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By Dick Birley, President of Condor Rebar Consultants, Inc.

These are words that have been used to describe Condor Modeler System – Rebar Detailer (CMS-RD). And no wonder – CMS-RD truly is remarkable. We have moved to the third paradigm of drafting.

First Paradigm: The draftsman, using a manual drawing board and tools, inputs data to manually create drawings and sketches. The user provides the tools and does the drafting.
Second Paradigm: The draftsman, using a computer with electronic drawing board and tools, manually inputs data then manually creates drawings and sketches, or more recently, a 3D model. The computer provides the tools and the user does the drafting.
Third Paradigm: The draftsman inputs data and the computer using its own tools, automatically creates a 3D model then extracts 2D drawings and sketches. It is 100% parametric. The computer provides the tools and does the drafting.

By moving into the Third Paradigm Condor has unleashed the full power of the computer. CMS-RD is able to create 3D concrete and rebar models at speeds never before seen.

If the draftsman correctly inputs concrete dimensions, rebar sizes, quantities, and spacings, the model and its rebar components will be one hundred percent accurate. All clearances, tolerances, and splices are automatically handled by the computer. Clashes are instantly highlighted.

HISTORY

Condor has continually developed, delivered and used proprietary detailing software since 1992. We developed and implemented two successful detailing systems, Condor Rebar Detailing System (CRDS) and Condor Rebar Management System (CRMS). CMS-RD builds on that success, leveraging the full power of a parametric system to speed up the drafting process.

CMS-RD is the culmination of over ten years of research and development. We have invested millions of dollars in order to deliver the best solution to our customers. Additionally, Condor has received grants of $750,000 from the Canadian National Research Council under their Industrial Research Assistance Program.

Initially, we tried to leverage commercially available CAD software products. Our first operational prototype was a fully parametric system built on top of a popular CAD platform. It performed well at low volumes of data but, by the time 45,000 pieces of rebar were present in the model, performance slowed to an impractical rate. This meant that a large reinforced concrete structure would have to be modeled in many separate models. Based upon years of experience we knew that trying to coordinate and manage rebar across many models would be difficult and, from a BIM context, totally unacceptable.

CAD systems can do many wonderful things, but they cannot handle the profound amount of data required to model rebar effectively. Consider this. In a model, a concrete column is a single object. The rebar in the column would add upwards of 75 – 80 additional objects. A structure with only 20,000 concrete members would require over a million rebar objects.

CMS-RD has been developed with cutting-edge, off-the-shelf technology used in innovative ways. It operates on inexpensive, off-the-shelf hardware. No matter how much data we input into a model, the processing speed is never degraded. This means that any reinforced concrete structure, no matter how large, can be placed into a single 3D model.

CMS-RD Industry Foundation Classes (IFC’s) are profoundly robust. They contain data from material properties, to heat numbers, to dimensions, to RFI changes, to delivery dates. 100% of all concrete and rebar data is contained in the model, rather than being scattered about in various spreadsheets and filing cabinets. Pour breaks, fabricating data, delivery dates, etc. can be back-loaded into the model through remote client portals. Merely clicking on a bar will instantly present all this data. Furthermore, all kinds of data and statistics are instantly available in default or user-defined reports. Nothing could be more BIM friendly.

Check out our Software section for more details.