Freedom Tower designers rely on software tools

The unusual building in New York will benefit from CAD software

By Matt Hamblen

March 4, 2005 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - Architects and engineers designing the 1,776-foot-tall Freedom Tower to be built on the World Trade Center site in New York are using PC-based software tools to render three-dimensional, animated images of the structure in a bid to improve collaboration between project groups that often still rely on sharing two-dimensional paper drawings.
Precise diagrams for plumbing and electrical systems, as well as detailed floor and wall plans for the unusual torque design, are now being rendered with computer-aided design (CAD) software by architects at Skidmore Owings & Merrill LLP (SOM) and structural engineers at WSP Cantor Seinuk, SOM officials said this week. Both firms are in New York.
The cornerstone for the building, being erected at a site of the Sept. 11, 2001, World Trade Center terrorist attacks, was laid on July 4.
While work on the project is a labor of love for SOM staff, the architects are glad to have the CAD and online collaboration tools to help them because the initiative is complex and many parties are involved, according to Angelo Arzano, a technical manager at SOM.
Most of the hundreds of subcontractors on the Freedom Tower will still likely do their drawings by hand. But the software tools SOM is using from Autodesk Inc. in San Rafael, Calif., will help schedule construction phases and automatically calculate the amount of steel and concrete needed, Arzano said.
"In the old days, you would count the number of doors needed from drawings, but these tools do it for you," he said. "It takes the monotony out of it. Imagine how many doors there are in a tall tower."
CAD tools have been used at SOM for at least a decade, but they have grown in sophistication with the company's customization of the newest products from Autodesk, including AutoCAD 2004 Architectural Desktop; Revit, which is used for creating and revising building drawings; and Buzzsaw Professional, a collaboration tool, said James Vandezande, CAD manager at SOM.


The Freedom Tower rises dramatically above the New York skyline in this artist's rendering of the planned building. Image Credit: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

"CAD has been around a long time but still hasn't been mainstreamed" in the building industry, he said.
Sharon Tan, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Stamford, Conn., said the adoption of Buzzsaw-like products by participants in a building project to gain access to data in real time is "not widespread in the industry," even though the products have been around since the late 1990s. Adoption will occur "bit by bit," she predicted.
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