Strategies to Unlock Your Revit Potential:
Approach Technology is a Seattle-based Cloud Computing company focused on solutions for architects, engineers, and construction professionals. As Citrix CSP Cloud Partner of the Year for North America in 2019, Approach Technology has helped many AEC organizations liberate their design professionals to work from anywhere, on any device. Our goal is to unlock human potential and enable professionals to work at the speed of thought. Please join us as Eric Carter, CEO of Approach Technology, leads a discussion on how technology is changing the AEC. Eric will share strategies that his team has uncovered to improve Revit performance, greatly enhance the mobility, and will share what the future of work looks like for AEC professionals. Our discussion will touch on these subjects:
- How and why a Virtual Desktop makes sense.
- AWS Revit Hardware for AEC professionals and scaling options for workstations and rendering servers.
- Network components to prioritize Revit.
- Human Costs of Slow Applications
CHALLENGE:
With a construction market rivaling any in the United States, Seattle design professionals have their work cut out for themselves. Unfortunately, for many BIM\CAD design professionals, traditional IT models continue to present challenges in offering mobility and easy access to high-performance design platforms. The models have grown so large and complex, and the applications so demanding, that most design professionals only have limited options to get their work done. Typically, these design professionals are forced to drive into the main office in order to enjoy satisfactory performance when working on commercial CAD\BIM models that require high-end CAD workstations. Today, even many of architecture and engineering’s largest firms struggle with issues of mobility and performance and few design firms offer employees the ability to work from anywhere, on any device.
SOLUTION:
With virtual workstations managed by Approach Technology, the design professionals can now leverage the scale and power of the Amazon Web Services Cloud. Leveraging powerful computing resources and graphics cards at AWS, today’s BIM\CAD professional can leave all the heavy lifting to the cloud and allow just the pixel data to be streamed down to the end user device. Using a Citrix Workspace backed by powerful data center hardware, design professionals can work quickly, from virtually anywhere, because the large modeling data never leaves the data center and all the heavy processing occurs up in the cloud. This enables BIM\CAD professionals to work on iPads, Surface Tablets, and other devices that lack expensive hardware, storage, and graphics acceleration.
By bringing all the file servers, user desktops, and other IT infrastructure into one single custom cloud in the datacenter, extreme performance gains are realized and the network is able to transition to just pushing pixel streams, which makes the end user experience, fast, gratifying, easy to access, and quick from anywhere.
BENEFITS:
- Empowers team members to work from anywhere, on any device, bringing professional access to those needing to work at home, on leave, or those who just want to embrace the ability to work from anywhere.
- Provides organizations with the flexibility to scale with changing business conditions.
- Grants teammates access to powerful data center class hardware for BIM\CAD and other 3D rendering workloads. Take advantage of the Tenser T4 GPU with RTX ray tracing cores to accelerate your rendering workloads and provide best-in-class visuals.
AUTODESK REVIT MODELS ARE RENDERED WAY MORE QUICKLY IN THE CLOUD. INSTEAD OF MOVING LARGE CAD FILES, JUST THE CHANGES IN THE INDIVIDUAL PIXELS ARE STREAMED AND RENDERED ON ANY DEVICE.
Why Push Pixels Instead of Raw File Content?
The Approach Technology Custom Private Cloud model focusing on a strategy of “pushing pixels” down to the end user device, instead of pushing the file content. When a user connects into their cloud workstation, all the data remains secure in the datacenter and just the pixels are pushed down the Internet to the end user’s screen. This is important for two reasons:
- It allows you to work from anywhere, off any Internet connected device, because all the heavy processing power occurs in the cloud. This enables you to detangle from the local workstation and empower you to work off iPads, Tablets, etc.
- Since about 2003, pushing pixels for BIM\CAD has become much more efficient than pushing raw file content. A user working off a cloud workstation will enjoy a far better user experience when pushing pixels versus a slow, clumsy VPN that encrypts your giant files and attempts to push file content down remote links. The user experience is far better on the Internet, WIFI, 4G, etc in almost every situation and is also much more secure because the file content never leaves the datacenter. Pushing pixels is more efficient way to transmit this information than pushing gigantic Revit files down the Internet and trying to save or "sync to central" across WAN links.
