As someone quite entrenched in both disciplines (Civil and Architectural), I’ll add my 2 cents worth on the BIM vs. GIS subject.

In my opinion, BIM and GIS are both “methodologies” rather than “products”. The acronyms each have their own meaning and refer to designing, building, and managing information in a full life-cycle.

Each discipline has its own standards; from CAD standards to design standards (think of AIA vs. AASHTO), but both BIM and GIS rely on correct As-Built data to provide accurate information about their models.

BIM
The National BIM standard states the definition of BIM as:

“BIM is best thought of as 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; defined as existing from earliest conception to demolition.”

Autodesk has taken the BIM acronym that has provided a great deal of success with their Architectural Modelling packages and applied it to their Civil products as well. Their logic appears to be that its a “3D” product, therefore it is a “BIM” product. I believe that it is irresponsible to change terminology to simply advance product sales.

On the Autodesk Web Site, Autodesk lists a number of products as being “BIM” products:

• Revit
• Navisworks
• Design Review
• AutoCAD LT
• + several more

With the acronym meaning Building Information Modelling (with building being a verb OR a noun), its interesting to see products such as AutoCAD LT and Design Review being shown on the list.

Revit
Revit is a Design Tool that allows the storage of certain pieces of information as well as the ability to add custom fields (heating capacity, cooling capacity, etc.) to the actual objects.

Navisworks
Navisworks integrates information from multiple data sources to provide a cohesive collection of information (graphics and data) to analyze things such as clash detection (HVAC duct work clashing with structural components, etc.).

AutoCAD LT
AutoCAD LT is Autodesk’s low-end design package. Apparently, any DWG file creation tool is now a BIM product as well.

Design Review
Design Review is a light-weight DWF viewer and markup tool. While it has been used as a backbone of products such as FMDesktop, its neither a Design tool, nor a Modelling tool.

FMDesktop
Absent from the list is FMDesktop. FMDesktop was one of Autodesk’s tools for managing the Building Information and Autodesk just dropped the product (Note: There are dozens of Facilities Managent Products available that provide similar capabilities such as FM:Systems, Archibus, Tririga, Manhattan, Cadapult, Famis, and more).

In the 2006 – 2007 time frame (when Autodesk acquired FMDesktop), Autodesk themselves showed customers Power Point slides regarding BIM. These slides showed where the “Design”, “Build”, and then “Operate and Manage” processes were performed. FMDesktop was Autodesk’s solution to tell the story of the building lifecycle and where the information was to be managed. These were broken down into 2 sections: The “Data Collection” piece and the FMDesktop piece.

Data Collection incorporated the Design (several disciplines such as Architects, MEP Systems Engineers, and Structural Engineers) as well as the majority of the Build process. The FMDesktop piece overlapped the Build process and then took over for the “Operate and Manage” process.

In my opinion, building that model of information AND managing that information is the true test of a “BIM” solution. There is no 1 product that is a “BIM” product. Its a series of technologies that are incorporated to provide the “information”.

Ultimately, a database component is required to work with the graphical representation of data (which certainly could be referred to as the “Building Model”).

GIS
GIS is BIM’s counterpart whereby Geographic (position on the planet) information is being stored and managed.

Most end users might think of GIS solutions as Google Maps or Google Earth where they can enter an address and out pops a graphic representation of that location or directions on how to get there. The graphic is just the tip of the iceberg. Without the data, the graphic would simply be a pretty picture.

Just as with BIM data, GIS data utilizes design tools to build the graphics and As-Built data and then tools to expand upon the As-Built information.

While there are a number of individual products on the market to assist in the creation, manipulation and distribution of GIS data, a complete GIS system involves more than 1 product or techonology.

A couple of the common Design Products are: Autodesk Civil 3D and Carlson Civil Suite

AutoCAD Civil 3D
Civil 3D is an object-oriented design tool for Civil Engineering applications. Because the tool is object oriented, the end product is not easily distributable. The data can be transferred to other links in the GIS solution chain by using technologies such as LandXML, but the graphical interaction is lost in this process (i.e. the objects are lost).

Carlson Civil Suite
Carlson’s Civil products work with DWG files in an AutoCAD or IntelliCAD DWG format. Because the data is stored as compatible DWG information with external data files, the data is easily transferred to other products in the GIS solution chain.

Managing the data developed in the design process is the next component of the GIS life-cycle. A number of products provide those solutions: ESRI ArcGIS, Vueworks, and Custom Mapguide Solutions.

ESRI ArcGIS
ESRI’s shp (shape) and adn (coverage) files are quite possibly the most prevalent GIS specific data files available and are often integrated in GIS solutions. ArcGIS allows GIS solutions to be deployed similar to FM solutions in the BIM world.

Vueworks
Vueworks is an organization that builds GIS and Work Management solutions using the ESRI base applications.

MapGuide
MapGuide is Autodesk’s development environment to build GIS applications. It is often used in concert with ESRI, Microstation and Autodesk data files.

GIS Standard
While there is not yet a concensus on a singular GIS standard, there are independent Spatial Data Standards employed by each digester of GIS data. You can view some of those here:

• Denver Colorodo Spatial Data Standard
• Oregon Spatial Data Standard
• Federal Geographic Data Committee

Both GIS and BIM perform very specific functions in accordance with their own disciplines. While the terminology is often mis-used, they refer to unique information systems; BIM in the structural facility world and GIS in the geographic world.

