A colleague here at the Factory just returned from the ACADIA conference in Chicago where she witnessed a demo of a Revit model on an iPhone. The demo of GoBim was from Ian Keough, Senior Technical Designer at Buro Happold in New York. There is a nascent blog documenting the project (an early version was posted on Design Reform back in February). This idea is not new - there have been many visions of the mobile architect - replete with images of architects in suits holding a tablet PC and gazing and pointing at the construction site. Recently, the convergence of the maturation of BIM and the meteoric rise of the iPhone is getting us thinking about mobility. Now, Fingerpainting is fun, but after the initial cool factor wears off, the same question always arises: isn't the screen too small for to browse a BIM model? Having personally tried the ICEVision Revit iPhone viewer, I have to say I was underwhelmed by the experience of navigating even a moderately sized model. Many of the examples of mobile BIM in use today seem to lean more towards utilizing the non-graphic information in the model such as construction scheduling, quantity takeoffs, and tracking the status of furniture installations (this latter one runs on the larger form factor of a tablet PC.)
The question for everyone is: useful or not? Are you currently using mobile devices in your BIM workflows? What are some scenarios where using mobile devices will enhance various BIM workflows in the near and distant future?
_tom
If I was attending an interview for a new job I think it would be nice to pull out my iPhone and give a presentation on the models I've worked on.
Otherwise I am not convinced, if I was going to site or meeting with other design team members and we were reviewing the model I would put it on a laptop and take it with me and review it that way. Huddling around a small 3' screen doesn't make a lot of sense to me!
Posted by: Allan Brown | October 27, 2009 at 03:16 PM
I'm not convinced either and I think you hit the nail on the head, it seems like another "cool" idea that quickly wears off when it just isn't practical.
Posted by: PaulB | October 27, 2009 at 05:56 PM
I was also very unimpressed with the IceVision app. Way too clunky. However, I can think of a couple times that a nice clean quick DWF Viewer would be handy. 2d mainly, 3d if quick. That's the key. If that model takes too long, it's a waste.
Those who have iPhone/internet based phones are getting used to being able to access anything from their device. Internal reviews especially. Most of our "on the road guys" use iPhones now. I could definitely see them quickly opening up a model, or a cropped version, reviewing and then sending back comments while sitting in a car or wherever (but of course, not while driving).
Posted by: Jason Kunkel | October 27, 2009 at 06:18 PM
For referencing published material, a phone (iPhone or other) is adequate when the alternative is to not have the material available at all. Having access to pdf's of specs and drawing sets can be quite useful. Being able to manipulate views of a Revit model any any given location would be an extension of this kind of reference-use, but would be much better served on a larger screen: netbooks could fill this role admirably without the need of full-power, heavy laptop. Actually modifying a model is probably out altogether on a phone-sized screen (much less processing power).
In my pipe-dream of a fully bim'ed future, I could see an integration of the full model with Google Earth or similar. The Google Earth iPhone app is cool in that as you hold the phone up to the horizon, it changes your vantage point relative to it's tilt. I can imagine being on a job site (or future sight), and having a device that would augment reality to show the model in it's final state, in context, along with the ability to turn categories on and off, manipulate section boxes, etc. Super cool, both for design, and for during construction.
For now, maybe what we need is a cross-platfom dwf viewer, able to run on iPhones, Android phone, netbooks, etc.
Posted by: Joel Osburn | October 29, 2009 at 12:05 PM
I don't want Revit model viewing capability on the iPhone per se... but viewing a Navisworks model on the iPhone - now that'd be very useful for us, especially if we can pull up the model, track through it while we're walking the site, photograph an as-built condition versus a "modeled" condition and edit the photo, then emailing it out, all from the construction site. And then walking the model again while walking the site.
That's something we could use.
Posted by: Jeremy Martins | November 05, 2009 at 12:11 PM