>> What's an example of one of the buildings that you've worked on where you -- the technology really led to some breakthroughs in terms of ability to build to spec and also to innovate.
>> Probably the first one that led to -- and there was -- the owner actually pushed it very heavily was Lucas Digital Arts. And they actually hired an outside company to do the modeling, and then we kind of followed suit with our own models for that project. So that was really the one that really pushed the envelope of virtual building in many ways from the owner's standpoint and from ours. And that one led to a lot of breakthroughs. And the project was extremely unique, being build in the Presidio. It had a lot of environmental challenges as far as what we were allowed to do on the site, because it was a federal government protected land site. And it really brought about planning and logistics and timing and all the things that virtual building can do for us. It really pushed it to the edge and led to a lot of new innovations and new features in the software package. And then we brought all those suggestions over to Vicosoft and actually came out with a whole new package early this year which we're using on the California Academy of Sciences with a lot of that new technology and features built in. And it's working fantastic.
>> When you get the plans on the site, do they always match reality in terms of as you get the construction going?
>> No. And they're often not complete or we're getting partial sets of drawings. And then each individual trade then sometimes goes ahead and redoes the drawings. So the piping and ducting people may be told that this is a ducting space for them to use, and then they go ahead and redraw the drawings. So we try to pull all those drawings together with the virtual technology and then overlay them together. Traditionally, we would use light tables and transparencies and lay 60 layers on top of each other and try to figure out where all the inherent conflicts are. Well, now it's all done with virtual technology and the computers. We then notify the subtrades of their conflicts and ask them to address them.
>> Now, the subtrades or subcontractors, are they basically forced to use the same software that you're using?
>> We have currently issued a directive that all of our vendors, large vendors, have to use 3D and virtual technology. We do not force them to use our particular vendor. We have a product called Navisworks, which was recently purchased by Autodesk, that allows us to view models from different applications into one viewer. So we've asked them to do -- use their tools, different industries, piping and ducting and so on have their own applications. And we've asked them to use their own tools but to allow us to share those models with us to allow us to integrate them into our virtual building models.
==== Transcribed by Automatic Sync Technologies ====
