From AutoCAD to ArchiCAD – Step 9: Quality Assurance and Testing

All right.

Pretty exciting day today, ladies and gentlemen, because we are towards the, the last couple steps within our ten step program on how to convert from whatever you have to the future, which is archicad, according to Willard.

Yes, sir.

Yeah, we're almost done.

Ten steps, almost there.

And it's important.

You like which step is the most important?

I don't know.

We don't know.

I think all of them need to be conducted in sort of sequence and I think the sequence that will it put together as a sort of the backbone of this 10 step process.

I think that's a good, that's a good flow.

Quality assurance and testing.

Let's get into this.

I'm Alex, I work for architect.

We help you with your it if you're an architect, designer, engineers.

Willard does a lot of consulting, he's an architect and does a lot of consulting on getting folks like you from wherever you are, autocad, whatever, into the archicad.

So how important is this step, Willard?

What is this?

And like, give us a little bit of an intro.

Yeah, so this is step nine.

So we're talking about quality assurance and testing.

And I think this is an important step because with everything, we want to make sure that the product or the deliverable that we are producing is consistently being evaluated for its accuracy and the richness of the content.

So this is in my mind, kind of a continual step and it both dovetails with, you know, the product that we're delivering, but also what we are conveying inside of our drawing.

So there's kind of a two fold approach where it's, you know, are our details looking the way that we want them to do?

Are they showing kind of the conditions in a way that is easy, easy to be digested in the field?

And then is the information that we're producing on the sheets being created and conveyed in a way that is accurate and represents, you know, the level of sophistication that this technology provides.

Can I take you like on a tangent for a second and just like loop it back to the bottom line?

It sounds to me like this step has some implications, but I can't, it's hard for me to visualize this.

Can you quickly take a different path and loop back to bottom line?

Does this connect?

How do I make more money?

How do I become more efficient, effective if I do justice to this quality assurance?

That's a good.

Well, I think, I think one thing, and this is something that is kind of more relevant to what I'm doing right now, is that I am in the process of converting probably a template that I created probably close to 12 years ago, or started that template and migrated it over, you know, 12 different versions of Archicad.

And one thing that is really good about the template is that it is, like, really well thought out.

Like, there's a lot of.

There's not too many holes that have been or not too many areas that have not been thought through.

But the one thing that always gets me is there's this one area where it's like surfaces or materials or composites, where I have fills that are inside of it that I haven't updated.

And so there's an issue, and I've just been dragging my feet on it.

And what I find is that the 95% of the template that's spot on saves me probably, you know, 400% in terms of product production capabilities.

Like, I can open up a drawing, lay it out and have it ready to go within a matter of hours.

But this one other piece that I have been not wanting to do, which is probably, you know, part of the quality, probably part of the, you know, kind of something that I should have just kept up with over the years, but I always find, like, it's easier.

It has been okay for me to just work around or kind of step aside for a little bit, but now I've come to the realization it's like I should just make this a little bit more.

Improve the quality of my final product, but also improve the quality of my experience.

You know, I think we look at quality as this end piece.

Like, I want to achieve a quality, quality in solution, but I think there's also a quality of life in terms of actually producing the information.

It's like, I don't want to be struggling, you know, day in and day out with one small issue or multiple issues when I can fix those issues, improve my efficiency and produce a better product in the end.

So I think that when you've come through all these other steps and you have a very good handle of archicad producing information, it doesn't hurt to go back and say, you know, maybe I can adjust it, fine tune it a little bit, improve the quality, improve the experience of the users who are producing the information and increase the end result or the quality of the product at the end.

And all of that is going to drop down into your bottom line so that you're increasing the, increasing the experience also for the contractors who are building the product or project and then improving the quality of life of whoever is producing the information in the first place.

So doing justice, this step drops more efficiency, which goes back to the bottom line.

It's a brand aspect as well because others partners get involved in your design process, see how, you know, clean and consistent you are and how easy it is to work with you.

That's the brand aspect.

And then also, I mean going cosmic here, employee retention, I mean this is like, right, I want to work for that company because everything is just falls in place nicely and I can really get job satisfaction versus, versus just being so dug deep into the details and minutia that you don't see the design until you've put in so many hours that you're exhausted.

Does that sum it up?

Yeah, definitely.

I think there's definitely a trifecta approach to quality for sure.

Cool.

So how do we achieve it then?

Well, I think like really summing up kind of, you know, the approach, I think that you know, you want to do consistent and reputable.

You know, you want to repeat this, you know, consistently over, you know, projects or within the year or just having, you know, periodic check ins.

So and then you want to have a comprehensive kind of quality assessment.

So and I think that there's probably a couple of ways to look at that.

There's the efficiency of what you're doing.

So and I think over the years have looked at this as like pixel mileage or pixel distance.

