BIM for DFMA: If It Can’t Go to Fab, It Doesn’t Belong in the Model
Stop performing “Coordination Theater” with placeholder boxes. It’s time to demand fabrication-grade data that actually builds
What if you actually know what is going to happen next?
What if you knew exactly how a sub-assembly would behave before it even left the factory? No installation nightmares, no ‘close enough’ fixes. That certainty is the real heart of DFMA.
But for BIM managers to actually sleep at night, we need those products to live where we do: inside Revit and ArchiCAD.
The Coordination Theater We’re All Performing In
Most coordination meetings feel productive until you step back and notice what is actually happening. Everyone gathered around the screen. The architect’s consultant has signed off. MEP says it clears. The submittal came back approved. The model is clean — no clashes, everything color-coded green.
Then the duct collar shows up two inches off.
Most of that manufacturer content in your model is pretty geometry. But fabrication intelligence? Often missing. Connection logic is vague. Tolerances are assumed. Adjustability exists only in the submittal notes nobody revisits once the model goes green.
We’ve built this entire coordination process around products that aren’t really in the coordination. We’re working around them, not with them. Modeling placeholder boxes and hoping the “contractor to verify in field” note covers us when reality shows up on a flatbed.
What Actually Living in the Model Means
A Revit family that loads isn’t enough. Correct dimensions aren’t enough. You need the data that actually drives fabrication.
Real manufacturer content includes connection points with exact coordinates. Tolerances that match the shop floor. Assembly sequences so your trade partners know what goes in first. Material properties that your energy model can actually use.
And it needs to be parametric in a way that matters. Change the duct size and watch the supports update, the clearances adjust, the access panels relocate.
Here’s the test: Can your MEP contractor export that family directly to their detailing software or fab shop? Can they generate cut sheets from it? If the answer is “no, we’ll redraw it,” then you’re coordinating with a placeholder.
Take a chiller that needs customization — say, switching from standard condenser water connections on the left to right-side connections for your mechanical room layout. If that family is truly intelligent, you change a parameter and watch the piping ports relocate, the access clearances adjust, the rigging points update to match the shifted center of gravity. If it’s just geometry, you’re emailing the rep, waiting three days for a revised PDF, and manually checking if your pipe routing still clears the electrical room wall.
Why Manufacturers Resist (And Why That’s Changing)
Most manufacturers still see themselves as making physical products, not digital ones. “We fabricate steel, not Revit families.” And there’s real fear behind the resistance — if the family shows a bolt pattern that’s off by a sixteenth, are they liable? What happens when fabrication tolerances don’t match model precision?
Fair concerns. But the market is starting to price this in.
GCs and design-build firms are now writing specs that simply eliminate manufacturers who don’t provide fabrication-grade BIM content. Not “preferred.” Required. The product might be better, but if it can’t live in the model properly, it’s not getting specified on a $200M project with an eighteen-month coordination schedule.
Talk to any curtain wall contractor on a high-rise. Five years ago, they’d model whatever system the architect selected and make it work. Now? If the manufacturer can’t provide families with actual extrusion profiles, thermal break details, and anchor embedment data that feeds directly into shop drawings, that system doesn’t even make the shortlist. The coordination schedule doesn’t have room for someone to rebuild the facade from scratch in Revit while the steel’s already going up.
The manufacturers figuring this out are treating BIM content as product infrastructure — version control, parameter standards, distribution platforms. Tools like BIMDeX are accelerating this shift.
What You Can Do Tomorrow
Add this into your specs: “Manufacturer shall provide native Revit/ArchiCAD families with fabrication-grade parameters including connection points, tolerances, and assembly data.” Make it a submittal requirement.
Then actually test it. Hand that family to your MEP contractor and ask if they can use it for detailing or send it to fab. If they laugh and say they’ll redraw it anyway, reject the submittal. You’re not being difficult. You’re protecting the coordination standard you already paid for.
Build a running list of manufacturers who get it. Share it with your preconstruction team, your trade partners, your designers. Make it easier to specify the people doing this right than to fight with the ones who aren’t.
And in every pre-con meeting, ask the question out loud: “Will this model go straight to your fab shop, or are you redrawing it?”
The Promise Worth Fighting For
DFMA is a promise that what you coordinate is what gets built.
But that promise is only as good as the data in your model. And right now? Most of that data is still trapped in PDFs and submittals, waiting for someone to care enough to change it.
If the product cannot survive fabrication, it has no business surviving coordination.