Connecting CAD, BIM & GIS – The barriers are coming down!

GIS professionals and designers/engineers need to work together, bringing their unique perspectives to infrastructure design and engineering projects:

• The GIS professional provides the insight in a large context.
• The designer/engineer provides the insight into detailed infrastructure assets.

Weaving CAD, BIM and GIS together helps to solve the big problems which AEC teams strive to resolve for their built world and natural environment projects.

AEC is a lifecycle – data flow and access is critical to address local, national and global scale challenges. But, the exchange of information has been difficult. Getting CAD and BIM into GIS has been cumbersome and visualization of GIS in CAD and BIM tools has not always kept up with the capabilities of other visualization platforms.

There has been a misperception that “GIS is GIS” and “Engineering is Engineering” and never the twain shall meet (thank you Rudyard Kipling). However, that old-normal can no longer be acceptable as AEC professionals work to solve complex infrastructure and environmental challenges. Data of all types must be brought together to meet AEC industry expectations. Projects are getting larger, infrastructure investment is a strong segment of the global economy, and clients of all types and sizes demand smarter project operations and digital project delivery.

Users have long thought CAD, BIM and GIS should be interoperable, there’s been an expectation of the systems and data to work together for years (decades?). Typical engineering data (CAD and BIM) and GIS data exchange is required to meet project’s and client’s demands. Creating the location-centric reports and visualization media needed to convey plans, de-risk projects and create common understandings requires data of all types to be collected, collated and conveyed. 

The current move towards digital twins, and the workflows enabled through digitalization is pushing the profession towards more and better information sharing and collaboration.

Interestingly, GIS has been ahead of the interoperability curve all this time. GIS has always been a collector and aggregator of information. But GIS wasn’t aligned with the world of CAD and BIM. 

Until now…

Esri is enabling CAD, BIM and GIS interoperability – -

Connected and working together in large part through our alliance with Autodesk, our partnership with Vectorworks, Trimble, Oracle and others, and through our investment in tools and technology to address design and engineering workflows. The outcome of this effort is Esri’s broad offering of solutions, ideal for Engineering and Design workflows.

Esri’s ArcGIS platform interoperates with CAD and BIM tools, helping ensure engineering and design projects are fully informed through easy methods of sharing information and collaborating.

AEC firms are putting these tools together already, delivering better projects, selling additional services, readying themselves for a world of digital twins where [LL6] BIM and GIS are the de facto standard for project delivery.

Professionals around the world are bringing together the worlds of engineering excellence and location intelligence through the workflows we’re creating. What you thought about working in CAD, BIM, and GIS has changed—the barriers and silos are going away!

Engineers using ArcGIS with Autodesk Civil3D, Infraworks and Revit deliver better designs. 

Civil and Building BIM designs become intelligent features in ArcGIS, informing design and engineering decisions.

Utility tracing, work order management, and life cycle management are enabled by GIS and BIM driven projects allowing public and private projects to benefit long term from their digital work performed in planning and design phase.

The silos you thought needed to exist are going away. 

Esri is empowering AEC professionals to solve the most complex challenges of today by connecting their GIS and CAD/BIM information.

These tools are available today – Customers are solving these problems today - What you thought about working in CAD/BIM and GIS has changed - You are empowered to solve your team’s challenges.

To learn more be sure to join experts from Esri and Autodesk who will be demonstrating and discussing these topics in our upcoming webinar.

Click HERE to register!