So how far are you traveling with your mouse on a daily basis, you know, to make answer questions or create a detail or draw something.

And what is the way to get to the least amount of pixel travel per day or the least amount of clicks or whatever it might be?

So I think that that's just more of an efficiency kind of check.

So and I would put that inside of a quality check.

And then how I would look at that is for instance, like looking at like layer combinations or composites or things of that nature, understanding the naming conventions that go into that.

Is there a relationship between naming conventions and your layout books or your layer sets or your layer combinations or all these different things and how those all relate.

So I think that that's part of your quality is understanding how you have built out your file and then how things are connecting and how to make those more efficient.

And then I think another basic thing is understanding that.

Is it too complex?

Like what is, what's that kiss like the acronym for, you know, keep it simple and you know, looking at where you might be overcomplicating certain aspects of your project, whether that's internally, how you've built out your Actual model file, or, you know, the file that you're using or even the set that you're delivering.

So if you're producing, you know, a high rise, is it both detailed enough and also minimal enough to convey the information that's necessary for somebody to build it or specify cabinetry or casework or anything of that nature?

So I think that there's multiple areas that you're looking at, like improving or conducting a comprehensive quality check.

So that's one area.

And then I think the second area would be, like, verifying the model's integrity.

So, you know, there's opportunities for you to embed objects from different locations that aren't standard within, you know, your project.

There's opportunities to potentially, you know, the level of accuracy that you're building to.

And so understanding how.

How integral your model is or what components of your model are being sourced from other locations, are they correctly being pulled into that, the relationship of those external parts to your internal model, and then ensuring that the model is actually created to the level of development or detail that you are your desired level of development.

And so let me step back, because I don't know if we've actually talked about this too much in this series, but there's this concept of level of detail or level of development that's actually a national BIM standard kind of idea where each a model or a BIM file can have multiple levels of development.

So it used to go from 100 to 500, but I think now it just goes 1 to 400 because 500.

So 100 is like basic information.

Like, you drew a rectangle and that was the building.

And as you increase the level of development, that rectangle becomes walls.

And those walls actually represent the exterior walls of the building.

And as you increase, it becomes not just walls, it becomes the composite of the walls.

And then it goes into the composite plus structure.

And it also relates to elements like equipment.

So it could be just a box that represents a mechanical unit.

And then level 300 is the actual piece of equipment with the mounting hardware specifically located and certain things like that.

So what I'm getting at is that there is known standards of how much information should be shown at different stages of your project.

So when you are doing a QA or qc, like quality assurance, or, you know, understanding the level of accuracy that your model has, you can say, like, I'm at schematic or I'm at construction level of information, and I should have this information represented at a level 300 kind of setting.

And then you can actually Pretty easily go through your models and say, this needs to be detailed more, or, you know, this other area is lacking information.

And then you can set a baseline across all of your projects or phases to understand that this is where I need to be.

So accuracy, what is included in the model, the information is being represented accurately.

So that would be the second stage is verifying the integrity of the model.

Then the third would be, you know, test for design standard compliance.

So this goes into both kind of the level of development, but it's also looking more through the industry and more maybe specifically the locality of where you're building the project or designing the project.

So you want to understand if your drawings adhere to kind of standard practices for how things should be conveyed as well as potentially what information you're looking for within certain sheets.

So for instance, one thing that I, you know, ensure on all my projects is I have a cover sheet that basically is like a cheat sheet for the rest of the project, where it for a code official to review my project, they can go to the front cover and they should have a pretty good idea of what's going on within the project without necessarily seeing the built elements.

And it's kind of a preview.

So, and then, you know, throughout different other kind of components within the set is like, you know, a rendering that shows this is what the project is going to look like, you know, a material sheet or different things like that.

And this could also be, go into assemblies.

So assemblies are how you represent or you want the, the assembly of a wall to be constructed and the parts and pieces within that assembly.

And so typically I have a sheet that says, you know, these are all the walls, roofs, floors, and I see their construction to occur.

So, you know, a waterproofing membrane, you know, you know, the thickness of the actual structural element, different pieces.

So, so within this kind of quality assurance and testing, you can go through your set and say, okay, like I can easily pick out like all of the boiler plate information and compare it to the rest of the set and also know that it's going to show up in the same location in my sets, so that it's easy both to manipulate and edit and then also convey that information to a building official or an owner or contractor or somewhere someone of that nature.

So, and then I guess this kind of goes back to, you know, your template and then also understanding how you're going to conduct these quality assurances.

So your template now is, you know, theoretically the backbone of it is being built upon the idea that you at a later date will Come back and check for these specific items.

So that's.

I'm kind of getting a little bit long winded here.

But the fourth one is just addressing any discrepancies and issues.

So.

And that's kind of what I'm doing with my template.

And I'll probably do this with a few of the templates I've created, is that I know like 95% of that template is like just amazing and then.

