Fabrication information modeling: interfacing building information modeling with digital fabrication

Abstract

Digital manufacturing methods have been successfully used in different industries for years and have since had a positive effect on the development of their productivity. These methods offer significantly greater design freedom and make it possible to develop shape-optimized and function-activated components. In the construction industry, however, these technologies are only being used reluctantly, even though additive methods could make resource-efficient construction possible. The possibly decisive disadvantage of these methods is that a significantly higher granularity of product and process information is required, thus significantly increasing the planning effort. A circumstance that the framework described in this study, fabrication information modeling (FIM), could significantly mitigate by linking digital fabrication and BIM-based digital building design via a digital chain. For this purpose, FIM provides a methodology with which the information of a digital building model can be detailed, component by component, in a fabrication-aware manner. Based on the open exchange data format IFC, the FIM framework integrates seamlessly into the BIM context and enables automated detailing of the design information.

Strategien zur Implementierung der Kreislaufwirtschaft beim Bauen mit Beton

“…Möglichkeiten des Einsatzes von Simulationswerkzeugen [39], immer bessere Integration von BIM‐to‐Robot‐Softwarepipelines [40] und der Einsatz von Robotics Frameworks [41] (HAL Robotics, ROS, herstellerspezifische Slicer z. B. beim Beton‐3D‐Drucken etc.)…”

RTDE robot control integration for Fabrication Information Modeling

“…The proposed methodology in this study uses the FIM methodology developed by Slepicka et al [3] for generating the required digital model instead of using a simple CAD tool. FIM offers a pattern-based approach where voids, inserts, supports, and other functional inserts can be integrated directly into the design.…”

“…While the outer shape of the component is retained from the BIM design, the pattern is applied to generate the interior structure of the component. In contrast to conventional slicing methods, with FIM, the voids are designed by path planning, not the other way around [3]. The fabrication information (path and parameters for material, process, and machinery) is stored in the BIM exchange format IFC (cf.…”

“…section 3), the manufacturing information can be directly transmitted with the online programming strategy to an AM system. As discussed in section 3.1.2, an object-oriented planning algorithm is proposed that complements the FIM-IFC representation [3], enabling direct data access and the generation of an adapted velocity profile. The proposed high-frequency online communication uses the Real-Time Data Exchange (RTDE) offered by Universal Robots TM (UR), which synchronizes the UR controller with an external client over TCP/IP.…”

“…This fact has led to various efforts to combine the two technologies [2]. Among other things, a methodology was developed to derive manufacturing information from BIM data for use with extrusion-based AM methods, i.e., Fabrication Information Modeling (FIM) [3].…”