Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon
BIM-based automated design and planning for boarding of light-frame
residential buildings
T
⁎
Hexu Liua, Gurjeet Singha, Ming Lua, , Ahmed Boufergueneb, Mohamed Al-Husseina
a
b
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 1H9, Canada
Department of Mathematics, Campus Saint-Jean, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6C 4G9, Canada
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords:
Construction-centric BIM
Boarding design and planning
Trades' know-how
Rule-based design algorithms
Enriched information extraction
Building information modelling technology provides a game-changing solution to address the challenges encountered in the AEC industry. However, this technology currently is not sufficient to fulfil the needs of construction practitioners in terms of proactive design and planning for boarding of light-frame residential buildings. This is partially due to the fact that boarding design and planning requires trades' know-how and
substantial manual effort in developing the building information models. Current manual and ad hoc decision
making for boarding of light-frame buildings leads to the generation of a significant amount of material waste.
This research thus proposes a rule-based automated building information model (BIM) approach for designing
boarding layout and planning material sheet cutting, resulting in practically feasible solutions with minimal
material waste. In this research, object-based computer-processable layout design rules are comprehensively
formalised based on trades' know-how. On this basis, rule-based design algorithms are further developed and
integrated with mathematical algorithms in order to automatically generate design and planning alternatives
while minimising material waste. Rich information in the BIM is leveraged to automate the rule-based boarding
design and planning. A prototype system is developed based on Autodesk Revit via Application Programming
Interface. A typical wood-framed residential building is used as a case study to test the developed prototype
system. The results show the proposed approach successfully preserves the know-how of senior trades people
while also minimising material waste in automating the boarding design and planning.
1. Introduction
In North America, light-frame structures, such as light wood
framing and light gauge steel framing systems, are widely used in residential buildings. Wall studs and floor joists in light-frame walls and
floors need to be covered using sheathing and drywall sheets to form
the exterior and interior sides. In general, sheets of sheathing and
drywall are available in rectangular shapes with varying dimensions
(e.g., 4′ × 8′, 4′ × 10′, and 4′ × 12′) and thicknesses (e.g., 1/2″ and 5/
8″). In construction practice, boarding sheets of nominal sizes are cut to
designed dimensions, then fastened to wood (or metal) studs and joists.
Boarding design and planning herein refers to the layout design of
sheathing and drywall sheets on walls and floors according to trades'
know-how as well as the material cutting plan. Such “design and
planning” differs from the general perception of engineering design
such as structural design, and it is also distinguished from commonly
practiced planning and scheduling on the project level –which is concerned about developing work breakdown structures and sequencing
⁎
activities into a project network model for critical path scheduling
analysis [22,23]. Boarding design and planning is carried out by trades
either late in the design stage, after all architectural and structural
designs have been finalised, or during the construction phase. It should
be noted that architects primarily focus on architectural aspects such as
energy and sound performances in determining the thickness and material of drywall sheets, while structural engineers concentrate on
structural performances in deciding the layout patterns of sheathing
sheets in structural components (e.g., shear walls). Inputs are required
from construction practitioners (e.g., carpenters) to properly design the
layout of boarding sheets according to practical know-how and design
principles, and to plan material cutting and installation. However, in
current practice, proactive boarding design and planning is largely
overlooked due to the fact that it requires [1] construction-centric design knowledge that is not accommodated in the existing design software and [2] substantial effort on the part of the construction engineer
working in the field to add relevant information in the building design
models. In most cases, construction practitioners make their ad hoc
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: hexu@ualberta.ca (H. Liu), gurjeet@ualberta.ca (G. Singh), mlu6@ualberta.ca (M. Lu), ahmed.bouferguene@ualberta.ca (A. Bouferguene),
malhussein@ualberta.ca (M. Al-Hussein).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2018.02.001
Received 7 July 2016; Received in revised form 3 December 2017; Accepted 1 February 2018
Available online 22 February 2018
0926-5805/ © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
residential building is presented to validate the methodology and verify
the prototype system in Section 6. The final section concludes by
highlighting the research contribution of this paper.
decisions regarding the boarding layout and the cutting plan of material
sheets solely based on experience and rules of thumb. Such an experience-based, ad hoc approach to decision making often results in considerable material waste and rework in the field. According to the
National Association of Home Builders [31], for instance, the construction of a typical 2000 ft2 residential house can lead to as much as
8000 lb. of solid waste, of which approximately 2000 lb. is drywall. As
such, there is a need for innovative technology which effectively enables proactive design and planning for boarding of light-frame buildings.
Building information modelling technology has the potential to revolutionize the construction industry. A building information model
(BIM) is a purpose-built information model, as the level of detail (LoD)
of the information in the BIM depends on the tasks for which it will be
used [9]. In general, building objects in a given BIM can be modelled at
various LoDs ranging from LoD 100 to LoD 500 [3]. With the increase in
LoD, building information and design details are increasingly enriched
in BIMs to represent the location, orientation, size, shape, quantity, and
non-graphic information of the building [34]. To make a BIM fit for use
by contractors and sub-contractors, it needs to be designed with sufficient construction details (i.e., construction-specific information) for
specific application needs. In fact, building objects in a given BIM must
be developed at LoD 350 or higher to represent detailed sub-components (e.g., blocking, wall bracing, boarding sheets, and so on) of
building components [39]. Such detailed BIMs are of vital importance
in project coordination and decision making in relation to construction
material takeoff and planning applications during the construction
stage [26]. Nevertheless, developing a construction-centric BIM
through manual modelling is time-consuming and error-prone. Increasing the LoD from one level to another increases the modelling time
by a significant margin (in the range of two to eleven times) [19]. As
such, it is challenging for construction professionals, who play the
crucial role in transforming designs into structures under tight time
constraints in the field, to translate construction-specific data into BIMs.
Generating BIMs in an efficient and cost-effective manner is identified
by Ding et al. [8] as one of the primary challenges faced by the industry
in implementing BIM in the construction field. For this reason, boarding
design for light-frame residential housing (i.e., precise sheathing and
drywall layout information) typically is not represented explicitly in
BIMs. The resulting BIM is still far from sufficient to fulfil the specific
needs of building trades.
To address these deficiencies, this research explores a novel rulebased automated BIM approach to boarding design and planning (i.e.,
designing sheathing and drywall layouts and planning sheet material
cut). The original contribution is the novel rule-based design algorithms
capable of generating various boarding layout design alternatives in
BIM. Design rules are comprehensively formalised based on trades'
know-how and are encoded into rule-based design algorithms to preserve trades know-how in the development of boarding design and
planning. Established mathematical algorithms (i.e., greedy algorithms)
are applied in connection with the proposed rule-based algorithms
enabling an iterative process to evaluate various design alternatives and
identify the “optimal” boarding design alternatives and material cutting
plans with minimal material waste. Rich building information, including both geometric information and functional information of
building components, are extracted from BIMs to facilitate the automated rule-based boarding design and planning.
