To start this analysis of Autodesk versus Bentley off, it’s
best to start with a little perspective. First up, I’m a layman. I’m not the
smartest guy in the room, nor do I want to be. But my job requires me to be two
things. First and foremost, I’m an analyst. It’s my job to objectively understand
the what, how and why for our design approach. Understanding what it takes to
get a project out the door, meeting the code and client’s needs, are first and
foremost. Putting the art into the project, while important, is a bonus, but
critical towards gaining wider acceptance for future work.
Once you gain knowledge of how things work, as the analyst,
I have to take that information and figure out how to make it work better. It’s
at that point the specialist begins and the subjectivity kicks in. We develop
the solution and implement it, train it and support it. Most cases, we’ll get
it right, sometimes we get it wrong…but then the analyst kicks back in and we
start over.
And all of this is based on understanding the information
that we receive. In today’s society, information is everywhere – in our
personal finances, in our job, in our culture…even in our refrigerator. And
it’s out there, unfiltered, for everyone to see. Just ask Google, Facebook, the
IRS and the NSA how important data is…they live and exist off of it.
How that data is shared is what drives nearly everything we
do. And we’re constantly in overload, being bombarded daily with information,
whether it’s personal, professional or trivial. It’s being able to pick out the
relevant data is what keeps us from going nuts.
So, to make BIM work, you have to create filters, and
understand information sources. All too often, we don’t get it the way we need
it, so for my own sanity, I had to break it down into categories. Here’s my
stab at the 100k foot perspective on information or data.
Personal – the priority in everyone’s lives is the personal
information that relates to everything you believe and do. We see the world in
a lens of information that directly pertains to us as individuals. Personal information is raw data, and it’s
what affects most of our decisions.
Here’s an example. My wife is a mortgage loan officer, and
in order to make a decision about getting a loan approved, she needs to know
personal information – where you live, what you make, what your bills and
expenses are. One of the things she’s good at is helping people interpret their
personal data, and make decisions about what they can and can’t afford. I know
she’s a rarity in the world, but she does care about the people she works with,
and tries to help them not get into a bad financial situation. But it’s all
based on the raw data they provide. If it’s incorrect, or falsely provided, it
can affect their lives in profound ways. But if you don’t know the raw data
about yourself and what you do, then it’s hard to make decisions correctly.
Apply this to BIM. The personal data is the specific
information assigned to an environment that we are designing around. This could
be specific information about a piece of equipment, or the area requirements of
a room. If the data is incorrect or falsely presented, it can cause all kinds
of problem. Have you ever gotten a set of plans or specs that don’t match how
something exists in the real world? That’s what I’m referring to. Getting this
personal data correct, and making sure it’s properly filtered and shared,
determines the success or failure of a design project.
Mutually Shared – at this point, you are entering into a
relationship where more than one person is involved. Two or more people have a
mutual understanding about the provided information, and they both agree on it.
This requires common knowledge of personal information, and agreement on how
it’s presented.
In the BIM world, this is the relationship between multiple
design sources. And it’s the most broken part of the system, since the majority
of our design tools aren’t made to communicate with each other. Sure, there
have been some attempts – IFC, for example – but it isn’t seamless. Part of
this comes from the inherent human nature and desire to protect their personal
information and intellectual property.
The other part comes from the way it’s presented. In most
design applications, all the data is shared. Take a look at the Revit DB link
tool – it dumps everything right down to the lines used to cheat, and make
something look different (or more like the way we did it in CAD, to get the
documentation to look pretty). Every CAD file, model, detail is nothing more
than a graphical database. It’s easy to share this, but sometime we’ll get
stuff we really don’t need, or isn’t relevant. This causes overload – and can
also allow for items to be missed, or misinterpreted.
Mutually Beneficial – there’s a big difference between
shared information and beneficial information. Just because data is shared,
doesn’t mean that it provides a benefit. If the data is in conflict, then it
can affect the design. An example would be a specification that states one
manufacturer for a part, and a schedule in a drawing that says something else.
At some point, you have to decide what information is
mutually beneficial. In our world, we are deciding what data needs to be shared
between databases, design programs, specifications and client applications. It’s
one thing to share everything, which is what happens now. It’s more important
to filter this list to what’s mutually beneficial, and needs to be coordinated.
So let’s back up and look at these parts. In order for us,
the end user, to gain productivity, reduce costs and increase accuracy, we have
to start with the personal information. We have to assimilate it and share it
with multiple sources. And we have to make it mutually beneficial, so we’re not
overloading each other with irrelevant facts, that don’t affect the outcome –
the design.
So how does this pertain to Autodesk versus Bentley?
Simple…step back and look at both companies. Look at their product offerings,
and how they approach the design world. While there is commonality, mainly
along the output side, everything else is pretty different. There’s nothing
wrong with that, but the common threads are too thin. Even internally, you look
at different products within the Autodesk world, and see the silo effect – for
example, class definitions and properties in the Plant 3D/P&ID products,
versus categories and parameters in Revit, and object styles/property set
definitions in AutoCAD Architecture/MEP. Bentley’s not immune to this either,
but both products have infrastructure in place that makes determining and
sharing the mutually beneficial information tough to do.
What BIM is doing is affecting the tools we use, and how we
gather this information. BIM is not software, it’s a process – we’ve said this
a million times. And it’s the “I” in BIM that needs the most work, mainly due
to both company’s different perspectives on how we need to handle the
information.
Next up – we’ll look at this in more detail, and talk more
about the silo versus silo-free approach.
CORRECTION: Norb corrected me on my previous post. Bentley
does allow you to use the ESC key to cancel the current command (although it’s
not the default – so there). Look under Workspaces, then Preferences. In the
Input section, you can change the right mouse button to all ESC to cancel the
command. OK – when I’m wrong, I’m wrong…but I ain’t sayin’ I’m sorry…yet..
Thanks – David B.
