3.9.2 release – Making money by calculating volumes in Infrakit 

They say, “Money is in the masses”. Someone outside of our infrastructure construction community would first obviously think of mass marketing or mass production, but for us, that means something entirely different.  

Making money with those masses is easy in theory, you just need to know = You just need to control your mass balance effectively. What is hard is doing that in reality. 😀  

That is why our team of champions, the Infrakit developers, wanted to rise up to the challenge -> To make a tool for volume calculation utilizing DEMs, Digital Elevation Models. 

Get flashy with the DEMs 

Sit on a coffee table with your supervisor. Your armpits sweat a little, you know it is that discussion again… money discussion. Your supervisor looks to the right, out of the window into the site and the question. “What about that pile over there… what do we have there…”.  

Your face turns into a quirky smile. You know this is your time to shine. “Hey boss, why don’t you check that one from Infrakit yourself, you can always check from latest flight, even at your iPhone!”.  

The boss taps you into your shoulders, “Wow, that was amazing, I must make you the CIO of our company with your superior digitalization skills!”. 

Okay, maybe the online DEM Volume Calculation tool won’t make you the CIO of your company overnight… But it definitely makes you stand out when combined with all of the benefits of the Infrakit platform!  

PS. Big Kudos to Wolff & Müller for helping us with this test data! 

Researching the greatest secrets of brewing data 

You people on the site have been rocking lately! The amount and quality of the coffee beans you have been pushing to Infrakit has been superb! Where do you even get those?? 

“What in the world is that blog writer again writing there in Infrakit…” you must be thinking. Coffee beans? Okay let me explain – by coffee beans I mean the data you feed into our systems. Now what we want to do as the coffee machine to that data is to: make all the best coffee types for you! Espresso, macchiato, marocchino, americano… from one machine.  

We invested again a lot of time and passion in researching how to brew the best way possible to put a smile on your face. And now for the 3.9.2 version, we found out a lot of new methods!  

To name a few, we found a way to improve the performance of preparing americano (DWG/DXF) a lot, enhanced the appearance of espresso (IFC) by a mile, and elaborated the level of details of macchiato mixture (3D collaboration model) greatly! 

Using software must feel right 

The promise of our software uniting all stakeholders around the same data brings also the responsibility of making using our software accessible for all. “It just feels right”  is what we want you to say when using Infrakit.  

How to make it happen? Paying attention to detail and being passionate about discussing with you on how to simplify things.  

For this version we focused a lot on bringing these wishes of simplification into life, here is a couple of the greatest ones:  

– We built you a way to use custom icons for external documents, to make things more visually simple 

– We designed many pieces of Infrakit to be more responsive on different screen sizes, especially to help you to use Infrakit Files page on mobile devices 

– We polished our mobile applications to have more intuitiveness in how to operate with the data.  

– And we also now enable you to select photos to preview by area on the map page 

Yet another successful version of Infrakit was released with yet another odd blog post about it… 😊  

Check more details on what is new in the 3.9.2 version from our release notes! 

Näiden kahden asian täytyy muuttua, jotta rakentamisesta voi tulla kestävää – Haastattelussa infrarakentamisen kestävän kehityksen asiantuntija Eija Multanen

Kävimme haastattelemassa infrarakentamisen alan asiantuntijaa, Eija Multasta alan hiilineutraaliustavoitteisiin ja -toimiin liittyen. Eija toimii monialaisen vastuullisuuden ja kestävään kehityksen edistämiseen tähtäävän AFRY:n Sustainability and Risk Managerina, ja on mm. johtamassa vastuullisuusnäkökulmasta kansainvälisesti merkittävän rakennushankkeen, Kalasatamasta-Pasilaan projektin, vastuullisuustiimiä.

Eija, miltä infrarakentamisen alan hiilineutraaliuden edistämisen trendit näyttävät seuraavalle viidelle vuodelle?

Ei ollut helppo kysymys näin alkuun, mutta ehkä jos peilataan taaksepäin, vaikkapa mitä Kalasatamasta-Pasilaan hankkeella on edistetty viimeisten 5 vuoden aikana, niin vähähiilisen betonin käyttö on mennyt paljon eteenpäin ja tulee olemaan tärkeää varmasti jatkossakin. Toki nyt vasta käytettiin paalulaattaan, eli yksittäiseen rakenteeseen, että ehkä jatkossa sitä sovelletaan laajemminkin, kun valmistajat ovat saaneet paljon oppia. Ja sitten ehkä isommassa kuvassa lineaaritaloudesta siirtyminen kiertotalouteen, vaikka se on vanha trendi, ja sen toteuttamisessa on paljon haasteita, mutta uskon, että siihen ratkaisujen kehittämisellä saadaan paljon aikaan.

Leikitään, että sinulle annettaisiin kaikkivaltiaan voimat. Mitkä kolme muutosta tällöin tekisit infrarakentamisen alalle, jotta saavuttaisimme meidän hiilineutraaliustavoitteemme?

