"SimTread lets Vectorworks users design with confidence by identifying crowded areas and factors that inhibit or change circulation flow," said Dr. Biplab Sarkar, chief technology officer at Nemetschek Vectorworks.
"It therefore expedites the iterative design process and helps to determine the best designs for safe traffic flows. Plus, several new features enhance SimTread's crowd movement simulations, such as creating events that trigger action, the addition of wheelchair objects and being able to program barriers to appear or disappear, mimicking actions such as the opening and closing of doors."
SimTread augments the cache of safety and planning tools that the people responsible for disaster preparedness, public safety, facilities management, or event, municipal or campus planning use for circulation studies and flow analysis.
To generate simulations, Vectorworks software users create destinations, specify the location of walls, columns or furniture in their designs that could possibly impede crowd movement, insert people and then run the simulation. Options to count people within a specified area or to calculate the rate of flow can also be added. Realistic representations of inhabitants are determined by variable travel speeds of people such as children, older people, and people who use wheelchairs. Users can also export and analyze data on travel speeds and crowd flow rates, and graph the flow rate over time and/or cumulative flow.
"Creating simulations with SimTread is easy, and you don't need to be a CAD or BIM expert to use it," said Rubina Siddiqui, senior product specialist - BIM Solutions at Nemetschek Vectorworks. "The tool is intuitive, giving Vectorworks users the flexibility they need to create simulations based on their Vectorworks drawings or on various file formats imported into Vectorworks, such as PDF, image and DWG files."
(Jim Evans)
