Building Information Models

This seminar course explores Building Information Models (BIM), business processes, applications and environments (e.g., Revit). These environments are quickly being adopted throughout the building industry for use in all project life-cycle phases. Characteristics of BIMs will be explored, including modeling / authoring operations and database structures necessary to support information modeling. Case studies will be presented that demonstrate how computable building information, e.g., costs and quantities, can be captured and shared to drive informed decision making. A variety of topics related to how BIM systems can be incorporated into practice, their influence on practice, and how they can be shared between stakeholders (owner, architect, engineer, structural, mechanical, fabrication and construction) will also be examined. Industry leading guest speakers will be invited to represent their individual viewpoints and cite their own examples of BIM use in their respective organizations.Students should have some familiarity with one ore more of these related environments (e.g., Autodesk Revit, Graphisoft ArchiCAD, Bently Generative Components).TIMES Lectures will be held on Friday afternoons, 12-3pm. Introductory laboratory sessions focused on basic skill building with Revit will initially be offered at times to be arranged.PREREQUISITES Prerequisites to this course include GSD 2107 or equivalent, and completion of most of the building technology sequence at the GSD or its equivalent. If you have completed module 2 of GSD 6319 in 2007 then you should not consider this course because much of the material is similar. GSD 6317 or other courses involving digital modeling are desirable but not required. Familiarity with some 3d modeling system (e.g., Rhino, FormZ, 3dStudio) is helpful.ASSIGNMENTS AND GRADING There will be short weekly assignments. Typically they will be assigned on a Friday and due the following Friday. One type of assignment will be the development of simple digital information models. Another type assumes a more case-study orientation. There will be a short final project. You are allowed you to choose a topic of your own choice.Evaluation basis:15% Class attendance and participation60% Assignments25% Final ProjectNOTES ON SOFTWARE SKILLS DEVELOPMENT Revit is quickly becoming the BIM environment of choice for recent adopters of BIM methodology in normal professional practice because of its direct application interface relevant to architecture and its powerful information modeling capabilities that are attractive not only to designers, but to other participants in the design process, e.g., constructors. BIM applications like Revit are complex software environments that have fairly long (and sometimes frustrating) learning curves. All students enrolled in the course will be expected to attend special skill building sessions for Revit later in the term. It is not the intent of the course to make you completely proficient in these environments, nor does time allow it. Instead, the intent is to demonstrate how design, practice and process are influenced by use of environments of these types. The skill sessions will, however, still give you a pretty good basis for going further into the applications if you wish.