I found an old software demo I made. I thought the video was lost but I just found it on an old USB drive in a box of old drives. It’s more than 10 years old now, from 2008. In 2008 I’d already been making BIM models and creating drawing sets from BIMs since 1998.

So it’s more than Ten Years Gone. It’s 20 years for me using this kind of tool/app and workflow, back to ’98. But I was late to the game. It’s 32 years gone now, since ArchiCAD first commercialized this kind of toolset in 1987. So BIM’s well into it’s 4th decade now. I wonder, will it go 50 years essentially unchanged, technologically stagnant?

Some of this video I laugh at now. It’s a time capsule and shows the state of things in one particular software in 2008. I’d just begun as an employee of that software company after years as their customer. Today I have no connection with that company. But this video shows a kind of baseline (I mean it’s a necessary foundation) that influenced what I became interested in since then:

• drawings-IN-models fusion, work I was involved in starting in 2010, and most recently,
• the book I wrote that gives away for free my ideas about generation two of drawing-model fusion, the evolution of the form of drawing that becomes possible today, and is just waiting for any interested software company to just do it: a flood of new innovation.

Here’s that 10 year old video from 2008. Maybe you’ll see something useful there, or it’ll make you laugh.

That’s me narrating (a real BIM true-believer then). All the BIM and drawings are my work. I built the models. All the drawing graphics (except text) are driven entirely from the model. I worked that way for 10 years, 1998-2008. The video tours models and drawings, and what graphics can look like: clipped models, and clipped models on sheets (aka: drawings). 

Old school!