Becoming BIM Certified

Have you thought about becoming BIM Certified?

Currently there are few options for becoming BIM Certified including Autodesk Certification, Associated General Contractors of America  and the RCIS in the UK.

In Canada, the Canada BIM Council has developed a comprehensive multi-level BIM Certification based upon multiple aspects including knowledge, education and experience.

The CanBIM Certification Program for Individuals is a tiered certification based upon nationally standardized and recognized levels of BIM Competency and Process Management.

Why get Certified? 

Certification is a formal way to recognise your competency in BIM. Gaining certification from a nationally recognised organisation indicates attainment of specific BIM competencies which indicate to employers and clients an assurance that those with certified designation have undergone a formally assessment process based on rigorous peer review of knowledge, application and experience.

CanBIM Certification includes four levels, the final being CanBIM Certified Professional, attainable after providing documented proof of having completed 3 building projects utilizing integrated, multi-discipline BIM or the previous three level.

The three levels building up to Certified Professional are based upon any academic training that you may have as well as the number of hours working on relevant BIM projects in your discipline.

As a CanBIM-certified individual you will:

Receive a certificate that entitles you to use one of the following exclusive, designations:

• CanBIM BP1 – CanBIM BIM Professional Level 1
• CanBIM BP2 – CanBIM BIM Professional Level 2
• CanBIM BP3 – CanBIM BIM Professional Level 3
• CanBIM CP – CanBIM Certified Professional

Join a respected and developing group of BIM professionals.

Gain a competitive advantage by being listed on the CanBIM website as a CanBIM-certified individual.

Here is an opportunity to be recognized in your field as BIM certified giving credit for your experience and knowledge in BIM in the AEC industry.

I'm Certified... are you?

Click HERE to access the site.

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Happy Canada Day

Happy Canada Day

Some fun Canadian facts:

• There are over 3 million lakes in Canada
• Canada has more than  54,716 km of coastline
• Canada is the second largest country in the world
• Canada's lowest recorded temperature was -63C (-81.4F) in 1947....brrrrrr
• Residents of Churchill, Manitoba, leave their cars unlocked to offer an escape for pedestrians who might encounter Polar Bears...!

The "BIM Effect"

How does BIM affect the other departments in your firm?

BIM has an impact in all departments such as IT, Human Resources, Marketing and Finance.

If you work in a fully *BIMplimented firm, or are making the transition from CAD to BIM you would have noticed that BIM has an impact on the operation of your business.

As a BIM Manager you can advise and provide valuable information to other departments in the company.

IT: Internal or Outsourced

Working with IT is critical, your IT support needs to have a understanding of BIM and the demands it has on a project. BIM needs to work in conjunction on IT as IT manages the network, the Revit Server, computer requirements and can be a valuable resource creating scripts etc.

HR: Staff Selection and Training

Who knows your technical staff better than you do?

Who can evaluate a potential employee's BIM skills better than you? Be a part of the interview process, even create a BIM or Revit skills evaluation test. Typically I can decipher how good a potential employee's Revit skills are just by talking to them and asking them pertinent questions.

You know your technical staff's skills better than HR, it's up to you as the BIM Manager to improve your technical staff's skills by making training and education options available.

Same applies to team selection, you know the best people for the type of project, their skill sets, what types of projects they like to work on and also when and how to "push" them forward and place them in a team position to help them move forward.

Finance: BIM’s impact on the bottom line

Traditional billing method still working for ya? How about billing?

Advise the project manager on time line expectations and billing time line.

BIM has changed the typical design time line and unfortunately the billing sequence still does not reflect that change.

*BIMplimented - Full BIM implementation. A firm utilising BIM technology to accomplish its goals as a profitable entity.

CanBIM YouTube

Following up on a comment I received on my Collaboration Systems Discussion Panel blog posting, to the Toronto CanBIM event. 

The event video's are available on the CanBIM YouTube site. More video from the Toronto event will be posted as soon as possible.
https://www.youtube.com/user/CanBIM

Also check out the CanBIM Facebook page for photos taken during this event and past events.

Next CanBIM regional session will be in Calgary on October 1st 2015. Watch the CanBIM website for updated information.

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OBJ Exporter for Revit

Here's a link to the OBJ exporter from Revit I use when pushing models up to the Augment app.

A free Revit 2014/2015/2016 add-in to export Projects and Families to OBJ format.

The images show the resulting OBJs from the Revit Sample Projects inserted into Octane Render and Blender.

New RevitOBJExport2 

– Material main textures and bump map textures exported.
– Materials now exported for elements in linked Revit files.
– Level of detail supported.

It works great and is a lot simpler to use compared to some other exporters that I've tried.

Check out these previous posts on Augmented Reality.

More AR

More on AR and VR

Enjoy your AR experience...

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Collaboration for Revit - New to us....

Were starting to use Collaboration for Revit on a number of projects, subsequently I’ve had a couple questions about local files and back-ups for C4R projects.

Here’s a couple quick points about C4R that are different to what we normally do.

Autodesk A360-Collaboration for Revit is a Cloud Subscription service that hosts building information models in the cloud, enabling project participants from multiple companies or locations to concurrently author models.

Locals:

There technically is a local RVT + an RVT for each linked model. They are tucked away in the Collaboration Cache but you’re not meant to access them.

This is purposely located in special location because team members using Revit shouldn't need to access their locals. Team members navigate to A360 within Revit's file browser, and Revit makes sure they are working on fresh local versions of the Cloud Workshared model in C4R.

You can Publish, Rename and Relinquish elements from C4R.

Saving a back-up file.

Currently there is not “official” way to create a back-up file. However every time we share our model with the consultants we keep a duplicate which can be considered as our back-up file. You can do a "Save As" from Revit for any cloud workshared model and that'll detach it and save it locally. You can also download RVT files in bulk from the A360 Hub, and they'll be downloaded along with any links into a zip file.

I’m sure something will be developed soon as I think it’ll be a commonly requested task.

How does C4R cache Data?

Collaboration for Revit, proactively caches updated model data locally on the machine. This helps to significantly improve the overall performance experience.

It caches the date differently to how Revit Server does

Will there be any “Latency” in accessing the file in the Cloud?

Since Collaboration for Revit operates with a Revit application naively executed on a Windows PC, the overall performance experience depends on the hardware of the machine and the size of the model(s) being operated on. Operations that require a transaction with Collaboration for Revit will depend on the latency and bandwidth between the PC and the Collaboration service. Basically it depends on your PC and your Internet connection, so far I haven’t seen any latency.

Here are a couple links with further information on C4R.

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/a360/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/ENU/123112/files/a360-collaboration-for-revit-cloud-subscription-faq-html.html

http://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/revit-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2015/ENU/Revit-CAR/files/GUID-AE6DBCDF-3DB1-41CB-9DC5-B0C336E6C851-htm.html

Industry Innovations Symposium - Vancouver

Industry Innovations Symposium
There is a great line up of speakers for this event being held at UBC Campus on June 9th.

• BIM/VDC
• Integrated practices
• Lean construction
• Modularization and prefabrication
• Computational design
• Sensing and data capture technologies

Tuesday, June 9th, 2015
8:00 am to 1:00 pm
Center for Interactive Research on Sustainability 
Modern Green Development Auditorium 
(CIRS - 2260 West Mall - Room 1250)
UBC Campus, Vancouver

Register HERE