It knows too much!

Why the BIM model is unlikely to replace the drawing as the communication tool within AEC projects any time soon?

The answer is simple: It knows too much.

Giving away the digital model of a building to another party without clear terms of reference what can be used from it and how, is like throwing one’s mind (brain?) to someone when asked to describe an event.

They question you: ‘what happened at the party when Pete knocked Paul over?’

You may tell your story as you remember it, in one sentence, or ten.

That would be the equivalent of ‘traditional, drawing based information’. You filter the information and give out what-you-want and how-you-want it.

What if, instead, the interrogator told you – ‘well, you were at the event, just give me your brain and we’ll scan from it all relevant info, what you saw, what your thoughts at the time were etc...’?

Sounds scary?

No wonder then that hardly any party is volunteering to drop the drawing and allow others to have full access to the ‘brains’ behind it.

This may change in the future, but new things will need to develop.

An essential one: Industry wide acceptance on how to distinguish within a model data backed by the issuing party and what is out-of-bounds.

Something flatCAD is still not managing very well, 30+ years mature.

(Image by Mahesh Kumar, modelled in Revit)