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Technical University of Munich

Linkage between BIM and Drawings

Deep Linkage between Building Information Models and Digital Drawings

Team Members

Jimmy Abualdenien, André Borrmann

Aim of the Research Project

The aim of this research project is to holistically tackle the problem of disjointed 2D digital drawings and 3D Building Information Models by developing automatic methods for geometric consistency check between them, tracking changes made to drawings, positioning mechanism, and ultimately exchanging drawings and BIM models together in a vendor-neutral container-like manner.

Project Description

It is a common feature for many BIM design tools on the market to provide deep geometric and semantic integration between 3D geometric representations of entities and the respective 2D shapes in digital drawings. However, it is only valid when they are used in the proprietary formats of software providers. Once the 3D BIM model and the respective drawings are exported to vendor-neutral formats, they lose all the relationships and can be edited irrespectively of each other. It is often the case that exported drawings are further edited by modifying them and adding additional information using 3 rd party applications. This usually brings many discrepancies which currently cannot be automatically detected and must be coordinated manually. Very often,

Accordingly, the construction industry insists to provide solutions for comparing the edited drawings with the respective BIM model. Recently, Solibri Model Checker has been equipped which a brand-new feature which allows to overlay 2D digital drawings in 3D BIM models in order to perform the consistency check. However, the whole process is manual, ranging from picking a plane in which drawings are overlaid to carrying out the visual assessment of the geometric consistency.

Therefore, to meet the expectations of the construction industry, this research project is supposed to develop methods for the following:

  • A semi-automatic geometry-based consistency check between 3D BIM models and 2D digital drawings so that it is possible to automatically compare whether a drawing matches the respective BIM model.
  • A method for tracking changes made to drawings so that it is known what has been updated since the drawing was derived from the 3D BIM model.
  • A method for semi-automatic positioning drawings against Building Information Models so that it is known which part of the model the drawings represent.
  • A method for managing and exchanging models and the associated drawings in a vendor-neutral container-like manner.
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