Retooling for BIM

I have retooled my mind and my CAD systems over the years many time. Changing from one version to the next of software requires rethinking how I do CAD. I have customized extensively to get the tool to do just what I wanted it to do. It has been costly, time consuming and tedious to do this. The rewards were worth the effort for the most part.

I have finally (for some time) taken on the perspective that I no longer want to develop, support, maintain, migrate and retain some of the old custom stuff that I created. It is sometimes counter productive to entrench yourself in tools that you created long ago. I will grant that some of them are still around and they serve me well and I will keep some. But the majority mindset I have now is – Use it out of the box.

Now that BIM is entering the scene this is forced upon me. My old CAD tricks no longer work and I have to retool my brain for BIM. This means that the finely tuned CAD processes that I have used over the years no longer apply. BIM is forcing me to retool. It is no longer a choice that I can make on my own.

This can be a negative thing for some users. Since I had already started to jettison my old tools, I may be slightly ahead of the game. For some of you, this process is just starting.

Keep in mind that the point of CAD and BIM is to focus you back on design and out of the CAD customization business.

Oh – I do think that custom tools and development are far from gone. AutoCAD still needs help getting “your” job done. It is a generic tool that will be around for a while. I suspect that my grandkids will be using AutoCAD 2020.