#18 - BIM Tools, Platforms and Environment

In planning and developing BIM within an organization, it is useful to think of it in system architecture terms. BIM will involve multiple applications, for different uses in most organizations. How are the different applications to be conceptualized and organized? Large firms will typically support and in some sense integrate 10 to 50 different applications for their employees' use.

• BIM Tool: a task-specific application that produces a specific outcome; example tools are those for model generation, drawing production, specification writing, cost estimation, clash and error detection, energy analysis, rendering, scheduling, and visualization. Tool output is often standalone, as reports, drawings, and so forth. In some cases, however, tool output is exported to other tool applications, such as quantity takeoffs to cost estimation, and structural reactions fed to a connection-detailing application.

• BIM Platform: an application, usually for design, that generates data for multiple uses. It provides a primary data model that hosts information on the platform. Most BIM platforms also internally incorporate tool functionality such as drawing production and clash detection. They typically incorporate interfaces to multiple other tools with varying levels of integration. Some platforms share the user interface and style of interaction.

• BIM Environment: the data management of one or more information pipelines that integrate the applications (tools and platforms) within an organization. It supports policies and practices of information within the organization. Often the BIM environment is not conceptualized and grows in an ad hoc manner to the needs of the firm. The automatic generation and management of multiple BIM tool datasets is their obvious use. Also, when multiple platforms are used, and thus multiple data models, another level of data management and coordination is required. These address tracking and coordinating communication between people as well as multiple platforms. BIM environments provide the opportunity to carry much wider forms of information than model data alone, such as video, images, audio records, emails, and many other forms of information used in managing a project.

BIM platforms have sufficient information to support the design operations of object creation, editing, and modification. They carry parametric and other rules important for maintaining the correctness of a building model spatially. They may have multiple embedded tools for 3D modeling, quantity takeoff, rendering, and drawing production. BIM tools, in contrast, lack the structure and rules for correctly updating the building design. They provide analyses, track and package data for costs or schedules, generate specifications, and possibly generate renderings or animations. Platforms are often also informally used as the BIM environment, relying on one platform to provide all the services within an organization and providing the integration environment for the organization.

Next article, BIM Maturity

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