beegee
2003-10-27, 01:33 AM
Just caught up with Lachmi Khemlani's latest article in AEC Cadence Tech New #108.
The whole article is worth reading, but a couple of points I thought interesting were :-
Interoperability:
Another significant area of discussion was the polarity between integration and interoperability. Recall that in my cover story "Should We BIM? Pushing the State of the Art in AEC" in the June 2003 issue of CADENCE (www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0603/coverstory0603.html), I posited that the ultimate success of interoperability efforts such as the IFC would depend on how the AEC industry evolves. If the industry continues to be dominated by one or two large companies, they will eventually develop integrated suites of applications around their BIM solutions and interoperability would become less critical; on the other hand, if smaller companies with effective BIM solutions attract a large client base, interoperability would gain in importance as a means to integrate these solutions with third-party applications.
When posed with the integration-versus-interoperability question, all three software vendors expressed their belief in and commitment to both principles. Autodesk did face some flak for not bundling IFC support with its ADT application and making customers rely on a third-party IFC translator instead. When questioned about IFC support for Revit, Autodesk stated that because Revit was still a relatively new product in the early adoption phase, plans for IFC support would be premature. Despite their support for interoperability, all the vendors also emphasized that the internal data structures of their products were proprietary, which means that data cannot be exactly mapped between the three main BIM applications. ( beegee's highlighting )
Legal Aspects:
Apart from the technology, a key topic of discussion was the legal barriers to BIM implementation. Several attendees expressed a fear of litigation in switching to model-based design, as the deliverables are bound to change and the standards for BIM still have to be set. Needless to say, our contract documents have to be rewritten to reflect the new way of designing, constructing, and maintaining buildings using intelligent 3D models rather than 2D CAD drawings.
Who will be the main agent of change to push the model-based approach? There was no clear agreement on this question. Some felt that it would and should be the owners commissioning buildings, particularly long-term ones, since they will be the greatest beneficiaries of BIM, saving costs on design, construction, and operations, all through the building lifecycle. Others disagreed, and felt that the bigger construction companies are going to start working with 3D models and dictate process changes to the other building professionals. In any case, design-build will become more common, instead of the current design-bid-build procedure, which is inefficient as well as quite illogical.
One of the main reasons the building industry is hopelessly behind other industries in technology adoption and efficiency is that there is no single party in charge of managing the entire process from concept to completion. The role and scope of the present-day architect is far removed from the "master builder" of the past; however, the adoption of building information modeling can conceivably create a new role, that of the "information master builder." Whether the architectural profession is smart and savvy enough to step up and take on this critical role depends upon the lead it takes in adopting and implementing BIM technology. The opportunities exist; they just need to be seized. BIM can be implemented on small pilot projects to start with, and the current economic downturn actually presents a great time to provide employees with the necessary training on the new tools.
Food for thought ?
The whole article is worth reading, but a couple of points I thought interesting were :-
Interoperability:
Another significant area of discussion was the polarity between integration and interoperability. Recall that in my cover story "Should We BIM? Pushing the State of the Art in AEC" in the June 2003 issue of CADENCE (www.cadenceweb.com/2003/0603/coverstory0603.html), I posited that the ultimate success of interoperability efforts such as the IFC would depend on how the AEC industry evolves. If the industry continues to be dominated by one or two large companies, they will eventually develop integrated suites of applications around their BIM solutions and interoperability would become less critical; on the other hand, if smaller companies with effective BIM solutions attract a large client base, interoperability would gain in importance as a means to integrate these solutions with third-party applications.
When posed with the integration-versus-interoperability question, all three software vendors expressed their belief in and commitment to both principles. Autodesk did face some flak for not bundling IFC support with its ADT application and making customers rely on a third-party IFC translator instead. When questioned about IFC support for Revit, Autodesk stated that because Revit was still a relatively new product in the early adoption phase, plans for IFC support would be premature. Despite their support for interoperability, all the vendors also emphasized that the internal data structures of their products were proprietary, which means that data cannot be exactly mapped between the three main BIM applications. ( beegee's highlighting )
Legal Aspects:
Apart from the technology, a key topic of discussion was the legal barriers to BIM implementation. Several attendees expressed a fear of litigation in switching to model-based design, as the deliverables are bound to change and the standards for BIM still have to be set. Needless to say, our contract documents have to be rewritten to reflect the new way of designing, constructing, and maintaining buildings using intelligent 3D models rather than 2D CAD drawings.
Who will be the main agent of change to push the model-based approach? There was no clear agreement on this question. Some felt that it would and should be the owners commissioning buildings, particularly long-term ones, since they will be the greatest beneficiaries of BIM, saving costs on design, construction, and operations, all through the building lifecycle. Others disagreed, and felt that the bigger construction companies are going to start working with 3D models and dictate process changes to the other building professionals. In any case, design-build will become more common, instead of the current design-bid-build procedure, which is inefficient as well as quite illogical.
One of the main reasons the building industry is hopelessly behind other industries in technology adoption and efficiency is that there is no single party in charge of managing the entire process from concept to completion. The role and scope of the present-day architect is far removed from the "master builder" of the past; however, the adoption of building information modeling can conceivably create a new role, that of the "information master builder." Whether the architectural profession is smart and savvy enough to step up and take on this critical role depends upon the lead it takes in adopting and implementing BIM technology. The opportunities exist; they just need to be seized. BIM can be implemented on small pilot projects to start with, and the current economic downturn actually presents a great time to provide employees with the necessary training on the new tools.
Food for thought ?