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Autodesk aces buildingSMART BIM interoperability challenge

Categories: Architecture Engineering

Autodesk COBie Toolkit for Revit 2015 now available

Autodesk has released its COBie Toolkit for Revit 2015, which gives designers the top-rated data BIM interoperability software.  This release follows a stellar performance at the January 2014 buildingSMART alliance (bsa) COBie for Design challenge, where Autodesk received 100% positive marks producing a complete COBie deliverable that required no additional processing or edits.

Building Information Modeling (BIM) has matured into a powerful process for architects, engineers and contractors to share and implement intelligent building design data.  Data exchange standards help project teams move models and information from one 3D modeling software application to another, facilitating more efficient, collaborative workflows. 

For that reason, Autodesk provides support for many other data exchange mechanisms and file translations to assist project teams, such as COBie. COBie is a tool that allows non-graphical data and information about buildings to be organized, documented and shared in a standardized way. This data can be maintained in a database which can be easily accessed and updated throughout the whole life cycle of a building, from concept through to demolition.

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The intent of the COBie Challenge, held during the Building Innovation 2014 Conference & Expo, is to allow software companies to demonstrate their ability to meet information exchange standards developed by the buildingSMART alliance.  As expressed by the buildingSMART alliance, finishing with no errors or penalties as Autodesk did “means that a user should not have to spend additional time editing the COBie file to fill in missing data or correct format errors on a COBie file exported by the vendor's software.”

The output for the 2014 COBie Challenge was generated using the COBie Toolkit for Revit 2014 which is available, along with the newly released toolkit for Revit 2015,  for download on the Autodesk BIM Interoperability page.   

 The Autodesk Revit COBie Toolkit assists project teams in producing COBie deliverables in conjunction with their Revit model development. Revit COBie Toolkit is an add-in application which installs in Autodesk Revit as well as Revit Architecture, Revit MEP and Revit Structure to support the creation and publishing of Revit data to the COBie standard. Together with Autodesk’s BIM solutions, the Revit COBie Toolkit helps make facility lifecycle management practices easier, more efficient, and less costly.