At the end of last year, an ex-colleague of mine and I — after 18 and 12 memorable years spent at Graphisoft — decided to carry on with the work we did as GDL fans in our former workplace with heart and hand.

Since we established our new company, many friends have asked what manuBIM means

Well, it’s not an unknown deap-sea animal —as we usually say 🙂 — but parametric 3D BIM components created for manufacturers, which can be used by designers in their BIM software, thus making their job more efficient. In our in-house terminology, we call these manuBIM. You may already know many of these, and we have just published some, too, for instance VELUX BIM or HÖRMANN BIM.

 

Why is it important for manufacturers to use BIM technology?

At the beginning of the new millennium, the BIM technology spread exponentially in the AEC sector. Not only designers recognized the advantages of this technology, but also investors, constructors and manufacturers. We think manuBIMs have huge potential in the BIM:

· High level of added information
· Faster work
· Effective, professional planning
· Greater flexibility in planning ahead
· Quick handling of documentation
· Effective marketing of manufacturers
· Decreasing risks, decreasing losses
· Estimation of time (4D) and expenses (5D)

Our vision of the increasing importance of manuBIMs is based on survey data

The architects survey shows the following results:

On a scale of five, 21% of the designers evaluated manuBIMs as one of the most useful items, and only planning manuals were valued as more useful than this by more people. On a scale from 1 to 5, results show that manuBIMs were rated on average (3.75) as the fourth most useful tool.

The manufacturers survey shows the following results:

The answers show that manufacturers prefer rather different tools to the ones designers would need. For instance, while printed catalogues (1. ß 7.) and informative brochures (2. ß 10.) are highly over-rated by manufacturers, planning manuals (4. ß 1.) or manuBIMs (7. ß 2.) are highly under-rated.

1. planning manuals
2. complex, manufacturer-specified solutions in CAD softwares
3. 2D drafts (e.g. dwg, dxf, pdf)
4. online technical documentations
5. consultations on plans
6. online (web-based) applications
7. printed technical documentations
8. conferences
9. individual (off-line) softwares and applications (not CAD)
10. informative brochures
11. magazines of manufacturers
12. popularization of references

We believe that one of the main tasks of business is to increase customer satisfaction

Manufacturers will understand the contradiction this survey shows and will provide the architects with more BIM solutions. We are here to help make that happen.

About our team

Apart from his numerous manuBIM developments, my companion, Gábor, was an author of the first GDL manual, published by Graphisoft (1996-97), and wrote an ArchiCAD Users’ Guide (1994) which showed the program’s applications from the users’ point of view. We have been working together since 1999, mainly focused on the development of custom libraries and library parts. We helped GDL WEB Control developments with useful ideas as well as with default signals. We developed many solutions that were based on this technology. It was an interesting task to contribute in the development of SalesCAD, to provide advice, and later, to create manufacturers’ GDL libraries for it. It was a challenge to work as editor in chief of CADLap, the magazine of ArchiCAD users in Hungary. We have also been collecting ArchCAD- and GDL-related websites; you may have already visited it: www.archicad.lap.hu. As users of ArchiCAD, you must have seen ArchiCAD library parts in the development of which we also contributed to. But to keep close to our job, I am completing my thesis on issuing opportunities for manufacturers of building materials through the analysis of manuBIMs.

We believe that GDL programming is more than just a programming task. We believe — putting aside architects’, developers’ or engineering tasks — that creating intelligent ArchiCAD BIM  objects adds value in the continually renewing world of BIM. This will save plenty of valuable designing time and work for architects

Say manuBIM…

Endre Ilauszky
Owner, manuBIMsoft Ltd.

You can reach us on:

http://www.manubim.com

http://www.facebook.com/manubimsoft