常见解释：
BIM的是Building Information Modeling的首字母缩写：
Building-建筑物；
Information-相关建筑物所包含的信息；
Modeling-模型。

美国BIM标准National Building InformationModeling Standard (NBIMS) 定义：“BIM是一种改进的规划、设计、施工、操作及维护的过程，用机器可读的标准信息为每个建筑（不论新老）创建模型，模型中包含建筑所有有效信息且这些信息可以为建筑全生命周期的参与方使用。”

The NBIMS vision for BIM is “an improved planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance process using a standardized machine-readable information model for each facility, new or old, which contains all appropriate information created or gathered about that facility in a format useable by all throughout its lifecycle.” (NIBS 2008).

The NBIMS Initiative categorizes the Building Information Model (BIM) three ways:
1. As a product
2. As an IT-enabled, open standards–based deliverable, and a collaborative process
3. As a facility lifecycle management requirement.

For the purpose of this book, we defi ne BIM as a modeling technology and associated set of processes to produce, communicate, and analyze building models. Building models are characterized by:
Building components that are represented with digital representations (objects) that carry computable graphic and data attributes that identify them to software applications, as well as parametric rules that allow them to be manipulated in an intelligent fashion.
Components that include data that describe how they behave, as needed for analyses and work processes, for example, takeoff, specifi cation, and energy analysis.
Consistent and nonredundant data such that changes to component data are represented in all views of the component and the assemblies of which it is a part.
Coordinated data such that all views of a model are represented in a coordinated way.

"BIM handbook[3]"一文中，作者给出了详细的定义：BIM是一种建模科技，它将一系列过程整合到一起，以创建、交流和分析建筑模型。