I recently went to a BIM seminar organised by TMS - an Autodesk systems dealer in Scotland - that was a broad overview of all the Autodesk BIM software packages.Despite the event being an obvious plug-in for the various programs that Autodesk now provide, it did highlight the fact that the construction industry is now moving towards BIM design - something that will affect how all construction professionals will work and operate in the future.

Similar design systems have been used for many years in the automotive and aerospace industries, where computer -aided design has virtually eliminated the need for expensive and time costly prototypes. Designers working in 3D can check their designs for conflicts between components and modelling programs can now analyse and test virtual designs to give an accurate indication of real-world performance.

So how will BIM design affect the practice of lighting design in the future?

The lighting design industry’s biggest draw-back is that the information we produce needs to be incorporated either into the Electrical Engineer’s and Architect’s packages, as lighting designers generally don’t issue stamped construction drawings. This sometimes limits our involvement with projects. With BIM, lighting designers will be “designing” directly on worked-up 3D models and inputting the lighting information into that - with no need for information to be duplicated and co-ordinated into Electrical and/or Architectural drawing packages.

There are clear advantages to working on 3D models, both for lighting designers to understand the volume of the space they are lighting and for other disciplines to understand the information we produce. Additionally, the potential is there for the lighting design inherent in the model to be used with rendering programs to produce realistic visuals used for Client/Public presentations - hopefully meaning that as lighting designers we’ll be incorporated earlier into the design stages of a project.

Rather than working with 2D symbols, BIM design will allow lighting designers to work with 3D representations of light fittings. The ability to potentially imbed information into these ‘3D blocks’ is significant. Ideally, information such as Manufacturer, model number, accessories, lamp type, control gear etc. will be included. This information can allow users to generate circuit/load schedules, luminaire quantities, watts/circuit information and other tabulated data that currently needs to be outputted manually with the use of spreadsheets. The 3D blocks can also be dimensionally accurate (model specific) and highlight any physical conflicts that may arise (ie. ceiling depth, diameter, width). All this information will be controlled and inputted by the lighting designer, which then can be used by the Architect and Electrical Engineer without the need for duplication and co-ordination.

The potential for lighting designers is, I think, quite positive. Regardless we need to be prepared for an eventual change to BIM design - something that has already been adopted by large architectural and construction practices and is commonly used in other European countries.

The first challenge to lighting design practices will be the capital outlay for appropriate software packages and which one to adopt - the big three are currently Microstation, ArchiCad and Revitt. Software providers need to ensure that each of these packages are interchangeable with the others, and when questioned at the seminar, the vague answer was that a common interchange file-type is used for this purpose. However, a search of the various online forums show that interchangeability is not that straight forward. For me, this remains one area of uncertainty towards adopting BIM design. It will be useless if practices cannot easily communicate and share information between each other because of compatibility issues.

There is also a major role to be played by the lighting manufacturing sector that hasn’t been addressed yet. Will they provide downloadable BIM ‘3D blocks’ that can be loaded into a model? Will they be dimensionally accurate and come with standard lamp and accessory combinations (something similar to what is already provided for RELUX and DIALux models in the form of IES and LDT files)? Will they have photometric data attached to them? For now, I do not see any manufacturers moving in this direction and, at least for now, each lighting design consultancy will have build its own 3D blocks and imbed their own information - or use the standard ‘3D blocks’ that come as part of the software. This method of working is something not too dissimilar to the current practice of using symbols and tags in 2D drawings.

Additionally how will RELUX and DIALux adapt to this new BIM software? Will they allow lighting designers to import BIM models directly into their programs and run lighting calculations on the areas that they want? Will they recognise the room surface finishes that will be integral to the BIM model? Or will we see a move away from RELUX and DIALux to something like 3D Studio Viz or 3D Studio Max, which already have the ability to import BIM models but have been, until now, used mostly as a rendering tools?

The aim of BIM is integrated design with other disciplines and minimising duplication of work. The potential is there but it needs to be mass adopted by the industry and supported by software providers and lighting manufacturers. If anything, I welcome the wide-scale use of BIM software and am confident that it’s use will make it easier for lighting designers to be part of the building process.

Martin Granese
July 7th 2011