data. The issues are still the same, getting data from a source (hopefully useable) and building models and features to automate and improve the construction process.
I attended sessions that covered importing original data, site data (commercial, industrial, subdivisions) and roadways. The developers of TBC-HCE were available in most sessions to aid the presenter in answering questions, which really helped on the tough issues.
TBC-HCE is adding some significant automation to the process of developing a model for the construction site. I was impressed with its approach to treating CAD data as objects that are added to the model. For instance, contours are added to the model as-is to be part of the surface.
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