Bimplus and Solibri convince the future BIM experts at the Technical University of Munich

As part of the interdisciplinary BIM course at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), ALLPLAN Bimplus and Solibri were used in BIM training during the last summer semester. Bimplus benefited the students and lecturers not only because of Corona.

When it comes to BIM, the TUM is one of the world's leading universities in both research and teaching. Part of the extensive range of courses in digital design and construction is, among other things, the interdisciplinary course Building Information Modeling, which has existed since 2011. In this Master's course, prospective architects and engineers jointly plan a selected project based on the BIM method. In the summer semester of 2020, the students used the openBIM solutionALLPLAN Bimplus. The platform not only enables smooth software-independent collaboration, but also particularly benefited the course during the Corona lockdown. The students also gained further extremely positive experience with Solibri.

The project of the BIM course in the summer semester of 2020 consisted of the design of an underground station for the new Munich Undergound line including a connected visitor centre near the picture gallery Alte Pinakothek. The circumstances for both students and lecturers at TUM proved to be historically unique: due to the Corona pandemic, they had to stay at home most of the time and were thus dependent on digital means of communication like never before - the perfect test scenario for BIM applications in the cloud.

In the BIM course, the project partners in the 15 interdisciplinary design teams were able to communicate excellently with each other regardless of location thanks to Bimplus. Communication with the teaching staff also ran smoothly via the powerful issue management system. The architects and engineers also benefited from the high-performance model management, revision management in the design team, collision control and attribute management with the cloud solution from ALLPLAN.

"For us, Bimplus is the perfect tool for training," explains lecturer Simon Vilgertshofer from the Department of Computer Aided Modelling and Simulation. "It offers all the functions for professional BIM management. We lecturers get access to all models and plans at any time and can communicate with each student about their project. I don't have to install any software for this. Everything runs directly in the browser."In addition to the extremely fast access to all models and documents from the design teams, the lecturers could also regulate deadlines via simple rights and role management. Via the BCF interface, it was also possible to communicate confidentially with the approximately 50 students, but also to deal with open questions transparently. BCF stands for BIM Collaboration Format, an open standard for communication between all project participants directly on the BIM model.

What particularly convinces Simon Vilgertshofer is the cloud technology used: "That helped us a lot in the summer, but of course we will continue to use Bimplus after Corona. Collaboration in the cloud is the future of our new working world." Furthermore, the big advantage of Bimplus in teaching is that it is free for schools, colleges and universities. The complete range of functions for professional BIM coordination coupled with simple handling make the ALLPLAN solution virtually predestined for use in training for professions in the AECO sector. The Bimplus API offers particular added value, with which the lecturers at the Technical University of Munich have developed their own app for managing student teams and lecturers.

The model checking software Solibri also ensured error-free models in the design teams. With this, the future architects and engineers were able to specifically examine the building models for inconsistencies and planning errors with regards to various requirements, such as accessibility, in order to identify and avoid potential errors at an early stage. Here, too, the identified problems could be imported directly into the Bimplus environment via the BCF interface and assigned to the responsible students directly on the model. After the once again positive experiences in the past summer semester, this BIM solution from Nemetschek will continue to be used in the future as part of the BIM course at TUM.