Manufacturer Content for Bentley Arch.

This should be a must as BIM becomes standard.  As a 3d files is not BIM without the information.

This should be a must as BIM becomes standard.  As a 3d files is not BIM without the information.

Yes ....

We (badly) need some catalogues of building elements and components from real world manufacturer's and suppliers.

Even the 2D and 3D cells in Microstation don't relate well to real world suppliers materials and components (INMO)

How will we be able to keep up with people using Revit if we are having to create our own catalogues all the time.

I remember well over 2 years ago raising something along these lines at a GC Demo (by Bentley) and asking why the large manufacturers (of building components) were not being 'introduced' to GC so that they could provide us (the designers) with a catalogue of parametric building components. The general 'unofficial' response from other users at the event (and some Bentley people) seemed to be .... 'that would seem to be worth pursuing)

This situation contrasts somewhat from what I've seen of Hevacomp, which comes with a vast set of catalogues of real world items (lights, HVAC equipment) that have 'real world' data/info built in to them (IES values, efficiencies for boilers and chillers, SFP, flow rates, ...)

The lack of these, is a real problem area in BA

Regards

Yes. I guess its too bad (or good !) that Bentley's agreement with Autodesk didn't cover Revit's file format. Maybe we will see a OpenRVT alliance soon, which does the same thing OpenDWG does today? Its amazing how file formats continue to be such a pain, eventhough everyone seems to recognise the global cost to productivity.

I think that there is still a big laundry list of sticky problems that need to be addressed before we can benefit from a real choice of component catalogues.

1. Ontology: How to define building products / components and how they behave and interact with each other. Bentley is trying to do this in the plant world and ISO 15926, in collaboration with other major plant world stakeholders. The amount of work looks pretty daunting. And, I don't see little AEC outfits paying for the multi-tier middleware set up that is being proposed for OpenPlant.

2. Open Standards: Long term, components need to be created, debugged/certified and updated by the manufacturers. They will tend to want to do this only for the market leader (Revit?). I doubt AD will open up its file format anytime soon. And, its probably not cost effective for lone vendors to provide the necessary kit / support to manufacturers. Converting Revit will slave Bentley to the way AutoDesk defines parametrics and their file format decisions, which will be a big strategic problem / maintenance burden. Look at the amount of effort and support DWGmode has meant for Bentley. Will it be able to do this again for Revit?; which is probably overdue for a revamp anyway. Google Sketchup seems to have gone off the boil, and probably isn't a realistic alternative to Revit anyway. Nemetchek's ArchiCAD, Allplan, Vectorworks don't have much market share, and have the same problems as BA.

3. Parametric / Interoperability Platform: Even if we can get the components into BA/Mstn; To function properly, the 'design intent' or 'information' needs to be able to extended and controlled as part of a dynamic 'information model'. End-user programming is a given and there are big software issues for both the vendor and user that need to be dealt with as a result. Even in Revit (which is not really the most sophisticated parametrically, granted) there are big problems will file bloat and reliability that results in in-house restrictions on users making their own components. Do we really want to follow their lead too closely? I have also seen guys who develop funky intelligent stuff in GC/GH, that revert to dumb geometry when it comes time to do detail design, just when component intelligence is most needed to manage the increased amount of information that comes with the later work stages. Bentley should be able to solve this with GC, and maybe Rhino with GH, and ACAD with D#. Maybe we should wait and see if AD provides a bridge between Revit and ACAD/D#.

4. ....

Interesting that CATIA is beta testing its Live Buildings, which supposed to be a 'Revit' killer. Who knows, maybe cloud computing will be able to pull the rug out from under Revit, and Bentley can ride DS' wave. Too late to jointly develop a common interoperability layer?

RMA is also supporting RhinoBIM. Maybe Bentley should focus on the structural component market ? Seems to be a lot fewer suppliers / product types, and Bentley already has a strong position here.

