The new U.S. Olympic Museum is under construction in Colorado Springs. A 60,000-square-foot structure that will house an interactive exhibit space, a theater, café, gift shop and broadcast studio. The facade will feature more than 9,000 shingles formed as triangles and diamonds, representing the uniqueness of every Olympic athlete.
This project is typical of many current building projects: to win new business, architects propose increasingly audacious designs that have to be realized in unprecedented time. Minnesota-based architectural surfaces manufacturer MG McGrath chose to digitally transform their design and fabrication process to meet these architectural challenges. Having successfully used Dassault Systèmes’ CATIA for over a decade, they chose to adopt the 3DEXPERIENCE platform on cloud to streamline development from concept to fabrication.
The platform allows MG McGrath to virtually build and manage the 9,000 unique shingles for the U.S. Olympic Museum. The tight control over the shingle’s geometry saves a lot of time and resources that had been spent on prototyping and testing in the past. Additionally, visualizing the facade with a high degree of definition in 3D allows the project owner a more hands-on approach to changes within the skin’s design. This not only helps resolve conflicts early, but also increases confidence in the end result.
During this project, MG McGrath doesn’t fear working on outdated information as every stakeholder from design to project management to fabrication to field installation can access the model, collect points and pull dimensions, all from a single source of information located on the cloud. Another added benefit of the cloud solution: reduced IT infrastructure costs for the company.
With the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, MG McGrath engineers and designers are able to do the same work in a matter of hours compared to something that took hundreds of working hours 15 years ago. And by saving generic component templates from this project and automating processes with the platform, MG McGrath is reducing repetitive work, amassing knowledge and saving time for future projects. Utilizing digital technology, MG McGrath is looking forward to pushing its creative limits further than ever before.
Want to learn how MG McGrath uses the 3DEXPERIENCE platform to construct unique and iconic buildings? Click here to check out the written case study and videos.
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Maryann is a Senior Communications Manager on the Dassault Systèmes corporate communications team. She’s been with the company for over 16 years, in roles ranging from marketing communications,internal communications, creative and branding, blogging to marketing programs manager.