Benefits and Uses of BCF Manager

Building Information Modeling is gaining more and more prominence across various parts of the globe in the construction industry. For larger and complex projects, it has become an indispensable tool. Architects, engineers, contractors and builders rely on BIM Services to integrate all the disciplines at the design level and minimize on-site clashes. It is used during all the stages of the asset lifecycle i.e. design, build, operate, and maintain. Scan to BIM Services is particularly useful for restoration, refurbishment or demolition of the building.

Constructing a building is a complex task and many unexpected issues are encountered during the entire project. Traditional methods of communication were insufficient to effectively communicate the issues to all the relevant stakeholders. Open standards have proved to be useful in communicating these issues digitally for a BIM project. BIM Collaboration Format also known as BCF is one such standard. The main drawback of open standards is managing the large number of files and its versions that are created. This can be solved with some of the paid plugins available in the market. We will be reviewing BCF Manager today and its uses.

What is BCF Manager?

BCF Manager is a paid plugin that is introduced by BIMcollab company and can be integrated with various BIM software. It allows users to share issues with the team members irrespective of the BIM tool they are working on. Users can multi-edit, create, comment, filter, and lookup issues directly in the information model with the context described.It also permits them to review the solutions that are suggested by team members, follow mark-ups, give feedback and prepare review meetings.

Benefits and Uses

1. Effective Communication

BCF manager is a very effective communication tool. It highlights issues in all disciplines and sub disciplines. It sends an email notification to the assigned team member. Viewing the issue is equally simple. All the issues are assigned numeric values and double clicking on the number takes you to the BIM element on your screen either in plan view or 3d view. There is a comment box which displays a brief of the issue.

Every construction project encounters hundreds to millions of issues depending upon the scale of the project. Major issues are discussed in the review meetings between the architects, engineers, designers and an email of the MoM is circulated to resolve the issues. Minor issues are left out of the purview of the meeting. These issues have a potential to disrupt the construction project and lead to major losses. Even for the major issues, due to their sheer volume, it becomes practically impossible to address and keep a track of all of them. Not all issues are even discussed in the meetings creating a greater problem Moreover, locating these issues on the virtual model is a cumbersome task. BCF Manager pin points the exact location of the issue and maintains a register of all the issues that were raised along with their current status. It also sends an automated email to the team member who has been assigned with the responsibility of resolving it.

2. Precise Viewpoints

Locating the issue precisely on the model is an important part of BIM workflow. Viewpoints are positioned automatically in the model and also adjusts for possible variations in coordinate systems; similar to survey points in ArchiCAD or Revit. You can highlight a component or use Quick Zoom while working with large models.

3. Efficient Interface

The interface is very user friendly and provides a clear overview that consists of everything that is required to generate and solve issues. They can be in the form of list or resizable tiles. All the properties of the issue can be accessed while creating or editing it. You can synchronize your work in a single click. These are some of the interface features that make it very efficient.

4. Software Compatibility

It is compatible with a wide range of BIM software. For e.g. Navisworks is one of the most popular software for clash detection and BCF Manager integrates with it perfectly. It can import thousands of clashes from the saved viewpoints or the clash-detective at once. Clash point, clash status, etc. can be easily added to the comments. It even allows to auto-update and auto-assign issues from newer versions of models with resolved clashes.