The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. In Section 2, the
literature pertaining to BIM-enabled construction design and planning,
parametric modelling technology, and BIM-based material waste
minimization is reviewed in order to clarify the point of departure and
demonstrate the rationale underlying this research. Subsequently, the
methodology for automated boarding design and planning is described
in Section 3. Section 4 presents boarding design rules. The development
of an automated design and planning system for boarding of light-frame
buildings is described in Section 5. A case study of a wood-framed
2. Review of related works
This section reviews the relevant work with respect to how BIM has
been used to support design and planning at the construction workface
level. Advancements of parametric modelling technology and its limitations in the particular context of boarding design and planning are
then illustrated. Also, material waste minimization studies with the
support of BIM are covered.
2.1. BIM-enabled construction design and planning
In the construction industry, BIM is increasingly utilised to support
various activities, such as site layout design [16], safety design [14,33],
construction-oriented quantity take-off [24], construction estimating
[18,27], and construction scheduling [20–22]. With respect to building
design and construction-centric design detailing, BIM is usually regarded as an extension and enhancement of conventional CAD, and is
expected to improve the efficiency of building design through enhanced
functionalities in terms of visualisation, navigation, and parametric
modelling [11]. Given this reality, Alwisy et al. [4] proposed a BIM
approach to automating the design and drafting process for prefabricated residential buildings, with a focus on wood-framing design
for walls. Jensen et al. [13] investigated manufacturing CAD parametric
tools to generate design alternatives for timber floor slabs within
modularized building systems, and concluded that these tools could
bring new opportunities in design automation for the construction industry. Manrique et al. [29] proposed a methodology for automating
the generation of shop drawings for wood-framing design using a
parametric model within a CAD environment. More recently, Zaki et al.
[42] developed parametric block wall assembly algorithms for automating the generation of masonry walls at LoD 400 in a given BIM.
In addition, there have been a few attempts to leverage rich information in BIMs as inputs for designing and planning temporary facilities during construction. One representative example is the application of BIM to scaffolding design and planning. For example, Hu et al.
[12] described a 4D construction safety information model-based safety
analysis approach to automatically design and plan scaffolding systems
based on the structural analysis of temporary building structures. Notably, the scaffold systems in their study were used to support temporary building structures during construction. Alternatively, Kim &
Teizer [15] developed a rule-based design and planning system using
BIM for temporary scaffolding that was intended to provide construction workers with sufficient work space. Their planning system automated scaffolding design by utilizing enriched information in BIMs.
Despite substantial research conducted toward the application of
BIM in supporting engineering design and planning in the construction
industry, BIM-based automated boarding design and planning has yet to
be addressed in construction research. At present, extensive manual
effort is required from construction engineers to generate constructioncentric BIMs with explicit boarding design. In this respect, the existing
BIM approach falls short of serving the specific needs of building trades
for proactive boarding design and planning. It is noteworthy that BIM
adoption in the AEC industry is constrained by both technical and nontechnical factors [11]. The substantial manual effort in BIM development hampers its implementation to cater for practical needs in the
construction field.
2.2. Parametric modelling technology
Parametric modelling technology provides an effective means to
improve design and modelling productivity. Domain knowledge and
design principles can be interpreted as object behaviours (e.g.,
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H. Liu et al.
environment.
geometric rules or constraints) of parametric objects. Such parametric
objects are able to retain their design content in response to external
and internal stimuli, resulting in intelligent building design [17]. It
offers numerous advantages with respect to alternative design generation, modelling productivity, and elimination of communication errors
[36]. A number of studies directed toward the development of parametric modelling technology have thus been carried out in recent
decades. For example, Sacks et al. [36] examined the requirements,
features, and performance of specifications of a new 3D parametric CAD
platform with a precast concrete construction example. Subsequently,
Sacks et al. [37] summarised direct and indirect benefits of parametric
modelling and provided a benchmark of the impact of parametric
modelling in precast construction. Lee et al. [17] specified parametric
building object behaviour (BOB) and its description notation for BIM
design systems. Sacks et al. [35] concluded that 3D parametric modelling improves the productivity in drawing production by up to 41%.
Cavieres et al. [6] explored knowledge-based parametric tools for
concrete masonry walls. They interpreted and incorporated knowledge
on construction and structural design into development of generative
rules and feedback rule-checking functions within parametric tools in
order to improve design efficiency.
In spite of these reported advancements, parametric modelling is
limited in its applicability in construction-centric design detailing due
to “ambiguity” (i.e., one object's behaviour can be implemented in diverse ways) and “complexity” (i.e., one building object can be defined
by a vast number of parameters and constraints that may crash a BIM
when it is modified improperly) [17]. In addition, parametric building
objects (e.g., a wall and its sub-components) must be designed in a
hierarchical manner in order to avoid manual placement of certain
parametric objects, and to minimise the amount of effort in design
detailing. For example, sheathing and drywall sheets, as sub-components of wall elements, should be defined as constituent objects for wall
objects with walls being the main controlling objects. As a result, when
designers develop the wall objects, the sheathing and drywall layout
can be derived and modelled automatically based on the relationships
between constituent objects and main controlling objects, thus eliminating the tedious process of manual design detailing. Nevertheless,
such hierarchical design requires a well thought-out plan prior to implementation. In practice, practitioners (i.e., carpenters) need to
manually determine the locations and dimensions of sheathing and
drywall sheets based on their tacit knowledge on an ad-doc basis, a
process which is labour-intensive, time-consuming, unrepeatable and
error-prone. In the present research, a rule-based approach to automating the boarding design is proposed. Trades' know-how with regard
to boarding design is comprehensively formalised as rules. They are
further encoded into the proposed generative algorithms to generate
design alternatives in an automated manner within the BIM
2.3. BIM-based material waste minimization
BIM-enabled building design provides construction practitioners
with opportunities to implement proactive planning and management
in relation to construction material usage. In this respect, attempts have
been undertaken to minimise construction material waste with the
support of CAD models or BIMs. For instance, Manrique et al. [30]
integrated a combinatorial algorithm with a 3D CAD model to optimise
the cutting of lumber and sheathing materials for walls in residential
buildings. Their work primarily concentrated on material waste minimization for a pre-determined 3D design model. Porwal and Hewage
[32] proposed a BIM-based rebar optimisation analysis approach (i.e.,
one-dimensional cutting waste-optimisation) to facilitate cost-effective
decision making during the design stage. Alternatively, Cheng and Ma
[7] developed a BIM-based system for estimation and planning of demolition and renovation waste. Liu et al. [26] introduced a design decision-making framework for improving construction waste minimization performance based on BIM technology. Won et al. [40] quantified
the design error-induced construction waste that could be avoided by
using a BIM-based design validation process, reporting that BIM-based
design validation could eliminate 4.3–15.2% of design error-induced
construction waste. In brief, BIM in most cases is used to facilitate design-related activities such as project coordination and communication
and to provide quantity information of a pre-determined design as input
for material waste analysis, with the objective of reducing construction
waste. Previous efforts have been undertaken on the premise that the
BIM should be developed in advance as input for corresponding tasks
such as project coordination and waste analysis. In contrast, the incorporation of material waste optimisation into automated construction-centric BIM development has yet to be addressed. Such an approach will maximise the benefits of BIM and optimisation technology
for the construction industry.
