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Thread: Affinity

  1. #1
    Super Moderator beegee's Avatar
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    I came across this in Cadalyst's Newsletter # 114...

    ( sounds interesting for certain types of practices )

    Affinity is billed as a knowledge-base manager. Basically, it helps gather
    and track all the information and requirements about a proposed house or
    commercial structure, making sure that no pieces of information fall
    through the cracks as a project progresses. The building information
    that's recorded and tracked can be as generalized or as detailed as you
    desire. It can be edited and added to as a project progresses.

    Affinity appears to have been initially developed for homebuilders and
    subdivision developers to allow customers to specify requirements and
    features for proposed homes. The program is probably most useful to the
    semicustom homebuilder, but it can be customized to handle other project
    types and situations. Basically, the program is organized into a
    three-step process: Questionnaire, Space Planner, and Reporting and
    Export.

    The Questionnaire walks through a series of questions and
    fill-in-the-blank forms to capture the customer's requirements. Number of
    rooms and their sizes, relationships of a room to other rooms and site
    features, room colors and finishes, and other items can be specified. The
    program calculates the building cost as the building is specified. The
    cost updates to reflect changes as you go, and you quickly see the results
    of various option and cost choices.

    Cost is primarily based on rough cost per square foot, which you can
    adjust on a room-by-room basis: $100/sf for overall building cost, $200/sf
    for kitchens and baths, etc. As the rooms are specified, plugging in fixed
    costs for individual appliances, fixtures, and equipment elements can
    further refine costs.

    The Space Planner translates the Questionnaire input about building
    requirements and relationships into rectangular graphic shapes of the
    correct size. You can then drag these into a window and arrange them to
    create a rough space plan. As you add rooms, the program flags any
    violations of requirements such as room relationships to other rooms,
    costs, and so forth. The Space Planner does not attempt to provide
    suggested graphic solutions or layout options, but simply flags violations
    in tabular form and leaves it up to the space planner/designer to resolve
    them. You can insert a preexisting home layout as an overlay to provide
    guidance for building a layout of a semicustom home.

    Information and requirements about individual rooms and the overall
    structure are shown in tabular form so you can review and modify items
    over time and resolve conflicts. When changes are made, you can track
    information such as who initiated the change, how the request was
    received, who was involved and made decisions, etc. You can also track
    approval status on individual items and the overall project.

    Affinity generates numerous tabular reports that you can view on screen or
    export in Microsoft Excel or tab-delimited format for printing or use in
    other applications. Reports are customizable and flexible to accommodate a
    number of uses.

    The graphic space plan you generate can be exported to a CAD program using
    a DXF file. The DXF can use layers to separate information, and you can
    specify the names of layers as required.

    The information-gathering functionality of the program emulates the
    traditional architectural process of the Programming project requirements
    that architects go through as a matter of course. Trelligence has designed
    the questionnaire so that prospective homeowners can go through it on
    their own or with the help of a designer/builder. But accurately filling
    out the questionnaire really requires some experience and judgment,
    especially when filling in cost parameters, in order to arrive at a
    meaningful and accurate result. Affinity does standardize the process to
    bring the information into a single database and easily track it over
    time, but the old adage "garbage in, garbage out" applies. You eventually
    must enter each item of information completely and accurately, along with
    any constraints and detailed specification data, for the program to track
    it.

  2. #2
    Revit Guru gregcashen's Avatar
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    Default Re: Affinity

    I have played around with the Affinity for Residential product about a year ago, and it is quite cool. It would be a great thing to have in Revit, as it would add some functionality that Chief Architect has but Revit doesn't, which is to be able to lay out the floor plan schematically using rectangles representing the rough dimensions of the rooms and their relative locations and then turn that into a conceptual model of the building. I have not played with it since...it was not in the budget. I like the idea of having a central repository of the design decisions that the client has made and even changed. I also like having something that can be used to generate specs.

  3. #3
    I could stop if I wanted to Kevin Janik's Avatar
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    Default Re: Affinity

    Have people seen this below about Trelligence Affinity and Revit in Q3?

    Trelligence Affinity™ is software for modeling architectural programs and for creating schematic designs in conjunction with building projects. An integral part of the Building Information Modeling (BIM) process, Affinity automates the pre-design stage of the building life cycle and delivers on the promise of interoperability for planning architectural projects.

    Adding Value to the AECO Team
    Created for owner/developers, architects, engineers and other AEC professionals, Affinity delivers unique value by continuously analyzing the schematic design options against the building program and requirements. This empowers the project team to make informed decisions early in the design process, reducing the time required for rework during the time-consuming detailed design phase. Affinity helps identify issues related to owner requirements and building codes before the project goes into construction where errors are even more expensive in materials and time. Clients also use Affinity for early-stage estimating and for assisting with go/no-go assessments. With Affinity as an accurate decision-analysis tool, the entire project team benefits.

    Separating Planning from Detailed Design
    For many building projects, the pre-design work is lead by team members with a different skill set than the design and CAD/BIM specialists. Moreover, today’s design tools do not offer the ability to capture detailed program requirements such as space adjacencies and abstract constraints. Affinity is an ideal tool for the client-facing architect or engineer who is not an expert in CAD and BIM modeling software. And the work done in Affinity can be integrated into the design tools without losing the information recorded in the program.

    Click here to Request a 14-day FREE trial

    PLEASE NOTE: Affinity is available as a download only. After your order is placed you will receive an order confirmation and then, within 24 hours (business days only), you will receive your serial number and download instructions via email.

    Compatibility
    As a new software product in the AEC and BIM space, Affinity is available as a Windows desktop application and as a plug-in to popular BIM design software.

    Affinity Desktop – is the stand-alone software that requires no additional applications and is available today.

    Affinity for Archicad – is a bidirectional and integrated plug-in to Archicad 9 and 10 from Graphisoft and is available today as a free introductory component of Affinity Desktop.

    Affinity for Revit – is a bidirectional and integrated plug-in to Revit from Autodesk and will be available in Q3, 2006.

    Affinity for Mac – is the stand-alone Mac version of Affinity that will be available before the end of 2006.

    Affinity files can also be exported as DWG files and imported into the CAD software or estimation tool of your choice. This allows the design team to smoothly move from schematic to detailed design without recreating the initial plan.

    Technical Requirements
    Microsoft Windows® 98. Windows 2000 or XP preferred
    CPU Speed: 700Mhz
    Diskspace: 100MB
    Memory: 128MB required, 512MB recommended
    Screen Resolution: 800x600 pixels
    Recommended: scroll-wheel mouse for schematic design zooming

  4. #4
    All AUGI, all the time Roger Evans's Avatar
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    Default Re: Affinity

    http://www.trelligence.com/affinity_overview.php

    Not available for Revit yet it seems ~ Their Link to Revit defaults to Archicad

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