📊 Power BI for BIM Professionals – Beginner Tutorial (Architects, BIM, VDC) - Part 1
If you’re a BIM Manager, Architect, or VDC professional and want to learn Power BI from scratch—without getting lost in generic data tutorials—this walkthrough is for you.
We’ll build a simple star schema, connect it to clean BIM-style data, and walk through Power Query, relationships, and visual basics in a way that’s tailored to the AEC world.
⏱️ Timestamps
00:00 Intro – Why this matters for BIM
00:34 Project setup: Simple Excel tables (Orders, Products, Staff, Stores)
01:09 Concept: Keys & connecting tables like a database
02:16 Importing Excel into Power BI
03:47 Power Query basics – data cleanup, header detection, and types
06:08 Model View: Star schema and relationship building
07:39 Building the data model: Orders, Products, Staff, Stores
09:40 Cleaning up the model – hiding keys and fixing snowflakes
10:18 Creating your first matrix visual
12:20 Detecting and fixing data mismatches (e.g. quantity * price)
13:30 Merging staff with store data in Power Query
15:33 Unloading helper tables and simplifying your model
16:28 Merging product data into orders
20:06 Using the Advanced Editor and cleaning expansion steps
22:31 Creating total price & cost columns
24:07 Fixing column types and aggregation settings
25:33 Adding drill-downs and order-level detail
27:07 Recap and what's next
📚 What You’ll Learn
1️⃣ How to build a star schema from simple BIM-style data
2️⃣ Why Power Query is crucial for data cleanup
3️⃣ How relationships affect your visuals
4️⃣ Best practices to avoid snowflaking and overcomplicating models
5️⃣ How to create a beginner-friendly BIM dashboard
🏗 Whether you're just exploring BIM data or managing a digital twin rollout, this series will help you lay a solid foundation in Power BI.
🔗 Learn more about BIM + Power BI workflows: https://vimaec.com
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💬 Have questions? Drop it in the comments!