BIM Reading #2

This week for the assigned reading we were asked to finish reading Chapter 2 of the BIM handbook, which discussed the major BIM model generating systems, describing their primary uses, capabilities and the strengths and weaknesses of each program. The main point of the reading section emphasized that at the moment there is no BIM platform which is ideal for all types of projects and then goes on to list various things to consider when choosing a BIM platform. Some of the things to consider include user interface, drawing generation, ease of developing "families", scalability (the ability to handle large projects), interoperability, extensibility, complex curved modeling, and multi-user environment.
One thing that was constant across the different BIM platforms was that the greater the ability of the BIM platform, the more difficult the platform was to learn in order to take full advantage of all of the capabilities that it has. One thing that I did not realize was that platforms could be disk-based, memory-based, or file based. So if a firm were to primarily work on large scale projects such as high-rise buildings, they would benefit from a system like Bentley, which is file-based and does not have a large load on the memory of a system, whereas a firm that does a majority of work on smaller projects they would better benefit from a system such as REVIT, which uses an in-memory system that can handle files up to 220 megabytes.
The chapter goes on to discuss the rest of the main BIM platforms on the market and concludes that the full potential of BIM will not be known for at least a decade because "its implications and new usage are discovered gradually." This statement relates to another article that I read, The BIM Steam Roller, which says that BIM will dominate big architectural firms within 5 years, and the profession in general within 10. The article goes on to show examples of how architectural firms that are already implementing BIM platforms are able to save significant amounts of time and money because of the power of BIM. The main points that stuck in my mind were a Maryland firm that was able to cut their staffing from 10-20 people to 2 or 3 by using BIM and another firm that was able to solve design conflicts for a building in 2 weeks, where it has taken 12 weeks in the past. This goes to show that the industry is well on its way to adopting BIM and the fact that ASHRAE president, Gordon Holness, said that ASHRAE and the International Code Council are developing software that will be able to read a BIM model and determine compliance with their standards, something that will save the industry even more time and money.