In short, although numerous BIM applications (e.g., construction
design and planning, material waste minimization) and BIM technologies (i.e., parametric modelling) have been developed, BIM-based automated boarding design and planning incorporating comprehensive
practical trades' know-how and material waste minimization has yet to
be realised.
3. Methodology
The objective of this research is to automate the boarding design
and planning process based on BIM in a manner which complies with
trades' know-how while minimising material waste. To achieve this
objective, a novel rule-based BIM approach is proposed. Fig. 1 provides
Geometrical &
functional information
BIM
Develop and apply rule-based
boarding design algorithm
Trades' knowhow
Design
rules
Design
alternatives
Evaluate each design alternative by
optimising its material cutting plan
(Cutting-stock optimiser)
Material
waste ratios
Fig. 1. Framework for automated boarding design and planning.
237
Optimised
solution
Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
know-how related to boarding layout is formalised based on construction experience of the industry partners involved.
The design principles aim to increase working efficiency in the field
and to reduce cracks at seams. These requirements make the patterns
chosen for laying drywall and sheathing on the studs crucial. Generally,
bevelled factory edges (see Fig. 3b) should adjoin other factory edges,
and butt edges (also shown in Fig. 3b) should adjoin other butt edges.
When two factory edges meet, a recess for filling mud into the joints is
created, which makes taping and feathering of the seams much easier.
On the contrary, a drywall butt edge adjoining a factory/butt edge can
create an uneven surface, causing difficulty during taping and finishing
of seams. Accordingly, butt joints should be minimised whenever possible. For this reason, boarding sheets are usually cut along the short
butt edges; as such, in this research board cutting is formulated as a
one-dimensional cutting-stock problem. It should be noted that the onedimensional cutting-stock problem is a combinatorial optimisation
problem that is concerned with how to cut stock material supplied in
standard lengths into pieces of specified lengths while minimising the
trim loss (i.e., the amount of material waste) [41].
Bevelled edges of drywall are usually laid out perpendicular to the
direction of the wood studs on which the sheets are spliced. When the
drywall is laid perpendicular to the studs, the resulting structure is
stronger and has greater resistance to cracking at the seams. This is due
to an increase in holding power across the wall, as more studs are
connected together. Also, in such a layout the seams are in the middle
of the wall, making it easier to complete the tasks of taping and finishing. Placing sheathing and drywall sheets horizontally on walls is
thus a common practice in the light-frame building industry.
Interestingly, provided that the wall length (Lw) is shorter than the
height (Hd) of a standard drywall sheet and the wall height (Hw) is
shorter than the length (Ld) of a standard drywall sheet (see Fig. 4), the
drywall sheet can be placed vertically parallel to the studs in order to
eliminate the drywall seam on the wall.
In addition, drywall butt joints should always be spliced on the stud
and be staggered. The staggered joints lead to increased overall strength
of the wall, as the staggered layout limits instances of butt joints, which
are prone to cracking, to no more than the height of a standard drywall
sheet. Drywall can be hung either from left-to-right or from right-to-left
along a wall. The sheets on the second wall will overlap with the sheets
on the first wall, creating a tight corner between the walls (see Fig. 5). It
is noted that the areas around the corners of openings (e.g., doors and
windows) are of high stress, such that seams around these locations are
prone to cracking. In addition, bulges resulting from the finishing of
drywall sheets will interfere with the installation of door or window
trim. As a result, in order to avoid cracks and to improve structural
integrity, joints should be away from such locations. Additionally,
drywall should be placed at the end of any interior wall that is not
connected to any other wall (see Fig. 5). Finally, a gap of 1/8″ should
always be set as the seam allowance to avoid situations in which the
drywall must be forced into place. Fig. 3a shows one feasible design of
drywall layout. As illustrated, staggered butt joints (i.e., drywall seams)
are located at position #1 and position #2, respectively. The butt joint
at position #2 is located in the middle of an opening, instead of at the
opening corners such as position #4 and position #5, thus avoiding
cracking. The butt joint at position #3 is resting on the edge of the door
opening. To formulate various design alternatives, butt joints at position #1 and position #2 can be moved left or right under the constraints
set forth in the design rules. The layout design can thus be optimised by
adjusting boarding seams with the objective of minimising material
waste.
an overview of the proposed methodology, which consists of four essential modules, namely: BIM interpretation, trades' know-how formalisation, development and application of rule-based design algorithms, and material waste minimization. BIM is crucial to automated
boarding design and planning, because it contains the rich building
product information required for design analysis; and in turn, it provides the platform for storing the generated design information.
Moreover, rich information is embedded into the BIM as properties for
parametric building objects. Information richness and its object-oriented representation in BIMs ease the information extraction process
[24]. BIM is thus interpreted in order to extract rich information pertinent to boarding design and planning analysis (i.e., geometric and
functional information). Meanwhile, development of rule-based generative algorithms is required due to the fact that a BIM in this research
functions as a database and as such does not encompass the design
analysis function. The generative design algorithms are thus developed
in order to extend BIM's functionality and formulate boarding design
alternatives based on rich information from the BIM. Rule-based generative design algorithms, seamlessly integrated with BIM, provide the
solution to the research question on how to automate the boarding
design.
To preserve constructability in the generated boarding design,
trades' know-how is incorporated into the generative design algorithms.
Practical trades' know-how is comprehensively interpreted and generalised as object-based machine-readable codes. During the generation
of design alternatives, these alternatives are checked against the formalised rules in order to ensure that the design complies with trades'
know-how. Trades' know-how, it should be noted, is collected from
experienced trades people in the industry such that the generative design algorithms are aligned with actual field practice in formulating
boarding design scenarios. Meanwhile, rule-based design algorithms
are developed to generate a set of feasible design scenarios as illustrated
in Section 4. To determine the final boarding design alternative, material waste minimization is performed in this research. The material
cutting-stock optimiser is thus incorporated as part of the proposed
methodology in order to analyse the material waste for each design
alternative as a cutting-stock problem. It should be noted that the
cutting-stock problem is a combinatorial optimisation problem that is
concerned with how to cut material of stock size into pieces of specified
sizes while minimising the trim loss [41]. The material waste for each
design alternative is calculated using the material cutting-stock optimiser by optimising its material cutting plan; in other words, the material cutting-stock optimiser servers as both ‘material waster calculator’ and ‘material cutting planner’ in this research. Ultimately, the
boarding design alternative with minimal material waste among all
feasible alternatives is identified as the optimum design and further
modelled in the BIM. The resulting visualisation of the optimal
boarding design in BIM facilitates communication, verification and
implementation of the design solution in a visual, intuitive fashion. In
addition, the material cutting plan associated with the optimised layout
design is generated using the cutting-stock optimiser in order to assist
construction practitioners in managing field operations.
