BIM and our drawing process
Saturday, February 14th, 2009Friday I received preliminary joists and beam sizes. I’m excited…I’ve been waiting to add this into our model for construction drawings. My office uses BIM (Building Information Modeling) software exclusively. It’s been great so far. Fairly soon after I had some initial hand sketches on paper, we had a developed 3D model built. As a design tool, BIM has been fantastic. Some of the things I was sketching in 3D simply weren’t possible. Not only did the model quickly identify those areas, but also helped us quickly solve our problems. This probably avoided a heated and frustrating discussion that probably would have taken place between me and my framer on the job site during construction…of course he would have been right!
BIM software showing building framing
Another plus for us is our ability to insert the actual framing members into our model. We can quickly get framing take-offs, and identify any problem areas…such as running a 4″ roof drain through a steel beam – steel beams are red in our model. I was able to fill in some of this framing information Friday afternoon…the tan joists and beams and red steel members took approximately 3 hours to draw. I’m fairly slow with our software and I was constantly interrupted, but a high level of efficiency is certainly there.
Also – if anyone out there knows how to post an image in wordpress so it can expand when you click on it, I could use a lesson.
