Construction Tech of the Week | Threshold, Combining Plans and Photos

Project documents in the cloud are nothing new. Any decent software that deals with plan files should allow upload, download, and sharing capabilities entirely through a web-based plan room. But Threshold, a new service from San Francisco-based 383 Studio, has added another incredibly valuable step...attaching photos directly to plans to illustrate various spaces/conditions and tagging the photos by service or trade for easy reference and search. 

"When a shot is pinned to a point in the plan, a "room" is created with a click and the image dragged to it. Images are tagged by trade or with custom labels. Items tagged "electrical" show up on electrical plans, "plumbing" on MEP, etc. They show up on multiple plans if several tags are used. Clicking a room shows all photos tagged to that place, in order of upload." 

Click here to learn more about Threshold project plan and photo technology

Construction Technology of the Week | SmartBidNet | Bridge Health Monitor

The Federal Highway Administration has released results on a five year study of using advanced technology to better assess corrosion on suspension bridges.

"The system was designed to detect the onset of corrosion as an early warning system by providing a corrosion rate for suspension-bridge cable so that the remaining service life and factor of safety can be reliably calculated."

The best sensor technologies available were combined into thousands of wires wrapped on suspension cables of major cities bridges like those in New York City. Acoustic, humidity, and temperature sensors also monitored conditions surrounding the cables. The data from real brirdges was combined from data obtained in the lab by simulating various extreme corrosive conditions. 

Researchers say the findings and responsibility to implement such monitoring systems on all bridges is now up to the owners. At only .001% of bridge cost, the system doesn't appear costly for the feedback it provides, and can even run off solar and wireless technology for minimal maintanence.

Click here to learn more about this bridge health monitoring technology  

Construction Tech of the Week | SmartBidNet | The Measured Mobile App

So here it is - our first "Tech of the Week" post! We dabble in construction. We like tech. So every week we'll share one of our latest and favorite construction tech discoveries - anything from the most advanced apps and devices to Star Trek-esque software and imaging. 
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Measured iOS App

From the iTunes store: "Have you ever needed to take measurements and not had a tape measure, or didn't have quick access to a ladder to measure something up high?

"Measured" allows you to measure just about anything in the pictures you take, with no tape measure or frame of reference in the pictures. The accuracy tends to be in the ±3% range.

Measured is not a simple trig tool that simplifies the problem to give a round-about guesstimate. Measured accounts for the true perspective in the photographs, and incorporates all of the accelerometer outputs to account for the rotations of the device. Measured analyzes specific data about your device's camera lens, as well as accelerometer data to "translate" the 2D data of the photograph into the 3D data of the world around you."




 Click here to get the app or learn more.