4. Boarding design rules
As described above, sheathing and drywall boarding refers to the
process of determining board layout, cutting boarding sheets into designed sizes, and then fastening them to the wood (or metal) studs and
joists. To improve structural integrity and to boost operational efficiency during construction, it is important to follow certain design
principles and trades' know-how in laying sheathing and drywall sheets
on building components. Fig. 2 shows examples of boarding sheets of
nominal size and material waste, as well as boarding layout design of
drywall and sheathing on walls. This section explains in detail the design rules and trades' know-how that pertain to layout design of drywall
on walls. It should be noted that in this research the implicit trades'
5. Development of the prototype system
5.1. Overview
To implement the proposed approach, an automated design and
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
Sheathing sheet of nomial size
Drywall sheet of nominal size
Waste
Waste
a Drywall sheet and waste
b Sheathing sheet and waste
c Drywall layout
d Sheathing layout
Fig. 2. Boarding sheets, layout, and material waste.
5
4
2
A
B
Drywall
Dry
rywalll
sheet
sheet
1
3
Stud
Stu
t d
a. Staggered drywall sheet layout: front elevation view
A: Beveled edges:
B: Butt edges:
Drywall
Dry
r wall #1
#1
Mud
Mud
`
1/8"
1/8" gap
gap
a
Mud
Mud
Tape
Tap
a e
Tape
Tap
a e
Drywall
Dry
r wall #2
#2
`
`
Stud
Stu
t d
`
`
Drywall
Dry
r wall #1
#1
1/8"
1/8" gap
gap
a
`
Drywall
Dry
r wall #2
#2
Stud
Stu
t d
b. Bevelled edges and butt edges: 3D, side elevation, and top plan view
Fig. 3. Staggered drywall sheet layout and drywall edges.
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
construction practitioners to visualise the optimised boarding design in
3D, shop drawings and cutting plan of the resulting boarding design, as
well as the boarding sheet purchase plan.
The core of this prototype system, as shown in the center of Fig. 6,
consists of four components: [1] object-based BIM parser, which extracts relevant geometric and functional information for the workface
design analysis (Section 5.2); [2] rule-based boarding design algorithm
(i.e., object-based design functions), which is used to design drywall
and sheathing layouts in accordance with design rules and trades'
know-how (Section 5.3); [3] cutting-stock optimiser, which is employed
to optimise the boarding sheet cutting for each design alternative with
the dual objective of minimising material waste and formulating the
material purchase and cutting plan (Section 5.4); and [4] drywall and
sheathing layout modeller (i.e., object-based modelling functions),
which takes the optimised design parameters as input and models the
layout design in the BIM (Section 5.5). The four components are encoded as an add-on of Autodesk Revit through API. Essentially, this
research makes use of object-oriented programming principles to
achieve automated construction-centric design and work planning.
Objects representing building elements in Revit are extended to explicitly include properties (i.e., geometric and functional information)
and functions (i.e., object-based design functions and object-based
modelling functions in a computer-interpretable form) in the generation of feasible layout designs. Detailed implementations of the system
development are discussed in the following sub-sections.
Drywall
Dry
rywall
sheet
sheet
Stud
Stu
t d
Ldd
Hww
Lww
Hdd
Fig. 4. Vertical placement of drywall sheet – front elevation view.
`
`
`
`
Enriched information in BIMs is utilised to automate the boarding
design process. In general, building product information in BIMs includes geometry, topology, and functional information. Geometric information refers to vertices, edges, and faces of building components,
while topological information elaborates on the locations and spatial
relationships. Functional information consists of additional properties,
such as host information, describing building components. Such rich
information is crucial to the automated design and planning analysis.
Nevertheless, BIMs are large datasets in which only a portion is needed
in automating the boarding design analysis. This research identifies the
information model for the boarding design and planning. The excerpt of
this information model (i.e., specific model view) is shown in Fig. 7.
Essentially, certain new classes (e.g., Geometry, LightFrameWall, and
LightFrameFloor as shown in Fig. 7) were defined by the authors within
Visual Studio in order to enhance the Revit objects by explicitly representing relevant geometric and functional information for design
analysis. As shown in Fig. 7, “BuildingComponent” is the base class that
carries all general information about building components, and “Wall”,
“Floor”, “Plate”, and “Stud” are inherited from “BuildingComponent”.
Basically, these sub-classes extend “BuildingComponent” with specific
`
Drywalls
Dry
r walls
5.2. Object-based building information extraction
`
`
`
Studs
Stu
t ds
` `
Wall end
`
Drywall
Dry
r wall corner
Fig. 5. Drywalls at wall end and wall intersection – top plan view.
planning system is developed as an add-on to the Autodesk Revit
platform using application programming interface (API) in C# language. Fig. 6 presents the architecture of the prototyped Revit-based
automated design and planning system. The inputs for the system include: [1] a BIM for the project, containing architectural and structural
frame information; [2] material sizes and prices, which indicate the
nominal sizes and prices of drywall and sheathing boards on the
market; and [3] boarding design patterns (i.e., horizontal staggered and
vertical pattern for walls), which allow users to select boarding design
patterns for walls to accommodate a vertical layout design pattern. The
output of this system comprises a construction-centric BIM allowing
Automated Design and Planning System
m
Revit add-on))
((Prototyped
y
3
Material Cutting
Stock Optimiser
1
2 Object-oriented
Boarding Design
B
Algorithm
4
Boarding
Layout Modeller
Object-oriented BIM Parser
(extracting building information from BIM in Revit)
Protocol: Revit Application Programming Interface (API)
Fig. 6. System architecture.
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
+Faces: List<Face>
+VerticalFaces: List<Face>
+Honrizontal lFaces: List<Face>
+TopFace: Face
+BottomFace: Face
Face
+StartFace: Face
+EndFace: Face
+LeftFace: Face
+RightFace:
+
RightFace:
g
Face
+StartPoint: XYZ
+EndPoint: XYZ
+Length:
+
Length:
g double
+Width: double
+Height: double
+LocationPoint: XYZ
+Rotation: double
op eve : Level
eve
+TopLevel:
+Function: stringg
+Host: ElementID
+ID: int
+Name: string
+Type: ElementType
+Project: Document
+
Location:
Location: Location
Locatio
+Location:
+Length: double
+Height:
g double
+Width: double
+BaseLevel: Level
+Geometry: Geometry
g
+IsStructuralUsage:bool
+Parts: List<Element>
Wall
Geometry
Stud
BuildingComponent
Plate
+StartPoint: XYZ
+EndPoint: XYZ
+LocationCurve: Curve
+Function: stringg
+Host: ElementID
FloorLayer
Floor
WallLayer
+JoistDirection: XYZ
p
Face
+TopFace:
+BoardSheets: List<Sheet>
+Function:
u c o : string
s g
+Material: string
+Orientation: XYZ
+InteriorFace: Face
+BoardSheets:
List<Sheet>
+Function:
u c o : string
s g
+Material: string
+Core: Geometryy
+StartPoint: XYZ
d o : XYZ
+EndPoint:
+LocationCurve: Curve
+Flipped: bool
+IsExterior: booll
+IsMechanical: bool
boo
o
s a t t o : bool
boo
+IsPartition:
+Doors: List<Door>
+Windows: List<Window>
+Connections: List<Connection>
+GetHostingOpenings():
List<Opening>
+IsConnected(Wall):
(
) bool
+GetHostingWindows():
List<Window>
+GetHostingDoors(): List<Door>
+Joists: List<Plate>
+EndJoist: Plate
+RimTrack: Plate
+BoardingLayers:
List<FloorLayer>
+Studs:List<Stud>
+Plates: List<Plate>
+ExteriorSheets: List<Sheet>
+InteriorSheets:
e o S ee s: List<Sheet>
s S ee
+BoardingLayers: List<WallLayer>
+GetJoists():
() List<Plate>
+GetBoardingLayers():
List<FloorLayer>
+G
tSt d () Li
+GetStuds():
GetStuds():
List<Stud>
stt<St
Studd>
+GetBoardingLayers(): List<WallLayer>
+GetPlates(): List<Plate>
+Core: Geometry
+Thickness: double
+Boundaries: List<Curve>
+Openings: List<Opening>
G tD i L
t() Li
t C
+GetDesignLayout():
List<Curve>
+GetDesignLayout():
+G tD i L
t()
List<Curve>
LightFrameFloor
LightFrameWall
Fig. 7. UML diagram of extended parametric objects.
