It’s hard to believe it was a mere two months ago that I was first learning to use BIM (Building Information Modeling) software. Last week I finished my first project using the software and have a complete set of construction documents made using BIM. During the past few months my opinion of the software hasn’t changed, I still love it!

Of course there were some struggles along the way and my coworkers will confirm there were days when I wanted to throw my computer out our 16^th floor office window. For instance, there was the day I spent most of the afternoon researching and trying to figure out how to put a brick lug in a wall. I asked others in my office who had worked on BIM projects, and while they pointed me in the right direction, they were unsure exactly how to do it. I also looked on several online forums but couldn’t find my answer there either. Somehow, I finally managed to figure it out and within 30 minutes of figuring it out, had all the lugs for the entire building installed and detailed in my wall sections.

There were also the times I was beyond thankful of the program’s capabilities. The biggest of those was when we changed the walls in our multi-purpose room from 6-inch wood studs to 10-inch metal studs only two days before the drawings were to be issued. When using a 2D drafting program, it would have taken at least a day or two to make all those changes in the floor plan, reflected ceiling plan, wall sections, details, etc. With the BIM software I had all the changes made in a couple of hours.

I will soon be starting on another project using the BIM software and look forward to seeing things run smoother and faster. This software is a great asset to my profession and a young architectural intern still learning how buildings are constructed. I feel it has allowed me to better see how connections and details will be done at the construction site.