Hit, Miss, or Maybe..2013

[Chris D]

A review of 2013 in relation to my recent BIMfail list:

- No live sections

Hit: Clip Cube kind of does this

- No multiple model windows e.g. plan and section open at same time

Miss

- Poor architectural tools, windows, doors, stairs, roofs, curtain walls etc

Miss (mostly): Minor improvements to windows and roofs only

- Missing architectural tools rooflights, gutters, foundations etc

Maybe: rooflights yes, roof objects no

- No multi-core / multi-thread support e.g even auto-save stops you working while it saves

Maybe: Background rendering yes, background saves no (not mentioned)

- No building materials, just 2D hatches, textures, fills with no relationship between them

Miss

- Poor workgroup referencing. No workgroup server or BIM server

Miss

- Poor stock component library, especially for the UK

Miss

- Poor Coordinate System support. No multiple UCS (moving origin doesn't qualify).

Miss

- No 3D working grid or reference lines related to storey settings

Miss

- Poor Stories implementation. No split levels, mezzanines, double-height spaces etc.

Miss

- No 3D hatches so all drawings need to be rendered for presentation

Miss

- Render quality needs to be set very high for decent elevation output

Maybe: Rendering now in background so less of an issue

The big one for us is the big fat miss on the vector-based elevations with 3D hatches. You can't do a BIM workflow if you can't even do your 2D drawings from a 3D model. VW still can't do this, yet it's the default behaviour in proper BIM packages like Revit.