Financial Ramifications of BIM Projects and the AIA E202 Document

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is very powerful, but it does come with a price.  Higher levels of model development mean more time involved in creating that detail, and someone has to pay for that time.

The AIA Document E202 (by the American Institute of Architects) is the Building Information Modeling Protocol Exhibit and assigns the specific responsibility for the various project team members in developing model elements to specific levels of development for project phases.  This contract document is extremely important in legally determining how the model is developed and who is responsible for different parts of the BIM file.  This document is not to be taken lightly and has dramatic impact on both the profitability of the project and liability of the project team members.

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Autodesk Supports Mac Users

 

Autodesk is now providing official support for Macintosh® users for some products.

If you are running Boot Camp on your Apple, Autodesk is now officially supporting the following BIM products in Boot Camp; Revit Architecture, Revit Structure, and Revit MEP, along with AutoCAD, Inventor, and 3ds Max.  I could not find where they state whether AutoCAD Architecture or AutoCAD MEP is supported, nor what software versions are supported.

Autodesk is also offering some products that natively support Mac OSX, including Combustion, Maya, and Mudbox.

Many users have been running Revit with Boot Camp anyway, but now they will be able to receive official support from Autodesk.  The next step for Autodesk is to make the Revit products be run natively on Mac computers so that they do not need to use Boot Camp.

You can learn more about Autodesk supporting Macs at http://usa.autodesk.com/products/mac-compatible-products.

Revit View Naming

Revit allows you to name views whatever you desire within a project.  This can be beneficial and aid in your workflow process, or it can be detrimental to your productivity.  It is important that views be named for easy retrieval and purpose definition, especially on larger projects.  Larger projects can have hundreds of views when the drafting views for details are included in the overall quantity.  Without an effective view naming process, a user can easily lose a great deal of time searching for the correct view.  When multiple users work on the same project, the impact to productivity is compounded.

The last thing users should be doing is naming views without any standards.

AutoCAD Architecture 2010 Xref Wall Cleanup Finally Fixed!

 

Autodesk has finally fixed a major wall cleanup issue between mirrored xreferenced drawings in AutoCAD Architecture!

Cleanup between overlapping walls in different xreferenced drawings was introduced several releases ago in AutoCAD Architecture (Architectural Desktop name at that time).  As they continued to improve the feature, walls still had problems cleaning up properly when the xref was mirrored.  If an existing xref was copied and mirrored, the mirrored version would have gaps in similar locations as the first instance of the xref.  If an xref was brought in and mirrored (without being a copy of another xref), then the xref would not cleanup at all.  Either way, walls in mirrored xrefs would not cleanup correctly with walls in other xrefs.

BIM Required in Wisconsin for State Projects

Effective July 1^st, 2009 the Wisconsin Department of Administration Division of State Facilities is now requiring Building Information Modeling (BIM) be used on larger state projects.

Revit Family Level of Detail

The level of detail that goes into families in Revit is very important and must be thoughtfully considered when using families in projects.  The level of detail must be balanced to get the achieved results of the model, but not too much detail to bog down the model.  A family that has a great deal of 3D modeled detail can greatly affect the speed of the model and bloat the model unnecessarily.  A model that uses families with very little detail creates more work in developing sections and elevations and will not give good renderings or walkthroughs.

To BIM or Not to BIM

If you are part of the AEC community, you are probably at least familiar with the term “BIM” as it is rare to receive an AEC-related magazine or newsletter that does not talk about BIM.  This is typically an acronym for “Building Information Modeling” as it relates to the design of a building and its components.  Autodesk and other software packages, along with industry experts, tout the advantages of using BIM on your design projects.  A big question, though, is whether you should use BIM for every project.

Hello AEC World!

This blog is directed toward utilizing technology primarily in the architectural design community, along with the engineering and construction fields.  Technology can dramatically affect our industry and this blog looks at methods to make technology affect us in a positive manner.  Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a very important part of technology in architectural and this blog will often discuss BIM and its application.

Thanks for joining me in this ever-changing world of technology in architecture.