Building information modeling (BIM) is graphic design for architects. Based on 3D models, BIM software tools can detect flaws in new building design, avoid “spatial conflicts”, and calculate the quantity of materials required for the job.
The excitement about BIM boils down to accuate accounting: BIM can predict the cost of a job with greater precision than
2-D drawing board models. “In ten years time there will be no drawings, and ‘back to the drawing board’ will just become an historic phrase,” says Dr Eastman, a professor of architecture and computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
According to the Economist, “Dr Eastman has been talking about this sort of thing since the 1970s, when the first BIM systems were developed. “But architects aren’t really technology innovators,” he admits. So until recently, BIM has largely been ignored—except, that is, by a handful of pioneering architects whose radical designs have required it.”
Frank Gehry is one pioneering example. “His uniquely warped and fluid style of architecture—exemplified by the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles (pictured), and the Ray and Maria Stata Centre at MIT—results in structures so complex that it might not have been possible to build them at all without the help of BIM.”
Gehry lead the way when he “took a product-design tool called CATIA, developed by Dassault Systèmes, a French company, and tailored it to his own specifications when designing the Guggenheim Museum. It is now marketed as an architectural tool, called Digital Project, by Gehry Technologies, a company founded by Mr Gehry in 2002. Architects really started to take note that same year when Autodesk, a leading maker of CAD software, bought a smaller BIM company called Revit, says Dr Eastman. It had the same effect as when Microsoft invests in a new technology, he says: “It legitimised it.”
“Manufacturers have been waiting for the leading BIM-software companies to agree on common formats. Now an agreement is in sight… adoption will happen very quickly.” full story
Neat stuff… I’ve wondered how concepts like that actually get down to the nuts and bolts — without relying on fibreglass, that is.
It’s fascinating stuff. I didn’t know the first thing about building design until I read this – I just assumed graphic design was part of the process, same as cars, planes, ships… The comment “architects aren’t really technology innovators” was quite a revelation!