Consistent management and evaluation of building models in the early design stages

Abstract

The early stages of building design involve the consideration of different design variants and their assessment regarding various performance criteria including energy consumption and costs. During the design process, the involved experts from different disciplines frequently exchange building information to develop a design that satisfies the project’s requirements and objectives. In the course of this iterative process, the building design evolves throughout multiple refinement stages. At the same time, different variants are developed. In BIM-based projects, the maturity of the design information provided by the model is expressed by the notion of Level of development (LOD). So far, however, there is no method to formally define the information requirements of a LOD. In particular, there are no means for expressing the uncertainty involved with the provided information. By contrast, despite the insufficient information available in early design stages, a BIM model appears precise and certain. This situation leads to false assumptions and model evaluations, for example, in the case of energy efficiency calculations or structural analysis. Hence, this paper presents an overview of a set of approaches that were developed to alleviate and preserve the consistency of the designed solutions. The approach includes the development of a multi-LOD meta-model, which allows one to explicitly describe the LOD requirements of each building component type incorporating the possible uncertainties, e.g. concerning the building dimensions. On the basis of this multi-LOD model, methods for evaluating a building design’s performance regarding the building’s structure and life cycle energy performance are proposed that take the defined uncertainties into account. To support the management of design variants in one consistent model, a graph-based approach is introduced. Finally, a minimized communication protocol is described to facilitate the workflow and communicate the evaluation results for supporting the decision-making process.

Fabrication information modeling: interfacing building information modeling with digital fabrication

“…Only through shared constraints for individual FIM modeling can cross-component functional areas and a seamless assembly of the individual parts be realized. Mechanisms that enable such a linkage have not yet been implemented for FIM but have been investigated in the context of multi-level of development (LOD) models (Abualdenien and Borrmann 2019;Abualdenien et al 2020;Chindanonda 2019). Thus, linking different FIM projects is possible (cf.…”

KI‐Methoden zur Integration tragwerksplanerischen Wissens in frühe Phasen des Gebäudeentwurfsprozesses

“…Der Planungsprozess ist charakterisiert durch eine Unschärfe der Entwurfsgrößen [8]. Zur Verarbeitung unscharfer Informationen mit den KI‐Methoden werden drei prinzipielle Vorgehensweisen vorgestellt.…”

“…Intelligente Ersatzmodelle umfassen sowohl die Wissensbasis als auch die Inferenzkomponente zur Bereitstellung der tragwerksplanerischen Expertise [7]. Da frühe Planungsphasen durch Unschärfe von Entwurfsparametern charakterisiert sind [8], werden Methoden zur Verarbeitung solcher Informationen vorgestellt. Basierend auf tragwerksplanerischem Wissen leistet das entwickelte System schließlich eine Beurteilung von Tragsystemen, Vorschläge von Entwurfsoptionen sowie eine Verarbeitung von Entwurfsänderungen zur Unterstützung des Entwurfsprozesses.…”

BIM-based design decisions documentation using design episodes, explanation tags, and constraints

“…However, throughout the design process, far more knowledge about the client's requirements is gathered compared to the beginning. Furthermore, construction projects are multidisciplinary, involving diverse domain experts, where each has their own perspective and interest (Abualdenien et al, 2020). In many cases, the interests of these experts contradict each other.…”