My name is Szabolcs Patyi. I am a Certified Architect-Designer working at the University of Pécs, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology based in Hungary.

What is the reason of your collaboration with WICONA?

We are delighted to work with the support of Dr-Ing Werner Jager, Director of Technology and Marketing at WICONA and the WICONA sales representative from Hungary, Péter Pályi and Álmos Dömötör, to make progress in the teaching of this special area of facade structures.

We consider it highly important to take progressive steps in the teaching of aluminum and facade construction within university education, which are considered outstanding in Central Europe. In addition to transfer the relevant professional expertise, presenting the advanced IT solutions to architectural and engineering design and developing the students' relevant skills are also absolutely essential for improving the quality of education.

In addition to the collaboration in education and software use, under the leadership of Dr. Tamás Kondor, Vice Dean, we highly appreciate the fact that our main sponsor’s WICONA’s Doors and Windows have been installed into the building - fabricated and assembled by a WICONA partner, Kartal Invest Kft - we entered for the Solar Decathlon International Architectural Competition, which has contributed to a great extent to the fact that the “Hungarian Nest +” could reach outstanding results both in terms of architecture and energy-efficiency.

What is the main purpose of using BIM?

Today, Building Information Management (BIM) can also play a key role in the design of facades through the involvement of various experts. These professionals can be designers, specialised designers, manufacturers, implementation contractors, and operators. In addition to 3D modeling processes, this method also brings 4D-5D-6D-7D levels into the design process. With their use, taking the cost of building structures, construction time, transportations and on-site organisation into account, providing the energy balance of structures or some specific information for subsequent operation play a role in achieving a more accurate design and construction in the various stages of construction; the completion and operation of our buildings can be performed in a more sustainable, cost and energy efficient manner.

At our faculty (University of Pécs, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology), we, including the management of the faculty, consider it important to have up-to-date knowledge and to enable our students to keep up and meet the ever-more-demanding requirements of the market. For this end, in addition to various architectural skills and knowledge, there are several specializations available for students in the master's programs. Taking the specializations in account as well, BIM education and methodologies are now available to all our students, with enormous help from the lecturers of our Department (Department of Engineering Studies), who are serious contributors to the market and play important role in the spread of BIM. We are continually developing the transfer of state-of-the-art architectural and construction skills, where the design and construction of aluminum and glass facades play a prominent role.

Do you propose training to customers who would like to know more about BIM?

We have Hungarian and international students involved both in the market as well as in the international training our university offers. For them, the relevant training requirements already include literacy in the basic construction-information modeling procedures. In addition, we collaborate with a number of market players, whereby the students concerned can acquire BIM techniques through advanced engineering or specific trainings.

Have you used already WIC3D?

We had a chance to use WIC3D. The software was used to tackle with the challenges of architectural tasks, which was intended as a preliminary test. The management of all this, as well as developing the possible solutions posed an exciting challenge for us, so we formed a team of architect students for this task. It was a great pleasure for us to see a high level of advancement in the field of IT, even in the case of special designs.

We believe that it is important to use software related to special design tasks, where WIC3D can be a reliable, constantly evolving partner for companies. We can see countless opportunities whereby high-quality and accurate work can be performed. We have already received feedback on the spread and use of "WICONA" as a brand name use for the WIC3D, which definitely offers a positive perspective concerning the future of the software.

Picture, from left to right: Balázs Novák (Certified Architect MSc) & Szabolcs Patyi (Certified Architect-Designer, assistant lecturer, doctor candidate).

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