Digital Workflow: An Example of Data-Centric Design Supporting Digital Fabrication

In the September/October 2018 Engineering Georgia Spotlight — R&D+E: Research & Development in the Engineering Industry — Walter P Moore’s Ben Cheplak discusses project delivery in the digital age, featuring the firm’s Digital Practice and the Digital Workflow process implemented on the Truist Park (formerly SunTrust Park) project.

Digital champions help test and apply workflows on projects of all sizes — including the Atlanta Braves’ 41,500-seat Truist Park stadium. On this project, the team’s digital models — first created with Grasshopper, then translated into a Revit BIM model and finally converted to a Tekla model — allowed for better coordination between teams throughout design and build to meet the project’s aggressive design and construction schedule.

“We’re basically leveraging the data. Regardless of the software, we’re going to leverage the data in each one,” says Cheplak. “We focus a lot on interoperability between those different software platforms and thinking about using that data downstream — not just producing the traditional design where we hand over paper documents and the construction team starts rebuilding everything from scratch, but being able to hand off some of that data reliably.”