BIM and AV

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is a buzzword that is growing louder in the AV industry. It is a growing movement amongst the architectural community and has gained traction within the AV consultant and AV manufacturing communities as well. According to the National Institute of Building Sciences (NIBS), BIM is a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility and a shared knowledge resource for information about a facility forming a reliable basis for decisions during its life-cycle. BIM aids in integrated project delivery for the design and construction phases, as well as building lifecycle management for the building's owners once construction is completed.

"Our industry has moved from paper drawings to 3D drawings in AutoCAD; this is the next evolution," says Craig Janssen, LEED® AP, Managing Director at Acoustic Dimensions, who acknowledges that he has a progressive view on BIM and AV. "BIM is 3D with embedded information such as weight, cost, mass, heat signature, and power draw. The data provides that interconnectivity and relational information for the AV system and for the building."

How does BIM work? Janssen offers the example of a wall plug. "In a regular 3D drawing, if you move a wall then the wall plug gets left behind. BIM uses intelligent mathematical models that recognize the relationship between the wall and the plug. You move the wall and the plug goes with it," he says. "Another example is stairs that can recalculate when the size of the floors it connects have changed."

There are several developers of BIM software, but the program taking hold in U.S. architecture and consulting firms is Autodesk's Revit Architecture. Others include ArchiCAD by GraphiSoft (popular in Europe) and MicroStation by Bentley Systems.

"The biggest challenge is that Revit has a steep learning curve," says David McNell, CTS-D, an AV system designer in the specialty systems group at architectural firm RTKL. "The primary thing for the AV industry is to remove the fear, and clear up the misunderstanding of what BIM is. BIM is a tool that brings all players to the table at the beginning for the common good of the project."

A Call for Standardization
Standardization is required to fulfill the promise of BIM, especially since it touches every industry related to building design and construction. In early 2008, the NIBS Facility Information Council announced the release of the "National BIM Standard Version 1, Part 1: Overview, Principles, and Methodologies" for public use. According to NIBS, the National BIM Standard establishes standard definitions for building information exchange through building information modeling.

Janssen thinks that standardization should be a priority for the AV industry too. "There is always been a resistance to standardization in AV," he says. "Here is the opportunity to create a unified drawing standard such as how objects are ordered, how they are placed, and weighting. And we can create it virtually overnight if the manufacturers work together."

McNell agrees, "Ideally, AV manufacturers need to standardize a way to approach object design and standardize the way to approach system design in BIM. Other industries are way ahead of us in offering BIM objects. The larger construction materials manufacturers such as Trane, York, Andersen Windows, and most of the mechanical engineering and plumbing manufacturers have full libraries to offer architects and engineers."

The challenge, according to Janssen, is that "almost no one in the AV world is using Revit; they are overwhelmingly using AutoCAD. By contrast over 75% of architectural firms are on or moving to Revit," he says. "If we can adopt an open source format and flood the market, every AV consultant and contractor can have standard documents and objects."

AV Manufacturers Offer BIM Models
Several AV manufacturers have taken the first steps to offer BIM models of their popular products.

"About two years ago, consultants came to us looking for BIM models. Today, we are seeing more and more requests," says Chris Broome, Contract Market Manager at Draper, Inc. "The reaction at Draper is that it's a good selling tool. It gives the designer an idea of what the room looks like with a projection screen in it. The client can see the size and shape of the screen in a 3D model."

Draper contracted an outside vendor to create their BIM models, but they still had to grapple with the two schools of thought about BIM objects. "You can either offer individual drawings for each product or use a more general drawing that includes embedded information on several similar products," he says. Draper is taking both routes for now, and will listen to feedback on what the market prefers.

The company currently offers their BIM objects on their website, and on third-party sites like Autodesk Seek and on the Reed Construction Data website. "We created objects for our most popular products and now we're watching download counts and waiting for traction. We'd like to see more momentum," says Broome.

Middle Atlantic Products is another AV manufacturer who has made the investment in creating BIM objects for their products. "We started getting requests from AV consultants and architects in 2008," explains Michael Cukrow, Marketing Communications Manager for the company. "Our philosophy is that we want to make it as easy as possible for our products to be specified and will assist in any way possible to make that happen."

To ensure they were offering what the market needed, Cukrow presented at a Revit architectural users group in Oklahoma City to get feedback. Middle Atlantic used an outside firm to create their BIM objects, but also bought a Revit license to learn about the technology in-house. Cukrow echoes the opinion that Revit has a steep learning curve but also counters, "It is also a challenge to learn exactly what consultants need because the concept and technology are new to many of them too."

Middle Atlantic's BIM objects are available only on their website, and they too will be measuring download counts. "If a request came in now, we would create the needed drawing ASAP." says Cukrow.

For now, there is no phase two rollout plan for more BIM objects. The company will wait for the demand to rise and take a wait-and-see attitude.

What’s Next?
Despite the growing availability of BIM objects for AV products, McNell says that his firm has created all of their BIM object families in-house. "It's just been easier to create our own since the shared parameter file that Revit uses is unique to each firm. A shared parameter is a shared definition which multiple families and projects can use so that information, like a products width and depth, can be understood universally across Revit allowing the parameter value to be used not only in the objects but also schedules and tags. So when a manufacturer creates an object, I still need to define how their parameters relate to ours," he says.

Janssen's view is much bolder, "Manufacturers will be on Revit or they won't be on big projects, and consultant's need to see that their value is in their interpretation and manipulation of information; not in their drawings."

Over the next year, McNell sees more consultants and manufacturers involved in BIM and hopefully more objects available to the market. Right now, he must look to other industries to morph their solution into an AV solution but thinks that, as BIM becomes more popular in the AV industry, user support will also grow.

Additional resources: