BIM and GIS
My hat is off to everyone who had to work within the BIM (Building Information Modeling) space on a daily basis. Talk about using tools that aren’t refined enough (and this is coming from someone who has worked with GIS applications for 15+ years). It was painful hearing about how many hoops folks have to jump through with BIM and how it affects their workflows (not in a good way).
It has been clear to me with all the emails I’ve received from folks wanting to know more about how I’m approaching BIM and GIS, that there is great interest in the subject. Just about everyone of my clients I’ve talked to about the move to the new company has mentioned BIM as something they want to or are being required to get involved with. I’ll make it my goal in the next year or so to keep everyone informed about how things are going and what I’ve learned about working with BIM and GIS.
I’ve just gotten Revit installed on my desktop and as soon as we can square the ArcGIS Desktop licenses we’ll start working on workflows and interoperability.
We don’t need gatekeepers between BIM and GIS
Whats BIM?
Dawnster: BIM is what has the CAD world so excited. Those I know who work in the space either love it or hate it. I think older “CAD heads” would rather just work in AutoCAD or Microstation, but the newer Gen Y or Z crowd seems to be happy working in it.
Autodesk will be supporting CityGML in the near future so it should be possible to convert your BIMs (with IFCExplorer?) to CityGML and incorporate the models into wider urban models alongside the rest of your GIS data. It’s certainly going to be interesting how building management and GIS will soon be overlapping.
My son is an architect.
He absolutely loves RevIt.
He just got back from a three day charette where they designed a building in real-time with him running the 3D mouse thing and RevIt and the customers sat around the table watching and making changes on the fly. His description of the project is pretty interesting.
He lives in RevIt and SketchUp.
The problem is that he wants a .dxf CAD file with elevations of the site and no one in the company seems to be able to efficiently generate one. I went to TNRIS and downloaded some USGS contours and sent him the model he was looking for. Interesting stuff.
Dawnster: BIM = Building Information Modeling
Or at least it did 10 years ago when I worked for Bentley. Back then folks were all worked up over a product named Triforma. It was even used on the Bellagio project in Las Vegas. There are several other software packages out there now obviously. James mentions one that AutoDesk acquired, Revit.
BIM in my opinion is just the natural collision of CAD and GIS. First we saw Microstation and AutoCAD begin to look and behave like one another. Now it is CAD and GIS. It is inevitable that one day a CAD operator is looking over the shoulder of the GIS tech and says “hey, that’s a cool feature!” Eventually such things find their way into the CAD product(s). The opposite is also true. Where do you think “snapping” cam from in ArcGIS?
AA
CAD and GIS are already overlapping I guess. See this URL:
http://www.geoinformatics.com/asp/default.asp?t=article&newsid=3661
Also, gaming techniques are used to make this overlapping happen (see p. 30 of the magazine)
http://fluidbook.microdesign.nl/geoinformatics/04-2008/
SAFE Software added BIM support as one major change to FME 2008.
It is quite impressive and you can see some cool examples in Dmitri’s 3d place: http://www.fmepedia.com/index.php/Category:Dmitris_3D_Place
or if you are a fan of CSGs (Constructive Solid Geometries): http://www.fmepedia.com/index.php/CSGBuilder_Example
Finally, here you can see some more details about what is BIM: http://www.safe.com/solutions/application/esri/movies/3D_Interoperability_with_FME_and_ESRI_Geodatabase.wmv
Speaking of gaming techniques, I have a buddy who works for a videogame programming company and when we talk shop I am impressed by the collection of object data and processing of physics equations. He has licenses to the Unreal Engines, and what he does with those blows me away. I think once the engineering and construction companies learn to fully understand how to utilize this efficiently, it will go gangbusters. On the other hand, it might accidentally turn the real world into a game for some people.
If you look at ARCHIBUS FM17 (facility mgt software based on AutoCAD and your favorite RDBMS) , they’ve just added both a REVIT extension for BIM integration, and an ESRI Geospatial extension for ArcGIS. This will begin to bridge the two technologies. See their website for the details:
http: //www.archibus.com