“In days of old, when knights were bold, and toilets weren’t invented, they dug a hole and did a roll and went away contented”

BIM Weasel, May 2020
Sorry, I fell asleep on the bog. Did I miss something?

Specifying BIM workstations is, for want of a better term, a movable feast. Constantly changing software offerings from vendors, myriad file formats, inevitable interoperability issues, a plethora of hardware choices; all this before you even enter into the human operator realm, being all squishy and organic and capable of errors and glitches completely lacking in consistency. And we haven’t even mentioned budget yet…

Given all these potential complications, the sensible choice would be to do some basic research to establish the most common hardware configurations from leading workstation suppliers, keep abreast of computer infrastructure industry developments, and trace a line back from the “bleeding edge” to a more affordable place on the graph. Essentially, you want your best “bang for buck” coupled with an element of future proofing. Anything too fresh is untested and likely to cost you an arm and a leg, whilst anything too old is likely to run into compatibility and support issues before long. You want your new machines to survive at least one project before upgrading, right? Well, you’d think so.

Apparently there is another train of thought out there that I have chosen to call “Ye Olde BIM” in that it has more of a medieval approach to technology adoption. After all, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, yeah? Yeah. Sure thing my liege.

Excerpt of BIM scope for a project in the month of May in the year of our Lord 2020. Yes. Quite.

The example above is taken from a project tender specification for a development in 2020. The year 2020. Weapon of choice; Autodesk Revit 2011. So for a project that may take a couple of years to complete, it makes absolutely perfect sense to specify software and hardware requirements that were looking long in the tooth at least 5 or 6 years ago. But surely by now all those bugs would have been fixed, right? Well, yes but actually no. That just isn’t how the industry operates.

Yeah, but no, but yeah, but…

It is only the latest iterations that get the latest productivity enhancements incorporated into them, along with introducing all the new and exciting bugs, as the product moves forward. Older versions are left behind and eventually no longer supported. Cast adrift, as it were. The development of complex software, like Autodesk Revit, needs to be carried along like a boat on a river of license fees. Actually more of an ocean of license fees. Software development is expensive! To extend the analogy to the example above, specifying 2011 software for a project starting in 2020 is the equivalent of clinging on to a fancy wardrobe that fell overboard during a storm en route and assuming that you’ll still get to your intended destination in a timely manner. Sure, you can do that, I suppose, and you’ll probably reach the shore eventually, but don’t expect to have quite the same experience as the paying passengers in comfortable cabins, being served fine wine by Autodesk waiters, leaving you behind in their wake…

Coming up in the next thrilling instalment of BIM Bollocks; how to generate complex geometry with the use of just an abacus. I jest of course… Or do I?

By Bim Weasel

Born in 1900, in a block of cheese, Bim Weasel has had to struggle from day one. After eating his way out, bursting forth, like some kind of pasteurised Alien alternative, he began trading nuts and seeds before moving on to complex financial derivatives. After making his first million at the tender age of 13 and three quarters, he diversified into commodities. The outbreak of the First World War saw his fortunes rise yet further, as now the owner of copper, bauxite and iron mines in Papua New Guinea and Australia, and rubber plantations in the Dutch East Indies, his holdings shot up in value. The next decade saw Bim spend his fortune on women and fast cars, whilst the rest he just wasted. By the outbreak of World War Two, Bim was destitute and living as a tinker and shoe repairer in a coastal village in Sulawesi. Despite not being a Dutch national, his love of the colour orange saw him interned by Japanese Imperial forces. He was sentenced to execution and only saved at the last minute by a young Jedi. In gratitude Bim joined the Rebel Alliance and saw action on the forest moon of Endor, frozen Hoth and arid Tatooine. Upon his return to earth, with laurels upon his brow and feted as a war hero, he wanted nothing more than to return to nature and work the land; a simple agrarian lifestyle, far away from conflict. He kept a low profile and slipped from the public consciousness, his past largely forgotten and his true identity unknown to those few mortals who met him on his occasional forays into urban areas in search of cheap thrills and rice flour. He may have remained forgotten and unknown, wandering Southeast Asia as a vagabond, had he not overheard a conversation in a bar one night whilst on one of his jaunts into civilisation. A pair of businessmen were talking in hushed tones about a new disruptive force, sweeping all before it and trampling all over norms and customs the world over. No, this was not a US presidential candidate, but an American software developer called Autodesk, and in particular a product called Revit. Intrigued, Bim sought knowledge and found a ready source of pudgy, pallid and poorly dressed men from the damp isles of Britain; a cold and windswept outpost on the extreme fringes of Northern Europe. A destination even the all-conquering Roman legions decided to abandon due to its inhospitable climate, arcane traditions and warm beer. However, it turned out that living in fog and drizzle for three hundred days of the year also accelerated creativity and the ability to generate a seemingly endless number of Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows, as well as memes. Bim immediately felt comfortable in this land of sunlight starved and sexually repressed Gollums, and within a short time he had established himself as a purveyor of some of the finest slideshows, Yammer posts and memes. Bim travelled the world, expounding eager audiences with tales of 15-20% efficiency gains, whilst providing little or no hard evidence. It was like a dream come true for Bim, having felt that he had discovered his true calling! The rise of Bim has since been vertiginous, with almost all nations, states, principalities and fiefdoms seeing the benefits Bim brought, but with one stubborn exception; Hong Kong. Seeing it as almost his divine duty, Bim took it upon himself to conquer that semi-submerged volcanic caldera in the South China Sea. He has been there ever since. Hong Kong still stubbornly refuses to accept Bim, yet still he persists. Now entering the third decade of his second century of existence, he feels sufficiently knowledgeable to be able to pass on some of his experiences, here in this blog. Read on, brave adventurer!

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