有关BIM的四本经典图书速览

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This book was published in 2008, yet it is still very relevant as the topic it focuses on—sustainable design using BIM—continues to grow in importance with each passing year. Energy efficiency is now one of the top-most criteria for evaluating a proposed building design. BIM has continued to gain in momentum and it is now firmly established as the key technology in the AEC industry for designing, constructing, and operating buildings. This makes it imperative for designers to learn to use energy analysis tools in conjunction with BIM applications if they want to take advantage of sophisticated performance technology that is greatly facilitated by BIM. Of course, a well-designed building that meets energy-efficiency criteria is ultimately dependent upon the skill and expertise of its designers—there are so many strategies for energy-conscious building design that can be implemented without using any software tools whatsoever. However, the availability of intelligent tools that can evaluate different aspects of the performance of a building by using its BIM model can only help in enabling the future crop of buildings meet energy performance standards that are becoming increasingly stringent all over the world.

“Green BIM” is authored by Eddy Krygiel and Brad Nies of BNIM Architects—one of the early adopters of BIM—and it came from their own expertise in both BIM implementation and sustainable design. (Eddy Krygiel is now at HNTB Architects, which is also well-known for its BIM implementation.) The book provides a good theoretical understanding of the key principles of sustainable design, including its history; benefits; rating systems around the world; main design factors influencing building performance such as climate, construction type, orientation, form, materials, glazing, and so on; as well as more advanced topics such as water harvesting, the use of renewable energy, and how to choose sustainable materials. This knowledge has been part of the architectural profession for decades, and is therefore as much relevant now as before. It is in the BIM portion of this book that you can start to feel its age. While all the key aspects of BIM are discussed including what it is, what are its benefits, and how it can be used for energy modeling and sustainable design, it was written when “BIM was still in its infancy” (as quoted in the book), so it is missing significant developments in the integration of BIM and sustainable design including the acquisition of Green Building Studio and Ecotect by Autodesk, the introduction of Project Vasari for early conceptual modeling and energy analysis, the introduction of several performance analysis tools within Revit, the integration of EcoDesigner within ArchiCAD for built-in energy analysis within a BIM application, and the launch of Bentley’s AECOsim Energy Simulator, to name just a few. In fact, this confluence of BIM and sustainable design has gained so much traction in the last few years that “Green BIM” seems somewhat outdated for those looking for practical tips on how best to create BIM models for accurate energy analysis. But for those looking for a broader and more theoretical understanding of sustainable design and how it can be better enabled by BIM, “Green BIM” is one of the leading books focused on this topic.

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Building Information Modeling: Planning and Managing Construction Projects with 4D CAD and Simulations

This book is authored by Willem Kymmell, who teaches BIM, construction documentation, specifications, building code analysis, and architectural history at California State University, Chico, and also runs an architectural practice that includes residential and commercial commissions, consultations, and virtual building software training. It is more of a general book on BIM rather than focused on a specific country or aspect of BIM, and is thus more like the first book—the “BIM Handbook”—than the second and third books discussed in this article. It aims to provide an understanding of the “ingredients, principles, and concepts” behind BIM, to then enable readers to “forge their own approach” to it. While a good chunk of the book is devoted to discussing the software tools for BIM, it does not seem as outdated even though it was also published in 2008, like “Green BIM.” This is because it more focused on the processes enabled by BIM than on the actual applications themselves. For example, I found several illustrations of building systems modeled in SketchUp, which is not, strictly speaking, a “BIM” application. However, as we saw at last year’s AGC BIMforum, leading contractors like Mortenson make extensive use of SketchUp in their BIM processes, so it makes sense to include this application in a discussion on BIM.

This also points to another key attribute of the book—it is more construction focused, with discussions on how BIM could improve processes such as construction management and construction documentation. There is a whole section of the book devoted to case studies, most of which highlight the work of construction firms like DPR Construction, Turner Construction, and Webcor Builders. (These case studies have actually been written by the representatives of the respective firms themselves, which help to lend some different voices and perspectives to the book.) This focus on construction is understandable, given that the author is an Associate Professor in Construction Management at California State University, Chico, and sees a “potentially insatiable demand for BIM skills developing in the construction industry.” Although this perspective is from 2008, we can agree that BIM is still being aggressively adopted by construction firms, which makes this book very relevant even today. Another key differentiating factor of this book is its emphasis on the teaching and learning of BIM—it outlines an entire BIM curriculum, spanning several semesters, with practical suggestions for concepts covered and learning exercises, that could be gainfully used by educators to jumpstart their own BIM classes.

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Conclusions

All the four books discussed here do a great job of providing a better understanding of what exactly BIM is, how it originated, how it is different from CAD, what are its benefits and long-term outlook, and why it is here to stay in the AEC industry. No doubt, there are problems endemic to the book format that all of them suffer from—the images are typically forced into a reduced size and limited to a black and white display, which does not allow them to do justice to the building projects and software applications they are illustrating. Also, a book usually has to be wrapped up a few months before it goes to print, so it cannot be fully up-to-date with current developments, which are happening at an increasingly rapid pace in the technology industry. However, on the upside, these books have been meticulously researched and can serve as a useful reference for information that may be difficult to find elsewhere. Despite the increasingly popularity of online content, books are still being written, and we should be glad that the AEC technology industry still has experts who find book-writing a meaningful and worthwhile endeavor.

About the Author

Lachmi Khemlani is founder and editor of AECbytes. She has a Ph.D. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, specializing in intelligent building modeling, and consults and writes on AEC technology. She can be reached at lachmi@aecbytes.com.