Modeled to Perfection
What better opportunity to incorporate the guidance of 3D modeling software into an AV design than when the client is Autodesk itself and the project is a new LEED Platinum corporate briefing center?
Launch Slideshow
Modeled to Perfection
Modeled to Perfection
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Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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AV integrator: Office Environments of New England. Consultant: ACT Associates. Architect/design firm: KlingStubbins.
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Martin Calverley
AV integrator: Office Environments of New England. Consultant: ACT Associates. Architect/design firm: KlingStubbins. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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Challenge: Incorporate audiovisual systems into an intricately designed, LEED Platinum briefing center where architecture is the star attraction and AV must fit just so.
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Martin Calverley
Challenge: Incorporate audiovisual systems into an intricately designed, LEED Platinum briefing center where architecture is the star attraction and AV must fit just so. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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Solution: Follow the lead of advanced modeling software to determine projector placement and other requirements, and use AV controls to minimize energy use.
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Martin Calverley
Solution: Follow the lead of advanced modeling software to determine projector placement and other requirements, and use AV controls to minimize energy use. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The gallery display systems are designed to showcase Autodesk applications and case study project designs.
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Martin Calverley
The gallery display systems are designed to showcase Autodesk applications and case study project designs. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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A total of 11 NEC projectors cast high-definition video and graphics from an Alcorn McBride Digital Binloop HD player onto a range of shapes and surfaces.
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Martin Calverley
A total of 11 NEC projectors cast high-definition video and graphics from an Alcorn McBride Digital Binloop HD player onto a range of shapes and surfaces. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The Digital Binloop HD players have no moving parts, contributing to a robust system with fewer service issues expected in the future.
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Martin Calverley
The Digital Binloop HD players have no moving parts, contributing to a robust system with fewer service issues expected in the future. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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There are 11 freestanding projection surfaces on the gallery floor; each surface has a dedicated DLP projector aligned to it.
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Martin Calverley
There are 11 freestanding projection surfaces on the gallery floor; each surface has a dedicated DLP projector aligned to it. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The gallery area projection system was designed with a flexible but simple-to-operate user interface. Systems could be programmed to run automatically and all elements of the 11 projected surfaces were in complete frame sync at all times.
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Martin Calverley
The gallery area projection system was designed with a flexible but simple-to-operate user interface. Systems could be programmed to run automatically and all elements of the 11 projected surfaces were in complete frame sync at all times. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The elaborate, wood ceiling coverings at the new Autodesk Briefing Center posed a significant challenge to placing the projectors that would illuminate exhibits throughout the customer gallery.
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Martin Calverley
The elaborate, wood ceiling coverings at the new Autodesk Briefing Center posed a significant challenge to placing the projectors that would illuminate exhibits throughout the customer gallery. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The ceiling above the wooden ceiling was painted black. The desired projectors were only available in white. A custom vinyl detailing company applied black vinyl to the projectors, carefully leaving open all ventilation and control surfaces.
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Martin Calverley
The ceiling above the wooden ceiling was painted black. The desired projectors were only available in white. A custom vinyl detailing company applied black vinyl to the projectors, carefully leaving open all ventilation and control surfaces. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The main central image sculpture is a four-sided rectangular screen that has overlapped and blended images on all four sides using six projectors.
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Martin Calverley
The main central image sculpture is a four-sided rectangular screen that has overlapped and blended images on all four sides using six projectors. -
Corporate Install: Autodesk Briefing Center
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The project was the first in New England to be built using the integrated project delivery (IPD) process, which integrates people, systems, business structures, and practices into a collaborative process that reduces waste and optimizes efficiency.
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Martin Calverley
The project was the first in New England to be built using the integrated project delivery (IPD) process, which integrates people, systems, business structures, and practices into a collaborative process that reduces waste and optimizes efficiency.
If you’re building a wine bar, the project will probably turn out better if the client is a vintner. And so it was when a client whose software helps designers and architects in the construction process brought that software to bear on the AV systems that would be integral to its new corporate briefing center.
Earlier this year, Autodesk, developer of 2D and 3D modeling software, wanted to create its second gallery-styled business center. The original, on Market Street in San Francisco, uses kiosk-controlled projection systems to display Autodesk images in standard definition on a range of surfaces. The new center, on Trapelo Road in Waltham, Mass., is all HD. It’s also LEED Platinum and substantially larger, with a customer gallery, two fully configured briefing rooms, 14 conference rooms, a large training room, a break room, and a game room. To get it the way Autodesk wanted it, the team used the client’s portfolio of products for building information modeling (BIM), making the briefing center the first project in New England to use the integrated project delivery (IPD) model, an innovative approach to design and construction that can accelerate project timelines and reduce costly errors.
