Static on an AM or FM radio station is never a pleasant
thing to hear. There are some things that come through, and other things that
drop out. It can be nerve-racking to have to listen to a channel that isn’t ‘quite’
tuned in. In Architecture, the same type of static used to occur often prior to
the advent of tools such as BIM.
As an Architect, one of the problems that has been most
difficult to overcome has been that often, clients are not trained to be able
to understand the floor plans, sections, and elevations of the work that will
be completed for their house, building or tenant improvement. This inability is
frustrating because the client is spending a lot of money on something that
they may or may not be able to understand. Until recently, the only way for the
Architect to be able to surpass the problems that this lack has caused is
through meticulously spending hours on the creation of perspective drawings
which would ‘place’ the client into a single rendered image of the building.
This process could take hours, and was still limited by the skill of the
architect in being able to communicate the information, until recently.
BIM allows the Architect the opportunity to not only
instantaneously show a client the nature of his or her design. It also
facilitates the Architect’s capabilities of being able to coordinate vast sums
of information with those of other professionals, automatically generates
take-off lists helpful in completing budgets, and greatly diminishes the
possibility of errors in the generating of construction documents. For ‘green’
building, simulating climatic and environmental effects gives an added
relevance to BIM.
So, what is BIM? BIM is an acronym that stands for Building
Information Modeling. First, we start with the term ‘Building’ – we use the
term building related to architecture, but the term can be a bit limiting,
because the use of BIM can be for more than buildings. Essentially, anything
that can be built can be designed using BIM. The ‘Information’ part of the
acronym refers to any part of the building that may be constructed or relevant
to the building’s realization, from materials to textures to a variety of
features, including costs and website locations. Each aspect of any element
that is in a building can be included. ‘Modeling’ refers to the creation of a
prototype in three dimensions. Now, if we combine each of the terms, we can
arrive at an understanding of the nature of what BIM is.
Essentially, it is the construction of a building virtually in
the computer in such a way that any aspect of the building can be readily
observed and changed in a way that corresponds to reality; since this is
happening in real time in a computer, one has the advantage of being able to
make lists, charts, and analyses of the building prior to it being built so
that its function in a variety of simulated environments can be determined and
assessed. If a material is used, it can be cataloged and added to an inventory list
so that an almost instantaneous budget can be created and its use in the
creation of the building assessed.
The implications for the use of this tool are enormous, as
we will see in future articles. But here is a primary point of interest for the
designer and his client – the client can easily see the product in three
dimensions, and if changes need to be made in any view at any time, those
changes are instantaneously coordinated with other views all at the same time.
The building model created in the process is actually a
visualization of a database that contains each of the parts of a building.
Therefore, as any part is added, its effects on the rest of the database can be
known and shared. As you can imagine, this increases the possibility of creativity
on the part of the client and the architect, because more combinations of
alternatives can be communicated to the client at a greater speed and with an
ease of communication that, has not been equaled. Collaboration is only one of
the effects of BIM. As we proceed, even more benefits will become evident.
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