A note on software

There are an array of choices when it comes to BIM software. BIM is as much a process as it is anything else, no one piece of software embodies BIM.

Revit, ArchiCAD, Bentley, Allplan and others all have their strengths and weaknesses as BIM implementation tools. As you can tell from the title of this blog I will be focusing primarily on Revit and software and processes that interface with Revit.

The reasons for the focus on Revit are simple. While Revit is obviously not the only product out there and is not as market dominating of BIM as AutoCAD is of CAD, it is the dominant software in the market, which is why our firm uses Revit as opposed to some of the other products.

So the BIM conversation will commonly be couched in general terms, but when I discuss specific details of software, it will be in terms of Autodesk Revit's latest release.

A BIM Perspective

There is no shortage of blogs about BIM and Revit, so why add one more voice to the chorus?
To understand that, a little explanation of who I am is necessary. I work for a small architecture firm in the Dencer area as the company wide BIM coordinator. I have been with the firm for just shy of three years and have seen us grow from a staff of four when I started to a staff of approximately twenty today.
So in this case, it's my hope to use this venue as a resource for my own co-workers and other interested readers with some general BIM knowledge and tricks as well as to provide some perspective to the AEC public on BIM in the small business.
In many ways small AEC firms approach BIM no differently than how many other firms handle BIM. In other ways though, we must approach things differently than a medium or large sized firm does.
Our company president also made the fairly unusual decision to go all-in with BIM, executing all of our projects using BIM software rather than CAD.
Some of the material presented here will be shortcuts, tips and tricks that I or others have found in executing BIM projects. Some posts will highlight difficulties and challenges. Others will outline presentations I have given to staff as a reference. Other posts will be targeted at non-users, such as marketing staff and some project managers who may never open BIM software themselves but who still seek to understand the lingo.
A final purpose behind this blog is more personal. It's to keep me thinking critically and creatively about the work I do and the field I am in. If no one else gets anything else out of this beyond that, then I will consider this endeavor a success. That said, I hope you, dear reader, will find value here as well.

In the beginning...

... there was the stylus.

And it was good.

The stylus evolved by small steps into the pencil, and, later, the pen. With these tools architects and engineers plied their trades for generation upon generation, drafting on paper, parchment, vellum and mylar. But there were limits. Hand drafting took a great deal of time, high quality reproductions were difficult to produce and stacks of paper and trace piled higher and higher.

Then came CADD.

Computer Aided Drafting and Design brought the AEC field into the computer age, promising faster, more reproducible work which could be produced in less time. CADD slowly grew to include three dimensional computer models and renderings. But there were limits. For all it's sophistication, it could easily be fudged, it wasn't very smart and proper three dimensional modeling for spatial coordination was time consuming and not very effective.

Now there is BIM.

Building Information Modeling has taken CADD to the next level. Instead of drawing lines that represent walls, you select a wall tool and in one quick stroke model the wall in three dimensions, with built in information such as layers of gypsum wallboard, brick, air spaces, structural support type, fire ratings, acoustical qualities, wall types and many more. Coordination within a project discipline has been brought to a new level, which coordination between disciplines going even farther when models are linked. Many modeling programs, such as Revit, can even be linked with software designed for specification writing. BIM has its limits, but right now, it is the leading edge in the AEC world.