B2 -Group D - Week 2 – Samuel Kim

B2: BIM for Architects and Engineers

BIM (Building Information Modeling) is a shared digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of any built project including buildings, bridges, roads, etc. The BIM was first practiced in 1970s and 1980s as Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) and Boundary Representation (BREP). These applications allowed to create, combine, and intersect primitive shapes to represent architecture as penetrations and subtractions. Now, there are more advanced BIM applications like Revit, ArchiCAD, Digital Project, and CodeBook that can do much more than CSG or BREP.

There are many benefits of using BIM in the construction industry. They benefit engineers and architects by allowing virtual walk through of construction models, explore structural components and details, and identify any potential design, construction or operational issues. Unlike 2D CAD drawings, if you make a revision in an element of a 3D BIM model, all of the views and details in the model automatically updates accordingly. This feature saves time and eliminates possibilities of errors. BIM also allows to effectively collaborate a design with all parties such as design professionals, suppliers, contractors and clients. With all of these benefits, utilization of BIM with construction projects became crucial to engineers and architects.

BIM is quickly spreading globally. The use of BIM in the construction and engineering industry has significantly increased over the past few years. The number of BIM files stored on the Aconex collaboration platform (The largest online project collaboration platform) in 2009 was fewer than 10,000 models. However, the number of BIM files increased to 270,000 models in 2013 which is a 2700% increase. Even the size of average BIM file had changed. In 2009, average BIM model was around 30MB and it has almost doubled to 54MB in 2013.

BIM is a fairly new subject for me at this time of my career in construction. With this blogger writing, I found out how much BIM is imperative to construction projects. I suspect that BIM will further advance and widely be used globally in the future. This insight really encourages me to study BIM to develop my career.

 

Resources:

http://www.archdaily.com/302490/a-brief-history-of-bim

https://goulddesigninc.wordpress.com/2014/03/03/6-powerful-advantages-of-bim/

https://www.aconex.com/what-is-BIM

Comments:

Andy Dinh

The financial benefit of BIM is well described in your post. I suspect that this is one of most concerned areas for construction companies but somehow I wasn’t able to think of it while I was writing my blog post. By utilizing BIM, building materials can be more accurately measured and counted therefore decreasing time to plan out a project and increasing the efficiency of planning for the project. This plays a huge role to save time and money.

 

Peter Dannemann

I liked how you stressed the owner’s interaction with the project using BIM. As you mentioned in your post, using BIM helps to do economic analysis and risk management more clearly and effectively. It will help to increase the owner’s understanding of the project, which can increase owner’s input to the project and satisfy both provider and the owner. I also thought that BIM hand book shows some useful information about BIM. It brings together most of the information about BIM, it’s history, and its potential use.

 

Maria Raggousis

Being able to use sane file across different applications allows to engineers and architects work more efficiently. For example, when I was making a 3D model for my structural design course, it was very helpful to convert my existing sketch up model to a CAD 3D model. This saved a ton of time. As you mentioned that interoperability is extremely important from the architect to all of the engineering departments, I also think that interoperability plays an crucial role in the construction industry.