AIA to CAD industry: get open!

I just found this item through CIMdata's e-newsletter... Last December, the AIA's board of directors made this statement on interoperability for BIM [building information models]:

The AIA believes that all industry-supporting software must facilitate, not inhibit, project planning, design, construction, commissioning and lifecycle management.

Here's what they want to see CAD and related software to do:

This software must support non-proprietary, open standards for auditable information exchange and allow for confident information exchanges across applications and across time.

This is exactly what CAD vendors don't want. To increase sales, CAD vendors want to lock in customers through proprietary file formats that they prefer not be reverse compatible. 

And so how should this openess be accomplished?

This is best accomplished through professional, public- and private sector adoption of open standards. The AIA encourages its members and other industry organizations to assume a leadership role in the ongoing development of open standards. 

For its part, CIMdata wants to see this happen in industries other than architecture:

We offer this as a challenge to other associations to take a similar position or to endorse the AIA's statement.

I agree, but it's going to be a tough slog. You can read the full AIA document here [PDF].

Comments

[Bob Holtzmann]

I was pleasantly surprised to see the AIA Board of Directors take this stand -- after all of that "AIA partnership" going on with Autodesk and McGraw-Hll, resulting in Reed Construction gearing up their Revit-only BIM estimating services. At least for once with the board's statement, it seems that future AEC software standards are going in a non-monopolistic direction.

[Jeffrey Ouellette]

This is exactly what CAD vendors don't want. To increase sales, CAD vendors want to lock in customers through proprietary file formats that they prefer not be reverse compatible.

Ralph,
Not all CAD vendors can be characterized this way.

At Nemetschek North America, we are enthusiastic proponents of internationally recognized open standards for the AEC industry, specifically the use of IFC for the exchange of Building Information Models (BIMs). Such standards allow our customers using Vectorworks Architect to share data with those other parties they invariably need to work with, in order to design, construct, and manage a project/building.

The AIA's BOD statement is a long time coming and correctly reflects the current movement among large owners and in the AEC software industry to support IFC in the use of BIM data by all project participants. Any reliance, in any industry, on a single software solution, instead of a set of open standards, is detrimental to all the participants, the ideals of competition, and the industry as a whole.

It is a win-win for all when we, the software development community, serve the industry, instead of trying to dominate and dictate what is wanted, or needed.

Jeffrey W. Ouellette, Assoc. AIA
Integrated Practice Group
Nemetschek North Amercia