【转帖】collaborative design tools

yang686526

collaborative design tools
i am a fire protection engineer working for an a/e firm.
our company is pushing (or being pushed)to move to revit for a lot of projects.
my question pertains to bim's (building information management). they seem to be similar to collaborative design tools in "part-making" industries.
how have or have these tools changed other industries at all? how have they done so? are they just a fad? i wonder about the benefit, but everyone seems to be pushing them.
thanks in advance.
an entire class of software that i might call "design automation tools" have appeared and evolved over the past two decades or so.  
note that the salesmen hardly ever call on engineers.  engineers don't have money to spend.  salesmen call on managers, and sell the software as a way to reduce engineering labor costs.
in general, the stuff works... not at making anyone's job easier, and not at making the product better, but at reducing engineering labor costs.
detailers were the first to go.  they all got jobs flipping burgers, and now are fast-food managers.  reporting to them are the top-level designers, who are now shift leaders.  flipping the actual burgers are the senior engineers.
what's left is junior level designers, now called engineers because they use a program that does "engineering".  when they get a little experience, they're replaced with more neophytes, and either sweep floors at the burger place or go to work as project managers, trying to clean up the mess they made of the engineering work and wondering why the screwups never cease and why they can't get decent help and...
yes, the software has had some effect.
real engineering costs have gone up; apparent engineering costs have gone down.  product quality has gone to hell, but apparent product quality is just fine, because nobody hires quality staff anymore.  if you don't measure it, you can't know how bad it is, seems to be the operating philosophy.
... okay, _some_ of that is exaggerated, but not _all_ of it.  it's a brave new world, now awaiting hope and change.
god help us all.
  
mike halloran
pembroke pines, fl, usa