Bentley's BIM Solutions, and the Contractor's Guide to BIM

Two weeks ago, I attended the annual Midyear Meeting of the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) held in San Francisco, California, where the AGC had a session focused on BIM and also unveiled a brand-new publication called Contractors' Guide to BIM outlining best practices for contractors using BIM. It is very impressive to see this kind of initiative coming from the construction side of AEC, considering that BIM has been relatively slow to take off in this sector so far. We have still to see any such corresponding guides for BIM in architecture and BIM in engineering. The construction sector may have been slow to take off with BIM, but the release of this guide and the emerging focus on BIM at the AGC conference should be heartening to those contractors eager to get ahead with this new technological development in the building industry. Both an overview of the BIM session as well as the guide are provided in this month's Building the Future article, The AGC's BIM Initiatives and the Contractor's Guide to BIM.

The Tips and Tricks section this month features a tutorial on Photoshop for the first time, showing how to enhance drawings with Photoshop layer styles, as well as a tip on how to modify vertical offsets of Autodesk Revit wall components. The Viewpoint contribution comes from Harald Krohmer, Managing Director of Nemetschek UK who looks at how an integrated approach to building design and construction can lead to greater cost awareness, resulting in reduced costs.

Following on the reviews of the leading BIM solutions, Revit Building 9, ArchiCAD 10, and Revit Structure 4, AECbytes takes a look at the BIM solutions offered by the other leading vendor in the field, Bentley Systems, which just released new versions of its applications. Look out for a detailed overview of the Bentley Building V8 XM Suite, followed by a combined exploration of Bentley Architecture and Bentley Structural later this month.

Thank you!

Lachmi Khemlani

Editorials > October 2006