Actively passive or passively active?

There is something quite weird when it comes to BIM ‘viewers’. Most appear to have been created on the assumption that there is a large section of project participants that are happy to ‘just view’ the project they are supposed to hold a stake in.

Clients are often put into this basket, negating everything I know about building owners/clients/developers.

Presented with a design, they all like to pull it apart, analyse, balance and savour, praise or criticise but more than anything, interact with it.

Scribbles of multicoloured pens over working drawings come to mind, perspective renders prepared with care and attacked with vivid pens also.

As far as I can recall from my past as a practicing architect, dog-eared, coffee stained these documents truly ‘lived’ between the communicating parties.

Digital viewers came to the market as the cheep/free and often highly-disabled versions of the modelling packages designers used.

Finally got around to trial Tekla’s BIMsight. Verdict? Not too bad.

Missing? Offload button for files. Export to formats I can use...

It is fast and smooth, however solid objects come through hollow!

I am non-inclined and definitely lacking-in-patience to systematically review anything –

but I feel obliged to note:

Not impressed by the interface...

Minimalist? Utilitarian? Boring?

How do we have such a mismatch or features in this field:

A Mercedes engine with a Trabant’s navigational interface?