The last few weeks have brought some new and interesting developments involving BIM, both in the news and internally at AVAware.

As we mentioned in the November 2010 edition of AVAwire, BIM has become an extremely popular topic lately, and only seems to gain more recognition each year. Just this year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began to require th e use of BIM for all vertical military construction projects.

The General Service Administration (GSA) have used BIM based projects for some time, with the requirement of AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction) industries to produce BIM documents before any final presentation, beginning in 2007.

It is clear that BIM based projects will only grow in number as BIM continues to gain recognition on the government level.  As such, we have been reviewing how BIM   impacts   the   architectural

openings industry, and how it can be leveraged with AVAproject.

Our preliminary research shows that while BIM documents contain a significant amount of information, very little of this is specific to door hardware or type.

Most of the data contained in a BIM document is used to construct a viewable model, and not to specify hardware.

In order to understand what data is contained in a BIM document, we must first understand how a BIM model stores its information. Every object in a BIM document, be it a wall, pipe, duct or door, is stored as a line entry or in a tag. Tags can specify relationships between objects in order to provide more detail, such as the size and material of a pipe or duct. What we as an industry are interested in are door tags; what information can we pull out of them? Unfortunately, most of the data contained in a BIM document is used to construct a viewable model, and not to specify hardware. While size andplacement of an opening are very clearly  listed,  there  is  little

 Sample BIM Model 

information about the type of door and, based on the sample files we have interrogated, no information about door hardware, elevations or profiles.

BIM is often viewed as the solution to many shortcomings of construction planning and coordination; a file format that can carry all the information about every component of a building. But where does this information come from and who enters it into the BIM file? The BIM format shows promise for the future, however at this point it does not appear to be of much use for our industry.

These are our initial results from our investigation of BIM documents - our analysis is still ongoing. We will keep our customers and readers informed of any new developments.