The majority of the end users on facility teams are not BIM experts nor do they need to be. Once they select an object in the viewer they can see information about the item they are selecting in the FM:Interact data pane that is not only in the model but also in FM:Interact database itself. The Autodesk Forge Model Viewer not only streams the entire building model quickly to the browser, it also includes the data associated with the building elements in a way that end users can easily select building components in the browser interface. For our customers the rich building data that resides within each of the objects in a Revit model is more important than the actual 3D geometry.
DataģD Model Viewers have been around for years. The Autodesk Forge Model Viewer is incredibly fast and streams the models to the browser real-time even with large multi-discipline models. Facility team members either at their desks or in the field need rapid access to data both graphical and tabular and waiting for excessive load times of drawings or models just isn’t going to work for building professionals who to handle tremendous workloads. They can contain a tremendous level of rich object data that goes far beyond what is possibly in a traditional 2D CAD environment. Here are some of the top reasons why the time is right now and why we are now making this fantastic viewer available to FM:Interact customers who are using Revit models in their implementations of our software. The Autodesk Forge Viewer gives us the next generation graphics engine that enables our customers to take greater advantage of their Revit models for operations. We’ve recently updated FM:Interact to the latest Forge Viewer from Autodesk and the results are truly fantastic. Over the past two years we’ve been integrating 3D viewing technology from Autodesk to help our customers take better advantage of the entire model. Traditionally plan views have provided a tremendous amount of information to facilities teams, especially intelligent plans, where users can query a drawing and get direct feedback on space and assets on the plan. For the most part, building owners who are going to utilize Revit models for day-to-day facilities operations primarily relied upon 2D plan views generated from the model for all aspects of managing their facilities including space and occupancy planning, assets and maintenance management etc. We’ve been integrating bi-directionally between our FM:Interact Integrated Workplace Management System (IWMS) and Revit models since 2010 and have been on the forefront of Lifecycle BIM since then.