|
The heart of Bryanston’s evolving central business
district lies in the triangular “wedge” bordered by
two busy commuter routes - William Nichol Drive and
Main Road – and dominated by the huge Dimension Data
corporate headquarters, a R550-million development of
18 low-rise buildings offering about 75 000 m² of
office space.
Along and sandwiched between the two highways are
dozens more developments of corporate office blocks,
retail centres and glassy motor showrooms. And more
are on the way.
“An enormous amount of earth and rock is being moved,
changing the landscape as the sites are prepared ready
for the contractors to move in,” says Deon Pinard,
senior technologist with consulting engineers Kantey &
Templer, who are involved some of the most
high-profile developments in the area.
But before the pre-construction processes can get
under way, the “surface modeling” –
creating the ground-level structure of a commercial
building site out of a suburban garden - has to begin.
Plotting and calculating the movement of bulk
earthworks, and building up the surface model is one
of Pinard’s key professional skills.
On a wide range of construction sites, from a few
thousand square meters to the vast Dimension Data
complex, Pinard uses Civil Designer, a suite of design
modules forming an integrated data-gathering, drawing,
surface modeling and design system. It’s the preferred
choice for many engineers, among them Pinard, who
describes the fully interactive package as “absolutely
essential for my work – one of the finest tools in our
civil engineering design armory.” Civil Designer is a
product of the design technology of Cape-based
software house Knowledge Base.
The bulk earthworks, the cut-and-fill and final site
terrain design, starts with a cadastral map accessed
and developed from K&T’s vast store of |
high-resolution aerial maps of the Greater
Johannesburg area and beyond – from as far south as
Orange Farm to Midrand in the north. Every back-yard
washing line, every swimming pool and tennis court is
there.
Onto this map, and using Civil Designer, Pinard deftly
lays other information such as the location of water,
electricity and sewer pipes, ground contours Working
with the architect, who provides the “footprint” of
the new building and the parking layout, Pinard is
then equipped to create a digital terrain model (DTM),
which is then used to sculpt the terraces and other
features.
“You have to make sure the cut is accurately balanced,
which that means that whatever material you cut, can
be used to fill, and so you need to cart away as
little material as possible. Civil Designer makes this
operation simple.”
From all this information, Civil Designer produces a
3D image which can be skewed in any direction to give
an accurate view of the planned final building site.
But what if, when all the surface modeling and design
is completed, the architect or developer wants to move
the position or direction of the building?
“No problem,” says Pinard. “This is one of Civil
Designer’s main attributes – the speed with which
changes can be made using the Survey + Terrain model.
There is such a seamless link and interaction between
the various design tools that it’s possible to
recalculate earthworks volumes and regenerate drawings
with a speed that’s truly magical.”
And once all this is completed, it’s over to the
architect and contractor to go ahead with their part
of the job --- while Deon Pinard looks at his maps
preparing for the next assignment, digging up the
past. |
