CAD versus BIM, the LOD 100–500 spectrum, the shift from drawing-centric to model-centric production, how architects, engineers, contractors, and owners each use the model differently, and the real business case — benefits and costs both — every later module in this program builds on.
CAD is geometry — lines and arcs with no inherent meaning that a drafter must keep consistent by hand across every view. BIM is a data-rich, object-based model where every drawing, schedule, and quantity is a live extract of one underlying source of truth. This module builds the mental model the rest of the program assumes: what Level of Development actually promises at each stage from LOD 100 through LOD 500, why production shifted from drawing-centric to model-centric workflows, and why architects, engineers, contractors, and owners genuinely need different things from the same model.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why LOD is assigned element by element rather than project-wide, and weigh BIM's real coordination and cost/schedule benefits against its real authoring-time and training costs — the exact trade-off Module 2's CAD standards and Module 4's modeling-fundamentals content each build on from their own side of production.