tarbim

Tarbim is a packaging concept used to deliver Building Information Modeling (BIM) data together with related project documentation in a single portable archive. The term combines tar, the traditional Unix archive format, with BIM, the practice of creating and managing digital representations of physical assets.

A typical tarbim package consists of a tar archive containing BIM model files, geometry data, textures, and other assets, along with a manifest that lists the contents, versions, dependencies, and coordinate reference systems. The archive may be compressed with gzip or bzip2 and given a .tarbim extension, or stored in compressed variants such as .tarbim.gz.

Usage and workflow proceed as follows: a BIM author or project administrator exports the model and associated files into a tarbim package, generates or updates the manifest, and transmits the archive to collaborators or contractors. Recipients unpack the archive, verify integrity with checksums, and import the data into their BIM software while using the manifest to ensure version alignment and dependency resolution.

Benefits of the tarbim approach include improved portability of large model sets, traceable versioning, and a single delivery artifact that couples geometry with metadata. Limitations arise from a lack of universally adopted standards, potential compatibility issues across different BIM tools, and the need for careful maintenance of the manifest to prevent mismatches or data loss during transfer.

See also: tar, tarball, BIM, data packaging.