AWS Options and Scaling:
Approach Technology is a certified Amazon Web Services solutions provider focused on assisting organization of all types with transitioning to a 100% cloud based IT model. The options at AWS (Amazon Web Services) far exceed any competing cloud provider.
Today at Amazon we can take advantage of a strong selection of powerful hardware to satisfy even the most demanding power user or design professional. Powerful workstations can be quickly provisioned and upgraded on the fly. Access to even the most powerful NVIDIA Tenser T4 can be tapped on an hourly basis.
|
Instance |
vCPUs |
Memory (GB) |
$/Hour |
|
g4dn.xlarge |
4 |
16 GiB |
$0.71 per Hour |
|
g4dn.2xlarge |
8 |
32 GiB |
$1.12 per Hour |
|
g4dn.4xlarge |
16 |
64 GiB |
$1.94 per Hour |
|
g4dn.8xlarge |
32 |
128 GiB |
$3.648 per Hour |
|
g4dn.12xlarge |
48 |
192 GiB |
$6.12 per Hour |
|
g4dn.16xlarge |
64 |
256 GiB |
$7.296 per Hour |
Imagine scaling your workstation up to a ¼ terabyte of RAM for a rendering job with just a reboot.
The most promising component of the AWS infrastructure however is the trend we are seeing in 2020 where the hardware is getting faster, and at the same time, the costs are coming down. Can your organization scale up to faster hardware while simultaneously reducing your operating expense? Let us show you how it can be done.
Network Components to Prioritize Revit:
In traditional IT strategies, the crutch of using slow and clumsy VPNs to encrypt file content and push it down the Internet is not viable for large BIM\CAD files. By moving to a pixel pushing strategy, organizations are able to avoid the lethargy of trying to push too much data through the pipe at one time. Like our mascot, Peter the Python, who has had too much dinner, traditional networks slowdown when trying to move large file content across the Internet.
However, when an organization centralized their operations into one custom private cloud with Approach Technology, we are able to take ownership of the network and accelerate the voice communication and the pixel streaming so that all other Internet traffic takes a backseat to the business operations. By using economical Cisco Meraki firewalls, switches, and WIFI units, Approach Technology is able to prioritize cloud services so that your employees never take a back seat to someone streaming music or videos on the corporate network.
We get powerful insight into the networks which helps us identify bandwidth issues, service provider issues such as latency or packet loss, and also helps to identify who and what devices are consuming the most bandwidth. We can then make intelligent decisions to keep your employees productive and keep operations running smoothly and effectively for all your teammates.
The Human Cost of Slow Applications:
Today’s AEC professional has to deal with a variety of platforms, systems, applications, and data sets. Additionally, few professionals have the hardware and computing requirements of today’s BIM and VDC teams. Keeping highly paid employees productive and happy will return far more value to an organization than skimping on an IT strategy (or having no strategy at all).
Professionals only have so much frustration to give to their employer. If the computers aren’t fast, the working experience isn’t efficient, and help is slow in coming, people will begin to feel like they lack the tools to be successful. Younger people, who have grown up with technology, expect to take advantage of the ability to work from anywhere and to work on a variety of devices.
Today’s environment is a sharp contrast to the most recent past. It used to be that “mobility” was described as a nice feature, but not “essential” or not our “company culture”. Organizations are now waking up to the importance of business continuity and having your employees productive and efficient from anywhere, at anytime, on any device.
Most organization spend over 80% of their operating expense on payroll, salaries, and benefits. IT spending is usually less than 1% of operating expenses. Please do not hamstring your payroll with slow and inefficient IT systems built around clumsy VPNs.
We encourage you to take a complimentary test drive of one of our powerful BIM workstations. Our goal is to unlock the human potential in your organization and empower you and your teammates to work at the speed of thought. Interested to learn more? See the full-length 1-hour presentation to the Seattle Revit User Group community HERE.
Or hear directly from architecture firm, Schemata Workshop, on how our cloud model has helped their organization over the last 5 years HERE.