THE 48 HOUR BIM PROCESS

Although BIM introduces new collaborative processes to AEC projects, early stage design concepts are developed by architects in much the same way as they have always been; as a series of design sketches.

Architects from the Japanese and Singapore teams began by developing their design concepts on paper. Both teams then ‘firmed-up’ the concepts in 3D using Bonzai3D (Japan) and SketchUp (Singapore). Their finalised designs & BIMs bear a close resemblance to the initial concepts.

3D Blueprint India started with some basic sketches and created five alternatives in SketchUp from which the best was selected prior to being developed as a BIM in Allplan. They impressed the organisers by issuing their massing scheme as a 3D PDF just 3-1/2 hours into the 48 hour process.

Team Obelisk also started with design sketches, but they chose to create their initial massing schemes directly in Revit with the BIM following on. The same was true for Ryder architecture who created their 3D design in Revit from the outset.

The five young architects from Gravicon dispensed with paper altogether and began the process in SketchUp. The best of five concepts was decided on by a vote and then developed further prior to being imported into ArchiCAD where an IFC was produced.

The Anglo/Dutch team 3DMB did not use sketches and used EliteCAD’s massing functions to define their concept prior to creating the BIM. At the outset this team planned to ‘focus’ on building services and so an early priority was to fix the location of the building cores & plant room.

Team 3DMB produced the most sophisticated 4D model of the event using Synchro. This required them to follow a strict model building and layering process in EliteCAD where objects were ‘cut’ and assigned to layers in accordance with construction zones that would be linked to a programme.