Am I the only one who thinks BIM is overrated for small crews?

I run a 5-man crew doing residential remodels in Cleveland, and last month I had a software rep push BIM hard on me for a $40k kitchen reno. 3 years ago I tried using a similar system for a job, and it just slowed us down with all the modeling when a simple sketch got it done in half the time. Has anyone else found BIM useless for smaller scale work?

3 comments

3 Comments

annajenkins29d ago

My buddy tried BIM on a 10-man crew for high-end homes and said it turned a 2-day kitchen layout into a week of clicking around. He went right back to graph paper and sharpies after that.

leehall29d ago

Read a similar story from a small builder on a forum once, @annajenkins.

robert65929d ago

I've been using BIM on 5 to 15 man crews for years now and I gotta say that week of clicking around pays off big time when you catch a cabinet clashing with a plumbing vent before anyone even pours the slab. Graph paper and sharpies are great for quick napkin sketches but for high-end homes with custom everything you just can't eyeball the tolerances like that. Your buddy probably got stuck with a bad template or someone trying to force a residential job through a commercial workflow. Once you set up a few basic families for your common cabinets and counters, the kitchen layout actually moves faster after the first time. I've saved weeks on revisions alone by just moving walls in the model instead of redrawing whole sheets.