Extending BIM into Construction, and A Viewpoint from Autodesk

AECbytes starts this month with a new issue of Tips and Tricks featuring three tutorials: Hiding Edges During Intersection in SketchUp, Autodesk Revit View Templates, and Making a Custom ArchiCAD Door Panel. Hope you find them useful.

This month's "Building the Future" article looks at an estimating solution for construction, Visual Estimating, that works directly with a BIM model output from Revit or Autodesk Architectural Desktop, demonstrating first-hand how the use of BIM can bring productivity and efficiency benefits beyond the design phase in downstream construction processes. Developed by a start-up company, Innovaya, Visual Estimating makes a smart connection between BIM and the leading estimating application in the construction industry, Sage Timberline Office Estimating, showing us that we may not need to create a separate construction model after all to use BIM in the post-design phase.

And finally, this month's Viewpoint series features an article entitled "The BIM Difference" by Jay Bhatt, VP of Autodesk's Building Solutions Division. He suggests that the real barrier to more widespread BIM adoption is nothing more than a new idea replacing and transforming old paradigms, similar to how almost every industry, when faced with a true innovation, struggles through a period where it tries to force the new and different to conform to the old and comfortable. But the AEC industry is beginning to understand that BIM is more than just a new phrase for old model-based design ideas, and those companies that are willing to open their eyes to its possibilities are the ones who will lead the industry into a productive and profitable future.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > March 2006