Building Products in BIM

BIM-compliant content for building products, materials and finishes is increasingly critical to the successful future expansion of BIM.
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Sponsored by Georgia-Pacific Gypsum, greenscreen®, McGraw-Hill Construction, NanaWall Systems Inc., Nystrom, Inc., Pella Commercial and PPG Industries
Stephen A Jones, Senior Director, McGraw-Hill Construction

Accessing Building Product Content for BIM

Once content is created, there is a growing number of ways it is distributed to users. In the early days of BIM, only a few architects at any firm were working with it, so they kept their home-made building product objects on their hard drives to reuse on other projects. As firms grew their implementation across projects and more staff needed access, firms began to house the objects in a central repository similar to the way a firm's CAD library was hosted.

In keeping with the overall grass-roots nature of the BIM phenomenon, early users began exchanging BIM objects with each other to save the time of building it themselves. Sites such as Revit City (revitcity.com), which now boasts over 20,000 members and over 10,000 BIM objects, became popular by providing free, user-contributed objects, forums and discussion groups, even job postings.

As referenced above, most BIM software companies provide libraries of generic content that is built to work with their applications. It is typically included with their applications and also available from their websites. Some have also expanded to include BPMs' proprietary content as well, such as Autodesk Seek.

BPMs who have BIM objects for their products and materials typically host them for download on their websites. As referenced above, some BPMs have also invested in online configurators that build customized content on-demand for users, rather than relying on searchable libraries of objects to satisfy the diversity of users' needs.

Survey of BIM Users About Where They Get BIM Content
Frequency:
100% of the time Most of the time About half the time Some of the time Never Average Rating
(1-5 scale)
Source:
Make it ourselves 9% 48% 15% 23% 5% 3.32
From free object libraries or user group sites 3% 13% 16% 55% 14% 2.36
From other BIM users I know 1% 4% 56% 56% 28% 1.94
From a paid subscription service 1% 2% 20% 20% 76% 1.32

Source: McGraw-Hill Construction

 

Established industry content aggregators have added BIM objects to their existing libraries of BPMs' building product content, and also made them available online for free. These include Sweets, ARCAT and Reed. The cost for this hosting is borne by the BPMs.

There are also subscription-based sites where users pay for access to content and the creators generally share in the revenue. These include FormFonts and Objects.com.

Many BPMs feel that using a combination of sites gives them the best total coverage. "Different people have their favorites so let's put them where they want to get them," Pella's Zeimetz says, referencing his company's decision to be on three aggregator sites as well as on the company's own web site.

Other BPMs are taking a more proactive approach. "We're taking BIM to the streets," says Tim Aspinwall of Nystrom, by actively visiting design/build firms, a niche they feel will be particularly successful with BIM, to deliver their content and services. "We're out talking with our clients to better understand their methodologies and challenges. The BIM discussions are always welcomed. The exchange and sharing of information is foundational to the success of BIM."

Despite the increase in quantity and availability of BIM objects, most BIM users are still using mostly self-made content. In McGraw-Hill Construction's BIM Content research study, nearly 60 percent of respondents reported making their own content either all or most of the time (see chart).

Next in popularity for access were free object libraries, followed by exchanging directly with other BIM users. Least popular was accessing from a paid subscription service.

 

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Originally published in Architectural Record
Originally published in April 2011

Notice

Academies
Building Products in BIM
Buyer's Guide
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