Who knows, maybe Bentley can use the work already done with piping in the plant world, and electrics with Promis-e and come up with an 'Integrated Services Model' that would be compelling enough to generate some 'positive externalities' in spite of not having market share dominance.

So back to real catalogues: Another 2-5 years before we see any real improvement, maybe....

being a software supplier developing own file format and own applications above this file format, competing in field with other file formats and other applications you have in fact 2 opportunities

- either to force everyone to use your own file format, because it is better, more reliable, more capable, ...

- or give your users option to work with different file formats, while still working on own one

first option does not work, unfortunately, as we can see in real world. it has been few years, since V8 DGN was released as open file format and there is still no other application then MS, that works fully with it. simply, world does not accept it.

second option works, but the software supplier must share his resources on two fields - developing his own application and continuously maintain support for other file format. here is one big danger, in case, his own application would become just another, though sophisticated, "another file format editor".

now, imagine, yet another file format comes into game with massive marketing and financial background. what shall the supplier do? put another resources to support it? with the danger that with each new release, which comes each new year he needs to either pay for license or reverse it and implement it into his own product? if the file format is relatively simple, this can be affordable, but if it is not, I guess the software supplier simply won't invest his money just "to be fully compatible" with this new format and put some money into his own product instead. question is, if his own product will succeed the others ...

as we all know, there are often other things that decide on whether the product is successful or not, other then the quality itself. and in case of BIM, one of the most important is the support of the manufacturers and other parties coming into complex building life cycle

IMHO, Bentley will not invest money into support of RVT file format, it's too different from DGN or DWG, rather produce Revit plugins to provide "some" compatibility. on the other hand, they should definitely put some money into marketing, universities, promo offers to get more users and more support from external parties. of course, this is just my point of view, form my small Central Europe perspective :-)

PS - if the Live Buildings by Dassault Systems is something like Digital Project by Gehry Technologies (based on CATIA), then it won't  be real competitor for 99% of projects

p.

Manufacturers will want to support the format with the most market share. The AEC CAD market seems to be by and large mature, with AD the dominant player in terms of licence numbers.  I don't think its in AD's interest to open up RVT, yet. They can rely on market share, which won't change much in a mature market, to support their current pricing structure and slowly bury the competition by buying up and providing better functionality.

OTOH:

1.       Most new Revit users will come from current ACAD user pool. Retraining, loss of productivity during retooling is a big cost barrier to this change. If D# can provide parametrics for ACAD, it would slow Revit down and split AD's BIM offering. D# seems similar to GC, so translation / roundtripping may be easier. I guess, if D# embeds its 'script' into DWG, like GC is doing, then Bentley would be covered by its pact with AD.

2.       Staying with ACAD. Actually, big part of the numbers are ACAD LT licences, used for 2d work. DS has brought out a free app, DraftSight which is based on DWG. Not the only low cost DWG clone / 'editor' on the market, which must be a thorn in AD's side. More weight behind using DWG as a path to BIM.

3.       Live Buildings: I won't write DS off too soon. They should have learnt from DP, but who knows how CEO's make decisions these days. There seems to be a lot of really innovative stuff that is coming out of DS: cloud computing, opening up of its geometry kernel through Spatial, more integration between SW and CATIA etc. They must be thinking of how to grab more of AD's numbers in a mature market.

4.       Invest in marketing and seeding in academia? Sure, GC has had some success here, but seems to have lost a bit of momentum to GH due to usability problems.. apparently. I guess, Mstn should be investing heavily in emerging markets like Russia, South America etc. Big minerals / infrastructure markets, also relatively open, still ? Big CAD local vendors in Russia still have relatively small revenues. Whether this will result in better catalogue selection is a bit of a long shot. I guess, there are other 'long tail' niche markets out there that could be 'jump started'. Sketchup was 'discovered' by the semi casual woodworking CAD user. Rhino has jewellery, fashion shoes, boats etc as well as emerging market presence.Bentley seems to be investing further up the lifecycle chain, which makes sense for the big pro user markets, but not for the typical AEC little guy site.