Ensimmäiseksi varmaan pitäisi keventää luvitusprosesseja, jotka tekevät siirtymästä raskasta ja vaikeaa toimijoille. Tietysti se ei ole helppoa, mutta jos nyt leikitään, että olisi kaikkivaltiaan voimat, niin sehän pitäisi laittaa kuntoon. Sitten varmaan vaihtaisin kaikki koneet sähköisiksi. Taas helpommin sanottu kuin tehty, tähän liittyy monta asiaa eri aloilta, mutta kyllähän iso harppaus hiilineutraaliutta kohti saataisiin sähköisillä työkoneilla. Niillä olisi varmasti positiivista vaikutusta myös muihin sektoreihin, kun mm. akkutehtaita voisi sijoittaa entistä enemmän Suomeen, kun täällä olisi edellä käyvä markkina. Ehkä kolmen sijaan, tekisin nämä kaksi.

Otetaan siis nämä kaksi. Jos näitä, sähköistettyjä koneita ja kevennettyjä luvitusprosesseja katsotaan, niin mitkä näet olevan niitä haasteita, jotka hidastavat sitä muutosta, mitä tarvitsisimme?

Investointien kustannus on iso, ja sen riskin jakaminen yksin ei ole mahdollista yhdellekään urakoitsijalle tai toimijalle. Sen lisäksi vanhentunutta tietoa on kentällä paljon, jopa huipputoimijoilla, joten varmaan tässä kliseisestikin yhteistyön jatkaminen ja entistäkin tiiviimmin on se, mitä tarvittaisiin. Vaadittaisiin lähes systeemitason muutos, jossa rahallista riskiä saadaan jaettua, vaatimuksia kiristettyä nykyistä nopeammin ja tietotaitoa jaettua jatkuvasti sekä nopeasti.

Kiitos Eija vastauksista, olisiko tähän loppuun vielä jotain terveisiä, mitä haluaisitte lähettää alamme toimijoille?

Vapaasti Albert Einsteinia siteeraten ”Et voi jatkaa tekemällä samoja asioita samoilla tavoilla ja odottaa eri lopputulosta kuin aiemmin”. Hyviä uusia asioita ja kokeiluita tehdään jo, mutta jokainen varmasti voi entistä enemmän pohtia, voinko minä ottaa sen rohkean askeleen, joka auttaa kaikkia eteenpäin?

We serve you the secret for Chef’s Special Menu: Infrakit release 3.9.1

Right from the first step into the restaurant, you can feel it, you can smell it: The Menu of this season is crafted with incomparable attention to detail, making the whole experience feel rich and effortlessly smooth.

Now we know building infrastructure and managing projects certainly does not always feel like running a Michelin Restaurant, rather more like preparing those smashed potatoes with too little salt and some overcooked vegetables… But that does not mean, the recipe of everyday meals could not be enhanced with some senior chef’s guidance, to make it more manageable!

That is precisely why we wanted to polish the everyday recipe and toolset of using Infrakit, to pursue our long-lasting vision of being the best cloud platform for infra projects, which in its essence, will become a reality only by you, the everyday chef using Infrakit for cooking, enjoying the experience and getting stuff done without everything being such a pain in the…

But what does the menu look like, and what tools to use to make it? Should we have a look?

Starters: The Soup of Simplicity

Starters never have to be shiny, but what they need to do, is bring an appetite and show that the restaurant can handle its recipes, and carry its water so to speak.

For your restaurant, where we want to give you recipes and tools to become a Star Chef, we created some features to enhance the simplicity of use. These will not only make you sweat less when cooking with Infrakit but also appear like a consistent, always-delivering master of mystic arts.

Infrakit area tool update comes with snap-to-model and snap-to-right angles. It’s also possible to create a Truck area directly from the measure tool. Small, but effective.

3D visualization has a new context menu that introduces ”show model breaklines” and the possibility to render more vector data files in 3D (Survey formats like GT). More is more.

Map capture and export function comes with new options, you can hide stuff from it and update your company logo there from the organization admin page, to make it look like yours.

LandXML deviation vector rendering on map and AIS stream support for maritime vessels, to keep all the tools for cooking near to your hand.

Main course: Faster than McDonald’s, better than your local steak house

Time is money. Quality over quantity. How on earth should your restaurant connect those worlds? 

Well to be honest, I am no chef to tell you that… But for infrastructure construction, there is a way!

Now quality and speed do not always need to compromise each other when some intelligent solutions are brought in place. With this version, we have paid extra attention to optimizing various bottlenecks of mega projects. This includes much faster cross-sections, file listings across the system, and faster access to project settings. You do not only have to bring high quality but you can also do it fast now!

Dessert: For all the admins out there – welcome Archive project function

A good restaurant experience tops always on the dessert, which leaves a sweet taste in the buds to make you smile all the way out of the front door. With Infrakit, what could be a better dessert for you to serve to the project, than letting everyone know everything is safe and sound, stored as an Archive project. 

As with everything else, see how to prep this nice desert for your project by archiving your project admin page. Access to the project is removed from all users and equipment easily. Everyone is happy, everyone is safe. What a nice menu it was from the start ‘til the end! 

Now recipes and tools are only for us to focus on the most key part of cooking -> Doing it. That will be the same for building, we can only help you, but you are the Michelin Chefs of our industry, so remember to be proud of that!

Without great restaurants, so many dates, family reunions, and celebrations would be lost.

Without great infrastructure, we would never even get to those restaurants on time safely. Without great infrastructure, there actually would not be much of a society even…

Thank you!

See more in release notes