B3 - Group C - Brennan Connolly

The Potential Future Advantages of BIM and Revit

              From the time I first heard about BIM in my senior year of high school 5 years ago, it has grown and improved by leaps and bounds. It still has growing left to do but right now it has changed the industry for the better. One of the main benefits of BIM is that it’s finished product is typically a 3D model of the design. A model that is well done will show the different materials and provide enough detail that will give the viewer an accurate look at what the structure will look like after construction is complete. The model is an attractive way for the owner to view the building, and how it looks in its surroundings, before construction starts. In the future, models will likely become more detailed and easier to design.

              One of the other benefits of BIM right now is that in multi-disciplinary projects, BIM programs can detect where clashes occur and point them out to the user. In the future and with more advancements in AI, I foresee the program itself being able to fix these clashes in reasonable methods. For example, if a duct is running through a pipe maybe the BIM program can fix the issue by rerouting the duct around the pipe while also avoiding walls and other obstacles. This will increase productivity amongdesigners as they will not need to spend time performing menial tasks.

              Jeff Yoders from the Building Design and Construction network anticipates that designers will be able to model energy performance quickly and easily. (Yoders, 2014) He discusses how Autodesk is coming out with plugins for their software that allow you to analyze the energy performance of your building. Energy performance analysis could allow designers to create the most efficient building given a certain budget. This could improve the push towards environmentally friendly and LEED certified buildings. There is also potential for AI to recognize what components are hurting the building’s energy efficiency and report those components to the designer similar to how clash detection works.

Works Cited

Yoders, J. (2014, December 23). 5 tech trends transforming BIM/VDC. Retrieved from Building Design and Construction Network: https://www.bdcnetwork.com/5-tech-trends-transforming-bimvdc

Responses

Maria - I liked your perspective on the file size of BIM models. Autodesk and other software companies will definitely have to tackle that issue if they want BIM to overtake AutoCAD and other drafting programs. I have used BIM programs that take a while to open file sizes and it's tough to say whether file sizes need to shrink or computer processors need to increase in capability.

Alexander - Your post sums up the challenges to fully implementing BIM in the construction industry well. However, companies are implementing BIM just as they would any other new process in their businesses, slowly and carefully. Design firms are teaching small groups of employees BIM and hoping that they will then be able to teach others and so on. So when you say that there is no consensus on how to implement BIM, I think you should reflect on how each individual firm will implement it.

Nick - I think your spot on with your analysis of the BIM program software updates being a major issue with its implementation today. The fact that smaller companies need to keep updating to a new software every year practically makes any file over 3 years old ancient. One solution to this problem would be if software companies released old versions of their program (maybe like 5 years old) to the public for free that way at least the older files can be opened with minimal hassle.