you design in 3d.
the model is the single source of truth.
precise. structured. every wall, beam, and connection in one file. five years of university for this. two hours a week of actual design, if you're lucky.
municipality needs drawings.
you flatten the model to 2d. print.
47 pages. floor plans, sections, elevations. the living model becomes dead paper. you hand-deliver it. three weeks of silence.
a marked-up pdf arrives.
you redraw the changes into 3d. by hand.
red annotations on flat paper. referencing walls that only exist in the model. you trace. you redraw. one markup at a time. the building the municipality reviewed is already outdated.
the structural engineer
doesn't open your bim file.
he sends a 2d pdf. you trace it. you redraw his lines into 3d. the electrical engineer doesn't open the bim file either. you export each floor as a separate dwg. he marks it up, sends it back. you redraw. hundreds of translations per project.
the foreman rolls out a0 paper
and pins it to the wall.
you revise in 3d. he scrapes the old sheet off. you print. he pins the new one up. revision 4. revision 5. the office lives in a virtual world. the site lives on paper. they never sync.
collision. electrical runs through
the structural beam. you're liable.
the architect is an octopus. one tentacle on the structural engineer. one on mep. one on fire. one on the contractor. the body in the middle carries the design, the regulation, and the legal liability. paid 50 an hour for this. next monday, it starts again.
