FINE MEP is a complete set of BIM applications for MEP design. It is part of 4M’s multi-disciplinary BIM suite, which also includes IDEA for architectural design and FineGREEN for sustainable design and analysis. The objective of 4M, which was started in 1986 and is headquartered in Greece, continues to be to provide the design and engineering community with powerful yet low-cost applications, as with IDEA for architectural design, which I reviewed last year.
4M’s applications were initially built on top of the open-source IntelliCAD format, the low-cost alternative to AutoCAD that is compatible with the DWG file format. 4M is now also using the ODA (Open Design Alliance) Drawing Toolkit, and this, along with a 64bit architecture, has made its applications faster and more powerful. Even with these changes, their cost remains a fraction of BIM applications such as Autodesk Revit and Bentley OpenDesigner, making 4M’s applications extremely popular in many countries all…