CADENAS open Competence Center for VDI 3805 / ISO 16757 compliant BIM CAD product data for MEP

The requirements in Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing (MEP) are continuously increasing. With the growing importance of BIM data in the construction sector, the provision of intelligent product information in MEP is becoming inevitable. CADENAS GmbH is therefore opening a competence center for digital product data for MEP, Building Automation and Electrical Engineering in Weinheim near Heidelberg, South Germany. The background: aspects of energy efficiency, networking of systems, user comfort, economic efficiency and finally the multitude of national and international standards and regulations lead to an increasingly pronounced complexity in the phases of design, construction and operation. Intelligent BIM data provides a remedy here: It not only allows sources of error to be identified before construction begins, it also simplifies facility management and increases efficiency throughout the entire life cycle of a building.

The VDI 3805 guideline is used as a standard for the product data exchange format of technical and geometric product properties for the design, construction and operation of plants. The demand for VDI 3805 / ISO 16757 compliant, interdisciplinary product data is therefore increasing rapidly. The newly opened CADENAS competence center is another milestone in the BIM field: It enables individual consulting for manufacturers of BIM components in the creation of structured, classified and digital 3D BIM CAD product data for architects, civil engineers, technical planners and executing construction companies.

The dedicated BIM team of the new CADENAS branch office includes Karsten Spieß, deputy chairman of the VDI 3805 main committee, as well as Stefanie Enkler. Karsten Spieß has been working successfully in MEP for more than 25 years. After working as a MEP specialist planner, he moved into the field of integral software development and product data management. For 18 years, he has played a key role in the development of guidelines and standards for documentation in building services, including as the author of various sets of rules in the area of product data exchange. Stefanie Enkler and Karsten Spieß are both active members of various committees, associations and working groups (VDI, VDMA, BTGA, DIN, DKE, VDE, ECLASS).

Together with various associations, manufacturers and cooperation partners, the CADENAS team oversees the development of the VDI 3805 position paper. "VDI 3805 standardizes the collection of required data in order to cover different tasks with access to a standardized product data model. With the help of this standardized data model, calculations, planning, simulations and analyses as well as the operation of MEP systems can be optimally coordinated and thus carried out more easily," explains Spieß. VDI 3805 offers planners all the manufacturer-specific, geometric and alphanumeric information as well as dynamic functions required for the correct design of components, regardless of the CAD software used. Work is already underway to transfer VDI 3805 to the international standard ISO 16757.

Multi CAD data is essential whenever large construction projects with many different teams are carried out. In most cases, each group works with different CAD or planning systems specialized for their purpose, so that the data often cannot be merged at the end of the planning process. Thanks to the flexible data model of the CADENAS technology for Electronic Product Catalogs, component manufacturers can effortlessly provide countless combinations of BIM product data, no matter which CAD system, Level of Geometry, classification or language is required. The appropriate data can be generated on-the-fly in over 150 native and neutral CAD & BIM formats via a central database.

Karsten Spieß and his team are looking forward to an even more intensive cooperation with manufacturers from the construction industry: "The new CADENAS Competence Center enables us to improve our interlocking with customers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland due to its favorable location. However, there is much more to it: our expertise enables us to give our customers the needed support in the provision and marketing of high-quality 3D BIM CAD models in the form of a digital product catalog. It is our common goal to permanently optimize the catalog technology in order to meet the increasing requirements of the BIM sector."

Browse thousands of 3D BIM & CAD product catalogs, including many from the architectural field.