What’s better way to start of this journal than to write about my first BIM project! It all began almost three years ago, and my starting point was my master thesis, student exchange programme and learning about this crazy BIM-thing in Scandinavian countries (first software I’ve tried was Tekla). I’ve connected all the dots and thought to myself – “why not give myself a challange, and maybe learn something in the process?”

The idea of my master thesis was to recreate an existing housing project located in Warsaw using BIM software (in this case – Revit), provide an analitical model within the same file that could be exported to structural software (in this case – Robot Structural Analysis) and show that such an aproach could bring cost and time saving benefits.

For the modelling part I was using “paper” documentation, but because the building wasn’t very complex – it wasn’t a terrible downside. My modelling software of choice was Revit 2014, upgraded later to 2015. I’ve issued the final copy as native file (.rvt), but if I was to repeat that project, I’d definetly use .ifc standard (and I’d add another chapter to my thesis explaining why that’s the right approach to have).

I’ve tried to use the “purest” software I could – i.e I wanted to use default solutions to fully learn software capabilites. However, seeing all that Revit had to offer, for the purpose of creating shop rebar drawings I’ve used SOFiSTiK Reinforcement Detailing.

Having a working analitical model within a structural model wasn’t as simple as I thought it would be, so I’ve spent a lot of time moving columns & walls around (Robot doesn’t take misalignments very well), and If I were to do it again, I’d look for some smarter aproach (Dynamo?).

Not to make this post longer than in should, I’ll give some bullet points:

• Structural and analitical information were matching – although I’m not sure if that could be achieved if the project would be more complex
• Loadings and foundation were modelled in Revit – so that Robot would be used just for calculation
• Loading combination were done in Revit, but I wouldn’t recommend such a solution
• Rebar was modelled in Revit, wasn’t easy but It made schedulling faster than ever