- BIM is used in different ways
by different companies throughout the AEC industry.
In the discussions so far,
you may be seeing clear use cases for the design team
and clear use cases for the general contractor.
But I don't want to leave you with the impression
that these are the only AEC team members
that can benefit from BIM.
On the contrary, implemented properly,
trade contractors and even suppliers
can benefit from this technology.
And when they do,
and they then contribute their data to the project model,
the entire project can benefit.
On the trade contractor side,
it's very common to see and hear about MEP contractors,
mechanical, electrical, and plumbing contractors,
using 3D BIM to add their assemblies
of wire and cable trays, pipes,
and other complex mechanical assemblies
to a structure virtually
prior to building it out in the field.
There are lots of pieces and components
that are not detailed by the architect,
and they require additional shop drawings
to detail these components
and how they're to be assembled.
Using BIM allows them to detect clashes
and find things that won't fit.
Again, that's becoming very commonplace among MEP trades.
For this course, though,
I wanted to explore other innovative uses for other trades,
so I turned back to a trade
where I spent a good part of my life,
and that's concrete and concrete reinforcing.
Here's how one company is using BIM
to improve the process
and accuracy of reinforcing detailing.
- My name's Tyler Keith,
and I'm the owner and general manager of Tyler Reinforcing,
a rebar subcontracting company in Phoenix, Arizona.
In 2015 when I started my company,
I had the ability of having a clean slate.
I didn't have any legacy systems.
I didn't have a bunch of money invested in 2D systems
and a bunch of people trained in 2D systems.
I had a clean slate.
And one of my first employees
worked at an architecture firm before.
Knew Revit very well.
He talked me into going with Revit.
I knew what Revit was, but I didn't know what it could do.
I didn't know how it could be powerful.
Quickly, I started to gather
that Revit really didn't know what rebar was.
It has it in there,
but it didn't have any useful tools
for us to extract the data back out of it.
So we had to create our own plugin tool
to make it useful for us to be able to,
to start to become to know what the rebar is,
clearances, sizes, standard bend types,
and start to pull that information out of it
and make it useful for us.
I think one of the greatest things it does
is it shortens up the learning curve
of figuring out what you're going to build,
what is this thing going to look like?
It is so hard to train somebody to look at 2D drawings
and draw a 2D placing drawing or shop drawing off of it.
It's because mentally you still have to process
in your head, what does this thing look like?
And look at section cuts
and understand how that relates to another section cut.
When you start detailing in 3D,
everybody can understand a 3D object.
Once you get the concrete structure there
and you can spin it, you start seeing things,
and you notice mistakes a lot faster, your own mistakes,
or maybe somebody has some elevations wrong.
It's really helped us in that,
and I think it's reduced our errors.
We've been able to take people,
detailer, rebar detailers, who create the shop drawings.
We took one person who was drawing cabinets in Revit
for a cabinet company
that came into our office and knew how to work Revit great.
We taught him the rebar side, and this person just took off.
So the learning curve for us training a rebar detailer
has been at least cut in half, if not more.
So it's opened up our labor pool
of people we could find to do rebar detailing,
which, in the past,
has been really hard to find skilled people
'cause it was more than a technical degree.
It was almost like an art degree
because rebar detailers were really hard to find.
If somebody has gone through classes
and knows Revit, knows how to set up a model,
and knows all those things,
rebar, when you get down to it, really is a simple concept
once you start to see it a few times
to where you're building the skeleton structure,
the skeleton for the structure.
In 3D, you have to meet at the right spot
'cause you're building a virtual model
of what you're building.
In the old 2D way,
lot of times you could detail the entire structure
and think you're right,
and it's all wrong when it gets out there
because you missed an elevation,
or maybe there's an error on the plans,
that the elevation's wrong.
Now these younger generation of ironworkers come up,
they're used to technology,
and now we're getting them to look at that 3D model
before we even fabricate the rebar
before we're even out on the job site.
Now they're looking at it.
They're seeing what it looks like.
They're starting to formulate a game plan in their mind
of how am I going to place this rebar,
and what order am I going to place this rebar?
And they look for problems.
How am I going to support this rebar
while I'm placing it in the structure?
So we're using it as a pre-planning tool,
and that's saved a tremendous amount of time,
errors, frustration,
'cause it's a frustrating business at times
if you don't know exactly how it's going to go in.
So doing that 3D model,
it's exceeded my expectations of what the benefits are.
I call my detailers virtual ironworkers
because that's what they are.
They're actually building, they're virtual,
they're a virtual ironworker.
I want their drawings of the mall
to look exactly like an ironworker's going to place it
in the field,
including rebar accessories, what we call placing aids.
Placing aids is a piece of rebar
that holds a structure together.
I want those shown in our model because that's real world.
It's not designed by the structural engineer.
It's not shown on the contract drawings,
but it's something we need to hold the rebar in place.
Well, it's going to be there in the real world.
I want it showing really on our model.
So if somebody looks at that model
and they're out there in the field, they look the same.