IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2011 - 18

“what bim and revit enable us to do is model projects quickly and run them through various [sustainability] analysis tools.”
—Paul Audsley, director of information technology practice, nBBJ

The ease and low cost of visual communication technologies is more of an equalizer, however. now—with commonplace technologies like video-conferencing and skype, where clients and designers can collaborate without burdensome travel and mailing costs—the global market is even more accessible to firms of all sizes. And here’s where smaller practices, such as the 15-person rsA Architecture and Interior Design, with offices in beijing and Los Angeles, can leverage the investment of bIm. “using bIm and video fly-throughs, we can walk clients through a project in three dimensions,” says rsA principal mitchell sawasy, FIIDA, FAIA. “It allows us to give presentations and share documents without being there.” anice stevenor Dale, FIIDA, president of JsDA, a 10-person “virtual office” with employees in three cities, has been harnessing various digital technologies for a decade. The firm has been working exclusively in ArchiCAD, which is more commonly used in Europe, while AutoCAD has been the standard in the u.s. ArchiCAD developed more advanced 3-D modeling techniques earlier than AutoCAD, which Dale says has been essential in designing the kind of “sculptural” interiors her firm has created for clients like boeing. As bIm developed, JsDA quickly integrated its capabilities into their already digitally focused practice. “Anyone doing large projects with big budgets should be interested in bIm,” she adds. sustainability is another area where bIm leads to more precise and faster design decisions. “What bIm and revit enable us to do is model projects quickly and run them through various analysis tools. A certain façade choice, for instance, could impact the mechanical loads on the interior,” said Paul Audsley, director of information technology practice at nbbJ. The firm uses Ecotect, a sustainable design analysis and modeling software, in

combination with bIm for solar and shading analysis. “When you’re looking at the interior design of a patient room, for example, the level of daylighting is very important. It will effect the placement of the bed and the amount of support lighting that will be needed.” Another area where practice makes things faster is building a bIm library. sawasy says that the initial process of using bIm was slow, but, each time you work on a project, things progress more quickly because of familiarity with the platform’s power tools and the additive nature of the program’s library. The practices that have made significant headway with bIm began with investing in time and internal education. “rTkL is very committed to adopting new technology,” states Jennifer barnes, IIDA, a vice president at rTkL, the global design firm. The baltimore-based firm has been using bIm for nearly five years, starting first with a few large-scale pilot projects. Those projects served as training for a core group of early adopters, who were then deployed as core team members on later projects. “Those people were really like seeds,” barnes continues. “now nearly the entire firm is revit-savvy.” The firm’s familiarity with revit means project size is less of a barrier, but it still matters. “I was initially skeptical that it would be useful on smaller tenant-improvement projects,” she says. but the platform has become so favored by rTkL that it’s now used on projects as small as 30,000 square feet. “you really don’t reap the benefits on projects any smaller than that,” she adds. yet even for larger projects that are destined for bIm, the process often requires cobbling together different software. Like rsA, the designers at rTkL use revit in combination with other programs. They might begin a project in sketchup and continue working on it to make quick changes early on in the process, then import the sketchup files back into

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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IIDA Perspective - Fall/Winter 2011