Are you BIM Ready?

Anyone who works with the construction industry has likely heard of BIM – Building Information Modeling. The concept of designing buildings rather than just drawing them has gained a solid foothold in the industry over the last few years, with as much as half of the construction industry now using BIM in some form.
Many companies who use BIM are constantly evolving their processes and attempting to incorporate more and more information into their models. With machine and product design, finding and fixing problems during the design phase is far cheaper than finding them during the build or late prototype stages. That capability is even more important in the construction industry, where margins are thin, and schedule slips and back charges can turn a profitable project into a financial liability.

That’s why BIM is such a hot topic right now, and why it’s here to stay. The ability to foresee construction issues and resolve them before breaking ground is becoming vital to the industry. That ability, however, requires information – information about every piece of equipment, fixture, and device – everything that goes into the building. That’s where Inventor comes in.

The ADSK format-a wealth of information
With the 2010 products, Autodesk has introduced a new file format – the ADSK format. This file format is purpose-built for collaboration between Autodesk’s Mechanical products, like Inventor, and its architectural products, like Revit Architecture and Revit MEP. This format stores not only geometric data for space-claim, but connection information that can be used by the Revit suite of products.
Inventor’s AEC Exchange environment allows you to specify connection location and shape information for Electrical, Pipe, Duct, Conduit and Cable Tray Connectors. In addition, you can specify a range of connection-specific properties. For example, a Pipe Connection can be specified as part of a Domestic Hot Water system. Specifying the system type allows you to provide all of the information that might be used by Revit MEP to size the system into which your device will be placed. An Electrical Connection can carry information about Voltage and Power Factor, and even whether the Power Factor is leading or lagging.

Providing the right amount of data
In addition to specifying design information about your products, Inventor’s AEC Exchange environment offers handy tools to simplify the model you provide to your customers. When modeling an entire building, you can imagine that each component needs to be as simple as possible. The AEC Exchange environment provides a Check Design tool that gives you an idea of how functional your product will be once it’s imported into a Revit model.

Should your model be too complex, you can use the included Shrinkwrap Substitute tool to remove interior components and simplify complex shapes to provide a good balance between detail and performance. Shrinkwrapping also allows you to protect your intellectual property by sharing only what your customers need to incorporate your product into their model.

Autodesk-the integrated solution
Over the past few years, through both design and acquisition, Autodesk has been working toward the goal of solid interoperability across the industries it serves. With deep roots in both segments, Autodesk sees the growing hunger for information found in the construction industry, and is providing tools to the manufacturing industry to feed it. The AEC Exchange environment and the ADSK file format are great steps toward that interoperability goal, and they will only improve in the coming years. The time for BIM, though, is now – are you ready?