properties and functions. For instance, “Plate” and “Stud” have the
property of “Host” indicating their hosting element. “WallLayer” and
“FloorLayer” are inherited from “Geometry” and are associated with
“Wall” and “Floor”, respectively. Fig. 8 presents a sample sketch of a
wall and its associated sheathing and drywall layers and openings,
whereas a sample sketch of a floor along with its associated sheathing
and drywall layers is shown in Fig. 9. Extracted geometric information
(e.g., vertices of drywall and sheathing layers) is highlighted by the red
dots in Fig. 8 and Fig. 9.
To extract relevant information from the BIM, modelling elements
in Autodesk Revit are mapped to those classes (see Fig. 7), while BIM
data is extracted to instantiate these objects, thereby facilitating
boarding design and planning. The flowchart of building information
extraction by the developed BIM parser is illustrated in Fig. 10. It
should be noted that the BIM parser is developed based on the Autodesk
Revit API functions. To begin, the BIM parser identifies all building
elements relevant to the boarding design and planning by their types,
such as walls, floors, windows, doors, studs, plates, and joists. Subsequently, their enriched functional information, such as host information
(e.g., wall ID), is retrieved through the Revit API functions of “element.get_Parameter(paraName)” and “elementType.get_Parameter (paraName)”, which is used to detect relationships between walls/floors and
their sub-components (e.g., studs and joists). On this basis, geometric
information, such as location of studs and windows, is then extracted
using the Revit API functions of element.get_Geometry(), solid.Faces, face.EdgeLoops, and curve.GetEndPoint(). Geometric information for individual sheathing and drywall layers is retrieved using the same geometric functions based upon semantic material information in the given
BIM. Notably, the boundary representation is used within Autodesk
Revit to represent a solid with vertices, edges, and faces as shown in
Fig. 11a. The developed BIM parser includes a set of algorithms which
interpret the geometrical information (i.e., vertices, edges, and faces) of
each solid component (see Fig. 11b). For instance, the normal vector of
each face (i.e., V1) is checked against the vector V2 (0, 0, 1) in order to
determine whether or not they point in the same direction (i.e.,
V1 ∙ V2 = 0 × 0 + 0 × 0 + 1 × 1 = 1) and to identify top faces as
shown in Fig. 11. Also, some information, such as wall connections, is
extracted, taking advantage of the effective means of BIM information
extraction. For instance, Revit API provides some functions, such as
wall.get_ElementsAtJoin (indexofWallEnd), to detect walls adjoined endto-end. In addition, Revit always forces the elements to automatically
adjoin their neighbours where appropriate; therefore, this Revit API
function is used to detect the connections. Additionally, the geometry
information (i.e., vertices) extracted from the BIM is transformed by the
developed BIM parser into local coordinate systems of corresponding
boarding layers using Eq. (1). The purpose of transforming this geometrical information is to ease the configuration of the boarding sheet
layout for each component in the later stage. All this geometrical information is then stored in the class Geometry (see Fig. 7). This information, along with formalised design rules, is used to design
boarding layouts in the following section.
(1)
Plc = M × P0
In which M is the matrix associated with the transformation obtained by composing a translation and a rotation around a unit vector
going through the origin. As a result, M can be expressed as,
⎡ rxx rxy rxz 0 ⎤ ⎡1 0 0 Tx ⎤
⎢r
r
r
0 ⎥ ⎢ 0 1 0 Ty ⎥
M = ⎢ yx yy yz
⎥⎢
⎥
r
r
r
0
zx
zy
zz
⎥ ⎢ 0 0 1 Tz ⎥
⎢
0 0
1
0
0 1
⎦
⎣ 0
⎦
⎣


0
Rotation
241
Translation
(2)
Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
object-based rules and translated into computer-processable codes.
Examples of design rules include Lay sheet edge on stud, Stop sheet edge at
opening, Stagger sheet edge, and Avoid edge around opening corner. These
rules are implemented in the rule-based design algorithms in order to
check whether the layout design alternatives comply with trades' knowhow.
The methodological flowchart of the wall boarding design algorithm
is presented in Fig. 12. It begins with the identification of the boarding
layers of one wall. Then, the sheet orientation is determined based on
the user's configuration of the design pattern for walls, wall dimensions,
and board nominal sizes. Following this, board sheet rows are determined by comparing wall height and board height. For each sheet
row, the algorithm begins by identifying its start point with the consideration of wall connections; then, one sheet of the board of nominal
size is placed accordingly (i.e., vertically or horizontally) at the identified start point. It should be noted that the nominal board size is
randomly selected from the available stock sizes. Subsequently, the end
point of the sheathing/drywall board is calculated. Next, this end point
is checked against the object-based rules to ensure that formalised design rules such as Lay sheet edge on stud, Stop sheet edge at opening,
Stagger sheet edge, and Avoid edge around opening corner are satisfied. In
case of any non-compliance, the sheathing/drywall board is cut shorter
to adjust its end point, and a new end point satisfying all design rules is
re-calculated by the algorithm. This end point then serves as a new start
point at which to place the next sheathing/drywall board. The processes
for one wall do not terminate until all boarding sheet rows have been
placed. Finally, connection information of this wall at its ends is
checked. One boarding sheet will be placed vertically at the end when
this end is not connected with other walls. The same process will be
applied to all other walls in the BIM, and the design algorithm does not
terminate until boarding sheets have been placed on all walls in the
BIM.
