BIM and structural engineering 1

[JAE]

I've been tasked to investigate the potential for us using BIM (Building Information Model) in our designs.

Currently, we use Autocadd with Arch. Desktop and integrate with our in-house architects and mech/elec engineers on our design plans. Most of our drawings are in fact 3D (in the computer) but of course we only use a 2D format for our contract documents. But we don't really use a full blown BIM product such as Revit and integrate it with RISA or other design software (yet).

Does anyone out there have some recent/new experience with using a BIM in their designs and linking it with structural software? I'm just getting started looking into this and would like to know if there's any experience with BIM out there that could be shared.

 

[mrMikee]

About six months ago there was a short thread where I found the following link ...

http://www.aia.org/print_template.cfm?pagename=tap_a_0903bim

thread507-126839

I have no experience with BIM however.

-Mike

 

[structuresguy]

We use ADT for structural and Autodesk ABS for MEP design in 3D. WAbout a year ago, we seriously evaluated Revit Structure in house. We used it on projects for about 3 months. We found that at that time, it was severely limited in its usefullness. Our intent was to use its interoperability with ETABS as a time savings, as only one model would be required. However, REVIT was too limited in its functions for completing fully 3D models, and was too limited in its 2D drafting capabilities to "fake" the plans in areas where 3D was not possible. So to make it work, we had a heavy use of 2D autocad on top of plans generated from Revit.

Our company has very strong ties with Autodesk. We ahve over 300 licenses of ADT/ABS. In fact, we are the single largest license base for ABS. As a result, we had direct communication with the design team for Revit. We expressed all of our concerns, and they said they would try to incorporate most of our suggestions. However, to date, we have no plans of reconsidering Revit again in the near future. We currently use ADT 2006.

BTW, we have no clients who have requested that we created true BIM's during design. So we don't have any pressure in that regard towards selecting Revit.