Lubansoft Case Study
Market: Building Information Management (BIM)
Lubansoft is a specialized construction BIM software and service provider. Through our decade-long cooperation with Spatial, Lubansoft can take advantage of the world's leading 3D modeling kernel and graphics platform and, thereby, be able to devote our research and development energies to the creation of higher value-added specialized applications. Using Spatial's SDKs has raised the competitiveness of our products, accelerated the pace of software development and shortened our time to market.
The Company
Lubansoft’s enterprise-level building information management (BIM) system (Luban PDS) is an engineering basic-data platform that innovatively applies cutting-edge BIM technology to the entire process of project management for the construction industry. Lubansoft’s BIM application clients are mobile ready, able to support mobile office requirements of the construction industry.
Lubansoft, founded in 2001, focuses on research, development and promotion of China’s BIM technology. The company concentrates on construction-phase BIM technology projects, plus enterprise-level solution research and development and
Services.
In addition to providing Luban PDS, the company also developed a number of specialized client applications for use in creating 3D BIM models, calculating workloads, visualization, etc. Lubansoft’s model and calculation applications, such
as Luban Architecture, Luban Steel, etc., and the majority of the company’s calculation series products were based on AutoCAD. However, due to AutoCAD’s limitation in 3D modeling and visualization, the company now uses Spatial’s 3D ACIS Modeler for 3D BIM model creation, Boolean operations, volume calculations, and other geometric operations, integrated with Spatial’s HOOPS Visualize for display of complex models.
The Challenge
Seeking Industrial Strength 3D Modeling and Visualization
Modeling Kernel
Early on, Luban Architecture used the 3D modeling function built into AutoCAD; however, AutoCAD’s strength is as a 2D drawing platform, and not as a 3D modeling engine. Because the 3D modeling kernel in AutoCAD is neither robust or full-featured, it impacted both the performance of Luban Architecture as well as resulted in a number of Boolean operation failures. The lack of features plus operational failures impacted the accuracy of calculations as well as the stability of the program. Therefore, a more stable, full-featured 3D modeling kernel was urgently required to replace the AutoCAD 3D modeling engine to raise the stability of the software and improve the accuracy of calculation.
Visualization
The flagship product of Lubansoft was built on a foundation of the AutoCAD kernel. Along with limited 3D modeling capabilities, AutoCAD’s abilities in 3D visualization are also very limited. For example, displaying a relatively complex 3D BIM model, such as a 20-floor building, resulted in sluggish performance. This lack of ability to effectively display complex 3D BIM models placed Lubansoft at a competitive disadvantage.
As customers’ demands increased, Lubansoft needed to develop a platform independent of any third-party design software to manage the data of the 3D BIM models and the related functions. This platform needed to be able to efficiently display complex 3D BIM models and efficiently perform such operations as package filtering, scene roaming, cutting plane, and animation.
Key Insights
Solutions
By incorporating 3D software toolkits from Spatial into their BIM software suite, Lubansoft has been able to raise design quality, reduce design errors, and obtain and analyze workload cost data, supporting the entire process of construction, operation, and maintenance. This increased quality of the 3D BIM models ensures the timely completion of construction projects, at a guaranteed quality level and within budget for their customers. Moreover, the Spatial toolkits have allowed Lubansoft to build a platform that enables collaboration from the office to the job site, be it on a desktop, tablet, or mobile phone.
