OPEN VCS, a lens for looking at models

Some background here as I come around to the details:

I saw a comparison made this week of GPS and BIM. When was the last time you unfolded a paper map while driving? This is used as criticism of those in AEC who, while having digital models, still make drawings.

But, would a model of the world alone, streamed to mobile devices have done the job?

Obviously no. We still have maps. The model of the world  is not enough. We still say,

“I’m here and I want to go there.”

And a map is made and shown to us progressively and turn by turn.

BIM, for 25 years (or 35 for some), is pretty much stuck at the worst of all possible places. Software companies have given us a model of our project, and then told us to generate the equivalent of old-school maps of them while, some enthusiasts clang on like a grinding bottom bracket:

“the model is everything, no maps needed.”

Our situation is not anything like GPS/Maps, because the software developers in BIM are really dim. And the users are left LOST.

I said BIM developers are dim though, didn’t I?

And you have to admit that’s true, don’t you?

What kind of developers, to use the GPS analogy, would put satellites in space for location tracking, build a digital model of the world, stream it on demand to mobile devices, AND OMIT TO INCLUDE ANY MAPS FUNCTIONALITY OTHER THAN PRINTING TRADITIONAL MAPS, AS IF ON PAPER?

That’s DIM.

Borges saw it already in 1946:

… In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a Map of the Empire whose size was that of the Empire, and which coincided point for point with it. The following Generations, who were not so fond of the Study of Cartography as their Forebears had been, saw that that vast map was Useless, and not without some Pitilessness was it, that they delivered it up to the Inclemencies of Sun and Winters. In the Deserts of the West, still today, there are Tattered Ruins of that Map, inhabited by Animals and Beggars; in all the Land there is no other Relic of the Disciplines of Geography.

– Jorge Luis Borges: On_Exactitude_in_Science (1946)

There’s a way out of this, starting with a strong correction back toward reason:

OPEN VCS:

Introduction to OPEN VCS

We’ve begun building this. We have a small volunteer open source developer team with potential to grow, a nascent codebase, a very professional developer organization joining us on OPEN VCS development just now, another one thinking about it, and we have a new specification, rewritten, much improved and also open: OPEN VCS equipment for Visual Close Study in all digital models 26NOV2024x

There is an open source piece to OPEN VCS, and, we intend that implementations in modelers benefit from the core but can extend and add to VCS features very significantly, independently and beyond the core and beyond open source if they wish.

We see this working in the following ways:

1. We establish an OPEN VCS Collaborative (or Consortium or Foundation or…some acceptable entity) to facilitate OPEN VCS open source core features development, as a group that maintains an open door welcome to developer organizations of all sizes.
2. We help development organizations that want OPEN VCS implemented within modeling applications of their preference, whether they are users of those applications or developers of those applications.
3. We also will help everyone who wants our help developing extensions and additions of VCS features beyond the open source core according to unique needs and vision.
   1. Everyone benefits from the open source core while remaining free to extend and add.

OPEN VCS really matters.

Sure there are piecemeal siloed one-off attempts that pop up here and there within an office, scattered fragments of partial attempts at addressing this, but no developer organization of significant strength yet paying attention to this fundamental oversight and the need for a generalized solution acceptable to industry.

I figured out what that is. Generally people laugh and dismiss when anyone says that. That’s fine. I challenge anyone to dismiss OPEN VCS after reading my spec: OPEN VCS equipment for Visual Close Study in all digital models 26NOV2024x