Following on from:
BIM for Beginners – what is BIM
BIM for Beginners – A simple BIM example and
BIM for Beginners – Client Benefits
This fourth post poses the question: So is BIM just software then?
The basic answer is no, BIM shouldn’t be tied to a specific ‘brand’ of software. Although you’ll need software that supports BIM (more of that below); you need to think of BIM as a ‘way of working’; a method of collaboratively sharing and exchanging information between architects, engineers, sub-contractor,contractors, owners, occupiers (to name only a few) from the buildings inception through to its possible demolition.
The key players in the BIM world in terms of software are listed below (I appreciate there are others and I’m only looking at the ‘key players’ and as I’m an architect I’m concentrating on the architectural variety):
And the software we use: VectorWorks Architect
It’s important to emphasise that all of the above are ‘BIM’ software and the game-changer that allowed programmers to represent BIM elements in a software language that all of the software could exchange was the creation of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC’s). If you’re interested in reading more or more depth on Industry Foundation Classes then
check out the Wikipedia Page on IFC
Again a very succinct and short post on BIM, I would love to hear from you with examples to include in the next post on BIM; simply CONTACT ME with an image and a paragraph of text together with credit details and I’ll include with a link back to you.
Any omissions or comments, please let me know…
Hi Mark, let us know if you would like us to send you a sample BIM project for your next post
Definitely, like that idea of architects model being using by visualiser. Who knows if things pick up we could do some work together!