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BIM: Not Just for Building Modeling Anymore By Heidi Boutwell As Civil Engineers and Designers, will we ever use BIM? What is BIM, Anyway? Our first question of the day to answer is, “What is BIM and how does it apply to us, the Civil Engineers?” BIM, or Building Information Modeling, has been around since 1970, but the actual term “BIM” was first used in the mid- 1980s and really didn’t become popular until around 2002. That year, Autodesk released a white paper called Building Information Modeling. Wikipedia defines BIM as, “a digital representation of physical or functional characteristics of a facility. A BIM is a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions e’ve all seen them: BIM for Structurals, BIM for during its life-cycle; defined as existing from Architects, BIM for Mechanicals. But what about us earliest conception to demolition.” Change out the poor Civils? Any BIM for us? word “facility” for “project,” and now you’ve applied Until this product release cycle, I’d have said BIM to Civil Engineering. we were never getting BIM, but the tides have In a nutshell, any 3D model that is dynamic and changed. The Civil products have gotten a huge can have information applied to objects within the overhaul this year, something that has not been model, information which deals with the project’s done since Civil 3D came about in 2005. Part lifecycle, cost and design, and which is also of this overhaul is adding BIM tools to Civil 3D, sharable and accessible by others, is considered and putting some really serious analysis tools to be a BIM project model. Given that idea, if you into InfraWorks 360. As I was told recently, they really think about how the Autodesk software works realize we’ve been neglected, and have made it a today, Civil 3D and InfraWorks 360 are already priority this year to bring us, the Civil Engineering somewhat BIM-compliant. community, into the BIM fold and upgrade us to a real-world experience. W 14 www.cadlearning.com