R5 - Data Interchange

The required reading the this week was chapter 3: Interoperability of the BIM handbook.  This chapter fist goes over what data exchange formats are and why they are used.  Having compatability between different tools have been a significant issue for some time. The chapter then goes into discuss the use of these data models.  It compares the advantages and disadvantages of the use.  It does state that there are still compatability issues but the IFC is widely supported by BIM tools. This chapter reinforced the idea that there is a need to create a universal file type.

For this week's assignment I found a video called 'Online BIM Collaboration around the World - Part 1'. This video is the first of three videos that discuss and demonstrate the use of ArchiCAD's BIM server, GRAPHISOFT.  The first part of the video explains the evolution of BIM and collaboration technologies.  Starting from CAD where coordination was possible but difficult to BIM there was there is alot of coordination but the process is not flexible.  Production is highest when flexibility and coordination are equal which is possible with a BIM severe.  GRAPHISOFT BIM server allows collaboration on a project in a single model.  Multiple user can access a single model as long as there is a internet connection.  When using this severe multiple users can be active in a model simultaneously. That means users can make changes to the model and they are imminently updated for every user that has the model open.  From the demonstration in the video the process appears to be easy and efficient.  The video explains that this is possible by only sending the changes that were made to the model instead of having the load the entire model every time it is updated.   For the demonstration of the server a model, that was being used by a number of people in different countries around the world, was changed and the updates were shown on all of the users' models without having the reload.