The cost of NOT doing BIM! Smartest title of the month!

I was just going through BuildingSmart Korea's The BIM Magazine, Winter 2012 issue and I came across with the smartest title of the month!

THE COST OF NOT DOING BIM

It is an article by Robert Yori, Digital Design Specialist at SOM. The article is looking at BIM from a professional development perspective. In some parts of the article I felt like it focuses more on the personal development.

After reading the article, I started to think about it!

Everything in the article is true but I do not see much resistance to BIM from individuals. We have been receiving more calls for personal trainings than corporate trainings.

Especially in the UAE, professionals see BIM as a new skill that will differentiate them from the others and they are willing to invest to upgrade their skills.

It's the companies who are asking for THE COST OF DOING BIM in their projects and start making calculations, trying to understand if it is feasible.

Well, while writing the sentence even I thought it sounds right:)) But come on!

I am working on a case study of one of our latest projects in which we worked for project owner. According to our calculations, in the pre-construction phase, the implementation of ArchiCAD BIM already saved 40 Million USD! Yes, you read right! I am sure we will help the owner to save more in the construction phase as well.

Everybody is more or less familiar with ArchiCAD License and training or service costs. I think I do not need to mention it's nowhere near 40 Million USD!

Let's focus on THE COST OF NOT DOING BIM rather than THE COST OF DOING BIM...

Diyane Koseoglu
www.bimes.com

Diyane's Top 10 ArchiCAD Features - # 5

# 5 - Import Surveyors Data

Converting Splines to Mesh levels with the help of Magic Wand was one of the "must to have" exercises of ArchiCAD trainings back in Turkey since it is a very mountainous country.

However that was not the case in the UAE. Most of the Emirates are extremely flat. Great for cycling and builders:)) Mesh tools was no longer "must to have" part of our trainings.

Then the 2009 recession came!

Most of the offices located in the Emirates started to look for projects in Libya, Iraq, Saudi, Qatar etc. For instance Iraq's geography is quite different than UAE. Full of mountains!

Image from Luxury House Design Concept

The site and slope becomes a very important design criteria!

A client of us recently got a job in Iraq! They received the surveyor's data and immediately called us.

- Hi guys! I know you showed us this how to import surveyor's data into ArchiCAD in one of the new features trainings but we never used it so far. Do you mind reminding it to us?"

- Well, you are lucky! It is not a complicated command. Design > Place Mesh from Surveyors Data and select the text file. ArchiCAD will do the rest:)

Of course, life is not that easy!

5 minutes later, Jothi received another call saying it did not work. We requested text file to check and noticed that the problem is very very simple but hard to see.

The number of digits decreased after a certain point and ArchiCAD did not read the remaining part. So to fix it, we added "0" to the beginning of each new number.

Later we noticed that this numbering system also depends on the equipment that the surveyor uses. We received the text file of the same site from a different surveyor company and that did not have the same digit problem at all.

Anyway, although it was a small one it still took us 2 hours to find the problem.

After solving this issue, the team finished their proposal for the master planning within 2 days! Yes, within 2 days!

A couple of days later, I came across with their CEO and he said "Diyane, now I truly believe in BIM. Our BIM team finished their proposal for Iraq project in 2 days. It would take 2 weeks if I gave that job to the other teams working traditionally!"

So yes! We love Import Surveyors Data feature very much:)))

Diyane Koseoglu
www.bimes.com

Shell Tool in Action!

Middle East!

Where the dreams of Architects come true!

The tallest, the most slanted, the biggest, the most luxurious, the most sustainable buildings... They all come true in this part of the world!

Our clients... They looove free form designs... My colleague Jothi receives a lot of questions about the new Shell Tool.

We wanted to share one of the recent ones.

This is one of the facade elements that our client designed by using ArchiCAD Shell Tool. At this stage I can not tell / show you more about the rest of the project but we will publish the case study soon.  As you know we need to get approvals etc.

Anyway, our client modeled it but since they were still in the design process

- sketch...
- model...
- nope... let's change here a bit more....
- modify..
- seems ok...
- not really... let's change here...
...
...

They ended up with so many operations and the result element was basically freezing even their super computers.

By the time, we received the model the design was final. So Jothi just made a "reverse engineering" and modeled the same geometry by using the same "Shell Tool" and operations. The result is a lot more lighter tough since he worked a bit more cleaner...

For the curious ones, here you have a video showing how to model it in a few steps.

Enjoy!
PS: The video is uploaded to YouTube but  YouTube is being a bit nasty today. Although it has been more than 8 hours it is still not listed in the searches. Anyway, here comes the YouTube link!

Diyane Koseoglu
Jothi Shanmugam
www.bimes.com