Founded in the United States in 1978, Trimble is widely known as “Tianbao” in China. Initially, the company specialized in positioning, navigation, and GPS technologies. Over the past 40 years, Trimble has expanded significantly, acquiring around 20 companies and products. Today, Tianbao offers approximately 500 products, both hardware and software, applied across various fields such as surveying, automotive navigation, engineering construction, machinery control, asset tracking, agricultural production, wireless communication platforms, and communication infrastructure.
In the engineering construction industry, Trimble’s approach to Building Information Modeling (BIM) emphasizes creating constructible and open BIM models and applications. It has invested heavily in advancing detailed design, construction applications, and collaborative sharing. Among its acquisitions, two well-known BIM software products are Tekla and SketchUp.
Tekla: Originally developed by the Finnish company Tekla, Tekla was formerly known as “Xsteel” and focused primarily on detailed construction drawing design. It was later upgraded to include features such as concrete structure detailing and finite element analysis, and renamed TeklaStructures. Now part of Trimble, Tekla offers two main software products: TeklaStructures and TeklaBIMSight.
TeklaStructures integrates 3D solid structural models with structural analysis, encompassing all information related to design, construction, and assembly. It supports extension with custom attribute information and enables detailed steel structure node design with an extensive library of node types. The software offers intuitive modification and editing controls, allowing clear representation of different components. It can generate 2D drawings and reports, customizable via various templates, and supports importing and exporting data in multiple formats. Moreover, it can export data directly to CNC machining equipment for cutting and processing, including software like Fabtrol (steel structure machining) and Eliplan (prefabricated part machining).
TeklaBIMSight serves as a collaborative management platform, enabling users to assemble and aggregate models from different software on a single platform. It facilitates model review and clash detection and is available for both PC and mobile devices.
SketchUp: Initially developed by @LastSoftware and later acquired by Google, SketchUp is now owned by Trimble. It is highly popular in architectural design and widely used across architecture, urban planning, landscaping, interior design, and industrial design due to its simplicity and ease of use.
SketchUp excels in creating 3D models and visualizations during the conceptual design phase. It offers intelligent, modular functions, a vast component library, and supports user-defined extensions. The software supports multiple data import and export formats. Thanks to its fast modeling capabilities and extensive component library, many software vendors provide robust support for the SketchUp (“SKP”) file format.
Thanks to its previous collaboration with Google Earth, SketchUp also features enhanced support for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), making it a common tool in smart city projects alongside GIS software.
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