BIM (Building Information Modelling)

joelk2

joelk2

joelk2

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howdy chaps,

so my company being a bit slow want to get on board with BIM, they've know about it for years but due to budgets and useless managers have decided that now is the time they should do it.

as the cad guy in the office ive been tasked with finding out the best courses and routes to take to be BIM compliant.

we have products which need to be useable within the revit software and we use autocad and inventor.

we are getting the revit software and being put on the revit essentials training which to my understanding doesnt cover the part about making revit families and the likes.

does anyone have any experience with this or has anyone gone through similar? what are the best courses to take?
 
Hey man,

I am also our CAD guy, and we have had to do the same.

There's really no such thing as BIM compliant unless you are the contractor for a government job, in which case you'll need to be using a BIM software to map out your project by 2016. Which industry do you work in? I'm in HVAC.

The construction industry is still, in general, using Revit 2013 for all its projects, which I found out after making a whole load of models in 2015, so please don't make the same mistake as me! You can't save Revit models as older formats, so anything done in 2015 is basically lost to the industry.

Forget everything you've ever learned about CAD modelling. Revit is parametric and a complete mind ****. Being able to use AutoCAD has little to know bearing on your skills in Revit, so be prepared to have your mind blown. I'm so confused by it all the time.

I did a two day course on modelling, probably similar to what you'll be doing. Mine did cover families because I specifically requested it. We sell products; we don't build buildings, so being able to model them is only partially relevant. If you're in the same situation, request that the training is more family focused. Having said that, it's very important to know how the model will go into and interact with the building, so don't ignore that side of it completely.

To be honest, I have no idea where our course came from. We use a company called Benchmark for our CAD software, and they recommended a chap to us.

Hopefully that'll help a bit. As with all this sort of thing, you just really need to dive in and see how it goes. Good luck!
 
lol, I always find it amusing when companies want to be "on board with BIM" but don't really understand what it's about or how they plan to integrate BIM into the workload. The main mistake companies make is thinking BIM is a tool you use, it's not. BIM is a way of working, of better information modeling and information management to ultimately streamline processes, improve delivery, reduce costs.

Start by working out what relevance BIM has to your operation, how will it be used, what will the benefits be etc.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
Hey man,

I am also our CAD guy, and we have had to do the same.

There's really no such thing as BIM compliant unless you are the contractor for a government job, in which case you'll need to be using a BIM software to map out your project by 2016. Which industry do you work in? I'm in HVAC.

The construction industry is still, in general, using Revit 2013 for all its projects, which I found out after making a whole load of models in 2015, so please don't make the same mistake as me! You can't save Revit models as older formats, so anything done in 2015 is basically lost to the industry.

Forget everything you've ever learned about CAD modelling. Revit is parametric and a complete mind ****. Being able to use AutoCAD has little to know bearing on your skills in Revit, so be prepared to have your mind blown. I'm so confused by it all the time.

I did a two day course on modelling, probably similar to what you'll be doing. Mine did cover families because I specifically requested it. We sell products; we don't build buildings, so being able to model them is only partially relevant. If you're in the same situation, request that the training is more family focused. Having said that, it's very important to know how the model will go into and interact with the building, so don't ignore that side of it completely.

To be honest, I have no idea where our course came from. We use a company called Benchmark for our CAD software, and they recommended a chap to us.

Hopefully that'll help a bit. As with all this sort of thing, you just really need to dive in and see how it goes. Good luck!
Click to expand...


thanks that does help somewhat.

im in the medical equipment sector so its bolting directly to the ceiling or the walls to start with and then we will move onto our mobile products which are just wheeled in.

do you build your families within revit itself?

i have some background in other types of modeling, i used to model bridges using software designed for steel frame buildings.

we do a lot of work with government based jobs which is why they are such a big panic and rush now. including writing into our tenders that we are bim compliant as of a specific date (they have decided on the revit essentials course and are assuming we'll be fully up to speed as soon as we've done that) haha
 
Windle said:
lol, I always find it amusing when companies want to be "on board with BIM" but don't really understand what it's about or how they plan to integrate BIM into the workload. The main mistake companies make is thinking BIM is a tool you use, it's not. BIM is a way of working, of better information modeling and information management to ultimately streamline processes, improve delivery, reduce costs.

Start by working out what relevance BIM has to your operation, how will it be used, what will the benefits be etc.
Click to expand...

BIM has quite a lot of relevance to my industry sector as we work on all the major hospitals/care homes/nursing homes/schools. all government jobs.

the companies views on BIM is that we can be specced on jobs right from the get go if our products has all the BIM bits available.

theyve not included me in any of the decision making apart from an email saying you are going on the essentials course. when i looked into that i noticed it didnt cover the creating of families.
 
joelk2 said:
BIM has quite a lot of relevance to my industry sector as we work on all the major hospitals/care homes/nursing homes/schools. all government jobs.

the companies views on BIM is that we can be specced on jobs right from the get go if our products has all the BIM bits available.

theyve not included me in any of the decision making apart from an email saying you are going on the essentials course. when i looked into that i noticed it didnt cover the creating of families.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a reasonable approach. There's lots of information available on http://www.bimtaskgroup.org including things like this supplement to Construction News which has some interesting reads on how some of the big players have approached BIM. Atkins for example is at Level One compliance worldwide. http://www.bimtaskgroup.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/BIM-2014.pdf
 
Will be interesting to see how my organisation (public sector client) implements BIM. Right now we can't even get our online collaboration tools and information systems to work smoothly so everyone just avoids it at every opportunity.

I think we have about one pilot civils project lined up.
 
Very nice! I can see how it makes a lot of sense when you have a mix of structural and M&E. Actually, our pilot project is a pumping station. Not quite as grand as the panama canal, but a good starting point nonetheless :p
 
Sunbed said:
Very nice! I can see how it makes a lot of sense when you have a mix of structural and M&E. Actually, our pilot project is a pumping station. Not quite as grand as the panama canal, but a good starting point nonetheless :p
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Aha yes, panama canal takes some beating!

Who do you work for out of interest? We probably know your company in some form.
 
Sunbed said:
I work for the EA - flood defences. I'm guessing SEPA is probably one of your clients?
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Yep, although we tend to liaise with them rather than work for them. We deliver flood risk assessments/optioneering etc for people like Network Rail etc and then handle the link between them and SEPA/local authorities for CAR assessments/approval.

EA are also one of our clients although in my part of the business it's primarily asset data capture projects (Culvert/Discharge surveys, topographic surveys etc). Our head office is actually in Manchester (Heywood).
 
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