Archive for the ‘Revit’ Category
Posted on June 9, 2008 - by Pete
BIM – Costs and Benefits
I just finished reading the Spring 2008 edition of the Journal of Building Information Modeling (JBIM). This is a publication of the National BIM Standard and the National Institute of Building Sciences. There was some really interesting information in there. One of the first things I noticed was an advertisement by the US National CAD Standard (www.nationalcadstandard.org) detailing benefits of utilizing their standards. I wonder how many different “National Cad Standards” are out there. I know AIA has some, NSPE has some, etc. Just think how much easier life would be if we only had one “Standard”. Oh well, that is for a future utopian world to figure out.
One point that David Harris, President of NIBS makes that I found thought provoking is that the typical building contains about 10,000 generic products ranging from screws to cooling towers. Integrating all of these products into systems and modeling the performance of the systems within the overall building can seem pretty daunting. It is daunting, but it is also doable and will have immeasurable benefits to building owners and users.
Posted on June 5, 2008 - by Pete
LEED meets BIM
Those of us who keep abreast of changes in the construction industry have been tracking two major trends over the last year or two. One has been the move of “Green Building” from the fringes of the industry into the mainstream. While not every project is going for US Green Building Council (USGBC) LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Certification, most of BJG’s clients are, at a minimum, talking about what it would take to get their project “Certified”. Once that conversation starts, the entire project team can, as a group, can make rational decisions as to whether the LEED Certification effort is economically or otherwise justifiable.
At BJG, we discovered that we can use BIM for our REVIT model, to help us determine appropriate strategies for achieving Green Design or LEED Certification. Through proper manipulation of the model, we can provide real time feedback on the cost and payback period of a variety of potential LEED Strategies including water use, insulation efficiency, glazing performance, etc.
When we decided to put the effort into moving into the BIM world, we hoped to be able to provide better coordinated drawings; calculate material quantities and budget pricing; generate construction schedules; and provide real time visual analysis of changes to the design program. Once we started down this path however, it occurred to us that we could also calculate recycled material content, water use, storm water runoff and perform energy analysis. Once the right data is associated to the model, the model will tell us what the cost to increase roof insulation would be and what the energy savings from the change will be. We are really excited by this combination of what we thought were two separate initiatives into a coordinated effort to improve our design and the opportunity it has provided us.
Posted on June 1, 2008 - by Elliott
The Future of Collaboration
What is the future of A/E/C collaboration? It very well might be Autodesk’s Freewheel.
Freewheel uses a small bit of embeddable javascript to render a dwf file. I simply upload a dwf file to our website, and then copied and pasted code from the Freewheel website. Freewheel will then render the dwf (2D or 3D) on our website. In this test case, I uploaded a complicated column/joist/girder/beam connection.
