!Restored: Vectorworks 2009 BIM: Its Happening... Its Not Happening

[Aaron Bourgoin]

The press release and the white paper on this product are reminiscent of the American Presidential Election: casting doubt on the competition's experience and outlook.

"From a conceptual and philosophical perspective, BIM is a better way to design, construct, and manage buildings. It allows architects to design more efficiently, construction firms to better manage costs, and owners to stay on budget and control day-to-day operational costs. BIM fulfills the promise
of economic gain and also better business relations. Excessive change orders, resulting from communication errors or missing information, negatively reflect on owner’s perception of architects and construction firms. Architects and construction firms with a reputation for costly overruns tend to lose business.

"As the key technology shared between architects and construction firms, CAD applications have taken center stage in the movement to take BIM mainstream. CAD’s ability to capture and represent the geographic information, building geometry, component relationships, and quantities and
properties of building components is at the heart of BIM. Several CAD vendors tout their applications as central to the BIM process, capable of managing the complex 3D information model generated on a BIM project. But are they really? As BIM evolved, architectural intelligence was built on top of primitive foundations. Many BIM applications have limited functionality and key elements of the model cannot be represented in 3D; most do not have a modeling kernel reliable or fast enough to handle large, detailed 3D models. Without the efficiency of a purpose-built 3D modeling kernel, good visualization becomes an extremely time-consuming process.

"We have the answer to BIM’s technological problems: adopt the time-tested platform used by the MCAD industry to build the best architectural 3D CAD solution available. With a purpose-built 3D modeling kernel, Vectorworks 2009 manages building complexity which previously tested the limits of
most BIM applications."

But then, Boingo:

At the Nemetschek Press Event, Ralph Grabowski reports this about Jim Flaherty's keynote theme which is

"BIM Isn't Happening...

...because it costs architects to implement BIM [building information modeling], but they do not get paid more for using it. (In the row ahead of me, Ed Goldberg was vigorously nodding his head in agreement.) Architects want a payback for themselves; they care not if the owner saves money down the road with BIM, because architects don't get any of that savings paid back.

"The key strength of Vectorworks is its free-form modeling, which products like Revit can't do. Mr Flaherty is pleased that Autodesk helps out Vectorworks by marketing BIM and Revit -- but then ends up selling AutoCAD.

"For five years, the #1 selling point of Vectorworks has been its presentation graphics -- outputting good looking drawings with gradients, transparency, 2D Booleans, and non-photorealistic effects in 2D and 3D. All this generated within Vectorworks, again something competitors can't do.

"Now there is a new key mission: Design. Mr Flaherty segregates design into four steps:

I. 2D.
II. 3D Conceptualization or Visualization.
III. Integrated Design and Development.
IV. Model-centric BIM [building information modeling].

Most customers are at step II, 3D Conceptualization; he's trying to get users to the next step, Integrated Design.

Step IV? It's a long way off. Model-centric BIM is the future that everyone talks about today. But there are lots of holes in the process, such as legal issues. Today, BIM works only for owner-builder-operators, such as GM building its own plants.

So, what are some of the limitations of competitors -- Revit, in particular?

* Modeling limitation; freeform modeling is needed to design things like spline-shaped roof edges. Vectorworks is the only one with NURBS surfaces.
* 3D speed and robustness; purely parametric modelers can't handle the model size once details are added.
* Complex UI; users face varying user interfaces when they switch between 2D and 3D packages from the same vendor. Vectorworks has the same UI for all its software.
* BIM slows down design; users spend too much time wrestling with the system.
* Good visualization is hard to get; customers find they have a hard time reproducing the beautiful renderings pictured on the vendor's Web site.

Mr Flaherty sees BIM as something that excites accountants, but not architects, and thinks that paper drawings will be the preferred output method for his lifetime -- as opposed to exchanging drawings electronically."

see the whole article at Issue #572 : : Setpember 16, 2008
http://www.upfrontezine.com/2008/upf-572.htm

Seems Mr. Flaherty has a different idea of what BIM is. His approach seems to be to say, everyone else's ideas about BIM are wrong or wrong headed. And then to take BIM back to CAD circa 1993.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

R.I.P. Geoff Langdon

[Anonymous]

I agree, Aaron. His passing was a sad day for our community...

[Anonymous]

The BIM man's comments on AC12
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=83201

[Anonymous]

Oh man -- those videos marketing ArchiCAD 12 are really bad -- those of us who are on the Autodesk cult juice diet are used to seeing much higher quality videos marketing the product. Hence the comments on the videos 😉

[Djordje]

metanoia wrote:
Oh man -- those videos marketing ArchiCAD 12 are really bad -- those of us who are on the Autodesk cult juice diet are used to seeing much higher quality videos marketing the product. Hence the comments on the videos 😉

Frankly, the videos are better, but I have never seen any of the product in them ... great imagery, yes.

[__archiben]

mikem wrote:
The BIM man's comments on AC12
http://forums.augi.com/showthread.php?t=83201

the quote about the GS marketing vids wes referred to is actually from one of our own pro archicad users. they are quite appalling after all

mike - wes has always written fairly and intelligently about both archicad and revit. if he is indeed dissing archicad in the augi forums then i for one would suspect it to be a justified comment. archicad's not perfect after all, is it?

furthermore, wes has never hidden his background. you, on the other hand, have been asked more than once now to front up about your vectorworks reseller status, yet still seem to cowardly hide away from placing it in your signature after ben's latest request . . .

from where i'm sitting it looks like you're making a very feeble attempt to poison this thread. lay off, eh?

~/archiben

[Anonymous]

I think someone was asking for assurances that I do work at BCIT:
http://www.bcit.ca/files/pdf/upd_mar_2007.pdf

I'm listed on page 2. I've been teaching part-time since 2006, but you're not considered a fixture there till you've built up a certain amount of seniority. I teach AutoCAD and Revit at this point.

[Anonymous]

I was actually refering to the Wes's rather dismissive comment about Archicad copying Revit because it indicates what his real opinion of Archicad, and what AC 12 provided, actually are.

Glad to hear that life in AC is a bit faster than minutes. And I would hope that Graphisoft and AC are raising the bar of their software -- imitation is the sincerest form of flattery after all!

If you are all fine with that so be it.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Dismissive? [Mike - you've just reminded me that I haven't taken my anti-depressant this morning. Thank you.]

The word "minutes" in your quoted text looks like a typo to me, but then I'm sure wars have been started over lesser affronts.

ArchiCAD and Revit will continue to "copy" or "resemble" one another more amd more - even if only superficially. That started long ago and has something to do with competiveness.

The Detail Tool in ArchiCAD looks a lot like Revit's "callout" tool don't you think? I saw the Callout tool at a rare live demonstration of Revit 4, two years before the AC Detail Tool was rolled out.

But hey, that's not what this thread was about. It was about the notion that a company can use both sides of an argument about BIM to mollify the user base and cast doubt on the competition while actually saying absolutely NOTHING about BIM.

We don't speak enough in this forum about the the bigger ideas that drive the platforms we whine about. We have no competent, independent press on the topic either.

Its precisely because of that HUGE vacuum that we need to raise the level of informed dialog on the topic of BIM.

There's a definite place in this forum for asking technical questions, for expressing wishes and desires and, yes, a place for dissention. Well crafted dissention. But, and its a big BUT...

The bar needs to be raised. Why keep trying to set it lower?

[Aaron Bourgoin]

Oh yeah, I wanted to mention one more thing...

I really enjoyed having dinner with Wes in Vancouver this week. It was a great discussion.

For the record. He paid. Thanks Wes.