A similar procedure is followed for floor boarding layout (see
Fig. 13). It also begins by identifying boarding layers. Then, the joist
direction is identified to determine the boarding sheet orientation, because the boarding sheet orientation is always perpendicular to the joist
direction. Once the boarding sheet orientation is determined, rows of
boarding sheets on the floor are calculated. Subsequently, the start
point of one row of sheets is retrieved, and one sheet of the board of
nominal size (e.g., 4′ × 8′ and 4′ × 10′) is placed at the identified start
point; then, the end point of the board is calculated. The board is then
checked to confirm whether it covers one opening as shown in Case 1. If
so, the board edge will be adjusted to the nearest opening edge. Similar
to the wall design algorithm, this end point is also checked against the
object-based rules to ensure that formalised design rules are satisfied. In
case of any non-compliance, the sheathing/drywall board is cut shorter
to adjust its end point, and a new end point satisfying all design rules is
re-calculated by the algorithm. This end point then serves as a new start
point at which to place the next sheathing/drywall board. The processes
for one row do not terminate until all boarding sheet layers have been
placed, and, in turn, the design algorithm does not terminate until
boarding sheets have been placed on all floors.
(a) Plan view of L-Connection
(b) Plan view of T-Connection
(c) Interior elevation of wall
(d) Exterior elevation of wall
Fig. 8. Schematic diagram of wall layers.
where
Plc = Point vector in the local coordinate system
P0 = Point vector in the global coordinate system (x0, y0, z0,1)
M = Transformation matrix
rij = Rotation along the ijth vector, with i = x-, y-, z-axes and j = x,
y, z
→
Ti = Translation defined by the vector T = (Tx , Ty , Tz , 1) in the local
coordinate system
5.4. Optimisation of design alternatives
A rule-based design approach generates multiple feasible design
scenarios in compliance with practical trades' know-how. To determine
the final boarding design and planning alternative, a material waste
minimization is employed in this research. Basically, the objective of
this research is to generate the optimised boarding layout design with
minimised material waste for light-frame buildings under construction
constraints. The objective function is expressed as in Eq. (3).
5.3. Rule-based boarding design algorithms
Generative design algorithms are developed in order to automate
the boarding design generation. These algorithms are encoded as the
function “GetDesignLayout()” and attached to “FloorLayer” and
“WallLayer”, as shown in Fig. 7. The boarding design rules described in
the previous section, including trades' know-how, are interpreted as
O. F . =min {W1, W2,⋯, Wd},
242
d = 1, 2, …, N
(3)
Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
Gypsum
Board
Oriented
Stand Board
Joists
Open
Web Joist
where O. F. represents the objective function; Wd denotes the minimised
material waste associated with the design alternative d; d is the index of
one design alternative in a list of N design alternatives; Li, d denotes the
length of board stock i; x is the number of stocks; yj, d is the length of jth
boarding sheet; and t is the number of boarding sheets generated according to design rules; qd is the quantity take-off (i.e., cutting list) for
the design alternative d, and it is determined based on boarding design
(i.e., number of seams and location of seams), as expressed in Eq. (5)
and Fig. 3a; num. of seams and loc. of seams are the decision variables of
the mathematical model; “loc. of seams” should always be subject to all
the boarding design rules, and “num. of seams” in each boarding sheet
row should be subject to Eq. (6). Notably, altering the design in terms of
number of seams and location of seams will lead to the generation of
different qd value, resulting in different material usage and material
waste.
An iterative process is used to solve the boarding design and planning optimisation model. An overview of the iterative method is illustrated in Fig. 14. For each iteration, one design alternative is formulated by using boarding design algorithms described in the previous
section. The design algorithm randomly selects one nominal boarding
size (e.g., 4′ × 8′, 4′ × 10′, or 4′ × 12′) when placing individual
boarding sheet (see Fig. 12 and Fig. 13). Upon completion of the
boarding design configuration for all building elements (i.e., walls or
floors), the design alternative is analysed to obtain a thorough cutting
list of sheathing/drywall sheets (i.e., quantities of cutting items). The
cutting-stock optimiser is then triggered, which takes the combination
of available material stock sizes and the generated thorough cutting list
as inputs to formulate an optimised cutting plan for this design scenario.
Three existing algorithms, Greedy First Fit, Greedy Best Fit, and
Greedy Next Fit, are evaluated in developing the cutting-stock optimiser [28]. Greedy algorithms are selected in this research due to the
fact that it can provide an optimised solution in a reasonable time [10].
It should be noted that applying these algorithms is neither the main
focus nor the novel contribution of the present research, and detailed
explanations of these algorithms would draw attention away from what
MEP Hanger
(a) Floor elevation view
Sheathing
Sheathiing boundary
boundary
r
(Orientedd Stand
Sttand Board)
Boaard)
Ceiling
Ceiliing boundary
bounndarry
(Gypsum
(Gyppsum
m Board)
Boardd)
(b) Floor plan view
Fig. 9. Schematic diagram of floor layers (gypsum board and oriented strand board).
x
Wd = min
⎛
L −
⎜∑ i, d
⎝ i=1
t
⎞
∑ yj,d ⎟
j=1
(4)
⎠
qd = {y1, d , y2, d ,⋯, yt , d } = f (num . of seams, loc. of seams )
s. t.
(5)
Length of boarding row
≤ num . of seams
Max .(Nominal board sizes )
Length of boarding row
≤
Min.(Nominal board sizes )
(6)
Start
Revit Modeling Element
- Wall, floor
- Window & door
- Structural framing (Stud)
- Structural column (Plate)
1
Identify building elements by
object type
Functional Information
Retrieve building semantic
information
- Element Name
- Host
- Subcomponent (wall layer)
- Funtional Information
- Material, etc.
Recognise object
relationship
relations p by semantic
se
ic
properties
pr
ies (e.g., host)
Geometric Information
- Location Curve or Point
- Orientation
- Dimension (length etc)
- Vertice, edges and faces, etc
Retrieve building geometric
information
Retrieve topological
information
Topolocial Information
- Wall Connections, etc.
End
Fig. 10. Flowchart of building information extraction.
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
Legend:
d
Vertex
x
Edge
Face
a. Boundary representation of a solid
Top Face
Vertex
Start
Face
Left Face
V1 =(1,0,0)
Right Face
z
End Face
d:
Legend:
y
Start
Point
z
y
x
x
Bottom Face End Point
di
Local Coordinate
System
b. Interpreted geometrical information of a solid
Fig. 11. Geometrical information of a solid component.
(doc, partsToBeCutted, id, cuttingCurves, sketchPlane)”, these parts can be
divided into smaller discrete parts, which can be independently
scheduled for the purpose of construction planning. As a result, part
elements are used to model individual boarding sheets. The sheathing
and drywall layout modeller transforms the optimised layout design
into an array of curves that cut the layers of sheathing and drywall
within Revit API. These curves represent the boarding seams and are
the inputs of the above mentioned Revit API function. By doing so, the
design modelling is materialised in an automated manner.
is the primary focus—BIM-based automated design and planning. Accordingly, detailed explanations of these algorithms are not provided in
this paper; instead, the reader is directed to previous Greedy algorithmrelated studies such as Esparza [10]. For a given design scenario, the
minimised cutting waste can be obtained from the cutting-stock optimiser. After saving this design scenario, the next iteration is then triggered and another combination of nominal boarding stock sizes (i.e.,
number of seams and location of seams) is analysed by the algorithm to
formulate a new layout design. The design optimisation does not terminate until it reaches certain termination criteria, such as completing
the specified number of iterations (e.g., 100). Finally, the design with
the minimised amount of material waste is identified, and the successful
design is used to formulate the Microsoft Excel-based boarding sheet
purchase plan and cutting plan by the prototype system.
