CAD and BIM Overview

The ARCHIBUS Extensions for AutoCAD and Revit are powerful tools that facilitate the integration of your CAD and BIM data with your enterprise data. This integration ensures that your CAD and BIM data is up-to-date and validated against your enterprise data standards, so that it is relevant for the lifecycle management of your facility.

Getting Results

The Extensions use:

Web Services to connect your CAD and BIM data live to your lifecycle database and facility management processes
enterprise graphics as a graphical index to make all CAD and BIM data instantly searchable and accessible, even over the Web
a wealth of validation tools to find and resolve errors in accuracy and consistency for areas, locations, and classifications of space, suites, equipment. Doing so ensures that you are operating your processes on solid data, and performing any external chargebacks on auditable results.

When you have synchronized your CAD, BIM and enterprise data, assets in your drawings and BIM models act intelligently. These assets and your graphics then appear in:

interactive forms, such as those that highlight suites for expiring leases or rooms with active work
dynamic reports, such as those that show today's space allocation by department or projected occupancy
dashboards and consoles, that roll up CAD and BIM data, such as area data, to give the big picture of how you are using space and assets and what line of business they support.

Typically, the CAD and BIM team uses the Extensions to connect the CAD and BIM drawings and to make changes in a backoffice fashion. All other roles can use the Web interfaces to interact with forms, reports, dashboards and processes without needing any CAD or BIM knowledge, and without needing copies of the Extensions themselves.

Getting Started

The Smart Client Extensions provide the CAD and BIM specialists with the backoffice functionality that they need to support the “Run Anywhere” and Web Central processes. When you add a drawing or model using ARCHIBUS, the program adds it to the Drawing List table (afm_dwgs). If a drawing is in the Drawing List, ARCHIBUS will keep the data associated with the drawing or model up-to-date as you add, remove, and edit entities within the drawing or model.

ARCHIBUS also uses the Drawing List to find your drawing or model content from searches that cross multiple floors or buildings. If an ARCHIBUS query needs to know all of the rooms that contain employees to be moved, all of the buildings that have open work orders, or all of the suites that have expiring leases, ARCHIBUS looks into the intelligent drawings to find the right properties, buildings, floors, suites, rooms, etc. to present.

The following describes the process you follow to integrate your CAD and BIM data with your enterprise facility management data:

Register drawings and models with the ARCHIBUS Drawing List: Register CAD drawings (dwg files) and BIM models (.rvt files) with the ARCHIBUS Drawing List. ARCHIBUS uses this registry to find and index the graphic content and to correlate data consistently across portfolios that are comprised of a mix of thousands of drawings and hundreds of BIM models. See Creating New Floor Plan Drawings and Enabling the ARCHIBUS Commands and Adding a Revit Model to the ARCHIBUS Database.
Catalog CAD entities and BIM objects: Catalog CAD entities (blocks and polylines) and BIM objects (for example, rooms, spaces, furniture, and equipment) with ARCHIBUS so that they are “ARCHIBUS aware” and can keep themselves synched with the ARCHIBUS enterprise database. See Creating Assets: Overview and Adding Additional BIM Parameter Data to ARCHIBUS.
Create enterprise graphic files: Create enterprise graphic files(.json, .emf, .swf) from CAD and BIM models, so that ARCHIBUS has a manipulable index back into the graphic databases of record. See Publishing Enterprise Graphics and Use Revit Enterprise Graphics on the Web.
Reconcile graphic and database data. See Synchronizing Your Data: Overview and Resolving Synchronization Issues (BIM).

Additionally the Help includes the following sections to help you get started using the Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD, the DWG Editor, or the Smart Client Extension for Revit:

The Drawing Environments

ARCHIBUS provides the following environments for intelligent drawing:

The ARCHIBUS Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD - Run AutoCAD commands on ARCHIBUS asset symbols, or use the commands that the Extension provides, including commands that connect to projects, edit asset symbols, and query asset symbols.
The ARCHIBUS Smart Client DWG Editor - The DWG Editor is comparable to the Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD except that it does not offer some of the advanced AutoCAD commands, such as commands for three-dimensional drawing or menu and AutoLISP customization.
The ARCHIBUS Extension for Revit - Provides editing for Building Information Model (BIM) and publishing of enterprise graphics.

The Smart Client Extensions support 32- and 64-bit workstations – that is, these ARCHIBUS Extensions act as plug ins for the 32- and 64-bit AutoCAD and Revit versions.

Using the ARCHIBUS Smart Client Extension for AutoCAD or the DWG Editor, you can round-trip drawings to and from the Windows Client/Server Overlay. Some aspects of the drawing might display differently; for instance, asset text might generate differently, but the xdata links and database record links are the same and can be traded back and forth with no data loss.

Differences from the Client/Server ARCHIBUS Overlays for AutoCAD

The Smart Client Extensions for AutoCAD differ from the Client/Server ARCHIBUS Overlays for AutoCAD in the following ways:

Highlighting, hatching, query text, and plotting from within AutoCAD or Revit are handled in the Flash drawing control and in the Web Services for reporting.
ARCHIBUS Design Management functionality (walls, doors, etc.) are taken care of by Autodesk Architecture or Revit objects.
Reporting features are handled live and dynamically in Flash controls that publish to enterprise graphics rather than by producing DWF files. Enterprise graphics are a quick and efficient way to publish your drawings.
Similarly, there is no need to use AutoCAD Original Equipment Manufacturer to report on DWG files directly via a “DWG Viewer”. This functionality is now in the Flash drawing control and the Web Services for reporting, so that all users in an enterprise can interact with graphic data from both BIM and CAD – not just CAD specialists and not just users with AutoCAD.