Data vs Geometry – Two Sides of the Same Coin

A new opinion piece from Technical Director of bimstore, Kris Atkinson

The BIM debate in our industry rages on with contrasting views, opinions and thoughts on the best way to do something. This often causes headaches for those starting out on the ‘BIM journey’ with a bombardment of ‘oh you should do it this way’ or ‘that way’. I thought with this article I would try and offer up my opinion on the contrasting views surrounding data and geometry within BIM content.

When creating BIM content for our manufacturers it often falls into two distinct silos. The data that is contained within the BIM content and the geometry, or what the component looks like. I have read many articles recently that places the emphasis firmly on data alone and that the geometry is secondary and not nearly as relevant.

Having the data organised correctly in multiple sources and being able to access it freely across platforms is the ideal scenario, providing data that caters for all. Data exchange formats such as COBie and Product Data Templates (PDTs) are going a long way to assist in make this a reality. Whilst I do not disagree with the importance of the data, I am a firm believer that the housing of this data, the geometry, plays an equally important part in the use of BIM content.The industry already has a wide range of services available to assist manufacturers in the adoption of BIM and provides an avenue for increasing brand specification and assisting in the compliance of Level 2 projects. The problem I see is that multiple views and services are being offered that sometimes mislead or mis-sell the fundamentals of BIM. I believe a massive misconception is that data organised and collated via PDTs can simply be housed in generic or basic geometry. As a technician by trade, I understand that the design process in place puts an emphasis on designers not committing to the specification of a product early on, as the likelihood is that during value engineering the product will be swapped out for something cheaper. This will then require someone to go into the model and swap the content around. This train of thought is something that is engrained into the way we work. I believe that the adoption of BIM should be to fundamentally reduce the risk associated with our projects, and this requires the industry to break this mould to make decisions earlier on.Let’s put this in real terms, if I decide that the boiler I require for my project is going to be a Logic Combi boiler, I am making a decision that ultimately reduces the risk of the project going forward. I know what the accurate dimensions of the unit are as per the BIM component supplied by the manufacturer (Ideal Boilers), I also know the specification and technical details for the output that the unit is going to accommodate, I can even assign a cost to this element. If I know all this information I can plan accordingly and there should be little to no risk. On the other hand, if I decided to take PDT data and input it into an out of the box or generic boiler, I’m actually increasing the risk by not committing to a specification. The unit may not be the correct dimensions of the unit that data should be assigned to, essentially only providing one side of the coin.The difficult task with BIM content is to cater for the requirements of all. Architects, engineers and even the manufacturers themselves, we all require the content to do different things and are very quick to voice our opinions if something isn’t as we want it. An architect will use BIM content for various reasons, for example, to take rendered visuals. These will be used to sell the design intent to the client, an engineer, however, will use it to calculate heating outputs for the building. The manufacturer will be using it to increase brand awareness as well as ensuring that it is clear the boiler BIM component used is their product and not similar approved by a competitor.Files size of BIM content is often regarded as a major issue and that placing the data into lesser geometry will save on that file size and encourage increased usage. However, since bimstore’s launch in 2011, I have created content myself that people have deemed ‘too large’ in file size. Despite this, we have never received a comment that the size of a BIM component has had a negative impact on the project itself. In today’s market, the computing power and software available to us is better than it has ever been. Optimised scalability of these files means that the file size argument is a thing of the past, today machines can cope with the large file sizes that come from adding additional features, guidance and error messages to the content. If you are having issues maybe you should look at the hardware you are using and the minimum requirements advised by the software provider.To close, I’d like to suggest that if BIM content contains all the information I need why would I water down or dilute the information for the sake of the projects stage? If I have the correct information in the correct geometry it gives me and all other involved parties everything needed to do the job in hand and remove the risk. If I only have one side of this coin, i.e. the data, I don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle. This is a core ideal of the bimstore hosting requirements, in that the content we have available are real life products that can be bought directly from our manufacturers and installed on site. The content itself is as near as we can get to a digital representation of the product and we use the software features available to us to ensure that the content we provide is easy to use, containing all the required data as well as being a dimensionally accurate representation of what will be used. No doubt the debate will rage on!

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