This news isn’t super new, but it is super interesting. How did we all miss this? And why isn’t Nemetschek pushing this harder… perhaps across all their platforms and voices (Graphisoft… cough, cough). Take a look at the BIM+ site here. It’s now open for Beta. Here’s a snippet from the official press release and an intro video…

Munich, 14. January 2013 – bim+ is an open platform and a marketplace for the building industry, connecting building information, models and people involved in the building process. It allows users to view and use the integrated building information with easy-to-use visual Apps on professional workstations and on popular mobile devices.

bim+ follows a philosophy that simplification and visualization allows you to make better collaborative decisions and to build faster. bim+ is provisioned as a cloud based, “pay-per-use” service to store and use building project information in OpenBIM format. bim+ AppStore provides all building related AECO Apps and enterprise tools.

bim+ is All-Connect
bim+ makes it easy for AEC professionals, builders, owners, facility managers, finance, ISVs, users etc. to view, manage, share and maintain the BIM information, during the entire lifecycle of the building process — reducing the overhead and burden of collaboration. It connects most modeling tools for AEC, and associated tools from services like finance and facility management, to export project plans/models into the bim+ system. All project models are stored and managed in the central bim+ server.

Read the rest of the Press Release here.

Keep an eye on the development of BIM+ on Facebook and Twitter.

Whether it’s Nemetschek’s BIM+, Autodesk’s Autodesk 360, or some other cloud-based collaboration site, I have a strong feeling that this is the future we’ll be living in. And that is great. The paradigm of primary platform with endless available 3rd party apps is wonderful and powerful. Autodesk, Nemetschek, Bentley, Graphisoft, etc. can’t possibly create all the add-ons and apps themselves. I want whatever platforms that take off to be open and inclusive. We don’t need any more walled gardens. Don’t you agree? Viva OpenBIM and 3rd party development!

Thanks to Rob from BondBryan Architects for making me aware of this. You should follow them on Twitter for all their BIM and IFC wisdom.Once you’ve followed BondBryan, why not also follow Shoegnome on Facebook and Twitter for more on being an Architect in the 21st Century.