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June 5, 2007
buildings
COLLABORATIVE CONSTRUCTION
First Standard For 3D Modeling Due by Year-End
6/5/2006
Nadine M. Post
Dana K. Smith sees building information models evolving without a foundation.
“If we are going to have long-term and sustainable building information models,
we need a standard,” says Smith, chair of the National BIM Standard project
committee of the National Institute of Standards & Technology [note: Should be
National Institute of Building Sciences].
The committee, which began work last August, is on schedule to publish the first
version of the standard by year-end. A draft is expected to be out this month.
A basic premise of BIM, says NIBS, is collaboration by different stakeholders at
different phases of the life cycle of a facility. The stakeholders will insert,
extract, update or modify information in the BIM to support and reflect the
roles of each stakeholder. The BIM “is a shared digital representation founded
on open standards for interoperability,” says NIBS in its definition of BIM. The
National BIM Standard promotes the business requirement that the model is
“interoperable based on open standards.”
The first portion of the standard, funded by the Charles Pankow Foundation, will
be on precast concrete. It will then provide the templates for other areas of
interest to produce more sections, says the committee. The basis for much of the
standard will be in the form of information delivery manuals. The BIM user will
not need technical knowledge to understand the manuals.
The scoping team has developed a standards-based matrix for identifying the
information exchanges required for a project life cycle. The testing team is now
testing the first item—the interface between CAD and a geographical information
system. The Open Geospatial Consortium is carrying this out.
Sponsors are needed for the CAD-GIS interface project and others. “We are also
looking for in-kind support,” says Smith, who is a chief architect in the
Defense Dept. Information is available on NIBS Website,
www.nibs.org/BIMcommittee.html.
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