Welcome to DIA BIM, part of the CAD/Logic didactic offer. This course is about the digital revolution and its power to disrupt architecture as a process as well as a product. Drawings have always been the main carrier of information exchange in architecture: we built what we could draw. When the digital revolution began (4th quarter of the XX century), architects began to use computers to aid the design process, to create drawings and 3D visualizations. This was the CAD era. Moore's Law confirms that the power of computers doubles every 18 months (although the cost of computers halves). With the enormous power now available, architects are modeling the reality they want to build, rather than drawing it. For example, 3D geometric models are now merging with information: instead of drawing two lines to represent a wall in a plan, we directly model an object that we call a wall, it's in 3D, it appears in all our plans, and we know how much it weighs and how much it costs. This object-oriented approach defines the BIM methodology that this course enforces and explains.

DIABIM´s didactic approach is centered on designing as a team and being ‘sustainable by design’. A masterplan area will be developed by the whole class, with students divided into pairs, to upgrade the existing urban structure within a set of rules to simulate a development plan. The course presents Autodesk Forma® to collaboratively produce the masterplan of the project, to test massing with generative design methods, and to analyze the different proposals with an environmental analysis toolset, before diving deep into BIM-based design collaboration in Revit®. Virtual reality enables design reviews and immerses team members in their own proposals. 

The course experience is 30% theoretical and 70% practical. Bi-weekly theory classes provide the disciplinary and professional background to understand BIM, the state-of-the-art methodology for information exchange in architecture. It is the way architects design, model, build, and collaborate with other professionals. In between, bi-weekly hands-on sessions allow live experimentation with a complete workflow in BIM. DIABIM pursues a project-based didactical approach, rather than presenting a series of tutorials, beginning with a massing exercise in Forma® and then pivoting to Revit®. The course presents how to integrate rendering and virtual reality with Twinmotion®, Because it’s logic to move away from CAD. 

After each, a form will be distributed with either a theory or practical assignment due in two weeks. Turning in all theory forms is sufficient to pass the course with a 4.00. Submitting all hands-on forms on top rewards a grade up to a 2.00. To earn the top marks, a final submission is required to bring the semester's work to a presentation level.