The course runs from 9.00am to 5.00pm for a day. The morning half will be spent on understanding Buildability. The afternoon half will be spent for hands-on tutorial using software to compute Buildability Scores. Every participant will be given a computer to work on.

Please check at the BCA website http://www.bca.gov.sg/citi/coursetemp.asp?pgmcode=72019 There is an INTECH grant of 70% and after the subsidy, the investment is less than S$130.00. However, this grant is applicable for course conducted on or before 31 March 2005.

No. This is because the theory part of Buildability must be taught by trained BCA personnel.

This module was written on IntelliCAD and hence is the recommended engine. It has been tested on R13, R14 and A2000. Several users have installed and used it on A2002 with ADT3.3. We have tested it briefly at a user's office on A2004 but we need to confirm if A2004 with ADT will work equally well.

As long as your CAD engine is working fine, SIACAD eBDAS will be be able to work efficiently.

The final output is generated as an Excel spreadsheet. This requires Excel 97 and above to be available in the computer. However, for normal computation, you do not need to have Excel installed. We are currently developing other alternative formats.

The eBDAS module includes a version called SIACAD Lite. This comprises of automation tools like walls, doors, windows, slabs and openings – more than sufficient to create / edit drawings that can be used for BDAS computations. However, it doesn't include advanced features like GFA/Floor Area computation, A&A Tool, Layer Sort etc.

It expands on your existing software. Besides Buildability, you can now make use of our BQ features. You can generate lists of components in your drawing such as doors, windows, sanitary fittings, furniture etc. The GFA module is also further enhanced. Note these features are only available if you already own SIACAD 1.8 and are not available in the SIACAD Lite version.

Yes, as long as it was done in CP83 layering (which is inevitable using SIACAD), you can compute Buildability or BQ.

As long as your drawing is done in accordance to CP83, you can use this eBDAS module to define / apply Wall or Structural Systems and from there compute Buildability.

In theory, not necessary. As long as you have done your drawings in a structured manner e.g. Walls, slabs, roofs, doors and windows in the correct layers, any layer standard will work. However, you have to create a Layer Definition file for SIACAD to understand your layering standard..

You may want to make use of the BQ features for counting sprinklers, smoke detectors and other components. We actually spoke to several M&E users during the development process and included such functionalities there.

Again, for the BQ portion. You can count / summarise the fittings, furniture in your drawings. You can also create symbols, e.g. furniture, fittings, on the fly and as long as they are in the right Layer, you can immediately get quantities from it.

This eBDAS module supports only COP 2004. However, as we know it now, a few firms are having projects submitted before 2004 and hence have to use the earlier COP. As yet, we do not have plans to support any COP before 2004 as we believe that the majority of users will be for COP 2004.

COP 2004 is easier to use as it measures wall lengths instead of wall areas in the earlier COP's. Also, the weightage for wall systems has been increased from 30 points to 40 points and bonus points have been introduced. Some users have found that they can get higher scores using COP 2004 instead of the older versions.

We make use of the user-defined field of the Layer Name to store System Information. This adds only 4 bytes to each unique Wall or Structure System used in the drawing. All in all, we don't expect your drawing size to increase by anything more than 100 Bytes (not kilobytes).

Yes, you can add user defined systems easily. This is limited to a maximum of 5 user defined systems per project. You are advised to consult BCA if you intend to have user-defined systems

Wall Openings. In the new COP 2004, as long as your door or window is not full-height, you have to measure the openings as walls. The new version of SIACAD eBDAS prompts you when you add a door or window and fills in with walls if the opening is not full-height. For existing drawings, we have included a utility to automatically fill in door/window openings. However, this will work only if the door/window blocks are inserted in the correct layers.