Which building information is best conveyed in 3D, and which still requires 2D?
◦ Which stakeholders need 2D drawings, and why has that not gone away? Contractors, permit officials and fabricators still rely on 2D sheets, like contracts, code reviews and site work run on signed, dimensioned documents that anyone can read and mark up without software.
◦ Give an example of something in your building a 3D view fails to communicate. A wall section through the envelope is a good example. The layer order of the assembly, the flashing laps and the insulation thickness are clear in a dimensioned 2D detail, but they get lost or blurred in a 3D view.
The same location needs to be shown differently to different audiences.
◦ How would information at one spot be filtered for a client, a contractor, a code official and a fabricator?
Take a stairs as the example:
- The client gets a rendered view showing materials and the overall experience.
- The contractor gets dimensions, the construction sequence and coordination with structure and MEP.
- The code official gets rise and run, handrail heights, the width along the egress path and fire ratings.
◦ What is the risk of showing everyone the same view? The main issue is then the audience gets buried in information it doesn't need and can miss what it does. A client might fixate on technical details, or a contractor might build from a view that was never meant for construction.
View templates enforce consistency across a set.
◦ What goes wrong on a real project when views are configured individually? Line weights, scales, visibility settings and annotation styles drift from sheet to sheet. Elements end up hidden on some views and shown on others, which causes coordination errors and RFIs, and makes the drawing set look unprofessional.
◦ Who should own the templates and standards, and why? A BIM manager or a small standards team should own them. Central ownership keeps the templates consistent across projects, controls changes, and stops individual users from quietly changing them to suit one sheet.
Your schedules pull information straight out of the model.
◦ How can schedules support procurement and model based estimating?
◦ What is the danger of a schedule that is accurate about the model but wrong about the building?
◦ What did your calculated field reveal that the plans did not?
You published two versions and compared them.
◦ Why does version history matter more on a shared model than a personal one?
◦ If a consultant says their work was based on last week's version, what do you need to be able to tell them?
◦ When should a model be formally issued rather than just saved?