A leader in the international market for the management of hydraulic and aeraulic flows, WILO is now offering its products in BIM.
A pioneer in the use of PIM (Product Information Management) for the dissemination of its data to its BIM catalogue, WILO has remained true to its motto: Pioneering for you.
For the manufacturer, the use of PIM is a non-negotiable: a reliable and unique source for all of the technical data relating to its products. Disseminating this data to digital twins of its products, BIM objects, was thus essential in order to guarantee its sustainability. Ralph Huysers, International Business Developer at WILO, explains: “At WILO we also have a PIM stored via an external partner with dynamic data. If we had published our BIM objects on bimandco.com in the classic manner, we would have published data that would have then required an online modification on the platform, which, although the functionality is unique and stands apart from competing solutions, is not sufficient for us. PIM is the basis for our product data, and is therefore our source of information.It was essential that any data modification could be applied to the objects in real time.“
The WILO teams were thus attracted by the PIM2BIM technology by BIM&CO, which enables the connection of any PIM to bimandco.com. In order to apply this process to WILO products, BIM&CO began by creating generic BIM objects based on ETIM MC models. ETIM MC is an open international standard that allows you to standardise the classification of electrical or climate engineering products and that indicates, for each product, all of the characteristics to be respected and linked to a 2D plan. These objects were then enriched: the BIM&CO APIs communicated with the WILO PIM to retrieve data, and these were then translated to the BIM&CO standard using a mapping technology.
“Thanks to our technology and generic ETIM MC models, the WILO BIM objects stored on our platform are directly enriched via the WILO PIM, which enables the automatic generation of a complete and reliable manufacturer object, without any human intervention whatsoever. The manufacturer can modify his database at any time: the information will be automatically updated in the objects on our platform and in our customers’ Onfly spaces,” outlines Bertrand Beudot, Project Manager at BIM&CO. A remarkable step forward in the world of BIM data management: in addition to the fact that the manufacturer has the guarantee that he can continuously offer up-to-date products to his users, this method is proving to be a real time-saver when generating the company’s BIM objects.
“Approaching geometry separately from data enables the advanced management of the data. Using our OPMS (Open Properties Management System), the technical information relating to the equipment meets all of the requirements of each phase of the life cycle of the building. The manufacturer thus ensures that he can offer products that are adapted to each business need,” concludes Muriel Bourgeay, CEO for Spain, responsible for the project.