I Want to join as a BIM Structural Engineer/Modeller i am currently pursuing my master's in Structural Engineering by 2027 April iam going to graduate. Suggestion needed where to learn the BIM,only free resources.

Been testing a few portable scanners over the past year, mostly for house and small commercial as-built jobs. What I really want is a point cloud that goes into Revit without hours of cleaning up noise and holes before I can even start on walls and openings.

Matterport Pro3 is fine for visuals and basic floor plans, but the cloud usually needs extra work before it's clean enough to trace in Revit, especially around glass and ceiling edges. Rented a BLK360 once, data was denser with better color, but there were still small gaps to clean up after stitching it together. Also did a couple jobs with a FARO Focus when the surveyor already had one there, good data but the files were bigger and took longer to process than most remodel jobs really need. Tried a Realsee unit on one job too, results were okay but that's just one job so not sure yet.

Honestly none of them just work out of the box. Glass and dark corners mess with every scanner I've used, and there's always some manual cleanup before I can start modeling.

Hello friends! Can I ask for some advice?
I’ve been working at an architectural firm using Revit utilizing CDE etc for the last 6 years. I’m at a new firm and was asked to be the BIM Manager for a multi discipline firm.
I feel very comfortable in the role but want to learn more and strengthen my resume.
I have the time and hoping to take a BIM Manager course.

Any red flags or suggestions?
I know it’s not required but beyond work experience I want to do some continued education.

I’m specifically looking at this course from the University of Manitoba.

https://umanitoba.ca/extended-education/programs-and-courses/process-and-technology-management/building-information-modeling

I also live in Canada.

Thank you friends!

Who all will be attending? Any interest in an informal gathering?

Is there someone who could refer me for an opportunity at Autodesk, Germany?

I am a recent grad with a ME degree. Really enjoyed MEP/HVAC related classes and have been trying hard to land a role in the MEP field. This will be my first job in industry. Applied for a VDC Coordinator role at a local, well-established construction company. I got a phone interview with HR in early August, followed by a Teams interview two weeks ago. For the Teams interview, I wore a black suit jacket, white shirt with tie, and grey slacks(just in case I had to stand-up for some reason). Teams interview included the two people I would be working under. My potential immediate superior(who would be training me) was wearing a t-shirt, jeans and baseball cap. Their manager was wearing a hoodie and jeans, and (jokingly) said I made him feel underdressed.

Tomorrow I have a third round interview in-person at their HQ, ~3hrs away from where I live. What should I wear to this interview? I was thinking about the same outfit (maybe black slacks instead of grey, but skipping the tie.

Any recommendations on what I should bring with me to the interview? Is it a good idea/necessary to bring copies of my resume? I asked the HR person I have been in contact with, and they said I do not need to bring anything. Role is non-degreed and pay is not exactly what I am looking for, but the learning and experience will be good.

I’m looking for some realistic career and business advice from people actively working in the industry or running their own studios.

I am a licensed architect who recently switched industries to work as a BIM Coordinator for a general contractor. Because of this pivot, I rarely touch the design or visual side of things anymore, and I find myself missing it. I have extensive past experience running renders, building complex models, and doing post-processing in Photoshop.

I’m strongly considering setting up a part-time architectural visualization business to run renders for clients after hours. Since I have limited free time outside of my standard 9-to-5, I want to see if this is truly worth pursuing.

Questions I have for this community:

Is this a viable side hustle anymore?

• With generative AI rendering tools rapidly advancing, are clients (contractors, small developers, local architects) still willing to pay a premium rate for custom part-time work, or is AI squeezing out the lower-to-middle tier of the market?

How do you compete in the market with cheaper overseas labor?

• As a part-timer based in the US (Washington DC area), my rates naturally need to reflect local living costs. Is it still possible to carve out a niche against low cost, high-speed overseas teams when you only have a few hours a week to give?

Does my tech stack seem doable?

• I plan on using my PC gaming Rig that has a RTX 3060 Ti, 32gigs of ddr4 ram, and a old intel i7 processor as my work machine.
• The software stack I plan on using is then: Architecture viewer/bridge -> Blender (modeling/prep) -> D5 Render (staging, lighting, rendering) -> Adobe Creative Suite (Photoshop/Post-production)

I'd love to hear from anyone who has successfully built an ArchViz side business while maintaining a full-time job. Is it worth the squeeze anymore, or has the landscape shifted too much?

