Customer Showcase

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Antunovich Associates, a Chicago-based company, is a leader in architecture, planning, and interior design. A midsize firm of 30 employees, Antunovich features a diverse portfolio of retail space, residential complexes, mixed-use development, and university facilities.Their design of the University Center of Chicago drew on the company’s varied expertise to create a vibrant and unique community.

A combined effort of Columbia College, DePaul University, and Roosevelt University, this 18-story multi-use residence will house 1720 students, and include retail space, meeting rooms, a conference center, fitness facilities, classrooms, music practice rooms, food service, and a rooftop garden. With 700,000 total square feet, it is the largest multicollege student residence hall in the United States. According to David Graue, Project Architect and Principal, Antunovich Associates, " We knew going in challenge because we had a compressed time schedule, and each client came table with slightly different needs.? With student occupancy slated for fall 2004, coordinating all parties was key to the project’s success.

Antunovich chose Autodesk® Revit® to meet the demands of this complex project. The program’s 3D visualisation capabilities helped everyone to understand the building design right from the start. Team member Bob Rux, a Structural Engineer at Chris P. Stefanos Associates explains, "It’s a tremendous coordination tool as far as visualising actually what’s going to be built. The Revit program allows us to see the pieces come together as a whole."

The coordination features of Autodesk Revit helped save time and expense by identifying a problem that would affect the focal centerpiece of the building—the lobby’s vaulted glass ceiling. Architects discovered that overlapping duct work would penetrate the ceiling’s glass panels. While the error was not detected in the 2D shop drawings, it was clearly visible in an Autodesk Revit model. David Graue remembers, "When we brought that into the coordination meeting, everyone’s eyes lit up. We were able to head off that problem and make the corrections before it ever went to production."

When weekly client meetings led to numerous design transformations, Autodesk Revit made it easy for Antunovich to keep up with the changes.  Any revision made was automatically reflected throughout the project.  Plans, elevations, sections, and schedules, all were coordinated by the software.  This greatly reduced the need for future change orders and constant rechecks.  For David Graue, the result is improved quality, and time saved that would be spent doing low-value, mundane work.  "It frees up our ability to really focus on fine-tuning the design."

Compatibility of Autodesk Revit with AutoCAD® made for trouble-free file sharing with the associate architect and other team members.  Having accurate, fully coordinated drawings in the early stage of design had multiple advantages.  Subcontractor bids were well-defined and accurate, and the quality of the documents helped the project come in under budget.  The clients used the early designs to generate excitement in their student base and start attracting potential customers.  According to Bob Janis, Vice President for Facility Operations, DePaul University,  "The documents related to this particular project were much more thorough in their content and level of refined detail than what we’ve seen in the past."

Antunovich Associates President, Joseph Antunovich, views Autodesk Revit as a solid investment. "In coordinating all these different entities and these different offices, this system allowed us to do that much more expeditiously than we have ever been able to do before."  For Scot Ferguson, success is measured in customer satisfaction. "The most important thing from my perspective is to have a happy client. And this software has helped that to happen."