About
Hi, this is the author of tailoryourbim.com and my name is Ching-Hua Chen, in its original language, Mandarin: 陳景華.
Based in Vienna, I am a working architect, specialised in BIM - building information modelling - with focus on integrated workflows for planning.
BIM.
For thousands of years, we have leart from the masters how to build, for hundreds of years, we improved our skill in modelling to see how our thoughts are, before they are built, and now it is the time for the integration of information, which is meant to direct the building processes.
Information, the most vague and intangible between the three - building, modelling and information - is available within a virtual three-dimensional model, and yet not quite easy to handle within the virtual world on the screen. Whether the geometrical dimension of elements or the fire-rating parameter, even its building phase can now be assigned as information to an element. This information is now the most important value, since it does not come from the final design but effect constantly - and literally is forming - how the decisions are made, and each time when the information is gethered, it is not just from one or a few, but from all of the building elements in the model.
How do we not only just but efficiently proceed with this massive amount of information?
This is where tailoryourbim.com comes in.
Integrated workflows.
For years working with BIM in architecture planning, I found it fascinating how the modelling programs are advanced, comparing when I started using computer digitalising my drawing two years after I started studying architecture 20 years ago.
At that time being, digitalization was more or less a documentation tool of drawings, hand-drawings, and not many thought about what digitalizing can mean in a daily routine drawing job in an architect’s office.
However, the technology grows fast. Soon, the routine job integrated a pen tablet, where one no more clicked mouse on the screen to call the commands, instead pressed the preset button on the tablet and drew with a pen. This integration presented a improved workflow, where people came back to what they were used to, at that time being, pen and paper, however immitated.
Now, with the increasement of familarity in digital approach, integration of efficient workflow lies with in how well the information is processed. The more comprehensive the information is dealt with, the sooner the next design process can take off. This workflow is not enough just by combining different programs, since the switching between applications, at one hand none of the programs is then totally clearly for the users, on the other hand, it can then also lead to inefficiency.