Building Information Modeling BIM
BIM
Building information modeling is a process that fundamentally changes the role of computation in architectural design. It means that rather than using a computer to help produce a series of drawings and schedules that together describe a building; you use the computer to produce a single, unified representation of the building so complete that it can generate all necessary documentation.
The primitives from which you compose these models are not the same ones used in CAD (points, lines, curves). Instead you model with building components such as walls, doors, windows, ceilings, and roofs. The software you use to do this recognizes the form and behavior of these components, so it can ease much
of the tedium of their manipulation. Walls, for instance, join and miter automatically, connecting structure layers to structure layers, and finish layers to finish layers.
Many of the advantages are obvious—for instance, changes made in elevation propagate
automatically to every plan, section, callout, and rendering of the project. Other advantages
are subtler and take some investigation to discover. The manipulation of parametric
relationships to model coarsely and then refine is a technique that has more than one
career’s worth of depth to plumb.
BIM design marks a fundamental advance in computer-aided design. As the tools improve,
ideas spread, and students become versed in the principles, it is inevitable that just as
traditional CAD has secured a deserved place in every office, so will BIM design.
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