With the advent of digital data in the 1990s, computer technology was introduced not only in business processes but also in design processes, leading to concepts such as CAD (computer-aided design systems) and later, BIM (building information modeling)
However, like any innovation, they are not the end point of development. Concepts like BIM have become an important milestone in the history of the construction industry, but sooner or later they may give way to better tools and approaches that will better meet the challenges of the future.
Overwhelmed by the influence of CAD vendors and confused by the complexities of its own implementation, the concept of BIM, which appeared in 2002, may well not live to see its thirtieth anniversary, like a rock star that flashed brightly but quickly faded away. The reason is simple: the demands of data scientists are changing faster than CAD vendors can adapt to them.
Faced with a lack of quality data, today’s construction industry professionals demand cross-platform interoperability and access to open data from CAD- projects to simplify their analysis and processing. The complexity of CAD data and the confusing processing of CAD data has a negative impact on everyone involved in the construction process: designers, project managers, construction workers on site and, ultimately, the client.
Instead of a full-fledged dataset for operation today, the customer and investor receive containers in CAD- formats that require complex geometric kernels, understanding of data schemas, annually updated API -documentation and specialized CAD software (BIM) to work with the data. At the same time, much of the design data remains unused.
In today’s design and construction world, the complexity of accessing CAD data leads to over-engineered project management. Medium and large companies working with CAD data or developing BIM -solutions are either forced to maintain close relationships with CAD vendors solutions to access data via APIs, or bypass CAD vendor restrictions by using expensive SDK converters to reverse-engineer,to get open data (А. Boiko, “The struggle for open data in the construction industry. The history of AUTOLISP, intelliCAD, openDWG, ODA and openCASCADE,” 15 05 2024).
The proprietary data approach is outdated and no longer meets the demands of today’s digital environment. The future will divide companies into two types: those who use open data effectively, and those who will leave the market.
The concept of BIM (Building Information Modeling), appeared in the construction industry with the publication of one of the major CAD vendors – Whitepaper BIM (“Building Information Modeling Whitepaper site,” 2003) In 2002 and, supplemented by the mechanical engineering concept BOM (Bills of Materials), originated from the parametric approach to the creation and processing of project data (Fig. 6.1-1). The parametric approach to the creation and processing of design data was one of the first to be implemented in the Pro-E system for mechanical engineering design (MCAD). This system became a prototype (А. Boiko, “BIM History Map,” 2024) for many modern CAD -solutions, including those used today in the construction industry.
Journalists and AEC consultants, who promoted CAD tools -vendors until the early 2000s, shifted their attention from 2002 to Whitepaper BIM. It was the BIM Whitepaper 2002-2004 and articles published in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007 that played a key role in popularizing the BIM concept in the construction industry (A. S. Borkowski, “Definitions of BIM by Organizations and Standards,” December 27, 2023).
Building Information Modeling is a strategy…….. [CAD vendor company name] to apply information technology to the construction industry.
– BIM Whitepaper,2002 (ADSK, “White Paper Building Information Modeling,” 2002. [On the Internet]. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20060512180953/http:/images.adsk.com/apac_sapac_main/files/4525081_BIM_WP_Rev5.pdf#expand. [Date of address: 15 March 2025])
By the mid-2000s, “researchers” began to link the BIM- concept published by CAD- vendor in 2002 with earlier scholarly works, such as Charles Eastman’s BDS, which became the basis for systems such as GLIDE, GBM, BPM, and RUCAPS. In his groundbreaking work Building Description System (1974), Charles Eastman laid the theoretical foundations of modern information modeling. The term “database ” appears 43 times in his work (Fig. 6.1-2) – more often than any other, except for the word “building”.
Eastman’s key idea was that all information about a building – from geometry to the properties of elements and their relationships – should be stored in a single structured database. It is from this database that drawings, specifications, calculations, and code compliance can be automatically generated and analyzed. Eastman explicitly criticized drawings as an outdated and redundant method of communication, pointing to duplication of information, problems with updating, and the need for manual updates when changes are made. Instead, he proposed a single digital model in a database where any change is made once and automatically reflected in all views.
It is noteworthy that in his concept Eastman did not put visualization at the forefront. The central place in his system was information: parameters, relationships, attributes, analysis and automation capabilities. Drawings in his understanding were only one of the forms of displaying data from the database, not the primary source of design information.
In the first Whitepaper on BIM from the leading CAD vendor, the phrase “database ” was used as often as in Charles Eastman’s BDS – 23 times (ADSK, “White Paper Building Information Modeling,” 2002. [On the Internet]. Available: https://web.archive.org/web/20060512180953/http:/images.adsk.com/apac_sapac_main/files/4525081_BIM_WP_Rev5.pdf#expand. [Date of address: 15 March 2025]) on seven pages and was one of the most popular words in the document after “Building”, “Information”, “Modeling” and “Design”. However, by 2003, the term “database” appears only twice in similar documents (ADSK, “White Paper Building Information Modeling in Practice,”), and by thelate 2000s, the topic of databases had virtually disappeared from the discussion of design data. As a result, the concept of “a single integrated database for visual and quantitative analysis” was never fully realized.
Thus, the construction industry has gone from Charles Eastman’s progressive BDS concept with its emphasis on databases and Samuel Geisberg’s ideas about automatically updating design data from databases in the mechanical engineering product Pro-E (the predecessor of popular CAD -solutions used in construction today) to the current marketed BIM, where data management through databases is barely mentioned, despite the fact that this was the concept behind the original theoretical
BDS and similar concepts until the 2000s were developed as a digital database of buildings rather than as a visualization tool. BIM in 2002 became a design tool where the database took a back seat. What have we lost in the transition from BDS and similar concepts in the 1990s to BIM by the mid 2010s:
Open databases: BDS and other similar concepts emphasized analytics, BIM emphasized design.
Flexibility to work with data: BDS emphasized data analytics, BIM emphasized processes that must be based on obscure data.
Transparency: the BDS was intended to be an open integrated database, while CAD vendors in BIM have made their databases completely closed and have fought unsuccessfully for 20 years against reverse engineering tools that open proprietary formats.
Over the past 30 years, designers have never had access to an “integrated database” and after twenty years of marketing euphoria around BIM -tools, the construction industry is beginning to realize the consequences of this fad.
