USC BIM Conference 2017, "BIM 2017: what's next?"

I attended the eleventh annual BIM conference at my alma mater. https://arch.usc.edu/calendar/bim-2017-whats-next-sold-out

Here is what I learned:

1. More and more firms are bringing visualization into their design work flow
• Virtual Reality
• Augmented Reality
• Reality Capture is replacing site photography
• 3d Printing
2. Machine Learning and Internet of Things bring valuable data to the design process
3. Grasshopper, Dynamo, Lumion are software to leverage what computers are good at to improve design outcomes
• Do analysis to better understand the performance of design
• Grasshopper can create visually complex designs using math and small repeated elements like bricks
• Dynamo can gather data from the design and automate repetitive tasks
4. The number of tech companies involved in VR and its technologies is extensive - Vive, Samsung, OculusRift, HoloLense, ...
5. Some VR tech allows live design - move equipment in space, add objects,
6. A virtual dissection table allows doctors to perform operations in a virtual environment using full body scans
7. A structural engineering firm used scripting to model every structural steel connection on a large project; they used Tekla to analyze and optomize the structure to identify and eliminate steel that was redudndent; the Tekla model was used by the fabricator

I already knew, and it was reinforced:

1. BIM helps designers make better design decisions and create better constructability
2. Sun studies optimize overhang performance
3. VR of virtual construction saves over building full scale mockups (Operating Rooms, Hospitality)
4. Each stake holder has different priorities, design teams must analyze the priorities and seek to maximize the satisfaction across many dimensions of priorities
5. 3d laser scanning is used for as-built visualization and to help design in existing structures; it reduces field time; one project is estimated to have saved ~$900,000 in change orders

If you have any questions or would like further discussion, please comment on the post.