Comparison
A long-running BIM blog by Simon Moreau, alongside a set of Revit, Navisworks, IFC and BCF tools — including Room Finishing, align-tag, GroupClashes and Sloth — some of them open source, plus Dynamo packages such as DynamoMEP published on his GitHub profile.
BIM 42 is published by Simon Moreau. Details below were checked on against the sources listed at the bottom of this page. Products change — verify anything you are about to make a decision on.
Individually published tools, some of them open source. Room Finishing is listed at a price of "Free" on the Autodesk App Store (checked 2026-07-27); check each tool's own page for its terms.
BIM 42 is not a commercial suite and it would be misleading to frame it as one. It is a blog and a collection of individually excellent tools, some of them open source, written by someone who explains their reasoning publicly. If you searched for it expecting a product, what you have found is better than a product in one respect: for the open-source ones you can read how it works and change it. Room Finishing in particular does something very specific — generating skirting and floor finishes around rooms — and is listed free on the Autodesk App Store.
Coverage and continuity. Individually published tools solve individual problems, and each one is maintained as long as its author has time for it. A supported suite is a different proposition: one installer, one support contact, one release cycle across all of it, and someone contractually on the hook when a Revit version breaks something. That is worth money to some firms and nothing at all to others.
| Capability | NexionTools | BIM 42 |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A commercial suite of 52 tools with support and releases. | A blog plus a set of individually published tools and Dynamo packages. |
| Cost | Subscription — €490/year, or €49/month. 12 free tools. | Priced per tool; Room Finishing is listed free on the Autodesk App Store. |
| Source available | No. | Some of the tools are open source. |
| Room finishes | Finish areas, materials and skirting per room with QA colour-coding. | Room Finishing generates skirting and finished floors around rooms. |
| Support and maintenance | Product support with a release cycle across the whole suite. | Best-effort, as with most independently published free tools. |
If you found this page searching for "BIM 42", you were probably looking for the blog or one specific tool — go and get it, and in the case of Room Finishing it costs nothing. The case for a paid suite is not that those tools are bad; it is coverage across many problems and someone to call when a Revit update breaks one.