Building Systems Design Inc. (BSD) earlier this month announced the simultaneous release of its latest specifications software and the beta release of software designed to achieve linkage to Autodesk's Revit.
BSD SpecLink-E (SLE) is the successor to BSD's SpecLink+ software currently being used by thousands of design professionals nationwide to produce specifications for more than 25,000 commercial, industrial, and institutional projects annually. BSD LinkMan-E is a new linking product that has been designed from the ground up to work with SLE. SpecLink-E participates in the building information modeling (BIM) process through integration with CAD environments such as Revit Architecture 2009 and 2010 via LinkMan-E, which serves as a communications conduit and an integration manager.
With LinkMan-E and SpecLink-E in place on the same computer or the same network, relevant project data can be transferred in both directions between the CAD environment and the specifications environment. LinkMan-E is designed for use by a project manager to review and coordinate data on the same project from all connected applications. Dashboard views show the status of objects in each of the linked applications, and LME can be set to "turn on" any missing products in the SpecLink-E application, based on data from Revit.
In addition to its BIM linking ability, SpecLink-E has been equipped with several new features that build on its predecessor, BSD SpecLink+. For example, its database can be collapsed or expanded to produce outline, short form, and full construction specs without the need to maintain separate documents for various phases of a project. It has also been designed to allow real-time updating of its master database over the Internet at any convenient time, according to BSD.
Updates to a user's client software take advantage of Microsoft technology called ClickOnce installation. This allows the client software on each user's computer to update itself automatically from a central location on the network once the site manager decides to make the update available to users at that site. As with the previous generation SpecLink+ software, data updates to SLE will not overwrite user modifications in any existing projects, including so-called "office master" projects, because of SLE's unique database structure. Project-specific information entered by a user is stored in separate project overlay tables that are automatically merged with the master database content when a project is viewed or printed.
