The Rosewood experiment — Building information modeling and interoperability for architectural precast facades

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Abstract

The Rosewood experiment examined building information modeling (BIM) and product data exchange in the design and fabrication of architectural precast façades. The façade panels of a 16 story office building were designed and fabricated using traditional CAD, while a parallel workflow was performed independently using BIM tools. No limitations were encountered in designing and detailing of precast façade pieces with current software. Production of the same set of drawings showed a productivity gain of 57% over the CAD process. However, the data exchanges between architectural and precast engineering systems were incomplete and inconsistent, confirming the need for BIM exchange standards. The existing Industry Foundation Classes schema (IFC version 2x3) lacks precast-specific entities and property sets. The majority of the difficulties can be traced to a loss in translation of semantic meaning for the objects exchanged.

Introduction

Building information modeling (BIM) is a conceptual approach to building design and construction that encompasses three-dimensional (3D) parametric modeling of buildings for design and detailing and computer-intelligible exchange of building information between design, construction and other disciplines. Development and products supporting integrated 3D parametric modeling have matured so that its adoption is becoming widespread as the base technology for building information development and management by major architectural and engineering firms [1]. As implementation in industry spreads, the pressure to make progress on the second aspect, that of interoperability, grows [2]. The second aspect of BIM utilizes the object model data generated to support improved processes throughout the building life cycle. The Rosewood project experiment addressed workflows between design and construction. It was undertaken to provide the workflow knowledge and data-use definitions needed for the preparation of a BIM standard for the domain of architectural precast facades. The domain of architectural precast relies on engineered- and fabricated-to-order panels that have complex geometry and detailed fabrication and erection issues. Its fabrication and erection require close collaboration among architects, precast fabricators, structural engineers and general contractors. The experiment also enabled detailed measurement of expected future productivity gains.

A building product model schema, which defines the data structure of objects, attributes and relationships, is the foundation for effective exchange of building information between disparate software applications. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) [3] and CIS/2 [4] schemas are the leading examples of product model schemas for building construction [5].

However, a building model schema is not sufficient in and of itself to transfer and share building data; additional building information modeling standards are needed to prescribe what subsets of a project's information must be exchanged at any step in a project workflow in order to fulfill the parties' information needs, and which objects and attributes are to be used in each exchange to represent that information [6]. The Facilities Information Council (FIC) of the National Institute of Building Sciences in the US is coordinating development of national BIM standards (or ‘NBIMS’) [7] for this purpose. These standards will provide guidelines for software vendors in developing translators that use the same subset of the IFC schema in a uniform way and will guide construction professionals in the way they use their BIM tools to compile models that can be exchanged effectively. They have a secondary effect of defining very function-specific information that the BIM design tools need to provide, in order to populate the data needed by the other applications. The Rosewood experiment was part of a broader research project led by NIBS which culminated in preparation of an early Information Delivery Manual (IDM) [3] within the NBIMS process.

The goals of the experiment were to: (1) explore what can be achieved with the use of 3D BIM tools in collaboration between architects and precast façade fabricators given existing tools and exchange capabilities; (2) identify appropriate collaboration workflows for design and fabrication of precast architectural facades where the precaster is a subcontractor, and the improvements in information exchange requirements that will be needed to support them; and (3) record the processes and productivity achieved in parallel 2D and 3D workflows for the same project. The primary research method was ‘action research’; the second author spent two months in residence at a precast company's design department modeling a 16 story office building (the ‘Rosewood’ building) using BIM tools in parallel with the actual design and detailing of the same building using CAD tools by a major architectural firm and a separate precast fabricator.

This paper is structured as follows. After a review of the state-of-the-art in interoperability for building construction and parametric modeling for the domain of architectural precast, the following sections present the goals, method and results of the experiment. Lessons learned concerning collaboration between disciplines, appropriate workflows in this domain using BIM and software limitations encountered, are described and discussed. The conclusions concern issues of BIM standard development, the nature of collaboration using building models, productivity impact measures and ongoing research needs.

Section snippets

3D parametric modeling for precast concrete

The building design community is in transition, adopting and learning to effectively utilize a new generation of parametric 3D modeling tools. These include Revit Architecture1 [8], ArchiCAD [9], Bentley Architecture [10] and Digital Project [11]. The consistency of a single digital 3D building model, with associated data regarding functional, material and product information, leads to major changes and potential productivity benefits across a wide range of the

Development of building information modeling standards

The internationally accepted approach to achieving software interoperability within the architecture, engineering and construction industry is based on the ISO-10303 Standard for the Exchange of Product model data (STEP) [18]. The STEP standard procedure begins with elicitation and collection of information requirements. It defines the scope and processes to be supported by developing a process model of the domain, called an Applications Activity Model (AAM). The AAM serves as the basis for

Experiment concept and goals

The building process selected for the experiment was the design and fabrication detailing of the precast façade panels for the Rosewood project, a 16 story (40,000 m2) mixed retail and office building in downtown Dallas, Texas. Fig. 2 shows a rendered image of the building; the gross façade area is approximately 3500 m2. The building has a cast-in-place concrete structure for columns and flat slabs and precast architectural concrete facades.

The project was designed by a leading architectural

Modeling procedure

In the first step of the modeling aspect of the experiment, 3DA prepared a 3D model of the building's structure using REVIT software. This model included slabs, columns, beams and walls for the structure and mass elements2

Modeling and productivity

The success in fully modeling the architectural precast of this project showed that the software used3 was mature for all aspects of the processes carried out for this project. It fully supported modeling of the geometry of the precast facades and the necessary details of the supporting structure. Column cover and spandrel type facade pieces were detailed completely, including all the necessary reinforcement and embeds. All connections were fully detailed with full

Conclusions

The Rosewood experiment was unique in that it enabled a full scale comparison between simultaneous parallel 2D and 3D design and fabrication detailing processes for the same project (architectural precast pieces for 3500 m2 of facades for a 16 story mixed commercial/office building). The experiment was performed within the framework of a research project that laid the foundations for the first National BIM Standard. Workflows were recorded and refined, information flows analyzed, and the current

Acknowledgements

The experiment described in this paper was the first of three major segments of a research project designed to explore the current and potential capabilities for exchanging building information models between an architect and a precast company for precast architectural facades. The project was funded by the Charles Pankow Foundation in line with its aim to further innovation in building design and construction, so as to provide the public with buildings of improved quality, efficiency and

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