Some of you may have heard David Palumbo, PE, Technology Manager for Dewberry, at the Carlson User’s Conference back in April.  For those that missed his presentation, his story has been published in CE News this month.  Read about the process Dewberry used to evaluate new technology, its impact on their business methodology, and how they planned the roll-out and implementation.  Regardless of the size of your company or the software you use, there are some good tips and pointers in this article.

http://www.cenews.com/article.asp?id=3928

With the adoption of machine control for construction, the ability of various GIS systems to accept 3D data, and now with the expansion of the term BIM to cover elements outside of a building proper, surface modeling has become a critical aspect of any project.  Since so many elements down the line rely on the surface model, it is critical that the model be as accurate as possible and free of errors.  This article will be the first in a series that will take a look at various tools and options within the Carlson product line to ensure the accuracy of your surface models, sometimes known as triangulated irregular networks (TIN) or digital terrain models (DTM).

In this first article, we will take a look at quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC) and how it applies to surface modeling.  This is an essential step of the model building process, and one that is often overlooked by software manufacturers.  For most people, the QA/QC process generally involves examining the contours and looking for issues, or spot-checking points on the surface.  All current surface modeling software allows for the generation of contours and spot-checking, but these rely on the user to manually review the entire surface after it has been built.

Carlson Software is one of the few products that include an error checker as part of the surface building process.  Most other programs either return a generic error message, or simply fail to complete. If you use the Triangulate & Contour routine, an error log is displayed showing any major issues after the surface data is processed.

The issues listed include the following:

• Crossing breaklines
• T-Intersections between breaklines
• Vertical faces

If there are no issues with a surface model, the error log is not displayed.  You can use the various options to change the sensitivity of the error checker, and to highlight any issues found.  Simply select a single error on the log, then click Zoom In.  You can then either correct the errors using any of the surface editing tools, edit the original data (such as the breaklines) and rebuild, or choose to ignore the errors if they are minor.

Although no errors may be found as part of the surface creation, there may still be errors in the surface model resulting from bad data.  Once the surface has been built and any build errors have been corrected, you should do a manual review of the spot elevations and contours.  The easiest way to check and verify spot elevations in Carlson is by using the Surface Inspector, which is available from the Surface pull-down menu of various modules.  After you select the Surface Inspector command, you can change options as to which surface(s) you want to examine, as well as labeling settings.  Once this has been done, move your cursor over the surface previously specified and a floating dialog box will show you information about that surface.  Click anywhere on the surface to label a specific point.

Press Enter to exist the Surface Inspector.

By taking just a little time to verify that your surface model is accurate and free of errors, you can save time, money, and effort in the later stages of your projects.  The Surface Error Log is an invaluable tool for locating any errors and flagging them for editing at a later time.  The next article in this series will look at checking a surface model using contours.

There have been many debates in various blog posts, discussion group posts, and articles regarding what is the best way to handle North rotation on maps.  With AutoCAD-based systems, there were essentially two choices: you could set a User Coordinate System (UCS) or rotate the screen using a tool such as 3D Dynamic View.  Carlson Civil and Survey offers these choices with a twist.

One of the main drawbacks to setting up a UCS is that it can throw off calculations being made by your mapping/design software.  For example, point databases and external TIN files often refer to the coordinates used in the field, or that existed when the data was generated (such as the TIN being built).  If you change the UCS, the coordinates may be wrong, and you may end up with incorrect results for things such as profile generation.

Because of this, many people choose to rotate the screen without rotating the coordinate system.  In AutoCAD, the simplest way to do this was by using 3D Dynamic View (DVIEW).  The main drawback to the DVIEW command is that while the screen would be rotated, common tasks such as adding text and symbols would be more difficult as they would have to compensate for the rotation of the screen.  This was usually managed using a setting called SNAPANG, which could be set to the opposite of the DVIEW rotation, making the use of ORTHO mode viable.  In AutoCAD-based systems, this would be fairly tedious, particularly if you wanted to match the rotation to a specific item, such as a portion of a road centerline.

In any of the Carlson desktop applications, there is a View pull-down menu with several commands that can solve this issue, often with a single click.  To see the most commonly used options, go to the View pull-down menu and choose the Twist Screen sub-menu.  There are four commands available, each one rotates the screen and automatically sets the SNAPANG to match.

• Standard – This option allows you to select a rotation angle using the mouse.
• Line, Polyline or Text – This option allow you to select an object to set as a view baseline.  It is the most useful when trying to match views to objects such as property lines or road centerlines.
• Surveyor – This option prompts for the manual entry of a bearing or azimuth for the rotation angle.
• Restore Due North – This option returns the screen to the orientation where North is straight up.

By using these options, you can quickly set up plot sheets and layout tabs, annotate the maps appropriately, and preserve the coordinate system for future design work or other calculations.

There have been many articles, discussions, and presentations on Building Information Modeling in the recent months.  If you haven’t already heard the basics, this post covers it well.  For surveyors, civil engineers, and construction firms, there are two things you should know about BIM and how it will impact your business.

First, BIM is very similar in its goals and processes to GIS.  Basically, you are attaching data and other information to objects.  This allows you to manage the facilities after they have been built and track their contents over time. This is very similar to how as-builts of infrastructure are managed and tracked through a GIS system. Water and storm sewer sytems, telecomm transmission lines, and landscaping are types of things that are traditionally managed using GIS.  The information age has dramatically opened up opportunities for professionals to gather, collate, and attach data to their surveys, designs, and as-builts. 

Secondly, since buildings are not constructed in isolation, they must tie into the site grading and infrastructure, further opportunities for designers and contractors have opened up.  Complex site plans showing how the grading, structural design, and utilities will all connect are now possible, and represent a new deliverable for firms to offer their clients.  Carlson Software offers many solutions for creating these models and because Carlson data migrates well between various CAD and GIS platforms, owners and developers of these projects can be assured that their designs will be ready for management once construction is complete.