Monday 27 May 2013

Why you should be moving to BIM

There is a a lot of hesitation in the AEC industry at the moment about making
the move over to BIM. If you are confused, scared or unsure about the issue,
this post, by Kate Morrical of Autodesk's amazing "Line/Shape/Space" page should help explain why you don't want to be left behind!



Think you have good excuses for not trying Building Information Modeling (BIM) yet? I’ve heard them all: “It’s too hard.” “It’s too expensive.” “I don’t need it.” But those are just excuses, not reasons. In fact, I bet you’re more ready than you think you are. Here are five reasons why.


1. You Already Think in BIM
You might not know it, but you already use BIM—at least the “building information” part. When you’re designing a building, you don’t think in 2D lines. You think in real-world objects—walls, windows, doors, floors. You know how they fit together, what their relationships should be, what elements support other elements.


2. BIM Improves Coordination
In any building industry—architecture, engineering, construction—you need to be able to understand what’s going on in three dimensions. If you move a wall in a plan, you need to know what that does to your elevations. If you change the size of your floor beams, you need to know how that affects your sections. BIM helps you manage that, with live sections and elevations that instantly reflect changes in other views. 


3. BIM Takes Care of the Details
In addition to the live section coordination, BIM also helps you with the housekeeping tasks for keeping a drawing set tidy. Need to change a detail number? No problem: Just change it on the sheet, and every reference is automatically updated. Same if you need to change a sheet number or update a drawing list. (Imagine, no more coordinating sheet indexes!) What if you need to change the scale of a plan or detail? Again, no problem! Simply choose your scale from the list, and all your annotations (notes, dimensions, fill patterns) will automatically adjust to the correct size.


4. BIM is Good for Business
BIM is not new technology anymore. In fact, Revit software has more than ten years’ worth of history (although I’m not sure you’d recognize the earliest versions compared to today’s software).
5. BIM is an Investment Worth Making
Make no mistake: Transitioning to a BIM workflow is an investment, both in terms of time and money. Yes, there’s a learning curve. Yes, you will probably spend more time on your model at first than you’re used to. Yes, it costs more than the 2D CAD program you’re using now. But how much is your time worth?
When you divide the cost of software by the number of hours you save with it over the course of a year, you may find that what initially seems like an expensive purchase is actually an excellent value. Especially after your initial purchase, you can probably pay for the software maintenance/subscription with just a few hours of billable time per year. This requires a bit of long-term thinking because you will have to spend time learning before you can save time working, but don’t forget the other ways you save time.

You can find the FULL article here,  titled " 5 Reasons Why You’re Ready for BIM "

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