Towards Automated Structural Stability Design of Buildings—A BIM-Based Solution

Building information modelling (BIM) is a revolution in the architectural, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. In the AEC industry, several interesting innovations are being introduced every day. Most of the code compliance work, which is time-consuming and quite multifaceted, is now performed manually. The number of unwanted errors is increasing, and any suspension of the project is led by the structural code-checking system, and is a tiresome process. Subsequently, the BIM-based model is presented to automate the structural stability design of buildings. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) specification is introduced in this work, and is used to automate the building design processes to achieve design correctness and efficiency. The IFC-based interoperability framework is presented to automate the design of structural elements of RC buildings. Consequently, a deep multi-perception-based generalized adaptive framework (DMPBGAF) is presented for the automated code compliance checking process. The concepts and relationships in the building code were automatically matched to their equivalent concepts. A building code was checked against the Indian seismic code IS 13920, and when shear wall data were presented in this IFC file, it exchanged the data with the custom engine. It is possible to eliminate the unwanted issues based on the automated code compliance system with BIM. This goal can be accomplished by using a coding rule-based engine to compile the BIM model and store the design code of the specific country with its clauses. After generating the Python file to code all of the prepared checks, the python file in the form of functions was obtained from the IfcOpenShell library. Finally, a rule engine was developed for interpretation of the checks; the three model IFC files were tested on this, and it gave satisfactory results. The FreeCAD software was employed in this research for the IFC-based BIM model to automate the design. The shear wall data were presented in the first IFC model; all of the code checks were passed based on this modelled design, and when given to the rule engine, it gave a 100% compliance report. Insufficiently reinforced shear wall data contained in the other two IFC files were purposely created to fail some of the code checks. This method significantly reduces the time by eliminating the duplication of efforts. From the viewpoint of accuracy and reliability, the proposed method is more accurate and results in enhanced reliability as compared to manual design methods.

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