[Leica] NYTimes.com: The Do-It-Yourself Economy

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

Hi Matt,

I've now been producing drawings (as an architect) for nearly 40 
years, and have generally been happy to use the technology as it 
evolved. Wonderful was the day when I realized I would no longer have 
to Leroy ink-on-vellum room finish schedules!

I've been using CAD for at least some parts of my projects since the 
mid 80's, mostly on Macs but some on PC's. On PC's it was usually 
AutoCad, but I was fortunate in coming early to Vectorworks, or 
MiniCad as it used to be known and was a beta tester and contributor 
to the program in the early years.

It's now stable and an extremely productive program, and flexible 
enough to be useable as a BIM platform but it doesn't have to be 
applied in that manner. I also used ArchiCad for a while, which 
is/was one of the earliest BIM programs before the term was coined. 
It worked great on a simple residence, but bogged down quickly on the 
most powerful machines, and was all but unuseable on large projects. 
And it showcased all that was wrong with the BIM approach.

While the final result of our drawings are the built environment, our 
immediate product is easy to understand graphics on paper that allow 
that construction. Programs that detract from that put up unnecessary 
roadblocks. Fortunately, Vectorworks (on Macs or Windows machines) 
make it easy to produce those graphics and turn off the parts that 
interfere (BIM components).

Nowadays I don't do as much drawing anymore since my skills are 
better applied in other areas, but I often have to edit drawings, and 
see draughtspeople struggling with overly complex modeling exercises.




At 9:17 PM -0500 12/15/09, The Filippini Family- Matt & Blaise wrote:
>Hi Henning-
>
>I have yet to use the current generation of BIM software on a project, but
>from the other projects in our office using it, your analysis seems
>correct.
>
>Collaborative work is a huge problem, as there is only one master model,
>unlike CAD, where each floor plan, or even partial floor plan, can be an
>individual file, as can details, etc. This allows many to work on
>different portions of one project at a time.  Likewise, different
>disciplines can reference in each others plans to allow simultaneous work
>with proper coordination.
>
>For simultaneous work (at least as I understand it) BIM requires different
>versions of the master model to be worked on and merged together later.
>Thus, conflicting edits can be made, and no one has all the current
>information.
>
>Early BIM software I used in 1993-94 was a disaster.  Basically, nothing
>worked correctly.
>
>Our energy engineers seem to be the biggest fans of BIM at this point.
>
>Matt
>
>>  BIM is a technological direction foisted on the design and
>>  construction industry by project managers and others who don't
>>  understand the design process, and through it  these managers try to
>>  offload work and responsibility onto the designers. It forces the
>>  designer to input a large amount of information at a stage where that
>>  information is not yet available, so it always has to be edited and
>>  corrected later. It's a make-work process that interferes with design
>>  and works best with industrial construction. I've not yet seen it
>>  applied successfully and productively on any architectural project.
>>
>>  It also bogs down computers, makes cooperative work difficult to
>>  manage and costs architects a huge amount of work that cannot be
>>  readily invoiced.
>>
>>  As you might be able to tell, I'm not a fan. I shall not use the
>>  words I would like to apply.
-- 

    *            Henning J. Wulff
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