The concept behind Building Information Modeling has existed for a long time. BIM has come a long way over the many decades of evolution. Today, it is gradually becoming an industry standard as more and more countries begin to adopt BIM on a national scale. Learn about the origins of the term ‘Building Information Modeling (BIM)’ and the story of how it came to be the way we know it today.
| 1980s | |
| Architectural Design Exposed: From Computer-Aided Drawing to Computer-Aided Design | Simon Ruffle in his paper published in 1986, put forward the idea of transitioning from computer aided drafting to computer aided design. |
| A brief history of BIM | A journey started in 1984 by the release of Radar CH(later known as ArchiCAD) by Gábor Bojár to 2002 when Autodesk bought Revit from Irwin Jungreis and Leonid Raiz. Vanessa Quirk tells an interesting story in her article about the evolution of BIM. |
| If BIM’s a mystery, Here’s the history! | A blog that explains the evolution of Building Description System used in 1970s to Building Information Modeling as we know it today. |
| 2000-2010 | |
| Building Information Modeling | In 2002, Autodesk published a white paper titled ‘ Building Information Modeling’ which introduced the term for a collaborative and database centric modeling approach to building design. |
| A debate about ‘Building Information Modeling’ | In April 2003, Jerry Laiserin, who is widely credited for popularising the term ‘Building Information Modeling’ brought Autodesk, Inc. and Bentley Systems, Inc., two of the world’s leading makers of design software for the built environment, face-to-face in a debate about their respective approaches to Building Information Modeling (BIM). |
| Building Information Modeling Two Years Later – Huge Potential, Some Success and Several Limitations | Two years after the debate, Ian Howell and Bob Batcheler, published a white paper that studied the early adopters of BIM and listed the huge potential, some success and several limitations with using BIM. |
| Parametricist Manifesto | In 2008, Patrik Schumacher coined the concept of “parametricism” and the movement of building parametric architectural structures. He highlighted the use of computationally advanced design techniques like scripting and parametric modeling. This later gave birth to software development for parametric modeling central to the concept of BIM. |
| 2010 and later | |
| Government Construction Strategy | The Government Construction Strategy was published by the Cabinet office on 31 May 2011. The report announced the Governments intention to require: collaborative 3D BIM on its projects by 2016. |
| National BIM report 2016 | The UK Government’s BIM mandate comes to force in April 2016. The National BIM Report is the most comprehensive analysis of the state of BIM within the UK construction sector. |
| National BIM Standard-United States® (NBIMS-US™) Version 3 (V3) | The NBIMS-US™ V2 came out in May 2012 and became the first open consensus BIM standard. Following a multi-year effort, the National Institute of Building Sciences buildingSMART alliance® released the latest edition of the nation’s consensus-based standard governing building information modeling (BIM) in July, 2015. |
Next: Why use BIM?
Back: What is BIM?
If you are a BIM expert/enthusiast, and would like to add your blog, article, website or an event related to BIM, we welcome your submission at ‘Submit your content‘ page.
Building Information Modeling 
One thought on “History of BIM”