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These terms are frequently encountered in BIM projects: level of development, level of detail and level of information. The terms have not been laid down in an act or standard, but have been devised as a means to help communication within a BIM project run more smoothly. In practice, however, it seems that the terms do, in fact, cause some confusion. To avoid any misunderstandings on the agreements that are made at the level of detail in the beginning phase of the project, it is important to understand what exactly the three terms mean.

Level of development [LOD]

The level of development comprises both the graphic representation of the family as well as the level of the information that is linked to the family. Level of development is often abbreviated to LOD and is often referred to in BIM-related documents such as the BIM protocol. The level of development is the most general term of the three and less useful for detailed agreements.

Level of detail [lod]

When we speak of the level of detail, we are only referring to the graphic representation of the family. A family with a low level of detail has, for example, a simple geometric shape such as a cube or a cylinder and will not contain any specified equipment. Unlike the level of development, the level of detail says nothing about the information that is linked to the family.

Level of information [loi]

Information plays a crucial role in an BIM project. The level of information is used to indicate the level of the information that is linked to the family. A family with an extremely high level of information comprises, for example, manufacturer-specific data sheets and a maintenance instruction.

Taking a LEAN approach to LOD

The three terms LOD, lod and loi are aids for making good agreements with the other parties in the project. Thinking beyond the level of development avoids data (graphic or informative) being added to the model that will not be used. For example, in a project that requires LOD500 (in relation to maintenance), it is quite conceivable to propose modeling the level of detail at a lower level than the level of information. It is important to describe in the BIM protocol what exactly falls under the various loi, lod and LOD levels. This makes it clear which information is really important, what is expected of each other and the collaboration can really begin.

Vaillant AuroTHERM families are now available on MEPcontent!

Flat thermal solar panels for solar energy systems under pressure can be downloaded in Revit and IFC formats and are ready to be used in all your BIM projects!

The AuroTHERM families are designed to guarantee installation flexibility and high efficiency. These solar panels can be installed in virtually any setup, making them extremely reliable. They can optionally be connected horizontally or vertically and offer the possibility of being placed in or on a pitched roof and are also suitable for flat roofs.

Additionally, they are resistant to snow and do not suffer from dust or bad weather.

Designing piping systems in Revit can be quite a hassle. We have been talking with quite some MEP engineers and designers over the last months and found out that there are common issues for all of you. Pain points we’ve heard from specialists like you:

1. I am spending a lot of time changing systems in Revit from generic content to manufacturer specific content like pipes and valves.

You have received a model with a generic piping system from your consulting engineer that you want to change to a system from your preferred supplier. This can prove to be very difficult. Content provided by manufacturers does not match your actual system, the correct fittings are not available or autorouting preferences are not set within Revit. Making a generic system work for your specific project can take hours.

The manufacturer specific piping content in our recently published Product Line Placer for Piping App for Revit and Product Line Placer for Valves App for Revit work seamlessly with plain Revit content. Changing from generic to manufacturer specific systems will be a matter of seconds instead of hours.

2. Changing from one manufacturer to another manufacturer’s system is hard.

Did you just design a piping system for a specific manufacturer, but now your contractor decides to change to another supplier? Fear not, you will not have to design your entire piping system again. The Product Line Placer for Piping App allows you to just select another manufacturer and change the entire piping system, including fittings and bends. Using the ‘apply types’ function, you can be sure the new piping system is equipped with the correct product and trade information such as article number and GTIN.

3. I am tired of working with the pre-defined (limited) Revit options and rigidity.

Revit is a comprehensive tool offering a lot of functionalities. Too many functionalities to really work for you perhaps? Creating your own Revit library for piping systems, including autorouting settings, means really a lot of work. And what if manufacturers decide to change important technical details? You will have to set up a new library all over again and update all your custom made products. The Product Line Placer for Piping will do all of this work for you, pre-configuring autorouting settings and to equip piping systems with the correct bends and fittings, linked to the cloud-based MEPcontent database. No fiddling with your piping systems settings needed anymore.

4. I am searching for working, actual family packs and other BIM content all over the internet (ideally fabrication ready families).

Wow, there are quite some manufacturers and BIM platforms out there offering content for your MEP systems. The big problem? For some reasons, they all have different standards when it comes to the level of detail, connectors, naming and size. We know it’s important for you to work with content that is light, compact, that works for your entire project, but still has the right data attached to it. That is why we made sure our content is (manufacturer) data based. In this way, your systems will always be flexible and not have enormous, unnecessary levels of details. Still, you will have the right connectors, article numbers and deep links available within your project. Also, we made sure we added all relevant manufacturers to the Apps so you no longer have to go through endless hoops to download a single connector from a website you might not know very well. Are you missing a manufacturer? Let us know and we’ll try to add it to our app as well.

