BIM - The world I would have dreamed of 20 years ago
20 years later, I can only associate BIM as the evolution that it represented at that time to leave the drawing board and tracing paper for CAD files. That was an impressive evolution, considering that he came from being a sketch artist and calculator of notebook + calculator + Lotus 123. It seemed impressive to me to believe that it was no longer necessary to put an electric eraser and skull on the tracing paper before a redesign, much less make modifications to multiple plans for that change, nor throw away the sepia copies of the original, which only served to stain with the red marker for the as-built plans or line the master builder's table.
I must admit that I was always a fan of technology, I had used an 8086 with an orange screen monitor in the days of crude DOS. Impressively, it had migrated from making unit cost sheets in Lotus 123 to SAICIC 3 for budgets and estimates, and had gone from the archaic SAICIC timeline matrix to Microsoft Project 4 to control time, although for inventory it was still using programming on FoxBase in TWO. Not because there weren't more, but hacking EaglePoint and SAICIC 4 in those days was almost impossible.
Everything changed, when I took into my hands AutoCAD, at that time R13, with a Gateway 2000 PC, a 133 Mhz Pentium I and a 250 MB hard disk. Sure, those were those times when I could lock myself in the only air-conditioned office -by computer; not for me- and go out in the heat of half a day with an ocher sweater to buy me lunch a chocolate Crunch and a coke.
To hell The triglycerides that mattered little.
BIM is today to me what represented an impossible when I was the only technologist passionate to mechanize the manual -With what would have-.
If we had only had AECOsim, the preliminary design would not have required making the watercolor sketches of the Architect Ramiro Bonilla, which by the way were impressive but sadly immutable, in that preliminary project of the Main Building of the Bank of the Armed Forces of Honduras; it would have been done at once in CAD, simulating the different blocks of volumes that it cost so much to reconcile with the concept “sober” of Engineer Roberto López Carballo. After its approval, he would not have had to struggle for days to obtain the approval of the construction plan, with the implicit suffering of Rudy and Rubén –Today architects of respect- above all because once the building was developed, fencing had to be done with the patience of Structural Engineer Boris Viscovich and his annoying taste for the use of counterweights, almost impossible with the ideal of spaces in the basement for parking lots of 2.50 meters wide.
With BIM, the design is worked based on functional areas, just as architects do on AECOsim, on axes tied to a digital twin template, so that the structural engineer only plays with sizes, running a federated version of the same DGN on Bentley STAAD; without the endless iterations of Engineer Rivera, with his continuous printed sheets looking for moments of optimal overhangs.
BIM allows the development of the air conditioning system to be carried out in parallel, with preliminary interference control, making a distinction between a steel beam and a concrete beam, in case it is necessary to make a hole in the inflection point, in the quarter length or if the card will not allow it. We would have saved a world, after the foundation was redesigned after the humidity conditions found in the elevator area, 5 meters below the basement, which implied rethinking the curtain wall and reconfiguring the foundation slab. Combining BentleyRAM for the structural steel annex, GEOPAK for the topography and Generative Components for the curved design of the auditorium would have been a luxury… and all on a DGN file fed in IFC standard on ProjectWise, It does not matter that my office was in the Torres Valladolid de Comayaguela and that in the afternoons I had to fight in the library classroom in the dead time of my university night.
But BIM goes beyond modeling the design, it also includes the simulation of the construction process, I remember what it cost the decision of the military of those times to choose a type of materials for the finishes, the symbology on the plane of environments was endless; what not to say about the update of dead charges after they decided instead of confectionery to move to marble throughout the seventh level. Applying BIM modeling, it is designed using elements from real life, either with Revit or AECOsim, you just have to say that this is a wall, the material does not matter, but if it is defined it is said to be a concrete block, which will carry 0.75 centimeter thick plaster, with 1: 4 mortar, lime polish and water-based paint. Here's the good thing, I would not have to be doing calculations, after calculations to estimate the cost, because using the Naviswork plugin, I can have the budget dynamically regardless of the idiotic changes of the bad tastes of the colonels.
Once the design is finished, you just have to generate the floor plans, sections, facades, without doing it the old way, including the perspective views, adding the plus of the impressive animations that now would not occupy hours of discussion at the headquarters of the Instituto de Previsión Militar, with the new board of commanders that was in charge of knowing again all the details of the project. IFC standards now allow interchange regardless of whether I use AECOsim (formerly Bentley Architecture) and they use AutoDesk Revit + Naviswork (which now includes quantity take off). Thus, controlling the progress of works does not require going to the notebooks of Engineer Carlos Rosales, which do not match the accounts of Engineer Marisela, of Fantasy Cowboy Palma, or the scribbles of Engineer Jessica Ortiz. It would save me the time of processing estimates, change orders and progress control in MsProject.
Ah, and of course, BIM saves me what it would take to be behind the Rosario Engineer's meticulous eyes, measuring and annotating in his notebook every detail to define the orders in special forms to Marbles of Honduras, bronze railings via fax to The company Torogoz in El Salvador, or the order of mirror sky that came from Miami and nobody knows in which container of the Customs of Puerto Cortes was lost.
If you think that renders with CAD software is the most, you must turn your eyes to BIM, because it goes beyond what we previously called AEC (Architecture, Engineering and Construction), AECO implies the life cycle of the Operation, that is, the rest of life of the building that at this point, 20 years later it is not seen as an engineering project but as an economic project -As it always was-.
La BIM Timeline Is far, but if something you can win for now, take a look at Revit y AECOsim. The inspiration it causes me is the same as 20 years ago, the decision by which brand to choose is left to your liking.
