The Grand LA

• Models load in seconds, not minutes
• File size cut to under 1/10 original
• Rapid Visicon adoption firmwide

DCI Engineers turned to Visicon to solve a coordination problem specific to The Grand LA's scale and geometry. With Frank Gehry's design spanning a 45-story residential tower, a 28-story hotel, and a large retail podium, each floor had its own unique layout, and the project's slab edges, columns, and transfer beams shifted shape and position from level to level. Reviewing that complexity meant working across three separate structural Revit models and their three corresponding architectural counterparts from Gehry Partners, models that were heavy, slow to open, and cumbersome to reference on a daily basis. Visicon let DCI's team combine and overlay all six models, generating custom views to study system geometry and support faster, more collaborative design decisions across the whole engineering group.

The Grand LA's Gehry-designed geometry created unusual structural coordination demands. Each floor had a distinct layout, so column placement and transfer beam locations changed from level to level rather than following a repeatable grid, and slab edges throughout the building took unconventional, non-standard shapes. Reconciling this complexity meant working across three separate structural Revit models built up against three architectural models from Gehry Partners, all of which needed to be compared and cross-checked throughout design and construction.

Before adopting Visicon, DCI's engineers worked directly with the project's native, uncombined Revit models, a method the firm's own team described as spending more time than necessary just accessing and referencing project information. With six separate architectural and structural models to track across The Grand LA's residential, hotel, and retail components, opening and cross-referencing files was slow and interrupted the engineering team's daily workflow.

Adopting Visicon gave DCI Engineers' team on The Grand LA dramatically lighter, faster project files: combined models that once took considerable time to open and navigate were compressed to less than one-tenth of their original size and could be opened within seconds. That speed let engineers move quickly between the six architectural and structural models without losing time to loading or searching, supporting more responsive collaboration on a project defined by shifting floor plates and irregular geometry. The results were compelling enough that Visicon adoption spread rapidly across DCI beyond this single project, and the firm's own team reflected that the tool would have been valuable from the project's earliest years, with DCI project manager Patrick Lindblom noting he wished the firm had Visicon when the six-year project began.