6. Validation
The proposed rule-based automated BIM approach is developed to
incorporate both practical know-how formalisation and material waste
minimization into boarding design and planning. Novel rule-based design algorithms are developed and integrated with the BIM in this research, while the trades' know-how is formalised and material waste
minimization is realised. The motivation is to preserve the knowledge
and experience of senior trades people in boarding design while also
minimising material waste. In order to verify and validate the developed prototype system, the system outputs are thoroughly perused in
regards to design constructability and material waste ratio. It is noted
that the constructability of the generated design alternative is examined
to ensure that rule-based design algorithms make use of rich information in BIM and formulate boarding designs that is well aligned with
practical know-how. The material waste results are checked to confirm
that the prototyped system is capable of generating the boarding design
and planning with minimised material waste.
5.5. Boarding design modelling
Ultimately, the boarding layout design with minimised material
waste is modelled automatically in the BIM by the boarding layout
modeller, as shown in Fig. 6 and Fig. 14, in order to obtain a construction-centric BIM and to generate shop drawings. Since this research is implemented as an add-on for Autodesk Revit, the boarding
layout modeller is developed based on the construction modelling
functions of Autodesk Revit, such as “Divide Parts”. It should be noted
that “Part” is a modelling element allowing construction modellers to
plan the installation of pieces of building components and their subcomponents. Part elements can be generated from layer-structured
modelling elements such as Wall and Floor to represent different layers
[1]. Furthermore, by using the Revit API function, “PartUtils.DivideParts
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
Start
Start
Identify boarding layer of
one wall based on its
connections (i.e., topology)
and material
Identify boarding layers
Determine board orientation
Determine sheet rows
Identify board orientation based
on joist direction
Horizontal vs Vertical
- Design pattern user selected
- Wall dimensions
- Board dimensions
Determine sheet rows
Retrieve start point of boarding
sheet for one row
Retrieve start point of boarding
sheet for one sheet row
Place one sheet
after randomly selecting
one board nominal size
Place one sheet
after randomly selecting
one board nominal size
Calculate end
point
Does it cover
openings?
Adjust ends
No
Noo
Adjust ends
- Lay sheet edge on stud
- Stop sheet edge at opening
- Stagger sheet edge
- Avoid sheet edge around
opening corner, etc.
Yes
Boarding design rules
No
Satisfy
O
Object-based
rules?
Yes
No
Is one row done?
Yes
No
No
Is its end
not connecting?
Is one wall
done?
No
Are all walls
done?
Is this floor
done?
Yes
No
- Lay sheet edge on joist
- Stagger sheet edge
- Avoid edge around opening
corner, etc.
Is one row
done?
Yes
Yes
Stop board sheet
at opening edge
No
Boarding design rules
Satisfy
object-based rules?
Yes
Case 1
Yes
No
Place one sheet at
the end
Are all floors
done?
Opening
Sheet
Yes
Y
Case 1
Yes
End
Floor Plan View
End
Fig. 13. Flowchart of floor boarding design algorithm.
Fig. 12. Flowchart of wall boarding design algorithm.
boarding layout and plan the material cutting. Construction practitioners need to provide available nominal board size and corresponding
unit cost information through the graphic user interface (GUI) as shown
in Fig. 15 to this prototype system, prior to enabling design optimisation. In addition, the GUI allows for users to set up a shop drawing
configuration in order to generate shop drawings of sheathing and
drywall layout for walls. It should be noted that a computer with an
Intel (R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz, 8.0 GB of memory, and
a 64-bit operating system is used in this case study test.
6.1. Case study
To test the developed prototype system, a wood-framed single-family house is selected as a case study. The building shown in Fig. 15
consists of three storeys and 75 walls, including 68 light-framed walls
and seven precast basement walls. This selected example is a typical
house model produced by one industry partner implementing offsite
prefabrication and modular construction technology. This house contains common product features such as various wall, floors, wall connections, windows, and doors (see Fig. 8) and serves as a representative
example to verify and validate the developed prototype system. In this
house model, oriented strand board (OSB) sheathing boards are placed
on exterior sides of exterior light-framed walls and top sides of floors,
while gypsum drywall boards are used for interior sides of exterior
light-framed walls and bottom sides (i.e., ceiling) of floors, as well as for
both sides of interior light-framed walls. The building model was first
built in Autodesk Revit 2015 [2]; then, a suite of commercial Revit addons, Metal Wood Framer (MWF) [38], was employed to frame building
components such as walls and floors. Following this, the developed
prototype system was launched in Autodesk Revit to design the
6.2. Results
The outputs of the prototyped system include construction-centric
BIM (shown in Fig. 16a), shop drawings with quantity take-off (shown
in Fig. 16b), as well as the Excel-based cutting plan and boarding sheet
purchase plan (shown in Table 1). They were generated automatically
by clicking corresponding buttons on the GUI. The runtime of the
prototyped system for the case experiment was on average 16.17 min.
Part of the generated Excel-based cutting plan (see Table 1) shows how
many sheets are cut from boards of nominal size and the location where
each sheet is installed. All standard boards are listed in the “Size”
column of this Table. Based on this information, construction
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
3
End
Generate cutting plan and
boards purchase plan
4
Start
Sheathing and
drywall layout
modelling in BIM
Identify optimized boarding
layout design
2
Yes
Get initial/new locations of
seams by using design
algorithms
Get the layout design
Stop criteria?
No
Obtain cutting waste/cost
Cutting Stock Optimiser
Optimise cutting plan
- Greedy First Fit
- Greedy Best Fit
- Greedy Next Fit
Receive quantity/cutting list
of one dsign scenario
Fig. 14. Flowchart of boarding layout design optimisation.
practitioners can manage field operations. Overall, the prototyped BIM
system can eliminate the manual effort of construction practitioners in
boarding design and planning through automating the boarding design
and planning processes on computers.
As demonstrated in Fig. 16, the prototyped system generates construction-centric BIMs and shop drawings, thereby significantly enhancing the communication among the project participants. This feature allowed the authors to verify and validate in a visual manner
whether or not a given generated layout complies with practical knowhow. This visualisation is used to examine the boarding design result
against the rules, such as Lay sheet edge on stud, Stagger sheet edge, and
Avoid edge around opening corner. In the interest of brevity, Fig. 16
shows the resulting layout design for one wall. The layout design results
were verified by the industrial partner, revealing that the generated
boarding design preserves the formalised design rules. In turn, it shows
that the rule-based design algorithms are able to formulate the feasible
design alternative, capitalizing on rich information extracted from the
given BIM, while the layout modeller effectively represents the generated boarding layout details in the BIM.
