What are the possible future advantages of Revit/BIM?
I found that there are various ways in which BIM is likely to improve in the future. In many ways the future advantages have been implemented but they are not in standard use but are foreseen to become standard, while there are other potential interoperability and unutilized capabilities of BIM that may exist in the future depending on how technology advances, the level of adoption and the economic support for those advances to become mainstream.
The currently existing advantages that are under utilized are the development and use of as built models for the future operation, maintenance, renovation and eventual demolition of the building, full interoperability of BIM with other specialty design programs, support of the complete design of a building in single BIM programs, provide quicker analysis of building systems, support modular and lean construction through prefabrication, track construction components on the site and have a real time updating schedule based on feedback from site sensors , the viewability of all building systems at the same time in a “stitched together” model, the direct use of a BIM model to fabricate the components needed, the use of virtual or augmented reality to facilitate building construction, Integrated Project Development will become standard.
As all of these capabilities that have been developed during the construction of building and other structures or products become mainstream. These future advantages of BIM in development will endow construction savings, efficiency, optimization, learning, quality, speed, safety and accuracy benefits. These will be realized by optimizing the construction process to reduce waste, minimize errors in components and schedule, limit the number of onsite activities and crew interferences, better record data about the construction process, streamline delivery, and require less work on site to assemble modular components. These will mostly occur due to leveraging what is learned from collected data and process automation through more advanced software to design a comprehensive and well informed concept to design to construction to operation work flow and feedback strategy.
Future advantages that may be possible with BIM but questionably feasible due to economics, lack of adoption or physical limitations such as computing power are the use of 3D printing to perform custom construction, use of drones or robots for construction, the automation of building systems design,
These plausible next generation advantages of BIM could increase the ability of BIM to develop custom and unique building features, automate the design, construction and operation process, use collected data and resulting performance information to optimize future construction and design, and reduce the need for human labor to construct a building.
Drones could be used to monitor construction progress through monitoring the proper installation of components and support the development of as built models. Robots could be used to help construct the structure, removing the need for human labor and performing hazardous tasks. Both the drones robots could increase the accuracy and speed and reduce the cost with which the structure is constructed.
Automated and comprehensive analyses of an entire building throughout its lifecycle could identify potential problems in the design that will unnecessarily shorten the life of the building or are non optimum. These analyses could show the designer where to pay attention to improve a building design and present the data needed to make the decision. They would effectively remove all of the tedious task that result from designing a building and leave the complex, intuitive decision making up to the engineer. If programs eventually gain the capability to make those tough decisions then programs could automatically design entire buildings or building systems so that only a check by an experienced and capable engineer is required to determine the functionality of the design.
Lastly, the digitization of codes that automatically modify families into components that meet the standards and requirements for location the model will be built. For instance the Canadian and US International Building codes have slight differences in how far out the handrails in stairwells should extend past the end of the stairs. Canada requires 11.75 inches and the US uses 12 inches. Based on the location the model is set to be built in, only stairwell handrails designs that meet the requirements would be importable into the model or the handrail family could be programmed to modify the handrail extension length to meet the requirements. This seems entirely possible, but because of the huge variety of building codes and their differences, the process to to understand the code would have to be automatic, taking advantage of text recognition software, language understanding artificial intelligence, and .link the output to the BIM code parameter input regions. This technology is already possible but is not fully reliable and expensive to produce.
References
Volk, Rebekha, Julian Stengel, and Frank Schultman. "Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Existing Buildings — Literature Review and Future Needs." Building Information Modeling (BIM) for Existing Buildings. Automation in Construction, Mar. 2014. Web. 26 Jan. 2016.
Yoders, Jeff. "5 Tech Trends Transforming BIM/VDC." Building Design + Construction. N.p., 23 Dec. 2014. Web. 27 Jan. 2016.
Comments
@Samuel Boyce
http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b3-samuel-boyce-group-a.html?showComment=1453876670088#c3445327528887797374
I think you are right about most of the future pitfalls of BIM modeling. Many of them exist today and will only get worse such as trusting that the computer program has done the correct thing and increasing complexity of the programs and creations of the programs. Somewhere there is likely to be an error that has been missed since class detections have not been reduced to zero. If were stop questioning whether or not the design has been done right then we will need to rethink how we design buildings. Many firms push the software to make profit and may not perform all the checks necessary and end up under designing building components. It gets scary when those building components that are faultily designed are crucial to making the building safe or keeping it standing. Another one of my fears is that the program operations will become so complicated that the usual engineer's check stops working. This could lead to a failure and there would not be easy way to check for an error so fewer companies would bother to put in the effort to do the check.
@Christian A in Alexis Akins Post
http://ae-510-ay15-16.blogspot.com/2016/01/b3-group-c-alexis.html?showComment=1453877679281#c7001707379768372946
I am very excited to hear that this technology is becoming a reality due to its abilities to enhance communication. It can perform all the tasks that you mentioned and maybe more depending on how the program becomes integrated with other functionalities. Like was show during the presentation the owner, architect, or engineer could go to the site even before construction starts and have the building model augment reality so that they can get a feel for what the building will actually be like. The communication from an offsite location could be upgrade with translation abilities so that language barriers wont get in the way of real time communication and decision making. Additionally, the owner could don a VR headset and take a virtual tour of the building which allows them to inspect the building model in a way that they are more familiar with. There are so many uses. I think this will be the next big game changer that will really push forward collaboration and communication of construction project stakeholders.
