From CAD to BIM: A New Way to Understand Architecture

Abstract

In recent years, and despite the effects of the economic crisis in the building sector, technicians involved in the architectural process had to adapt themselves to many changes, in search of new job opportunities. In this situation, traditional methods imposed by computer-aided design (CAD) in the development of new projects have evolved towards the use of Building Information Modelling (BIM) methodologies, enabling the control of different aspects such as the design, construction and monitoring of a building; the implementation of this new approach has meant essential updating of construction professionals towards a new global coordination paradigm throughout the complete life cycle of a building. In order to analyse these demanded skills acquired by technicians with previous experience both in traditional CAD systems and BIM environments, a study has been carried out to determine (by comparison) the outstanding aspects about the use of BIM systems, taking into account the modelling process. To do so, a simple practical exercise of modelling using both AutoCAD and Revit software has been carried out with the participation of students and professionals within the building sector. Necessary data were obtained and later evaluated through simple regression considering the time dedicated to the modelling resolution; also, different variance analyses were conducted to identify alterations between the different categories and groups considered, taking into account factors such as gender, having a previous university degree or not, years of experience with CAD or BIM software, type of academic qualifications or having attended previous training courses (among others).