5. I am facing issues connecting piping systems with other equipment such as valves and pumps.

Having a decent piping system is one, but obviously, you have to add valves, pumps to it and connect it to existing systems as well. Finding or even creating correct fittings, connectors, valves, and pumps is a time-consuming job. But hey, we’ve got you covered here as well. Stop using content that you have to edit or customize yourself, and start using our content for valves and pumps which work seamlessly together with the piping app. Designing complete MEP systems from now on will be a piece of cake.

6. I am finding bad content online, forcing me to create my own content.

There is only one way to solve this. Work with a content platform you can trust. Such as MEPcontent. And when you miss content you often work with, we can talk to the manufacturer (we have over 290 manufacturers we cooperate with on a frequent basis) and use your case (and that of the 30k other MEP engineers, designers and modelers using MEPcontent) to convince them to have their products BIM ready and available to download for free from MEPcontent. We keep the content up-to-date through our cloud services and content update sessions with manufacturers. The great thing about the apps is that they can do the downloading for you! So you only have to focus on your project and the deadlines to be met.

Image found at https://bestplumbers.com/the-dangers-of-delaying-plumbing-repairs/

New socket combination items from Spelsberg are now available on MEPcontent!

Sign in to your free MEPcontent account and download the new content: socket empty enclosures, small-scale distributors, socket casings, distribution boxes and enclosure from the AKI and STV series.

The socket combinations are available for download as Revit families, and can be loaded into your project immediately.

The Flowcon Green Pressure independent control valve is now available for use in your BIM projects. You can easily configure the valve with the required actuator, bodies, pressure/temperature plugs or union end connections. Many configurations of the valve are available within the Revit family, all equiped with correct GTIN and article number. Once you have configured the valve according to your requirements, the data on your schedule will be correct and is ready for ordering.

Download the Flowcon Green valve now from MEPcontent.

Welcome to the new BIM Insights Sessions in 2018!

Hope you had some great days off and wishing you all the best for 2018.

What will be new in 2018 is the focus on workflows of MEP engineers. We want to involve engineers more in our webinars and address typical workflows recognizable by specialists in the field. Specialists like you!

The webinar of Thursday Jan 18th (starting at 3 pm CET) will focus on how to place manufacturer specific and generic high-quality content related to valves and pipes in Revit. And to demonstrate how MEPcontent apps can be of help in doing just that.

There will be plenty of time (within the 30 min webinar) to ask anything you want about this workflow and our webinar hosts will gladly provide you with answers.

Do you have a specific workflow you want to see explained during the webinar? Let us know (marketing@mepcontent.com) and we will try to reach out to you as soon as we can.

Hope to see you (again) at the webinar on January 18th.

BIM files for the renewed Hager Vision distribution board have been published on MEPcontent. Composite dividers up to 40A offer a completely assembled housing construction solution. Easy for the installer, reliability for the resident.

The vision group divider has been a familiar face in many Dutch homes for more than 20 years.

In 2017, Vision was renewed at more than 15 points, following an extensive development process in which Dutch installers participated.
The result is a group distributor that is packed with cleverness and where ease of assembly is the main starting point. The pipe entry piece offers extra space, the cable routing is unobstructed and the QuickConnect spring clamping technology makes the fastest safe connection.

Download the Revit family, CAD file and IFC file now on MEPcontent.

Spelsberg has been a regular content manufacturer at MEPcontent.com for a number of years. During the BIM LIVE Experience in Boxtel, Erwin Van Schooten, Managing Director at Spelsberg, explained how the role of the manufacturer has become increasingly important in the BIM process.

Spelsberg is a German manufacturer of plastic enclosures for the electro technical market and focused originally on German speaking countries. This is still an important market today, but exports now also play an important role.

Past and present

Erwin van Schooten, Managing Director at Spelsberg, explains how the role of the manufacturer has changed: "In the past, when the world was not yet digitalized, a MEP engineer had limited choice in different brands. He went to his wholesaler to buy his products. The wholesaler could only sell a limited number of brands. When an engineer had selected a wholesaler, this usually also determined his preference in brand and product.

