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CHAPTER 1 Understanding BiM: FroM the Basics to advanced realities
Coordination with BIM is now required for many buildings to come into existence. Consider
a complex project such as Daniel Libeskind’s recently completed Denver Art Museum and its
extreme geometric configuration (Figure 1.1). Integrating the mechanical and structural systems
into a 3D model is essential to completing a building of this complexity. Exact spatial organiza-
tion of structural members could be modeled, which in turn led to fewer field errors and fewer
requests for information. In addition, parts could be sent directly to fabrication from the model,
eliminating the need for 2D drawings entirely.
Let’s not leave out some of the more pleasurable aspects of BIM that go beyond all the tech-
nical, economic, and ecological benefits. With a 3D model, you can expect to see changes in
how you interact with your team and your clients and in the way you produce presentations.
No longer are you stuck with using 2D drawings or outsourcing to create perspective images.
You’ll find yourself working with your team in close quarters, sharing a model, and exploring
it together. With your clients, you can now take them through the building, in full 3D, from the
beginning. The experience of working with and visualizing 3D space can’t be overemphasized,
and people enjoy it immensely. In the BIM era, 3D experience is the norm, not the exception.
BIM and Process Change
When moving to a BIM work environment, you’ll experience a change in process and workflow.
Perhaps the most immediate and obvious difference is that a traditional CAD system uses many
separate files to document a building, whereas a BIM project typically has only one file. With
CAD, all the separate files are created individually and have no intelligent connection between
them. Each drawing represents a separate piece of work to be managed and updated throughout
the design process. With such an unwieldy process, the possibility of uncoordinated data, and
thus errors, is very high. The manual change management enforced by CAD is a tedious and
error-prone process that requires diligent project management and lots of red lines. BIM pro-
vides a different approach to the problem: rather than many files, you work with one file. With
BIM, all information is consolidated and networked together for you, and the resulting draw-
ings all relate back to a single underlying database, guaranteeing an internally consistent model.
Figure 1.1
BIM makes it
possible to build
more complex
buildings with
fewer errors.
Denver Art Museum, Daniel Libeskind
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