28 August 2020 BIM in interior design
by Everton Amaranto
I remember that, when I started working with Revit 10 years ago, I always heard: Revit was not made for projects of interior design. My question is: what was Revit or Archicad made for? I do not have the monopoly on the truth, but these are programs that were developed for civil construction. So, yes, they can be used for the development of interior projects, since “interiors” is part of the development of a work, be it residential, commercial, or corporate.
When we talk about Revit or Archicad, software that works within the BIM platform, we soon associate these programs with architectural and engineering projects. Why not use them for interior projects? Perhaps because we have the mistaken idea that interior projects are less important within the work or that the “decorator” will only take the customer to the store to buy furniture and decorative objects, in an informal way and without more detailed projects.
We need to understand that the interior design development process can be as complex as architectural and engineering projects. In fact, many works will pass through the hands of these three professionals: architect, engineer, and interior designer. So why not have a model (project) developed within a BIM process program, where these three professionals can work together? The answer is: we can!
Stages of the Project
The idea of working with interior projects within a BIM platform program is not a new one and many offices throughout Brazil already do so. In them we can develop the main stages of projects, going through the preliminary study (layout), modeling and rendering, and finally the executive projects. Within what we observe today, the offices use at least 3 different programs to develop each stage, one being a modeler, one a renderer, and another program to develop the executive projects. Is this wrong? It is not a question of right or wrong, but the time it takes to exchange information between these 3 programs and that because they are not all interconnected, any change in one of them will have to be reviewed manually in the other ones.
Using Revit as an example, within it, when we make any project changes on the floor plan, we are automatically changing all views (cuts, elevations, perspectives, tables), which does not happen in the process mentioned above. Thus, the change of a finish in the cabinetry will be seen in modeling, as in rendering, in the views and quantitative extractions.
Rendering
Another very important issue when we say that we could only use Revit to develop the whole project is the rendering quality. We can say that within the reality of an office where the rendered image has the function of becoming just a way of showing an idea of what the final project will look like, we have this step taken care of. We are not talking about a level rendering of photography, but a rendering that expresses to the client how the finished project will be, having applied textures, finishes, furniture and so on, true to the result obtained at the end of the work. In the images below we can see two examples of renderings developed within Revit.
Libraries and Families
It is also worth mentioning that several companies such as Deca, Duratex, Lumini, Coral, Portobello, Hermam Miller, which focus on interior products, are already making their libraries available in BIM and this proves once again that the trend is that all professionals involved in construction are provided with families, templates, and high resolution images that facilitate the process of product specification, quantities, tables, and surveys.
Executive Projects
Finally, I would like to highlight that the executive project process happens in a faster and more assertive way, because we already have the project modeled before to render it and now the work will only be to generate the views of plans, elevations, sections, as well as detailing and quantitative tables of floors, lamps, furniture and so on.
I deeply hope to have clarified the importance of developing interior projects in BIM platform programs, as well as to have shown that we are not talking about something utopian. I am extremely happy to have friends who are architects and interior designers who, like me, develop their projects on Revit or Archicad.
BIM for interior design? Yes! Not for the future, because the future is today.