Extend the Life of a BIM Model in GIS/FM with Revit Reader

Arkance Systems is the one of major CAx, BIM, GIS provider in Europe, with solutions based mainly on Autodesk technologies. Arkance Systems is a part of big international group - Groupe Monnoyeur. Our GIS division is delivering GIS solutions mostly to private enterprises, utilizing mainly own Arkance Systems technology - twiGIS. Besides usual utility-GIS (water, wastewater, heat, telco), we are focusing our GIS solutions on facility management of large public and industrial areas like airports, exhibition grounds, manufacturing plants, power plants, etc. Our main goal is to provide tools and solutions for reliable data management lifecycle and especially for effective data distribution and accessibility for the end users.

As most of the GIS data (especially in utilities and facility management) are describing buildings and infrastructure coming from the construction activities, the nature of the data inputs is changing rapidly in these days: the usual CAD documentation is being replaced with BIM models. Therefore we have adjusted our tools for smooth BIM – GIS connection with these goals:
Keep BIM model live through the whole building lifecycle (e.g. not just export the data and let the model die)
Let BIM people use their tools in the most vanilla way (BIM modeler like Revit, CDE like BIM 360)
Let the GIS users use the data from CAD, GIS, and BIM in the same way, with no difference to where the data originated

So far, we have built a BIM connector to our twiGIS doing the entire job. The connector is based on Safe Software’s FME with heavy use of the new Revit Reader. The flexibility of the workspace definition enables us to adjust the BIM-GIS mapping to any flavor of any of the sides.

Our talk will focus on the following topics:
Introduction of twiGIS and its BIM connector – why and how
Details on how the Revit reading is done in FME
Pitfalls and highlights of the BIM to GIS transformation
Open questions and outlook