Explaining why BIM is not ONE program

[KPirela]

So I'm looking for some assistance from all of you. As the office "Revit Guru", I have spent the last few years leading the charge on BIM. As we are all aware, it is often difficult to convey to non-users (aka management) that BIM is much more than just one program. We have developed and become comfortable with our facilities engineering workflows by combining Revit for the systems models and Autocad for the single line documentation. It has taken well over two years to get to this point, and everyone has been pleased with the end results. I've been tasked by the higher ups to bring the process engineering "on board". My question is this....how have you explained/sold that Revit is not a "one stop shop" for BIM model generation? Obviously there are limitations in the program, and there are additional platforms (Plant) that are better suited for the process systems. We're a small firm with limited resources, and only one other beginner Revit operator. Weighing the cost of additional software vs the time it would take me to develop all new custom content to only sort of get the desired output seems clear to me. But I'd appreciate real world input or articles I may not have come across in my searches. I can't be the only one in this situation.

[dgorsman]

That really depends on what your typical job is. For me, most plant facilities (wellsites, compression, sweetening, gas-to-liquids, and so on) would be better done in a product focused specifically to that field. Revit is designed for commercial building design; while there is some overlap (primarily in the structural and building areas) it can be sorely lacking in critical areas.

The typical clients for those projects are long invested in either AutoCAD products like AutoFLOW, AutoPLANT, and/or CADWorx, or the "big daddy" programs like PDMS or SmartPlant, and are expecting deliverables in either those formats or at least workable with them. Trying to shoehorn a Revit deliverable in there, no matter how "BIM" it is, is going to be somewhere between difficult and a non-starter.

[Monkey With No Name]

I'm surprised other more clever BIM people than me haven't replied so what I say maybe totally missing the point. I'm purely from a CAD draughting background that has learnt Revit and therefore the BIM person (which isn't the way it should be), but I keep researching it as I can see benefits to my job and the company as a whole.

BIM is not any program, BIM is a process. It is about collaboration & data sharing. If the engineer has designed his pipework in his engineering software & you are then modelling it again in Revit, or you are modelling a building in Revit & the mechanical engineer is modelling it again in his heat load calculation software, you are not collaborating efficiently. You are doing stuff twice.

You need to use the right piece of software for each job in the concept, design, build, manage part of the project, and they should all be able to share their information with each other.

I found this quite interesting -

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/bimis...an-aristizabal