B3 - Group C - Peter Dannemann

Future Advantages of Revit

One possible future advantage of Revit is incorporating geotechnical surveying collected by drones. Importing the geotechnical data would give the Revit modeler a plethora of information about the immediate surroundings that would allow them to construct the building in accordance to the environment. Using a drone would make the data collection process quick, easy, accurate and cheap, and would not require many people to be involved in the process. The data may need to be interpreted by GIS before it would be ready to import to Revit, but in the new few years I'm sure the world will have figured it out (Snow).

Revit has come a long way since the later 90's and early 20's. Revit started as a tool for architects and has evolved to become a program that is used by architects, MEP engineers, and structural engineers. For large firms that deal with all three disciplines, it is a no brainer to purchase licensing from Revit as it allows for project integration and the ability to check that each design does not conflict with each other. It is likely that in the future, even more applications will be added to Revit such as HVAC, biological modeling for air quality, and compatibility with AutoCAD or Solidworks. These features would allow engineers from every field to work together on the same platform and reach a higher level of understanding of the project as a whole ("The Future of Revit").

The next logical step for the advancement of BIM is responsive environments. The ability to test for structural strength, results of natural disasters, crowd control, and other countless scenarios would be the perfect complement for the already multifaceted programs such as Revit. Running simulations in Revit would allow the project designers to see exactly how their building environments would react in worst case scenarios and would allow them to alter their designs to make them as safe and well designed as possible. Seeing how the entire project functions as a whole will be very necessary as people often cannot understand how work from other disciplines with effect their own work, and with a simulation everyone will be able to see the effects in real time (Davis).

Works Cited

Davis, Daniel. "What’s Next for Autodesk Is What’s Next for Architects." Architect. N.p., 17 Dec. 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2017. <http://www.architectmagazine.com/technology/whats-next-for-autodesk-is-whats-next-for-architects_o>.

Snow, Colin. "The Truth About Drones in Mapping and Surveying." The Business of Drones. SUAS News, 02 Aug. 2016. Web. 26 Jan. 2017. <https://www.suasnews.com/2016/07/truth-drones-mapping-surveying/>.

"The Future of Revit." YouTube. CADLearning, 18 May 2016. Web. 26 Jan. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v>.

Comments

Drew Hovey- Drew - I agree the legal and technical issues that may come to the surface from the rise of BIM may lead to a lot of problems. A lot of companies are implementing strict intellectual property policies, and with people collaborating on a large BIM project, this may lead to people using ideas from the building in the future unknowingly and being reprimanded for it. In a scenario like this it will hard to tell what kind of action will be taken, but it could certainly end in innocent people being arrested.

Brandon Mengel - Brandon - Your comment on the lack of processing power of the common computer creating issues in BIM software really resonated with me. When I was trying to render a PDF from Revit for our first assignment I had a lot of difficulty and I suspect the slow rendering speed was due to the computer's low processing power. Your point on largescale projects becoming too large to handle could definitely hold true. With more and more disciplines being added to Revit (MEP, structural, etc.) it is certain that the models will be clustered with data and may end up too filled to function. Certainly backups could be used, but further progress on the project will be at a standstill. It is hard to figure out how to combat this scenario without purchasing supercomputers for the whole staff..

Maria Raggousis - Maria - Your points on the conservative nature of the construction field getting in the way of BIM implementation made a lot of sense to me. Often the people at the top of the totem pole have quite a few years of experience under their belt and may not be willing or interested in learning how to use new technology. This makes it very difficult for full technological implementation under their management and definitely does not provide a conducive environment for someone eager to learn as much as possible about BIM.