Peter Philipps, Head of Product Development at Dietrich’s in Neubiberg/DE, is actively involved in the BuildingSmart association. He is one of the spokespersons for the work group BIM in timber construction. Thanks to Philipps’s commitment, the interface solutions IFC import/export and IFC Premium have become extremely efficient. Today, they are an indispensable part of modern workflows.
“Of course, I have to do with structural engineers and architects. A frequently asked question is whether the planner came up with the details or whether it was me. Usually, people rely on the carpenter. With Dietrich’s IFC, I’m in the driver’s seat,” Dietrich’s user Johannes Urban from Tübingen says, who is currently building a semi-detached house with CLT elements. In the driver’s seat, it is not only important for Urban to work with the right tools. Dietrich’s developed the CLT+ module for work preparation involving CLT mass timber elements.
New possibilities in timber construction
Cross-laminated timber opens up new possibilities in timber construction in terms of the structure and size of buildings. However, these construction systems have their own requirements. One has to pay attention to how the constructions are to be interpreted in detail. For other trades, one has to take into account, for example, that there are no cavities for the technical building equipment. When an opening is needed in a wall, one can do without a replacement. However, one has to be able to remove all of the material from the element. In the development of the CLT+ module, these basic considerations, many years of experience and a lot of know-how were incorporated into the product requirements document and formed the basis of the right digital tool in the work preparation for cross-laminated timber elements.
Thanks to the CLT+ module, the cross-laminated timber system of an entire building can be recorded. Individual elements are not drawn. Instead, the user records all positions, layers, niches for electrical ducting and plumbing, fasteners, fittings, connection situations, mass determinations, lifting points and tools in one step. Thus, CLT+ is the rule-based, dialog-driven and continuous gathering of data in a kind of control center. The CLT+ set of rules extensively maps the CLT methodology, which means that only a few settings are required for customization. The work planner systematically records their expert knowledge of construction elements and methods as well as materials through the intuitively operated dialog boxes and forms. After that, the calculation of the construction is done automatically with the combined element technology which calculates in the background. This way, nothing is lost and a complete 3D model is created. “We use CLT+ to cover most of the project with the preliminary settings. Efficiency is key”, Bernhard Wörter from Holztec in Waidring, Tyrol comments.
The process of calculating changes is designed to achieve this efficiency. With the help of the automatisms and the dialog guidance in the control center, desired changes to all walls in the construction can be easily reproduced and recalculated during the planning process. With just a few clicks, users get the new building including the complete documentation. Labeling, numbering, work plans with dimensions and weights, control plans for architects and structural engineers – everything is included in the building software.
“From the point in time when the construction permit plan for the project is submitted to the authorities, we create an offshoot of the Dietrich’s position and get the costs for the CLT and glulam construction kit. As a rule, we send an IFC file, SAT file and a 3D HTML file, which we create directly in the Dietrich’s system, from our offshoot. Communication is entirely digital. This means that we send our partner, for example Theurl, the entire Dietrich’s building file for the production of the CLT and glulam elements, including the joining data. The building file has a high degree of maturity. All that needs to be done is entering the orientation of the elements and checking for the machine feasibility of the tools in Hundegger’s Cambium machine software,” Wörter explains. The CLT+ module thus provides the crucial factor for the planning and building of mass timber houses, for the preservation of the maximum variability of the structure and for the machine data transfer and final production of the elements with the machine.
“With tools like the CLT+ module, we can automate a big part of the input work in the CAD/CAM planning of individual projects. The degree of automation is very high for serial or identical types of houses and buildings. Thanks to this tool, we can increase our efficiency. Similar to Dietrich’s HRB software for timber frame construction, the CLT+ module is a must,” Holztec comments.
Torge Weiß, work planner at Holzbau Gehrmann in Hoisdorf/DE, also praises the flexibility of the module. “I’m currently planning a new project, a multi-story building made of CLT, in which I face numerous challenges, among other things because of the difficult situation on the timber market. As a timber builder, I have to plan the project already even though I don’t have the final structural design and the expert opinion on fire safety and noise protection yet. Therefore, I need maximum flexibility when entering the data. As a result of the development for raw material prices, it is still unclear whether CLT or timber frames will be used for some of the walls. The combination of Dietrich’s CLT+ module and the HRB editor offers me maximum flexibility and variability in the configuration of walls. Since I don’t know what the structure of every single wall will be, the thickness of the soundproofing tapes has not yet been precisely defined either. Here, too, I can play with the default values and configurations of the digital tools. Changes can be made quickly and safely.”
Not only CLT+
Dietrich’s does not limit itself to CLT+. The company also thinks outside the box. With Dietrich’s own structural building element dimensioning together with the DC-Calcs structural application, construction elements can be dimensioned parallel to the construction, thereby optimizing the raw material consumption of the building. The DC-Calcs software has a dimensioning tool which was developed specifically for cross-laminated timber. Depending on the permit requirements, a complete examination of the structural analysis can be made as well.
Thanks to the automatisms which are a typical feature of Dietrich’s DC-Calcs, such as for the verification of corner projections, the user can do the structural calculation with DC-Calcs. In many cases, there is no need for a new and time-consuming entering of data in external dimensioning programs.
Another aspect of the continuous work process is the integration of other project steps between the construction and the finished building. For example, the load planning module covers high requirements with regard to the optimization of processes, loading aids and customization. Dietrich’s also places importance on the digital communication with partners, such as architects, builders or carpentry companies on the construction site. With the optional 3D Web Viewer module, users can make the finished 3D model available to everyone involved in the project as HTML file in Dietrich’s own D-Cloud. This file contains relevant project data, such as dimensions and weights or the positions of individual components and elements in the building. According to Dietrich’s, this tool perfects the work process and helps to avoid errors on the construction site.
