BIM consultant

[eas]

Hope it is okay to post this here.

30 person office in Massachusetts using VW for institutional work in the 200,000 s.f. range.

We are looking for a consultant with several years of experience running BIM jobs in VectorWorks to help us set up BIM in the office and to get the firm up to speed on the software implications/implementation.

Any recommendations/names will be welcomed.

[Jodyb17]

BIM in VW? Hmmmm....

[Guest]

EAS -

In addition to posting here, you are encouraged to use the form on the following website to post this to our job board:

http://www.nemetschek.net/community/jobs.php

[Petri]

BIM in VW? Hmmmm....

What's the problem? VW has been a very good BIM-program for many years - in it's own way.

Whether other BIM-concepts are better here (ie. your country) and today is debatable.

Whatever, it appears to me that the IFC-implementation of VW is very good.

[visard]

Interesting conversation. I have been asked to support an effort to provide BIM information to a large institution here in Philadelphia. Having attending Robert Anderson's presentation on BIM technology and VW I assumed that a search of topics would be yield copious amounts of information - search didn't recognize the term 'BIM".

[Robert Anderson]

I can't explain why the search is so broken on this forum.

[Guest]

I think the problem is "BIM" is 3 characters, and there's a 4 character minimum on searching. This is a limitation in the current UBB software version, which I've tried to get addressed.

This came up recently when someone was trying to search "PDF", another 3 character search.

Let me see if I can change a setting somewhere.

UPDATE:

It's all coming back to me...... *light bulbs flashing*

When the PDF search issue came up, I changed the minimum search character from 3 to 2 and the software was updated, so everyone could search with a 3 letter word. Ideally, a 3 character search should provide results.

I'm going back to the troubleshooting mode.

UPDATE 2:

Okay, so it looks like despite the setting of 2 character search, the forum will not search for anything less than 4 characters. PDF doesn't work, but PDFS does.

I'll have to put in a trouble ticket with UBB.

[boxjoint]

Katie,

While you're at it, can you get them to fix the annoying popup sticking problem which covers the whole screen and obliterates the topics? It's been some months since this was reported... #80133 - 05/28/07 Re: New Forum Safari bug.

Still not corrected.

Thanks.

[Christiaan]

While you're at it could you increase the topic title length again (which seems to have reverted back to a short length when you upgraded)?

[eas]

Petri,

That is what I am thinking--if VW has been a leading cad program in Europe and Europe is more BIM oriented than the US then VW and BIM is not a problem.

I am less concerned about VW's ability to do what BIM wants than I am about finding someone in the Boston area who knows how to do this.

Moving to BIM is not something I think we can fumble our way through the way we have with general cad stuff.

Thanks for the suggestion about the job board Katie, we will also look into that.

[Guest]

Christiaan,

Are you referring to the subject line length?

[Christiaan]

Yeap.

[visard]

Guys,

I think the question has been sidestepped. Where can I find out everything that VW knows about BIM?

[Guest]

Visard,

Unfortunately, there's no way to search for BIM discussions here. It's an issue I'll be looking into, but do not have an immediate resolution.

You could view the Architect and General Discussion forums manually until you see BIM in the subject line.

The VectorsWorks BIM page is available here:

http://www.nemetschek.net/architect/bim.php

[Petri]

Petri,

That is what I am thinking--if VW has been a leading cad program in Europe and Europe is more BIM oriented than the US then VW and BIM is not a problem.

I am less concerned about VW's ability to do what BIM wants than I am about finding someone in the Boston area who knows how to do this.

Right. Find a person with at least some VW skills in the Boston area and tell him or her that

BIM means that for each real-world object in the building there must be one and only one CAD-object.

Then you have your someone.

Moving to BIM is not something I think we can fumble our way through the way we have with general cad stuff.

Fair enough. There are things to consider, procedures to implement, libraries and structures to establish, architects to re-educate in gruelling camps. But by and large, it is not nearly as difficult as some "white papers" and consultants' proposals seem to suggest. (Robert's paper, while I don't necessarily agree with everything in it, does a pretty good job in demystifying BIM.)

[Christiaan]

]BIM means that for each real-world object in the building there must be one and only one CAD-object.

Nice. Doesn't get much simpler than that explanation!

Interestingly, after giving up on 3D BIM for now, I've been moving our office in this direction on a 2D basis. i.e. if we can we draw it once. VW 13 should help quite a bit in this regard.

[Petri]

Nice. Doesn't get much simpler than that explanation!

Thanks. It is just a rehash of something I wrote in a paper about "modeling" in 1989.

Interestingly, after giving up on 3D BIM for now, I've been moving our office in this direction on a 2D basis. i.e. if we can we draw it once. VW 13 should help quite a bit in this regard.

This is certainly a possible interim strategy. However, at least in principle IFC does not support 2D, but if that is of no concern to your firm, it should be fine.

Or, let's put it this way: by doing only 2D, you avoid certain problems but have others.

[visard]

Thanks, Katie.

visard