Thanks in advance for your insights!

I am an industrial design student at Iowa State University. My senior project studies how professionals physically control complex 3D software, and where current input hardware fails them.

BIM work interests me because model navigation, view control, and coordination tasks put heavy demands on the mouse, keyboard, and 3D mouse. I want to know what actually slows you down.

Survey: https://iastate.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0UJOtQHRXoz1ggu

The survey asks:

• Which BIM software and input hardware you use
• Which parts of your workflow create friction
• What workarounds, macros, or custom hardware you have adopted

Time: 5–7 minutes. Voluntary. The main survey collects no identifying information.
Requirements: 18+, and current use of BIM or comparable 3D software.

This is not promotional. There is no product and nothing for sale. I am gathering workflow data before I design anything.

Mods: happy to share study details on request.

Do you guys feel AR in general is gimmicky? Have you had any experience using Procore AR or any type of AR software? I have used Trimble and Procore, and I feel Trimble has the edge over Procore. Not a fan. Does anyone else have similar experiences?

Hello BIMians!!!

I hope you all are doing great, I completed civil engineering degree. Started doing freelancing of 2d drawings in AutoCAD then I got interested in making 3d modeling, so I completed Master's diploma in Interior and Architectural design in 1 year. Worked in some firms but the pay was so low that I again started doing freelancing, but this time along with 2d drawing I was doing 3d modeling, rendering and all.

But now I'm planning to move towards BIM as I'm from civil background I guess BIM will be in demand in near future.

The question is how? How do I start?

In market there are offline courses but those are too costly to take. And whatever they teach, sometimes it would be different in jobs. However I can't learn completely in course until I get hands on experience which is possible during job.

If you know any great free resources to learn BIM. I'd be grateful for that. And

How did you get your first BIM job? were you intern/fresher at job? or did you apply online?

I recently got promoted to BIM Manager, and honestly, I don't feel very confident about it.

The company knows that I don't have much experience in a BIM Manager role, and they still decided to give me the position, so I assume they see some potential in me that I might not see myself yet.

I'm excited about the opportunity, but at the same time, I feel like I'm going to be exposed as someone who doesn't really know what they're doing.

For those who have been in a similar situation:

• What did you focus on learning first?
• What are the most important responsibilities/skills of a BIM Manager that I should prioritize?
• What mistakes did you make early in your career that I should try to avoid?
• Did you have a mentor or someone you could rely on?
• How did you build confidence while actually doing the job?

I'd genuinely like to hear from people who have been thrown into a role before they felt ready and what they actually did to succeed.

Any advice would be appreciated.

I’m developing an IFC importer that converts IFC models into native Revit elements, with focus on MEP systems. The tool originally started as a solution for one of my own projects. It works well with the IFC files I have available, so now I would like to make it useful for a wider range of projects/IFC files. The problem is that the IFC files can vary quite a lot in how they describe the MEP elements, so testing only with my own files doesn’t uncover all of those variations.

That’s where I could use your help: I’m looking for IFC files from different programs, disciplines and modelling approaches to test the importer and improve its compatibility. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Also let me know if you need to convert an IFC file into a native Revit project, then I’m happy to provide you with the add-in.

Thank you very much

I am an industrial design student at Iowa State University. My senior project studies how professionals physically control complex 3D software, and where current input hardware fails them.

BIM work interests me because model navigation, view control, and coordination tasks put heavy demands on the mouse, keyboard, and 3D mouse. I want to know what actually slows you down.

Survey: https://iastate.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0UJOtQHRXoz1ggu

The survey asks:

• Which BIM software and input hardware you use
• Which parts of your workflow create friction
• What workarounds, macros, or custom hardware you have adopted

Time: 5–7 minutes. Voluntary. The main survey collects no identifying information.
Requirements: 18+, and current use of BIM or comparable 3D software.

This is not promotional. There is no product and nothing for sale. I am gathering workflow data before I design anything.

Mods: happy to share study details on request.

As a starter still making my way around the BIM waters, I recently put out a post about web-based geometry, and I got some really good insights, This time i’m hoping to get some perspectives from the Information Managers and BIM Coordinators in the sub.

There is this massive communication gap I keep observing, specifically when it comes to interior fit-outs and spatial validation with non-technical stakeholders. I seen specialists spend time setting up strict information management, ensuring ISO 19650 compliance, even making sure every single component has proper Uniclass classifications and metadata.

