Top critical review
2.0 out of 5 starsbasic introduction of BIM
Reviewed in the United States on January 30, 2010
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
