BIM Chapter 3 reading - Interoperability

Reading from the BIM handbook can be a little dry, but this week it was helpful in learning the importance of data sharing across different applications. I thought that learning about the IFCs was especially important, as they are the standards that were developed so that there is now consistency in data representation between different software applications, making it easier for data to be exchanged in between these systems. These IFCs were designed so that information on the ENTIRE building could easily be shared, which means the entire lifecycle from feasibility and planning to occupancy and operation can be shared easily. Before the use of IFCs, this information came kind of scattered and incomplete in between software applications. This could greatly interrupt all the benefits that BIM software has to offer.

While we have often discussed how useful BIM software is and can be in the field of engineering, I was interested in looking into a more practical point of view. From StructureMag.org, I read an article called BIM Interoperability: The Promise and the Reality . The article mentioned that BIM software is already changing the way that structural firms model designs and store information about these projects, but it is still unable to perform design and analysis functions which has lead to the continued need for other programs, such as SAP and RISA. Because firms are trying to use BIM but still need SAP and RISA and other similar programs, models are often transferred back and forth between the programs. This means that time has to be spent on maintenance of the model after such switches, and can often times lead to a loss of data in the model. This constant transferring between software and the need to have multiple software also leads to issues with version compatibility: can this model be transferred between the current BIM software to an older version of an A&D software? and vice versa? are all contributors to the project using the same version of each software? This leads to firms having to maintain several version of BIM software and several version of A&D software in order to be able to properly work on large projects that may span several years. Even with these problems associated with BIM and interoperability, the article was optimistic about these problems being resolved and the implementation of BIM software despite of these issues. The article concluded that these issues "may effect he pace of transformations to BIM, but not its inevitability."

I thought that this article, being written in 2009, may have been a bit outdated and was interested in looking into something written a bit more recently, thinking that maybe some of these issues had already been sorted out. This led me to a 2011 case study where BIM models were transferred into several different analysis programs to see which aspects of the model were in tact and which ones were a source of trouble. It was observed that different analysis programs were able to successfully and flawlessly receive some kind of information from the BIM model but had difficulty with other information. A lot of the time, the issues that were had were small but could be very hard to detect to someone who was unaware of the issue (the size of openings, the height of windows, etc.). With this information, it could be possible to pick and choose which analysis programs or BIM programs a firm could use, depending on what kind of project is at hand. However, then we are back to the issue of needing to maintain multiple different software packages in just one firm. But, it does give us a hopeful outlook on the future of interoperability between BIM and analysis software.