It should be noted that, without the formalisation of trades' knowhow, the generated boarding layout design scenario lacks constructability, likely leading to a poorly-designed layout that is not feasible for
field execution. It is commonplace that construction practitioners
would discard a layout design that falls short in terms of constructability and would instead resort to experience-based, ad hoc decisions
for boarding design and planning on the jobsite. Optimising material
waste based on an insufficient, not practically feasible design solution is
not advisable. In addition, there are no other boarding design algorithms proposed in prevision research with which we can compare.
Although Won et al. [40] reported BIM-based design validation could
eliminate 4.3–15.2% of design error-induced construction waste, their
focus was on the likelihood of detecting each design error without BIM
Fig. 15. Graphic user interface of the prototyped system.
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Automation in Construction 89 (2018) 235–249
H. Liu et al.
Gypsum
yp
drywall
y
layout
a. Construction-centric BIM with boarding layout
b. Shop drawing for boarding layout
Fig. 16. Outputs of the prototyped system.
results generated from the prototyped system with these benchmarks,
material waste is found to be below the industry benchmark and the
company's current levels.
Table 1
Part of OSB board sheet cutting plan for floors in Excel.
Count
Size
Used
(SF)
Waste
Cutting plan
Cutting list
Location
4′
4′
4′
4′
Floor
Floor
Floor
Floor
6.3. Discussion and future work
1
4′ × 8′
30.42
5%
1
4′ × 8′
28.83
10%
0″ × 4′
0″ × 3′
0″ × 3′
0″ × 3′
0″
7 1/4″
7 1/4″
7 1/4″
1
1
3
2
Construction-oriented design detailing such as boarding design is a
labour-intensive, time-consuming, and error-prone task in the AEC industry, which presents one barrier that impedes the adoption of BIM in
the construction field. Furthermore, trades' know-how remains mainly
in the minds of experienced trades people and is generally missing from
existing design software. This research successfully integrates practical
know-how formalised based on the boarding practice in light-frame
building construction and mathematical algorithms with BIMs. Notably,
the boarding layout design and board cutting plan associated with
minimised material waste can be automatically generated by the prototype system; however, the resulting solution may not represent the
truly “global optimum” due to the non-deterministic polynomial-time
(NP-hard) nature of design optimisation and the limitation of the employed greedy search algorithm (e.g. search heuristics are embedded
while the termination criteria is specified as a certain number of
iterations). In fact, the layout design optimisation is an optimisation
problem where the board cutting optimisation is nested. In the current
research, the optimised design is determined by evaluating all the
generated feasible design alternatives and selecting the best scenario
among them. For each design alternative, the board cutting optimisation is defined as a one-dimensional cutting-stock problem. Greedy algorithms are capable to find the cutting solution in short computing
time. In future research, the following extensions can be pursued to
further improve the performance of the proposed methodology: [1]
heuristic algorithms can be incorporated into this prototype in order to
in quantifying the amount of construction waste that could be reduced
using BIM-based design validation. Moreover, their case examples were
reinforced concrete structures, rather than light-frame building structures (where boarding design and planning is entailed). This research
advances the state of art in construction-centric BIM design research,
though the research in this paper is not directly comparable to other
published research findings. Given this, results of the prototyped system
in terms of material waste are compared with the industry benchmark
in order to validate the proposed system. Material waste information
pertaining to the boarding design and planning generated by the prototype is summarised in Table 2. As shown in the table, the minimised
gypsum drywall material waste for walls is 6.85%, while the sheathing
material waste is found to be 7.3%. As for the ceiling, the material
waste of gypsum boards is found to be 6.53%, while the sheathing
material waste for floors is 5.84%. Table 2 tabulates the corresponding
material waste information for the second optimised design and planning solution, which is 7.00%, 8.64%, 8.13%, and 7.38%, respectively.
The material waste of drywall sheets averages 12% according to the
California Integrated Waste Management Board [5], whereas the waste
of sheathing sheets falls within the range of 12.57% and 22.62% according to the historical data of our industry partner. In comparing the
Table 2
Material waste of optimised boarding solutions.
Material
Wall
Gypsum board
Ceiling
Oriented strand board
Gypsum board
Floor
Oriented strand board
Size
4′ × 8′
4′ × 10′
4′ × 12′
4′ × 8′
4′ × 8′
4′ × 10′
4′ × 12′
4′ × 8′
Optimised solution #1
Optimised solution #2
Industry benchmark
Number of sheets
Waste ratio
Number of sheets
Waste ratio
86
23
30
68
31
2
16
60
6.85%
63
26
43
69
32
2
16
61
7.00%
7.30%
6.53%
5.84%
247
8.64%
8.13%
7.38%
12.00%
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optimise boarding layout design more efficiently, rather than enumerating a set of layout designs during iterations; and [2] cutting-stock
optimisation can be extended from one dimension into two dimensions
in planning material cutting patterns. In addition, the layout design
optimisation is conducted for floors and walls, separately. It is anticipated that optimising boarding layout for walls and floors simultaneously would further reduce boarding material waste.
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7. Conclusion
This research has proposed rule-based design algorithms and developed a novel BIM-based approach for automating the boarding design and planning for light-frame residential buildings. An Autodesk
Revit-based automated design and planning prototype system is realised through Revit API. This prototype system incorporates boarding
design rules (i.e., trades' know-how) and material optimisation into
BIM-based construction-centric design and planning in order to provide
optimised boarding design and planning to construction practitioners.
Comprehensive trades' know-how is successfully represented in a
computer-interpretable form within the design generative algorithms in
order to formulate boarding design and planning with enhanced constructability at the workface level. Furthermore, rich information is
retrieved from BIMs as the basis of this research, thereby enabling BIMbased automated design and planning. The prototype system is tested
using a typical wood-framed residential building project. The generated
boarding design and planning from the prototyped system is found to
ensure design constructability while minimising material waste. It
should be noted that the prototyped system is also beneficial to building
designers, who can use it to consider boarding layout and design constructability during the design stage.
The main contribution of the presented research is in the development of rule-based design algorithms and the BIM-based approach that
automates the construction level design and planning regarding
boarding of light-frame residential housing. Rule-based layout design
algorithms in consideration of trades' know-how form the core of the
proposed BIM approach. It preserves the knowledge and experience of
senior trades people in boarding design. The resulting prototyped
system automates the solution in boarding layout design and material
cutting by taking advantage of rich building information in BIM and
established material cutting algorithms. On the other hand, it adapts
the design-focused BIM for construction practitioners in an automated
fashion and overcomes the limitations of existing BIM in terms of catering to the specific needs of building trades for proactive boarding
design and planning. Additionally, this research augments existing
BIMs with construction-oriented intelligence (i.e., trades' know-how
and rule-based design algorithms), resulting in the construction-centric
BIM that aids carpenter trades in performing their work in the field. It
lays the groundwork for further research in the area of BIM-based
construction-centric design and planning.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank all anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The authors would also like to thank
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada
(NSERC) for financial support (Grant File No. CRDPJ 470067-14), as
well as personnel from Kent Homes, Star Prebuilt Homes, ATCO
Structures & Logistics, and ACQBUILT, Inc. for their support and
technical assistance.
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