On Model Quality

Let me start by saying that, to me, Model Quality does not equal Design Quality. Your model can be great, but the design can be flawed. And although it could inform you about duplicate elements and position of the models it is also no replacement for 3D Coordination.

On all projects I have worked on over the years, Model Quality has always played an important role. However, model quality can also be a bit illusive. It can mean one thing to person A and something else to person B. To offer a way out from this ambiguity I like to break it into four topics:

1. quality related to the compliance to the BIM execution plan,
2. quality of the file as created in the model authoring application,
3. quality of the attributes added to model elements in accordance with the client delivery requirements,
4. quality related to compliance to open standards.

The first quality item is related to administrative agreements about the model as documented in the #BEP. Things like filenaming convention, model export formats, frequency of datadrops, model sizes are the first things that can be checked, even without specialized tool. However with the support of specialized tools things can go quicker.

• When the #namingconvention support is turned on in #BIM360 or #ACC from 欧特克 , file names that are non-compliant automatically are placed into a quarantine folder.
• To review if filesizes are complient one could look at the directory or even write a small script to do that for you. Filesize is also one of the basic things that can be checked with InteroperabilityTools (more about this tool in the 2nd item). The people over at DAQS.IO have a adapted this into a tool that allows you to run similar checks against information stored in BIM360 or ACC.
• To see who is late and who is on time with their delivery Core for BIM from OpenText allows you to input your model delivery plan into their system, now it will track the performance for each stakeholder against the agreed deadline in a dashboard.

On the second quality item, I can be quick, purging models ( like some of us did in the #CAD days ) and taking care of warnings should be mentioned in the BEP and should be part of the daily job of a modeller. It should be clear to everybody that, leaving model issues unresolved will affect the model performance and/or the downstream use of the information extracted from the model. The BEP should also inform how often the BIM Manager should check the native models to ensure quality is indeed being met and how reports on this topic are shared with the project stakeholders. On a simple projects with only a handfull of models this maybe a small task, however once the number of models on a project grows this can quickly grow into a task no one really want to do without some support.

• If you are working with #Autodesk #Revit it is possible to use InteroperabilityTools which allows you to disect and study your model. Are we using a lot of linework, are there duplicate elements, do we have views that are not placed on a sheet, the list is long. An additional perk is that it comes with #PowerBI sample dashboards and if you are handy you can use #windows #taskscheduler to automatically make your reports.
• As mentioned under the 1st item if you want a tool that does that for you consider using #DAQS.

The third involves the quality of the attributes in the model. In my mind this is the hardest because it has two sides:

1. Checking the attribute presence, e.g. does the door have an attribute to store its fire rating.
2. Checking the attribute validity, does the fire rating on the door actually make sense.

To start with this, you need to have really clear documentation, preferably a database of some sort. This will allow you to store a model breakdown structure that is aligned to your internal modelling best practices. From your own structure you can link to the elements requirements from your clients. As nothing last forever, the database should also track version of the client requirements over time and/or by project.

Now that you have aligned your client requirements to your prefered way of working you can now add properties per element by hand or do it in an automated way ( again if you are working with Revit #Dynamo will do the trick here).

With the respective attributes added to the model elements, the values can now be filled by the relevant subject matter expert ( to avoid future bickering AND enhance future workflows I would encourage you to store this in your database ).

Checking the validity of the values has always been a bit of an issue for me. One who am I to judge is a 230V and 3000W are the correct values for a pump or a 60 minutes fire rating on a door? But if the subject matter experts have done their job well they should be able to give you a certain range. That range can be used for write a #regex for each object, that will eliminate empty fields and weird entries. For some items a closer look into the model may still be required, e.g. are all doors between two fire compartments of the same fire rating? Writing these checks and having them display in a model viewer can be a bit much. Recently I have come in contact with Xinaps and used their #Verifi3D tool to create my checks. It was good to see how quick I was able to breakdown the models and zoom into the properties for specific elements. Note they currently have build in checkers for the Dutch market, but would love to work with other clients and support their local markets too.

To avoid a long read, I will keep the fourth one for a future update.