Autodesk released Tandem in 2020 to create a digital twin of buildings and structures. Earlier this year, the company announced a beta version of facility monitoring for Tandem that can process and visualize the data that is streaming from smart buildings, such as Autodesk’s own Toronto office.
Autodesk relocated its Toronto office to the MaRS[i] Discovery District. The company uses the facility as a proving ground for its latest AEC software. In 2017, Autodesk used generative design to lay out the office space. The office space is full of Internet of Things (IoT) sensors that have been sending streams of data since they were embedded in the walls, floor and ceiling. Like carbon dioxide in ppm, or temperature.
What to do with what 15 years later is a giant data lake?
Tandem, Autodesk’s digital twin application for AEC, is able to dive into the data lake, make sense of it and get useful information, recognize usage patterns and trends and zero in on problems. For instance, one side of the office facing the sun may suffer from high temperatures. Tandem can read practically any digital format, whether it be DWG files, Revit models, PDFs and more, allowing it to effectively look at the whole picture, as it were. Instead of having to look at DWG files in AutoCAD, Revit files in Revit and PDFs in Acrobat, you can look at the whole building—inside and out—through the Tandem interface.
With active facility monitoring on top of Tandem, the BIM model can be like the twin that senses what its sibling is feeling even though they are separated.
“A digital twin with facility monitoring capabilities allows our staff to study the performance of our offices remotely and see how everything is built, deployed, and connected,” says Jenny Lum, director of Autodesk Workplace & Travel. “We value the speed at which we can access the live conditions and reference the history we need for decision-making.”
Eating its own dog food and liking it, Autodesk plans on using Tandem with Facility monitoring on more of its offices worldwide. Working out whatever bugs as it goes, Autodesk gains the advantage of having a thoroughly tested all-digital facility manager ready for sale to its customers when they are ready for it.
The world of facility management (FM) software is a crowded one, however, and distinct from AEC and BIM by its software, users and methods. It is led by veteran FM software vendors like IBM, FM Systems and ARC and, like every class of software, has seen many startups offering modern software as a service (SaaS) apps that use the cloud. No doubt, Autodesk feels as if building owners and operators already in its camp with AutoCAD and Revit will favor it over other brands that may be totally unfamiliar to them.
All you have to do to use Tandem is open a free account. With no cost barrier, Tandem with or without facility monitoring is certainly worth a look for any building operator—Autodesk customer or not.
[i] MaRS stands for Medical and Related Sciences.