Trimble’s structural design software features enable collaboration throughout the project
Tampere University and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland are studying ways and methods to develop real-time collaboration in 3D environments in the LiveCol project together with their business partners Trimble, AFRY and Senate. New information is gathered constantly, even though the project is nearing completion. As a most recent piece of interesting information, the project team heard about Trimble’s latest technological developments in the field of live collaboration.
Earlier this year, Trimble released a preview version of the Live Collaboration feature in Tekla Structures, which allows users of the software to work with the same 3D model without sharing files with each other (read the news on the LiveCol website). Now all Tekla Structures features are available to users, without a separate setting. Last year the feature was hidden in the Tekla Structures 2024 version.
The different features of Tekla Structures software are complementary and serve different purposes. For example, with the Model Sharing feature, different users can make separate changes to the same model, which can be then combined. In the Live Collaboration feature, the editing of the model is done in real time in collaboration between the editors.
“One Live Collaboration session can have tens of users. Nowadays, it’s easy to add a link to a Live Collaboration session to a meeting invitation, and participants can click on it to comment and edit the shared template. Once created, the link will remain valid, and there is no need to create a new one for each session. However, you must save the desired changes yourself, reminds Kim Nyberg, Senior Technology Director at Trimble.
What to do when the model is confidential?
Another consideration to the equation comes from the companies need to handle confidential information and even large models, and they do not necessarily want to share every part of it with all partners. As a solution to this problem, Trimble has developed the Federated Modelling feature, which allows only the needed part of the model to be shared with others. This makes it easy to keep the ownership of the model in the hands of the owners, all the while the work is easier when the so-called “ghost parts” do not have to be hidden separately from the model.
“We started to develop live sharing technology based on customer interviews, as we wanted our products to be better connected to each other. The changes we have now created make this possible, and the same model can be viewed seamlessly with different features. The Federated Modelling feature that is being developed complements the Tekla Structures feature set, which will make the work even more efficient,” says Nyberg.
In practice, Federated Modelling makes it possible for different people to edit parts of a model, but the connection point where the entire model and its edited parts are visible remains with the owner. In addition, changes to parts of a template must always be confirmed before they are incorporated into the entire template.
“This is a mechanism for improving cooperation without sharing the original model with all the information. The necessary information, such as the material information of the building beam, can be shared, so that the people who edit the parts of the models have enough information to make decisions,” says Nyberg.
The LiveCol research team is eagerly waiting for the launch of the latest technologies, as the new features were seen to have a lot of benefits.
“This will help to solve a major challenge that has been present in the real estate and construction industry, as designers no longer need to duplicate solutions in their own models, but it is instead a matter of genuine shared use of data. Federated Modelling will also make design work more efficient,” predicts Toni Teittinen, University Lecturer at the University of Tampere.
More Information:
Kim Nyberg
Senior Technology Director
Trimble
kim.nyberg@trimble.com