Assemble Systems: big "I" BIM

Thanks to Assemble Systems for contributing and being a sponsor at ENR's FutureTech 2012 event. I wanted to single them out for a moment because I think they are offering something unique that will impact the way you interact with the "I" in BIM.

I spent some time (certainly not enough time) with Trent Miskelly (VP of Development) during a break and learned a little about what they do.

Basically, Assemble Systems is a Web Based program that allows you to slice, dice and filter your BIM data in ways that currently are in the realm of the BIM manager and other high level users.

Using their tool Team Members who don't have access to the model can now get just about any non-graphical information that exists in the project.  Quantities, locations, Manufacturer information, etc...

Publish your model to Assemble Systems and now you can create and save views that only include the data needed for the task at hand.  Sound familiar?  It should, that's exactly what you do in Revit.  You filter the view to make the overwhelming amount of information included in the project useful at that moment.

Set up views by adding and removing columns of infiltration.  Sort and filter that information by any parameter or value available.  Even use Comparators (=, <, >, etc) and Booleans (if, and, or, etc...) to create more complex filters.  Sure, you can do all of this by exporting the model to Access or a SQL database.  (Wait, that's not universally true.  Maybe you can do that, but I can't.  I'm not a SQL wiz and I don't have access to Access.)  Even if you can use the data in similar ways, Assemble Systems doesn't stop there.  You can bring those filters into Navisworks as selection sets and see this data in a very visual way.  Oh, and I almost forgot... you can export all of this to Excel for disbursement to the team.

Assemble Systems is truly a tool (as opposed to a packaged solution.)  Learn how it works and create your own uses for it.  Their website shows some suggested uses, such as Estimating, or variance reporting between versions of models, but don't stop there.  Get out of the box, only you know how this tool can help you be more efficient. And I think that's the most exciting thing about this company.  They encourage that attitude. Get in touch with them and get to now what they are all about. 

Assemble Systems: not afraid of the big bad "I" in the Big Bad BIM.