Customer Reviews

BIM Handbook: A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

In the BIM Handbook (A Guide to Building Information Modeling for Owners, Managers, Designers, Engineers and Contractors), a remarkably knowledgeable and credential team of authors has provided a sound, thoroughly researched and comprehensible review of the technology, the market drivers and the business transformation issues surrounding Building Information Modeling (BIM). This book is a must-read for anyone involved in the design, construction or operation of buildings who needs to understand and apply effectively the emerging BIM tools and techniques. University professors of architecture, engineering and construction will find this an excellent text for introducing BIM to the emerging generation of design and construction professionals.

The concepts underlying BIM have been evolving for a quarter century, as the book makes clear. In the past few years, however, market drivers and technology advances have converged to produce software tools that have an extraordinary positive impact on the design and construction of buildings. In the industry scramble to take advantage of this potential, there has been much confusion about what BIM is, how to use it and who benefits from it. The BIM Handbook tackles all three questions.

Highlights include the chapter on the interoperability of building models, which clarifies what is probably the least understood technology issue related to BIM. Of immediate utility is the evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the major BIM software products. Even the most design-oriented readers will marvel at the variety and innovation demonstrated by the ten case studies. The very thoughtful chapter entitled "The Future: Building with BIM" provokes lively conjecture and debate.

This is clearly the most comprehensive book to date on the subject of building information modeling. It covers the entire spectrum and provides many comparative analyses of existing products, to help you make an educated choice of tools.

The BIM Handbook is an extensively researched and meticulously written book, showing evidence of years of work rather than something that has been quickly put together in the course of a few months. It brings together most of the current information about BIM, its history, as well as its potential future in one convenient place and can serve as a handy reference book on BIM for anyone who is involved in the design, construction, and operation of buildings and needs to know about the technologies that support it. It is the must-have text book for BIM for all academic institutions who would like to teach or research this subject. Some practitioners might find it a little intimidating, as it does get very detailed and technical, but those refuse to be daunted by its academic style will find their efforts very well rewarded with a deeper understanding of all aspects of BIM that are relevant to their work.

You can read a more detailed review of this book in my AEC technology publication, AECbytes: http://www.aecbytes.com/review/2008/BIMHandbook.html

Excellent in how it encompasses BIM issues to various partners in the building process. It is considerably appropriate and relevant when considering the impact of BIM on the building industry and our personal business.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) describes the entry of data base files into construction and fabrication drawings; the designation of the shape on the drawing is actually a hyperlink to the data file. In this way, BIM is definitely not ` what you see is what you get".

In a very similar manner, this BIM Handbook is not "what you see is what you get". It appears to be a book, in fact, it is a catalyst, a dynamic interactive tool that changes the way design and production professionals accomplish their work. It seems to me virtually impossible to read this book and remain rooted in traditional inefficiencies, in outdated practices.

As a catalyst, of course, this book is hard to simply "read", because it is initiating transformative action in real time as one is going thru its chapters. The layout of the book is logical, its progression and presentations crystal clear. It contains many helpful graphics and charts, as well as direct instructions for newcomers to this field to achieve a measure of competence in it. The BIM Handbook is an obvious choice for university level classes, and for professional offices in construction management.

After eight thoroughly informative chapters, the authors give to the reader in Chapter Nine very useful examples of BIM applications. I also appreciated the authors' efforts to describe the current software systems available, and their intended purposes.

BIM Handbook is a must have companion for anyone in this field desiring integration into the leading edge of today's design / build world. I recommend BIM Handbook unequivocally.

Mike Daly
San Francisco

This book is a great resource for managers/executives who need to familiarize themselves with bim technology in order to successfully initiate implementation within a company. Benefits (and drawbacks) of technology for all groups mentioned in a title (developers, facility managers, designers, contractors)are covered in details.

Authors are very competent and they put lots of effort to prepare and organize this material (this is one of the best organized book I have ever read).

[...]

Highly recommended.

If you are responsible for implementing building information modeling at any level (executive or technical), you can either fumble your way through the process change by relying on pure marketing propaganda from the software vendors, or you can read this book and have a deep understanding of the concepts that brought BIM into the building industry. I have read the first edition of this book and the second edition contains vast improvements.

The BIM Handbook is divided into three basic parts. First, the authors give us a deep and thorough understanding of the technology behind today's BIM software tools from Autodesk, Bentley, Graphisoft and others. Second, benefits and use cases are described for each industry group including architects, engineers, owners, builders and fabricators. Finally, a series of highly detailed case studies are provided from a variety of project types and regions around the world.

If you haven't read the BIM Handbook, you're only scratching the surface of BIM.

Recieved in the amount of time given. Brand new. Was given me in the condition listed. Great. Got in time for my class.

By researching the websites, I could know advantages and disadvantages of BIM, and there is no need to own this book. It gives a general idea on BIM and doesn't enhance my skills using related Softwares like the AutoCAD and Revit books that explain steps on how to use them and also there is much words than graphics which makes it a little boring to read.

This book is for BIM newbies. It does not need many computer knowledge to read but it needs some kinda of design and construction background. It has many amateurish comments on BIM, and some of them are not accurate. For example, one of discussion questions in chapter 2 is In what ways are some of the current popular design tools, SketchUp for instance not BIM tools?The truth is many BIM plugins were developed by third parties for SketchUp. With these plugins, SketchUp not only is a design tool but also is a powerful BIM platform. Many BIM functions can be achieved by the object-oriented programming (OOP), Ruby API for SketchUp.These plugins might not provide comprehensive BIM functions, but they could give a good solution for a specific purpose. In addition, the sketchUp added the dynamic model function after 7.0.It is a simple parametric modeling function.Overall, the statement of 'Sketchup is not BIM tool' is not accurate because it does support the OOP, such as Ruby and C++, to develop BIM tools and it also build-in the parametric modeling function.
I recommend this book for owners, project mangers, and contraction managers. However, it is not for designers, engineers,and students who want to understand BIM deeper.
Some of the basic information is useful indeed, but some of the statements will lead to the stereotypes of BIM. It is bad from academic perspective.
The book will disappoint you if someone try to think it further in a computing perspective. Especially for the designers and engineers who want to develop their own BIM tool kits for Reivt or the other BIM applications to satisfy their unique requirements.


East Lansing,MI