Dipping a toe...

When a second chance rolls around, who wouldn't want to take it? I was a contractor in my former life, and am a geek in my present one. Where I once took big ol' sheets of paper and turned them into buildings, I now take 2-dimensional ideas and transcribe them into 3-dimensional computer models. Sounds boring? Hardly so! The recent surge in interest of BIM technology (Building Information Model, for the uninitiated) has produced exciting and promising advancements in the way buildings come together. No longer do contractors and subcontractors have to stand onsite, scratching their heads and looking at two objects trying to occupy the same space.

The advent of BIM's brings to the forefront the capability to detect conflicts of this nature before the shovel hits the soil; not to mention the impact upon a client when he can not only look at his building in 3D before it is built (in-situ, to boot), but acutally take a walkthrough tour of his building before it is built. Add to this the ability to collaborate between all builder trades, engineering and architectural disciplines to bring together a completed building right in the office, and you are looking at a tool that, implemented properly, can knock weeks off the schedule, and subsequently, dollars off of the budget. Appealing all the way around, isn't it?

Leading the charge into modeling for building construction is a little piece of software called Revit, produced by Autodesk. Next time, we will formally introduce you to it. This program can take an entire project from conceptual design right through budget calculation, material takeoffs and right through construction. Fasten your seatbelt, this thing MOVES!