The cooperation between Vlieg Engineering and Van Wijnen Engineering (VWE) started back in April 2023 when neither of us had ever thought about Rodly or IFC Mapper. However, we did successfully work together on the automation of Tekla workflows. Both with continuous development of existing tools as well as the development of new tools.
The first ‘real’ new tool that was co-developed, was IFC Mapper, which started development back in April 2024. The necessity for this tool was clear, because much time was lost in repetitive error-prone tasks. For more information about IFC Mapper, refer to the product page. IFC Mapper was also the first product that was made public for companies other than VWE. The concept of ‘platform thinking’ was initiated here. So rather than proprietary in-house tools, we shifted our vision towards transforming the engineering in the construction industry together.
Sometime later, the idea of Rodly was brought into live in the form of abstract mathematical algorithms. These developments were initiated by Vlieg Engineering in August 2024. After about half a year, this drew the attention of VWE, who asked us whether this “linear algebra bomb” would be able to generate the rebar for foundation beams. The answer to this question was that the algorithms were complete overkill, but that they for sure would get the job done. Therefore, from this point forward, we shifted our focus to realizing this.
VWE inspired a fundamental change to the algorithms, by expressing a deep wish to integrate the algorithms directly with the simulation results of the constructor. This completely removed the necessity for a complex user interface which was initially designed and planned. Instead, a very minimalist approach was chosen for working with Rodly. And the algorithms were setup in a way that allowed for smart and generic transformations between external simulation results and standardized Rodly Requirements. These same algorithms hold up until today.
By integrating Technosoft Balkrooster with Tekla, VWE was able to eliminate incredibly many manual steps. And by continuously using Rodly, more and more unique edge cases were found and solved, resulting in very stable algorithms today. The end result of all of this, are massive time savings and an incredible platform that more and more people are able to enjoy both today as well as tomorrow.