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by galfarragem 3121 days ago
BIM (Revit, Archicad and others. Even Sketchup is a BIM software nowadays).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Building_information_modeling

1 comments

Isn't BIM an extension to rather than alternative to CAD?
In practice not so. The design process is different: in CAD you draw 2D like you would draw by hand. In BIM you don't draw, you build a 3D model. That model will contain all the data about your building (materials, dimensions, etc) and you can analyse it on realtime. With a traditional CAD system (BIM is still CAD - Computer aided design) all data must be gathered manually.

Despite BIM existing for a long time, hardware requirements and unpolished software didn't allow it to become a true alternative to traditional CAD until recently (10y ago?) when it become good enough.

Not as big as standard architecture but landscape architecture still seems to be stuck in CAD world and relying on plugins to do its dirty work. It doesn't work out so well with Revit. So there's a market that could use a good product.

The issue our office had was getting people to put in the time to go from CAD to Revit. We went big and got a BIM manager too to help with that but even he will confess he thinks the company doesn't really know how to utilize him.

BIM also seems to come with a certain mindset and philosophy vs CAD where you would just design, which might throw people off.

I still find it surprising, like others, that Autodesk would lose money give their market dominance and I assume that's why they're switching to subscription.

I think BIM's market is large buildings that you are sure will be built. All the rest I would go for CAD or some light BIM (sketchup) without blinking. Setting up a BIM project is time intensive and you have often to fight with the software when you want to go beyond the standards - that's the reason that architects don't 'fall in love' with it and the reason why BIM managers exist.