BUILDING INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

UK BIM Standard: What next?

The AEC (UK) BIM Standard is a practical, workable standard for any company that has invested in Revit, or Bentley Architecture, or any other BIM software of choice, and has stopped to ask “Now what?”

Nigel writes about AEC for AEC magazine...

by Nigel Davies, 27th of January 2010

HOK BIM Solutions Wiki

[HOK] decided to call it ‘HOK BIM Solutions” as it is for our HOK buildingSMART BIM community and we want to primarily demonstrate answers to issues we face in our daily work. Postings will be by HOK and invited guests, viewing is by anybody inside and outside HOK.

23rd of December 2009

Bentley Architecture V8i Review

Product Summary
Bentley Architecture V8i is Bentley’s BIM application for architectural design that is part of a large integrated multi-disciplinary set of building solutions for design, analysis, and collaboration, built on the new MicroStation V8i platform.

Pros: Inherits all the power and comprehensiveness of MicroStation's CAD platform in solid and surface modeling, documentation, rendering, and animation; federated database approach lends itself much more easily and efficiently to distributed work processes and large projects; new release includes better conceptual design and new space planning capabilities; views are now dynamic, ensuring better drawing coordination; new display styles allow high-quality presentation graphics to be easily created; native support of Rhino and SketchUp files with live links adds to long list of supported formats; new Luxology rendering engine allows high-end renderings and animations to be created within the application.

Cons: Continues to remain a very complex application with a steep learning curve; quality of the documentation is poor, making it even more difficult to learn the application; new dynamic views adds an additional layer of complexity with more constructs to set up and work with; distributed file structure makes project organization more difficult to set up and manage

by Lachmi Khemlani, 20th of November 2009

BIM in the Parametric World

Or should that be parametrics in the BIM world?

This presentation was given by Nigel at the CAD Manager's Forum "Introduction to Generative Components" evening 21 October 2009.

Nigel discussed the use of parametrics to provide pre- and post-rationalisation of architectural and structural form and how that fits into the wider picture of Building Information Modelling and Integrated Project Delivery (or collaborative working as it used to be called).

The presentation aimed to raise the awareness of the importance of procedural approaches and effective data management strategies to reduce the "haystack" of unnecessary, uncoordinated and unmanaged information. Sometimes we don't need to "bale and stack" our project data, we need a flamethrower to incinerate all the waste!

by Nigel Davies, 23rd of October 2009

Bentley Architecture Dataset Overview

Datasets add the ‘I' to ‘BIM', i.e. the Information to Building Information Modeling. They power the Bentley Architecture engine and without datasets, the application is not able to create a building information model and to generate drawings, rendered images and animations, reports, schedules, analysis data and other output. All such outputs depend on different inputs from the datasets. Therefore, it is vital to understand the different dataset components and their interactions, relationships, and dependencies, and how they affect the BIM as well as outputs from the BIM.

Note: to open or download this file, you must be:

1. a Be Communities member
2. signed in to Be Communities
3. a member of the Bentley BIM Solutions community

by Bentley Systems, 21st of July 2009

BIM Truth or Dare FAQ

The CAD Managers Forum met in March to discuss Building Information Modelling, in particular relation to the implementation of technology and the role of the CAD Manager. The following is a summary of the topics discussed and conclusions reached. For ease of presentation it has been formatted as a list of FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)...

1st of May 2009

How Bentley Structural Sections work

Bentley Structural allows you to place a wide range of structural members. The exact size and shape of these members is defined through an external “structural shapes” file in XML (Extensible Markup Language) format...

22nd of October 2008

BIM Elements eSeminars

View Bentley's eSeminars to learn more about BIM and how it can fit into your design, engineering, analysis, construction, and operations needs.

by Bentley Systems, 4th of March 2008

Managing BIM Technology in the Building Industry

This Viewpoint article by Chuck Eastman, Paul Teicholz, Rafael Sacks and Kathleen Liston, offers a perspective on emerging positions such as BIM Specialist, BIM Champion, BIM Administrator, 4D Specialist, and Manager of Virtual Design and Construction and suggests their roles and responsibilities at the corporate and project levels within owner organizations and the AEC firms that serve them. It builds upon the authors' reflections as co-authors of the "BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers, and Contractors," published by Wiley and available in the middle of February, 2008.

by AECbytes, 19th of February 2008

Book of the Month: BIG BIM little bim

Finith A. Jernigan's "BIG BIM little bim" is available from the EatyourCAD bookshop. Nigel looks at whether it gives big or little value...

1st of February 2008