How we made calculations more accurate and designers happier

To drive the work of not only our company, but the entire market

I saw the trend towards design automation when I first entered the profession. There were many tasks and little time – often I had to look for ways to automate on the fly.

In 2008 I started working with Civil 3D and GeoniCS. This is software that aims to automate design processes in construction and land management.

True, it was not without difficulties. Civil 3D is an American program. It has many advantages, but it has no templates, no settings, no adaptation to Russian GOSTs. And GeoniCS was more suitable for post-Soviet usage standards, but it did not have those useful “tricks” for working with the general plan of construction, improvement and planning of land plots, which Civil 3D had.

Through trial and error, we were able to “make friends” between the programs and find a balance between ease of use and the required level of process automation.

I came to PIK in 2017, when the active trend towards BIM — the information construction model — had just begun. At that time, every second person on the market was trying to automate, write templates and applications. PIK was no exception and was actively implementing automation systems.

PIK designers had already worked in Civil 3D, but they had not used all of its capabilities. Therefore, my work began with optimizing a huge number of processes and creating guidelines for specialists. It was necessary not only to pump up automation, but to radically change the approach to project development as a whole. Gradually, we realized the need to create our own software that would help us solve automation problems quickly, clearly, and exactly as we needed.

Spoiler: the result was so cool that we are going to introduce our PikTools General Plan to the CIS market. Its potential is so broad that it may well become the industry standard.

From a Basic Classifier to Total Design Automation: How We Developed PikTools

In just two years, we have upgraded our designers and reached the maximum capabilities of Civil 3D in the project, because PIK has quite a few unique design features that could not be implemented in Civil 3D.

To continue the automation processes, we began to create your own separate mini-applications for each separate taskOver the course of several years, we collected more than a hundred such buttons and commands, but we couldn’t get a complete picture. Sometimes it got to the point where specialists forgot that we already had a tool for automating a specific process, and wanted to create it anew.

To unite all mini-programs into one ecosystem, we created a classifier of general plan elements. One of the users jokingly called it “Chamomile” and the name stuck.

Classifier of general plan elements

The classifier allowed us to collect our own tools in one place: classify many objects of the general plan, automate individual design processes, operate with smart properties. Even then, we saw the potential of a single product, so we actively implemented the tool in design and collected feedback from specialists who used Romashka. But this was not enough either.

First automation tools

That's why in 2020 we developed Family Manager for Civil 3D. It is a platform, library and classifier of design elements, which integrates the CAD standard.

Transition from classifier to Family manager

Essentially, when a designer uses Family Manager, he automatically ensures CAD standard and at the same time receives machine-readable data in all models: they can be downloaded, transferred, combined, analyzed, and used to generate estimates and orders for suppliers.

Family manager CAD interface

At PIK, we used a similar system for buildings in Revit, but decided to implement it in Civil 3D for landscaping — there was nothing like that there in principle. The main goal for us here was the unification and digitalization of the work of the product department and the PIK standard for landscaping, which could now run all accounting through a single system. So the probability of errors became almost zero.

But we didn't stop there. At the end of 2020, we faced a new challenge – the product needed high-quality packaging, and it was on the basis of this challenge that the PikTools Genplan product was created – a product for automating the design of general plans and improvements.

PikTools General Plan: Optimizing General Plan and Land Management to the Maximum

PikTools Genplan is a product with a set of tools for automating BIM design of general plans and landscaping, which automates work with elements of the general plan and landscaping. It is divided into modules: vertical, landscaping, coverings, small architectural forms (MAF), fences, curbs, lighting and other landscaping elements.

PikTools Product Modules Master Plan

With the help of automation of landscaping PikTools Genplan allows to simplify the work of the designer with the general plan. Below I will tell you exactly how.

PikTools General Plan sets standards for courtyards in the construction of residential complexes, helps to prepare design and working documentation for them and ensures more reasonable operation.

It does not directly affect the construction of the building, but with its help we can easily and simply calculate the volumes of all materials for the implementation of landscaping, the volume of excavation work throughout the yard and land plot and under all buildings – the designer launches several automated processes and in a minute he has all the estimates for landscaping in his hands.

Design optimization is mainly achieved by working with digital data. In addition to the standard design of drawings according to GOST, we have separate features that we use for all company projects. Unification of all numbers helps the designer quickly make changes to the project. The specialist does not need to manually recalculate the data and double-check its correctness – the program does everything for him.

Not long ago, we made a pilot launch of the system on a real residential building project. As a result, we calculated that the tool already at this stage saves up to 25% of the designer's working time.

The development of the PikTools Genplan product is currently in a very active stage. Just the other day, we launched MVP testing of the new quality control module “Topology”, which automates the checks of designed elements and systems as a whole. This will save even more effort and time of the specialist, because even complex checks for compliance with standards can be launched with one button.

PikTools Interface Master Plan

We are currently looking for promising areas of application of the tool both within our internal ecosystem and beyond. And at the same time, we are finding out how BIM can help other PIK departments improve and improve their work results.

Recently, there has been an obvious trend towards the use of artificial intelligence in construction and elsewhere. We conducted a series of studies on how AI can help with the automation of designing master plans and landscaping. No one has done this in the Russian Federation yet. The study was to use an AI assistant to generate an image with landscaping concept options and immediately create vector graphics in dwg format.

Example of AI generation image. ImageToImage:

Ambitious plans for the future PikTools Master Plan

The development of the PikTools Genplan product is not yet complete, but we already see its demand on the Russian market.

In the nearest future we plan to merge PikTools Genplan and Family Manager, creating a self-sufficient and universal classifier with all necessary libraries, templates, settings, adaptations for Russian GOSTs and a high level of automation of all design processes. Thus, the designer will be able to quickly and easily calculate the volume of work, estimate and send the necessary information to the supplier within one system.

After entering the Russian market, we plan to implement PikTools as a universal tool. Not only for Civil 3D, but also for any other CAD: AutoCAD, nanoCAD, Topomatic Robur and even specific Chinese CAD. The main condition is support for the DWG drawing format. This will allow us to quickly scale the project and immediately bring it to at least the CIS level, and if the launch is successful, to the international level.

If pure CAD gives the client approximately 0.7% of automation of design processes, then PikTools Genplan will give all 100%. And this is not an exaggeration or a joke – we really are going to automate all the processes that a designer can use. Today, the system already saves 25% of the time of a specialist, and in the future we plan to achieve savings of 50% and more.