This month’s issue of Landscape Architecture Magazine has a new article out, “BIM There, Done That,” which focuses on Meghan Quinn from Office of Cheryl Barton who seems to have some pretty solid Revit experience.
It is a good follow-up to their first article last year, “The Limits of BIM“. And it is certainly refreshing to read about a landscape architect with a can-do attitude about BIM and Revit in landscape architecture. Though I was admittedly surprised by a few statements throughout the article.
In particular, I find it hard to believe that this author could only find three or four landscape architects worldwide who were using BIM. Perhaps it is just my echo-chamber bias, but it seems a bit ludicrous to suggest only a handful of landscape architecture firms use BIM on a daily basis.
…a number of landscape architecture firms have dabbled in BIM over the past decade, but I’ve struggled to find even one that incorporates it into daily work flow. Before I was introduced to Quinn, I’d found three, worldwide, who were using it on at least some of their projects.
This statement is even stranger given the fact that this blog, landarchBIM, is mentioned at the end of the article (sandwiched in between some Autodesk references).
Quinn says she’s never come up against a Revit challenge that she couldn’t resolve by studying the many online forums and tutorials for the BIM community. Autodesk offers two free tutorials on using Revit in landscape architecture, and landarchbim.com offers a 33-part video series on the subject for $230. The Autodesk representative also pointed me to the company’s Site Designer Extension plug-in (previously known as Siteworks)…
And while I do appreciate the link back to my blog and the mention of my Revit video course, it nonetheless caught me entirely by surprise. So keep up the good work, LAM, and next time, feel free to get in touch.
landarchBIM 
The statement I found most odd was this:
“BIM software is typically cloud-based, allowing all members of a design team to work from a single model that updates in real time”
I’ve never worked on a cloud model yet!
But yes – we do all our Landscape in Revit on a daily basis! (using LandarchBIM workflows where required..!), but then we’re multi-disciplinary, so it makes sense for us.
We are using Revit increasingly as our skills and libraries develop. It’s exciting to be involved at a point where LIM is really about to take off.
It would be naive to hold our breath for completely intuitive LIM software when architects complain about Revit daily.