BIM Gets Broader
February 08, 2010
With a few updated solutions hitting the marketplace, construction companies will have more software functionality to enable BIM (building information modeling). At the World of Concrete show in Las Vegas, Feb.2-4, Tekla, www.teklastructures.com, Espoo, Finland, announced the release of Tekla Structures 16.
According to the company, this upgrade will improve collaboration, usability, and business workflow. For some project teams, this technology will increase efficiencies, productivity, and sustainability, while also incorporating more project members such as self-performing cast-in-place contractors.
Tekla Structures 16 has new features including cast-in-concrete design and detailing, better data exchange, better utilization of reference models, improved numbering, and model publishing tools, such as a free application to share the model over the Internet.
The product has also been built according to Microsoft’s requirements for the Windows 7 certification.
Tekla executives are touting that this new product will help the industry create a BIM process based off information in the model, while also providing a green installation through the sustainability benefits that BIM can bring to an organization.
While these upgrades could help companies improve a number of processes across a firm, another new product can help improve document management as it relates to the BIM process.
Last month, Vico Software, www.vicosoftware.com, Boulder, Colo., introduced its Vico Doc Set Manager product, which is a comparison tool for DWG and vector-based PDFs. This product collects and compares drawings for construction projects, which will allow companies to identify changes and make it easier to track and assign RFIs (requests for information).
According to Mark Sawyer, CEO and president, Vico Software, with all the interest in BIM, construction companies still need to remember that documentation serves as the record for building projects, and finding and resolving the changes in 2D document sets makes the benefits of 3D, 4D, and 5D BIM possible.