we are starting to use BIM in our firm ... primarily because we believe that it will ENHANCE creativity ... the jury is still out on that, because we are in the very preliminary stages of using the new technology ... and, it does take a lot of up-front work that previously would have been shoved later into the process ... it also requires much more decisionmaking earlier than before, but that's probably a good thing ... nevertheless, we're still taking a "watchful waiting" stance ...

overall, we think this is the wave of the future and we better get on board ... we think it affords the opportunity to become better architects ... but, it will require a fundamental rethinking of how we go about doing our work ... it's not a challenge for the lazy

No, it will not limit your creativity, but if you can’t tell the software to bend a wall in 2 different directions, you may be limited. I personally think the current bim is not for design use especially for complex shapes. Because of cad and 3d modelers like Formz, 3ds max and Rhino, designers have the option to work the other way around. They can build a solid sculpture for that matter, import to a cad program and extract plans and sections. This bim thing forces you to go back to the traditional way of designing. You start of by making serious plans with doors and windows which is very uncommon in the p.d. stage. In autocad you can at least draw a line that can represent anything without having to choose what it will be. And God forbid, you want a tapered wall in a bim software.

Bim is excellent for making cd’s, but you’d probably need an additional cad and 3d solid modeler for the early stages of design.

With Desktop you could sweep a profile, Im sure theres something sim in the others. I've still found that unless everyone's on it, and into it, IT can become a disaster.

of course not, its in the designer not the tool.

Hi
I have a very strict aproach towerds CAD towerds drafting about the conservatism some of you think is over , -- to put it simple, I want sections and drawings that can help acturly produce the building compoment AND I want it so, that the CAD can open more options do things that is not so easy put into a plan drawing, into the tradisional 3 planes .
I want more than just a nice rendering -- I want more tools ,tools that do not restrict my creavity to "the known methods" the limitations in tradisional projecting AND after I made the renderings, I want that 3D model to be the basic description of the thing I designed BUT with new tools for manufactoring the thing.

As you all know this mean that what I design, by tradisional means, are calculated into a number of 2D drawings, ---- The tradisional technic drawing with front, side and top views NOW do this mean any new tools , is it now with the tradisional methods just rewritten into fast code in a #D CAD program _easier_ to build or produce what I designed ????

Well if you reconise my claims you also know why and how projecting are limited by the same tools , just in CAD, that _allway's was avaible.

Do it offer more creativity to be able to add a note to an object no.
If you are tight within the exact same world, and the only option are reverse engineering ( make a sculpture and then measure that and put it into 3D ) --- where are the new options ? Well I could make a 3D router do an increadible expensive routered copy, but realy is that the promising new tools, --- to be able to do fragile one-off with an attitude that make CAD just support oldfasion manufactoring ?

any technology is not a benign or neutral 'tool' as you say. any technology prduces certain effects and risks that can only be attributed to using that technology. it is hubristic to ignore this fact in the history of technology.

technologies makes us as we make things with technology. we develop certain habits of mind, forget other practices. this can either be a very good thing, producing new freedoms or it can be deeply risky.

all that being said, of course it is up to the designer to place limits on freedom. however, the history of numerical control is an oppressive and tyrannical one in western technics. the history of numerical control (from the benedictine clock tower, to double entyr bookkeeping, through CNC and BIM) have always suppressed and opressed alternative praictices.

BIM will be used most effectively by those who produce endless reptition (strip malls, motel 6's). will BIM be more efficient way to organize design documentation? perhaps but who benefits? aren't you jsut arguing for less yet once again for architecture?

architects are very naive technically-about the effects of technology and their profession. they unwittingly and uncritically accept whatever technology is sold to them by some software snake oil salesman. they rush toward pertpetually novelty, but don't know what that is. they are incredibly irrational about this most purportedly rational of endeavers: technology.

the only thing architects do is produce drawings and specs. that's it. if they slowly forget how to do even that, what will they know? and as a followup, what will they be worth if you can biy a program to do what architects normally have done?

Hi

"technologies makes us as we make things with technology. we develop certain habits of mind, forget other practices. this can either be a very good thing, producing new freedoms or it can be deeply risky."

And be sure that when you from hands on need, develob something from the attitude "I want to be able to make what I can model with Solids" , then the abrubt anwer will be " this is not how "we" do it".

Now BIM as assoc informations in plan drawings is another direction than the expermental aproach that demand better tools than plan drawings to acturly produce the wonders, you can model just with simple Solids, but as added informations how to route the manufactoring to deliver that particular building compoment then that make sense. --- as added information post processed ready for making the thing .

But BIM still seem to be about account, not about creativity with new tools but refining the manual drafting ,I see it as being restricted to what can be described in the tradisional drawings, ------ In that sense you can say it restrict your creativity to the tools that fit within the model you build with the tools avaible, if creativity are to be able to produce in real ,what you CAN draw 3D in a CAD program with advanced 3D entities then BIM make no new way's no new manufactoring process, --- still it don't mean that no creativity is possible within this frame.

I've read some crap in my time on this forum but switters, do you honestly beleive that the only thing architects do is produce drawings and specs.

You have obivously never worked in practice.

I would break apart your theory on BIM but at the moment I stick with the above.

per - would'nt the cad tools for manufacturing be programs that come later in the process? For example - if I draw a piston for engine in CAD, I would load the drawing into a milling machine that would read it and is hardwired to program the paths the router bits would take to make the die in order to cast the piston. All the machines are different so they need different software. CAD is only needed to tell it what it wants to look like when done.

Exactly --- but when you describe this ,you also do so from a hands-on aproach, with this aproach you will master the new options know what the N.C. routered mashine can produce, you know that as long as your 3D model fit into the post processor, then the software will route the tool .

So yes , a tradisional drawing will work -- but allready it is not a tradisional drawing, but a drawing where your "pen" is your knowleage about what the post-processor in the manufactoring mashine ask.

Your "pen" suddenly changed from making the tradisional plan drawings translated by a craftman to feeding a post-processor.

This is a major change not well described in the manuals .

bots, i have worked in plenty of offices over the past eleven years, plenty of construction sites, and built plenty of work boht in an office and by hand. what do architects produce besides drawings and specs?

I have a rule I try to follow regarding technology. Stay a few iterations BEHIND the curve. Let others w/ more resources idntify unforeseen issues & give some time to identify the real bugs.

Also, if something better pops up, then you will be in a better position to act. Being on the extreme Cutting-edge is for those that can afford it. If you can - do it. If not, take your time....unless you want a govt contract.

switters - I produce a mound of paper and other media that is not just drawings and specs. Letters, faxes, e-mails, memos, notes, graphics, annimations, web etc some which are interactive.

I may have interpreted your intial comments out of context.

"the only thing architects do is produce drawings and specs"

There is a lot more 'doing' than these two elements alone, but you know that.