But I know that there's this 5% piece that actually is probably exponentially more time consuming than it needs to be because of the like missing links or whatever it might be.

So now I need to address that.

And I think that there's, I think there's multiple ways to both identify the issues that you have within the project as well as identifying solutions.

Because sometimes the solution that you're looking for or the way that you're addressing these issues might not necessarily be something that you can easily do within a live project and it might need to be scuttled for the template itself.

And that's kind of where I was, was at, was I was taking a template and then knowing that the issues that I had needed to address were things that I was going to have to address in a future state and then understanding how address those, you know, it wasn't going to be in the project that I was working in.

It's, it's something that I'm going to have to go through and kind of engineer a solution inside of that and then reassess a bunch of different other like links to that.

But it also potentially starts to curate other kind of initiatives which could be like a BIM or VDC execution plan, so, or execution requirements both internally and then how you integrate with other stakeholders.

So you might have potentially, you know, different ways the information is being represented, whether it's line weights or fills or you know, other potential discrepancies, or you're getting information from other outside sources and then you're having to convert that.

So there might be instances where you are now looking at more forward thinking as you kind of review kind of current issues.

And through all of this, you want to maintain a very open feedback loop with your team, with your stakeholders, so that you're not getting stuck in, you know, because I've seen it before where people will say, you know, it's like, it could be, you know, a minor issue, but instead of making adjustments to the template that you're using or like a project that could make those adjustments, or even potentially leveraging a technique that might make those adjustments more globally in the project that you are working, people start to push that off a little bit too far.

And so what I like to do is I like to create a template or even kind of a review document or execution plan or whatever.

And then because of the information that I find, you know, project per project or more globally, I'll try to make some time to modify the template, and then I create versions of the template, even though.

So, like, say we're on Archicad 28 right now, and I'm working on the 28 template, so I'll have a version one which will, you know, not necessarily clear all the issues, but it'll start to address some of the issues.

And then I'll definitely have, you know, multiple versions probably, you know, every month or every couple of months that will show that change or that evolution of information as it kind of.

It evolves.

So just to kind of sum it up, you know, for quality assurance testing, you know, it's critical for us to kind of assess how we are representing information, how we are working on that information.

And so we.

We want to conduct comprehensive quality checks.

We want to verify the model's integrity, and then we want to test for design standards and compliance, and then address any discrepancies and issues in an iterative, dynamic kind of method.

And so that's kind of the long and short of the quality assurance and testing.

What part was short?

Yeah, that's.

That's good.

I mean, you want to listen to the topic.

You got to get deeper into it.

And yeah, with your experience, like, you touched every single piece of it.

And so I can totally understand where this is.

This requires some.

Some explanations and deeper, deeper dives, so.

Absolutely.

Excellent.

So, yeah, I suppose number nine is in the can, and that's great.

I think we'll just leave it at that.

I think training and support.

The last one, we should do its own session.

Yeah.

So, folks, if you're still with us, thank you very much for watching.

We appreciate it.

Thank you for listening.

Hopefully this helps you out.

And if it does, great, and if it doesn't, we can help some more.

If you go to get architect.com find us there, do contact us.

We can help you with your conversion.

We can help you with questions.

We can get Willard involved.

We absolutely will get Willard involved.

And let's see how we can help you get more effective, more efficient, happier company, making more money and all those good things.

Willard, any parting words of wisdom or.

Folks, go cosmic.

He's trying to think of A cosmic use here, it's not for quality assurance.

I don't know how you're going to do it.

Yeah, this is a tough one.

Well, maybe I do have one.

I think one of the things that we're doing here is we're trying to build little, like, little compact pieces of information that we can deliver and kind of like a.

I would say maybe like a spaceship or something of that nature.

And one of like NASA's like.

You.

Know, kind of, you know, the thing that they're really good at is doing testing and quality assurance.

And so in a way, you can think of these little projects as little spaceships of data.

And we can.

We can understand either that we have shipped this little spaceship and it's, you know, it's going in its direction, and there's little that we can do, you know, at different stages, you know, before launch, after launch, you know, once it arrives, where it is.

And then we know that there's things that we can learn from those projects and, you know, put those into the next iteration, in the next project and support our projects that are in the field or at different stages.

So this is, you know, in a lot of ways, a, you know, a testament to the human civilization is like ensuring that we are creating something that, you know, is the best representation, representation of our skills.

And then, you know, we're trying to do it in a way that, you know, provides, you know, a safe environment, a place to learn, and, you know, and furthers our civilization into the cosmos, basically.

Do quality assurance or your spaceship will blow up.

Yeah.

Everybody will suffer.

Well conquered.

All right, I appreciate you, as always.

We'll see you all next time.

Thank you very much for watching, listening and learning with us.

We.

We can't wait to go to stop step 10 and then go somewhere else with this.

Thanks.

Thanks.