Erin Rae Hoffer, industry programs manager at Autodesk, says the facility had to both represent the visual nature of Autodesk’s clientele and products, and present its graphics in an artistic light. “Autodesk customers in architecture, engineering, and construction are visually oriented, and we make extensive use of visual media in our communications, both internally and externally. So, one important goal of the AV system was to seamlessly support our business requirements for visual conversations among virtual teams around the world,” she explains. “Besides our day-to-day needs, the Trapelo Road facility also reflects our aspirations for a state-of-the-art customer display space—a gallery that presents the extraordinary work of our customers to visitors. This includes physical models, wall-sized video projections, renderings, and hands-on demonstration stations that show how our products are used to create amazing results. We also have customer briefing rooms in Trapelo that utilize electronic projection and white boards, and a telepresence space that connects with other Autodesk facilities around the world.”
Automation, in the form of Crestron PRO2 control processors with TPMC-8X touch panels, became a critical component, both to achieve the LEED rating and to manage 11 NEC NP4000 and 4100 DLP projectors displaying computer-generated content from 11 active channels of a 16-output channel Alcorn McBride Digital Binloop HD player. The images are projected onto walls and freestanding obelisks in the gallery area, providing a fluid, artful effect.
The biggest challenge was getting the projectors mounted in the open plenum above an intricately detailed ceiling made of undulating, woven wood elements. Digital prototypes were modeled in Autodesk Inventor software and it was determined that the steep angles at which the projectors had to be mounted required the use of 11 Silicon Optix warp engines—one for each projector—to scale and resize the images. This allowed the projectors to be mounted off-axis and at odd angles so that they are almost completely concealed by the ceiling design.
“At the time, the Binloop hadn’t been on the market all that long so there was no large installed base on which to predict reliability,” Calverley explains. Substantial trial and error was required to get the video image files, supplied by Autodesk’s in-house creative team, at the optimal encoding algorithms, refresh rate, and resolution to match both the projectors’ native resolutions and the correct file structure for the Binloop player. “There were numerous MPEG encoding options available during the setup for the computer renderings and it took a while to find the right one,” he says.
“We also knew we were going to need the corrective capability of a warp engine,” Calverley continues. “We could have used projectors that have warp engines integrated into them, but they would have been physically too big and too expensive.”
The AV integrator on the project, Office Environments of New England, worked closely with ACT on aiming the projectors. “We studied it from the point of view of the video processor,” explains Sunil Botadra, engineering manager at Office Environments. They used Flexible Picture Systems’ Image AnyPlace, a video scaler with geometry correction and edge blending. “Usually, the projector would need to be directly dead on the center line, but, because of the nature of the ceiling, we had to position some of the projectors as much as 35 degrees off center.”
Botadra says the undulating nature of the boomerang-shaped wood pieces that make up the ceiling’s aesthetic treatment were unpredictable, and an up- or downward-curved wave segment sometimes interfered with where the projector needed to be positioned. “In some cases, we had to coordinate with the general contractor to move some of the elements in the ceiling,” he says.
The building’s AV budget was less than $650,000. Standardizing technology in each of the spaces helped manage costs by achieving economies of scale. All the briefing rooms, for instance, use the same complement of Mitsubishi FL-7000 1080p DLP projectors, Panasonic 65-inch TH-65PF10UK plasma monitors with wireless presentation boards, Smart Technologies’ 65-inch interactive overlays, and Custom Display Solutions heavy-duty swing-arm wall mounts. Standardization also simplifies operation of the rooms by Autodesk employees. “The intent was to have basic functionality in many rooms, rather than having fewer rooms outfitted with too much technology,” Calverley says.
The use of BIM and IPD had a positive effect on the way the project progressed. “BIM in particular helped us tremendously,” says Botadra. “At the first project meeting, the [general contractor’s] project manager had a 3D walkthrough of the project ready for us.” When a structural change was made in the Revit file, all related elements would react to that change, shifting their position if necessary. “Revit looks for physical conflicts,” Hoffer explains.
It came in handy when positioning the projectors. “You tell the software to align the projector with this or that ceiling grid, this or that wall or sprinkler head,” Botadra says. “Once it knows where it is in relation to everything else, any move you make will affect everything else.”
“I’d say that both BIM and IPD contributed to the project coming in on time and on budget,” Calverley says. “In a sense, the project team had improved confidence that the Autodesk project was going to have a happy ending very early on in the project planning.”