Nowadays things are different, the MEP engineer is offered a lot of products from different brands and therefore a wide range of choice. However, he no longer has time to study all the product details of so many different brands; he simply wants to have a good product for the requested application. This creates a conflict: how does the engineer know which product is most suitable? Especially because he has no time to personally address, for example, 10 different suppliers of a type of product.

The solution to this problem lies in good communication of information. A representative still has a role to play in this, but the digital highway also offers many opportunities to engineers for making a choice. The more details of a product are available, the better the selection will be. BIM plays an important role in this and this role will only increase in the future.”

Data transfer

“When we look at where the manufacturer stands in the BIM process, there are still major steps to be taken," said Erwin Van Schooten, Managing Director at Spelsberg. “But how should we move forward? How do we come a step closer to the ultimate transfer of information?”

This is where MEPcontent comes in: the largest BIM library for MEP engineers, which offers up-to-date BIM content and productivity-enhancing Revit applications for the installation industry. On this platform, the manufacturer's products come together with the requirements of the engineer. Spelsberg is one of the hundreds of manufacturers that place their content on MEPcontent.com.

Reduce failure costs

MEPcontent demands a lot from the manufacturers. All product specifications must be communicated so that they can be displayed on MEPcontent.com. Why does Spelsberg go through so much effort to get all product specifications right on MEP content and what does Spelsberg want to achieve with it? Erwin explains: "The purchase of a product is only part of the total cost of ownership. Spelsberg wants to deliver a product at the end of the cycle that fully meets the wishes of the user and a product that is fully appreciated by the MEP engineer.

Spelsberg is convinced that the quality of the product and the installation improves when there is an insight into the costs of the total cycle, for example with regard to ease of installation and service costs. The purchase price of a product can be higher, but due to a reduction in costs, the total installation price at the end of the cycle can be cheaper. Thanks to all the displayed up-to-date product specifications on MEPcontent you can really reduce your failure costs!”

Supply of information

MEPcontent assists Spelsberg in disseminating all the information they provide to a product. But it is important that the manufacturer continues to supply the information. Spelsberg is ahead of other manufacturers in this process. There is a lot of demand for actual content, but this is not yet matched by the amount of content supplied by manufacturers. In the future, MEPcontent wants to create an even better collaboration between the manufacturer and the MEP engineer, because there will be constant demand for new and improved content.

Would you like to know what MEPcontent can mean for you as a supplier/manufacturer? Read more on mepcontent.com.

Heat pumps are indispensable when it comes to sustainable heating (and cooling) of buildings. Tomorrow, the Dutch Heat Pump Congress 2017 will take place. Here you can hear everything about heat pump concepts in homes. A good time to take a look at the growing range of heat pumps from Vaillant, Mitsubishi Electric, Alpha Innotec, Remeha and Fujitsu on MEPcontent!

New content for heat pumps from Dimplex is now available on MEPcontent.

The System M Compact Outdoor and the System M Compact Indoor are both available for download in RFA, DWG and IFC files, so they can be added in both AutoCAD and Revit projects. The System M Compact Outdoor is available in 4 designs. Just select the design that best fits your garden or the outside of your home. A comfortable and sustainable heating solution!

We'd like to introduce a new manufacturer on the MEPcontent portal: Elco. Elco is an established manufacturer offering innovations in burner, condensing boiler and solar technology.

A Revit family and DWG file for the Trigon XL boiler is made available. You can download the file directly into your Revit or AutoCAD project.

Do you want to know what the latest trends and developments are in the MEP industry?

Listen to the webinar on November 30th 2pm CET and discover what developments and trends will impact your job in the upcoming years.

The webinar is in English.

Click here to sign up for this free webinar

After a very successful premiere last year, BIM World MUNICH, the leading event for Building Information Modeling in the German-speaking DACH region, is returning in 2017. Held on November 28th and 29th in the ICM (Internationales Congress Centrum München), the exhibition is expected to attract more than 3000 visitors from 22 countries. Together with a two-days international conference and open forum for all visitors, over 100 exhibitors attending Germany’s biggest BIM fair will present the newest trends concerning the digitalization of the building industry.

Solutions for MEP engineers
Here you can also discover our innovative BIM solutions for the MEP industry: with Stabicad for Revit, MEPcontent and Revit Apps, engineers work quickly and easily in the BIM process. Meet our BIM experts at stand 74-76 and discover the right tools to support your complete BIM workflow: from design to detail with the right level of information for your construction partners. We look forward to meeting you!