BIM is the future of architecture and engineering drawing and documentation (and much more: analysis, rendering, costing, purchasing). BIM will lead to changes in process and procedures, as well as monumental cost savings throughout the entire design, building and management phases. However, in many ways, BIM is a promise of what will happen. the extraction of information from the BIM project is the ultimate power of BIM and the automation that will come. Structural engineers are leading in the extraction of data from the BIM model, with energy analysis close behind. However, we are just at the beginning. Most are using BIM to create contract documents that look like hand drawn contract documents. There continues to be great concerns about releasing the BIM models to the contractors. This will change. We need to be careful not to focus on making BIM look like 2D contract documents, such as fixating on graphic standards. We have a new very powerful graphical and data tool. We should be experimenting with how to take full advantage of this power.