Architectus

Architectus uses Revit Architecture to optimize design documentation, increase productivity, exceed expectations, and shape the future.

Architecture is a competitive environment, and the purpose of any technology is to allow us to make the best use of the skills and experience of our professional staff. Revit Architecture eliminates many tedious tasks, and our staff are very enthusiastic about using it.
—Rodd Perey, Design Technology Director, Architectus Sydney

The Firm
Using Revit® Architecture, Architectus consistently delivers intelligent architectural solutions, notable for their simplicity and performance. By extending its Autodesk investment with building information modeling (BIM), the company is realizing immediate competitive advantage by optimizing the design and documentation process and capitalizing on intelligent 3D design. The firm exceeds client expectations by delivering more complete documents and higher-quality designs. Staff and project productivity is maximized through better coordination and integration of project documents.

A multiaward-winning practice, Architectus is an international professional services company with more than 200 leading architects, urban designers, and planners, with offices in Auckland, Brisbane, Melbourne, Shanghai, and Sydney. Their experience spans many project typologies, including urban design and planning, public, commercial, residential, education and research, industrial, hospitality, transport, retail, and interior architecture.

The company is behind projects such as the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane; 1 Bligh St. Sydney; Australian Synchrotron, Melbourne; Maanshan City Centre, China; and the Waitakere Civic Centre in New Zealand. Architectus directors have been honored with more than 85 awards, including the 2007 Royal Australian Institute of Architects’ Queensland Award for Public Architecture with the Queensland Gallery of Modern Art, and the 2007 Property Council of Australia’s award for innovation and excellence in public buildings with the new Australian Synchrotron building.

With a strong reputation for project delivery, Architectus sought to streamline the design and documentation process in a bid to further enhance its services. The company adopted Revit Architecture software as the key platform underpinning its building information modeling approach to project delivery. Today, Architectus relies on Revit Architecture software to communicate design proposals more quickly and clearly, offer better design insight through on-demand visualization and analysis, and provide a process that mirrors the real world of building.

The Solution

Greater Productivity
Since adopting Revit Architecture software, Architectus has transformed the way it creates, amends, and delivers designs. The company now has the ability to design throughout different phases, and quickly and easily make changes to major compositional elements. It can create comprehensive design proposals and realize its clients’ ideas on the fly with 3D views. It can also make late-stage changes without having to manually coordinate model views, drawing sheets, schedules, sections, plans, and other design information. More important, Revit Architecture helps Architectus to provide designs and documentation that are coordinated, consistent, and complete.

Architectus has dramatically reduced the time spent on iterating designs, particularly where detail is consistently added to various elements and phases of the design process. According to Rodd Perey, design technology director of the Sydney Architectus office, “Originally we saw Revit Architecture as a design and presentation tool, but in my view the strength of the product is in its ability to manage and coordinate all the elements needed for successful building design and construction documentation. We use Revit Architecture to produce our door, window, and finishes schedules, and many other types of analysis. The documents remain fully coordinated, allowing outstanding design issues to become immediately obvious.”

Enhanced Coordination, Quality, and Communication

Using BIM technology the company can keep computable information about a building project in design and construction up-to-date and accessible in an integrated digital environment. This gives architects, engineers, builders, and owners a clear overall vision of their projects and enables faster decision making—helping raise the quality of projects.

From conceptual studies through to the most detailed construction drawings and schedules, Revit Architecture software helps Architectus coordinate its projects effortlessly. With the Revit Architecture parametric change engine, the company can make amendments to any part of the design and have the changes automatically integrated and coordinated throughout the project. It also enables the company to enhance client communications and accelerate decision making, by gaining timely feedback on project design, scope, schedule, and budget, while minimizing costly efforts to coordinate documents manually.

Using model-based design, by having the ability to design in a 3D format, the company can better share ideas and inspirations with clients at an early stage to fast-track support. Through the Project Navigator feature in Revit Architecture, designers can access any view of the building information model including drawing sheets, schedules, sections and plans.

Collaboration and Integration Drive Success

As Architectus grows, seamless integration of designs and documentation is the key to driving project success, as is effective collaboration across teams and geographies. This requires streamlined processes and effective workflows to ensure designs are created and delivered efficiently.

With the flexible licensing arrangements for Revit Architecture software, Architectus has extended the benefits of the solution to the project team’s desktops. This helps create a cohesive work environment that fosters collaboration and knowledge sharing, both internally and externally with partners. From initial concept to project completion, designers and project architects can now view the status of a project and integrate information in real time. This has delivered considerable time savings by reducing the time taken to develop plans.

Revit Architecture software interoperability with other Autodesk products further streamlines workflows. Its ability to share files with AutoCAD® software has helped Architectus realize further value. Perey explains, “At the early stages of a project we often use AutoCAD blocks to stand in for modeled Revit Architecture elements, and replace them as the design progresses. We are also able to deliver high-quality AutoCAD drawings for use as backgrounds by our consultants, using our established automated drawing issue procedures. We can also host consultants’ drawings within the Revit Architecture project file for easy reference.”

Realizing a Return on Its Autodesk Investment

Architectus has made a strategic investment in Autodesk, not just in terms of software, but also in relation to staff training, quality assurance systems and procedures, as well as extensive in-house customizations. The adoption of Revit Architecture is further maximizing the value of the company’s investment, as the solution builds on its existing systems with BIM capabilities being developed alongside existing applications.

Perey explains, “Architecture is a competitive environment, and the purpose of any technology is to allow us to make the best use of the skills and experience of our professional staff. Revit Architecture eliminates many tedious tasks, and our staff are very enthusiastic about using it.”

Perey goes on to add, “With each project we take Revit Architecture technology one step further. We are now using Revit Architecture as the basis for analyzing a building’s environmentally sustainable design (ESD) performance, code compliance, construction sequencing, and logistics. We are sharing models with multi-disciplinary teams for structural analysis and MEP integration, and using the built-in coordination and interference checking tool to reduce errors.”

The Result

Revit Architecture software is delivering significant benefits to Architectus, providing the company with a key point of differentiation and further boosting its position as a leader in the architecture and design field. Architectus now relies on Revit Architecture to keep its designs and documentation coordinated, consistent, and complete; communicate design proposals more quickly and clearly; and offer better design insight through on-demand visualization and analysis. Overall, the company is delivering on its commitment to project success and excellent service through enhanced communication and collaboration, integrated processes, and streamlined systems.

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