Solibri and Tekla Leading the Way to BIM-based Collaboration

Helsinki, Finland May 6th, 2010 — Tekla Corporation and Solibri, Inc. have developed innovative BIM technology in their own fields. Tekla and Solibri are both active members of buildingSMART. The organization’s main goal, sharing Building Information Models between disciplines and software applications by using open standards, is gradually becoming widely accepted. Interoperability makes it possible to share digital information, re-use, review and analyze it effectively. Tekla and Solibri have previously developed their own ways to communicate findings and required actions to other project stakeholders. Tekla has done this in their free of charge Model Reviewer application with model viewing and commenting and Solibri has developed the Solibri Issue Locator for communicating quality problems to be fixed by designers.

The two companies have introduced to the buildingSMART organization the idea of using an open standard to enable workflow communication between different BIM Authoring tools. This initiative was very warmly received when presented to the buildingSMART community. The standard has been named “OpenBIM Collaboration Format”.

In practice, the standard specifies means by which designers and other stakeholders are able to relate messages, action items, viewpoints and snapshots to specific components in a model and transmit them to others. The receiving party then uses this information in their own BIM Authoring Tool to identify and locate the component(s) and view them from the same viewpoint that the sender had established. Currently, Tekla is using a similar approach for void planning between MEP designers and structural engineers.

This “OpenBIM Collaboration Process” enables an orderly and effective method of communication that is fully traceable.

The idea of interoperability is to focus on the process and how well the various BIM Authoring Tools operate together instead of the features of one single tool. To support this idea both Tekla and Solibri have contributed the software code they have developed for the BIM collaboration process to be freely used by other software vendors supporting open standards. Tekla and Solibri have started this initiative, but these companies do not claim the ownership or intellectual property rights to the idea or format.

Currently, the following companies have committed to include open standard BIM collaboration tools in their software:

-       Tekla Corporation, Solibri, Inc., Autodesk, DDS, Eurostep, Gehry Technologies, Kymdata, MAP, Progman, QuickPen International

Bentley has indicated that they are planning/considering to include these BIM collaboration tools in the near future.

Tekla

Tekla's model-based software products make customers' core processes more effective in building and construction as well as infrastructure management. Tekla Corporation has area offices and partner organizations worldwide. International operations account for more than 80% of net sales. Founded in 1966, Tekla is one of the longest operating software companies in Finland. More information at www.tekla.com

Solibri

Solibri, Inc. is the global leader in BIM quality assurance providing out of the box tools for BIM quality assurance, design process coordination, design review, analysis, and code checking. Solibri’s corporate mission is to develop and market quality assurance solutions that improve the quality of BIM files and make the entire design process more productive and the construction process more cost effective.  Solibri’s customers include major building owners and users, construction companies, architects and engineering firms.

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