May 5, 2010

Your say

We need a BIM protocol that can be accessed at all levels

Re: Common digital exchange format a solution to BIM problems (DCN, April 30)

Brian (Lighthart) is right in his assessment of barriers that exist in successful deployment of a BIM solution cradle to grave.

As it was put to me at the Insight BIM conference held last month in Toronto by a colleague of CanBIM, if ‘Bimmers’ truly want to advocate for a common protocol of interoperability across all platforms, then the advocacy shift needs to move from a proprietary standard of file share (i.e. .dwg) to something that can be interpreted, modified, accessed etc. at all levels.

How about a dot BIM protocol for IFC?

Imagine the solution to the woes of implementing BIM platform solutions is for the dot BIM file extension to become the dot PDF of the modeling and building information world.

AutoDesk, Bentley etc. really need to take a hard look for the overall good of the industry, and I believe they are now or will be soon as these challenges grow with mass adoption in North America.

Someday an enterprising C++ programmer will come along and create the ‘dot BIM’ solution Bimmers are really looking for.

Until then, Industry Foundation Classes deployed in accordance with ISO 16739 is your alternative.

I just gave away a very profitable business idea - is anyone out there listening?

-Derek Smith, Canada BIM Council

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