The Building Information Modeling during the design stage: how to get advantages with the BIM
What are the advantages the BIM provides to engineers, architects, and specialists of the building industry involved in the design process? How can we obtain more beneficial results? (part 1)
The rapid spread of the BIM should be perceived and experienced as a turn of events for the entire construction industry.
As a matter of fact, the process of digitization is affecting the whole society and has even reached the construction sector, which traditionally is the less prone to innovation.
Like for any other innovation, once its real advantages are understood they can consequently establish themselves and spread on the markets.
Interface of the architectural BIM software Edificius
However, innovation doesn’t automatically deliver a new production model in the building industry.
A revolutionary methodology such as the BIM will not be able to assert itself without a modernization process, first changing the attitude of those involved, and subsequently changing the roles of the new professional figures of the supply chain.
The BIM establishment in the construction sector
The BIM tools usage should make the workflow more efficient and thus expanding the awareness of the involved parts, even within traditional processes.
The real keystone for the success of the BIM can be summed up through the following question: why is the BIM convenient?
In order for the BIM methodology to establish itself as a new standard, the response will have to be beneficial for all the stakeholders, from the client to the designers, from the construction companies to facility and project management.
In particular, it is the project area that is the first to be invested by the BIM process.
The first change is represented by the first result of the design stage: we move from the representation of the project based on drawings (including digital ones), to get to the phase of providing a simulation of the project, based on parametric 3D models.
Design of parametric objects in the BIM software Edificius
During the design stage, the largest number of information is defined in the construction world. This happens right from the preliminary phase, until reaching the executive project. Throughout this process, the BIM approach can offer clear advantages.
In the “Conceptual Design” phase, all the basic aspects of the intervention, which will later on be developed, are now defined.
The effects of the assessments carried out during the design stage will subsequently affect various analyses, such as those related to:
- volume
- surfaces
- the relationships between the different functional areas expected in the project
- the statics
- energy
- sistem installations
- the impact of costs to be incurred
- insertion and relations with the pre-existing urban context
- and several others analyses.
BIM software solutions and “concept design” activity
In the BIM field, software solutions able to support “concept design” activities can be sorted in two macro groups.
- The first includes tools mainly aimed at the spatial design of the building and its location, with limited information on the entities represented.
- In the second, we can count all those BIM authoring tools able to manage different levels of object development and to dialogue with analysis and verification tools capable of processing on different degrees of information definition.
Those tools are of great help for the creative elaboration of the designers and return the feedback of the maximum choices made, allowing more precise and safe design choices.
In the next article, we will present more aspects of the BIM authoring software, BIM tools or BIM collaboration plugins and how they provide a real benefit to the construction industry professionals involved.
