People wave their hands and talk about "Model Based" software, "Model Based" design, and BIM. What do these words really mean where the rubber hits the road?
Maybe the answer is simple, but it sure appears that takes a while for people to get the unexpected consequences.
Model-Based is Simple and Elegant
We build a "reasonably realistic" model of what we want BEFORE we attempt to actually construct it. The phrase "reasonably realistic" means "suitable" from my perspective, but that's the subject for another post.
Hopefully, our model building isn't too time-consuming. At first, learning the model-based structures and processes will unquestionably make our model building consume More project man-hours up front. If that doesn't change pretty quickly, you are probably doing some basic things "wrong" or at least incorrectly. If it keeps happening, please get some help and a change of perspective. It's really not supposed to be or work that way.
Hopefully, our model is good enough and the design software is also robust enough to actually help us construct, quality assure, and publish the model in multiple ways too.
All these three parts are essential and equally significant to our success.
Our skill and experience, our understanding of the design discipline(s), standards, and real world systems, AND our Civil 3D usage skills all are put to the test thoroughout these processes.
More Ain't a Joke
The problem of More than one process going on at once isn't a joke. Simultaneous multiple processes confuse us personally and corporately. They upset our old school CAD workflows, and our habitual way of working (what always worked before) most of all. Personal task accountabilities get all mashed up and mixed together in new, and perhaps, unforeseen ways in the new environment.
The basic questions and answers to What, Where, When, and How simply are not the same anymore.
Those uncomfortable and overwhelming facts can and do produce negative expectations and More. Maybe we REALLY didn't want anything to change in the first place. But it did, it will, and it must. Complex socio-economical realities we don't and cannot control make that so.
We Can and Do Miss the Forest for the Trees
At the beating heart of "model-based" design is the core concept that the model and it's managed "data" will produce the published results we will require.
Yippee! The end of drudgery is on site!
Civil 3D actually can do this remarkably well today. But on a practical level, to many Civil 3D users and organizations it sometimes feels like Elvis left the building or never showed up at all.
The model building/publishing problem and the complexity of the output publishing processes can easily become a beast all by itself in these multi-process muddied waters.
Here's why. Our decades of previous CAD experience teach us to go back and focus ALL the time on the details present in the "model" to solve the problem. That makes sense because this focus was absolutely necessary when the CAD software was primitive based NOT Feature-based (model-based). Put another way...
We won't and can't throw away our previous "investments" even when they may no longer apply or actually require some additional investment to again become even More useful.
Recently, I heard a telling example of this kind thinking , "All our details are in CTB format so we can't use STB or we have to "convert them all". They employ old school .shx font files in the details; have their own internal detail Layer scheme; historic hatch patterns, etc. Who doesn't? Converting all that to the any other standards will "take forever" and be a waste of resources that are currently "in short supply". So
"We'll have to keep doings things the same way."
Huh?
Aside from the fact that there are a number of ways to automate and/or systematize a conversion process for this kind of stuff, (they do own AutoCAD Map 3D and AutoCAD after all) there is another More significant issue.
Ask Another Question
"What are you publishing? Are you really handing over digital "drawings", your complete project models (Yes there can be More than One), or just submitting a dwg based plan set?"
To them their "project", the "drawings", the "model", and even their deliverables were all the same thing. To be honest, they probably DO know better, but that has been their world in LDT since the early nineties. By now they "know" Civil 3D is different, but they still can't quite break the old mold and reengineer the new machine they need. A some deep mental level Civil 3D was just replacing the old software. Changing how and what they were producing as work wasn't being questioned in any real depth by anyone except maybe some of their customers. These were just tired of converting the "old" dwgs to get backgrounds to use in their own deliverable plan sets.
The Critical Issue and Our focus must be
Make Publish on Demand Real
The model is the Model and that is all it is.
Good models don't and shouldn't care what they "look like" in a Feature (data) based world. The model and its data structure(s) should be stable, but remain malleable, flexible, and able to be validated first and foremost. Civil 3D is NOT perfect at this without some informed user hand holding, a known structure, and some organizational maintenance and publishing processes in place.
From a historical perspective CAD looked like it could do Publish on Demand. People promised it (and continue to promise it) today. Technically, CAD by itself could NOT perform because of its fundamental CAD primitive only definitions. CAD is like stacking concrete blocks on the ground by themselves and saying or thinking you've constructed a retaining wall.
Ordered pictures of parts by themselves do not make systems. However, the old school CAD "device" did allow us to create an acceptable illusion of the real world system(s).
Please note that you have to work on the PARTS and their careful arrangement in detail to make the end published illusion work.
Maybe it is still called "AutoCAD" Civil 3D for a reason?
NOT
We know Civil 3D employs Feature (model-based) "representations to display and annotate the data buried in a Model's Features. Yes, if you explode the Features you'll get simple CAD primitives. Dumbing down to CAD into any format is not rocket science today, but that is only practically useful if you view the acts as a linear publishing one way output process. That means that the "Export to" process REALLY is a separate and discrete process triggered by a known event and performed from a known checklist.
All forms publish and reporting processes in Civil 3D need to be seen and dealt with this way. It maximizes the use of your real world resources to do this. The More you can move and concentrate publish details into a one-way OUTPUT process the faster it works, the easier it is to maintain, and the cheaper it becomes to perform. That is basic process engineering and mechanics 101.
Work the Same and Publish on Demand or NOT
Publish on Demand (POD) is something you must work on ALL the time in your project. You will and MUST fail and then learn and improve to get better at it.
How Do You Do That?
The specifics and details of the output POD process must NOT get mixed up with the model building, QA process, etc either. This is HARD to do because of our detail centric CAD experince is focused on what we see NOW or in other words - the CURRENT state of MY drawing.
STOP
In a model-based world, ALL publishing ALWAYS happens from an OUTPUT drawing specifically built and designed to help us perform the specifics of our Publish On Demand process.
That means there WILL be More than One Publish On Demand drawing doesn't it?
That also means that our all important MODEL should eventually become the replaceable and almost disposable object in our project structures.
That is what "Model-Based", "Feature-based", and/or "Data based" really means.
BIM IT
Now if we want to talk about BIM in a substantive way, we must introduce continuous feedback loops into those external publish processes too.
We must have those basic loop structures and methods already in our internal processes to get to functional Publish on Demand and do our internal QA well anyway.
Can you say, "How would you like your ______ today?"
InstantOn Basic and the Jump Platform exists to help you focus on that More Important Work. That happens to be what you get paid for.