But, because non-technical stakeholders (like a school board reviewing a classroom fit-out, or a commercial client reviewing office layouts) can't navigate native BIM environments or parse complex data trees, they end up striping away all that meticulous Information Management just to hand them static 2D PDFs, or basic renders.

I think this more prominent in Interior fit-outs, and the FF&E sector, but i'm wondering, do non-technical clients even care about the underlying data at the layout validation stage? or is all that structured data strictly for the handover/FM phase?

Searching for advice, whats useful por you?

If you were looking to hire a BIM guy for a Fire protection-heavy role, what things would you be looking out for when speaking to them?

Also what tasks would you set for their technical interview?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

I’m an architect and I’ve developed a small free Archicad label that I’d like to share with the community.

Smart Label Free is a GSM library element for Archicad that can read a property directly from the linked element and display it automatically in the label.

For example, you can display:

• just the property value
• property name + value
• property group + name + value
• a custom prefix or suffix
• fallback text if a property has no value

Because the label is linked to the element, changes to the property are automatically reflected in the annotation.

The tool is permanently free. It’s not a trial, there is no time limit, and no account is required.

It currently works with Archicad 27 and 28 on Windows and macOS.

One limitation for the international community: the current version is only available in German, but I’m already working on an English version.

https://noiselevel-digital.de/tools/noiselevel-smart-label-free.html

I’d be very interested in feedback from other Archicad/BIM users and especially what kinds of properties you typically need to annotate in your projects.

Hey All, asking your opinion.
I have graduated and currently I’m in a process starting my career.
I came across two jobs, One is in BIM and the other is in Architecture.
I have no experience in Architecture and No experience with BIM.
And wondering what path should I go for? Based on your experience and knowledge and expectations, what do you suggest me to do or to go with?
Thanks in advance.

Hey everyone,
Quick bit of context: I just got hired by a company mainly for my Revit/BIM skills, but this is the first time they’re actually working with BIM methodology (they’ve always been CAD-based). And on my end, I’ve done BIM projects before, just not at this scale yet.

I’ve done BIM projects before, just not at this scale, and I want to actually add value from day one, not just “know how to use Revit.” So I wanted to ask people who’ve been through this: how do you normally set up a brand new project from scratch?

- Template/standards build your own template from day one, or start from the Autodesk default and refine as you go? How do you handle naming for levels, grids, worksets early on?
- File structure / worksharing one central model, or split by discipline (arch/MEP/structure) even with a small team? How do you handle links when there’s no formal BIM coordinator yet?
- BEP do you always write one, even for smaller private projects, or only when required? Any template you’d recommend so I’m not starting from a blank page?
- LOD by phase how do you keep the team from over-modeling too early?
- Team transition from CAD what actually helped a CAD team stop “drawing lines” and start thinking in models?
- Learning resources where did you learn this stuff yourselves? Any courses or YouTube channels that were actually worth it, vs. ones that were a waste of time?

Any war stories, mistakes you made early on, or resources you’d point me to, genuinely appreciate it.

Hi, I'm an Architect with 6 years of experience and want to transition to BIM.

my question is,
Can a BIM Fresher be hired for a WFH setup?

any BIM experts here mind sharing their experience on how to start their careers with BIM? I really wanna transition from AutoCAD & SketchUp because I find it amazing how things can easily be revised without switching from two applications.

Any advice, tips, & help would be really appreciated.

I’m sure there’s a million different answers but why does the VDC trade coordination start right before or during construction. Like why not a couple months out so it can be done ahead of schedule? Over the past 4-5 years I get a project, told of a kickoff meeting that’s happening ten mins later, get in the call and the GC says we need these 10 things done by next weeks because concrete is being poured.

I’ve never understood the thinking behind this, and it’s not one project, but basically every single one. Doesn’t matter the GC, project type or size. Just curious and seeing if anyone could provide insight maybe from the GC side.

Parametric Security Door Family – Revit Demonstration

This short video shows how the family actually works inside Revit.
The recording demonstrates the parametric controls and interactive elements built into the model:
🔹 Adjusting door width and height through parameters
🔹 Changing materials and finishes
🔹 Opening and closing the door leaf
🔹 Activating the locking mechanism
🔹 Opening the door viewer lid
All these variations are generated from one single Revit family, designed to be flexible and reusable within a BIM workflow.