Sustainable Design, and a Book Review of the "BIM Handbook"

AECbytes starts out this month with a guest feature entitled "Interoperability and Sustainable Design" by Sid Thoo, an Australian architect with an interest in energy efficient building design, BIM technology and information management in architectural practice, who previously authored "An Introduction to Ecotect" for AECbytes. In the recent wake of Autodesk’s acquisitions of Ecotect and Green Building Studio, and events such as the cooperative agreement announced between Autodesk and Bentley Systems, this article takes a timely look at how interoperability relates to green building design, and how innovation in the way we communicate as building design professionals will help us all design more sustainable buildings.

This will be followed by a review of the book "BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors" published by Wiley earlier this year. Authored by a team of leading academics and researchers including Chuck Eastman, Paul Teicholz, Rafael Sacks, and Kathleen Liston, this book aims to provide an in-depth understanding of BIM technologies, the business and organizational issues associated with its implementation, and the advantages that effective use of BIM can provide to all members of a project team. The review will provide an overview of the book and explore how well it meets its intended goals.

The Tips and Tricks section this month features a tutorial on creating an occupancy load tag in Revit Architecture that is parametric, making room schedules easier. It also shows how to effectively utilize shared parameters, which provide additional flexibility in creating custom parameters for Revit objects that can be scheduled within the project. 

Thank you for your interest, and do continue to check out both the AECbytes Blog for reader comments and the VendorHub to get information about the technology providers in AEC.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > August 2008