i-model plugin for Revit

So Bentley provide a i-model plugin for Revit. Details can be found here.

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Promo/Revit/i-model.htm

So on the face of it, this sounds cool if you are say an Structural Engineer or MEP Engineer using Revit & collaboration with an Architect using Bentley tools, but it ain’t much good if its the other way around from my experience.

We have a very complex project where we would have ideally liked to have linked in the Structural Engineers Bentley Structural Model & the facade Architects Microstation model into separate Revit models which we could then link into our main model. IFC I hear you shout! Well good luck with that, as its been a nightmare to get that to work. I will apportion some of the blame to both Autodesk & Bentley for not getting their act together to address the IFC disorder. Although, I have to say Revit 2013 IFC is way better than previous releases, but as this project must remain in Revit 2012 & most of the modelling is now complete, I’m not going to worry about it now. All I can say, is thank goodness for Navisworks! :-)

So the point of the post? People ask my; sorry! people tell me, that I have sold my soul to Autodesk Revit machine. That really isn’t the case, trust me. But right now due to limitations in interoperability I find it preferably to work on the same technology platform. Lets hope the holy grail of IFC does one day allow us to deliver robust data between technology platforms.