Research on Self-adaptive Reinforcement Plug-in of Prefabricated Concrete Component Based on BIM

Abstract

Prefabricated concrete structure has the advantages of faster construction, labor saving, pollution reduction, and enhanced quality. It has been more widely adopted in recent years, but the cost is usually higher at its design or pre-construction stages due to component disassembly and detailed design. Building information modeling (BIM) could improve the design efficiency and reduce design cost, hence promoting the development of prefabricated buildings. However, due to the complexity of reinforcement modeling, existing BIM authoring tools still have low operation efficiency. Even though the latest technologies can achieve rapid reinforcement modeling, it often fails to realize the adaptive adjustment of reinforcement. In the case of changes in prefabricated components, the internal reinforcement needs to be remodeled, with reduced efficiency and increased the risk of errors. Therefore, this research proposes a self-adaptive reinforcement plug-in based on Autodesk Revit for prefabricated concrete components. The research achieved fast modeling and adaptive reinforcement. Firstly, the parametric modeling of column, beam and slab components was completed by using Excel to drive family parameters. Then, by adopting the Revit Application Program Interface (API), programming language C# and programming platform Visual Studio (VS), the secondary development within Revit achieved the rapid adaptive configuration of reinforcement. At the same time, the user interface was developed based on Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), and the Ribbon function was adopted to expand the Revit function area to realize the visual regulation of key parameters of reinforcement, such as the reinforced type, cover thickness, spacing, and reinforcement ratio, etc. Finally, the program was developed by integrating different modules and plug-ins were established. A typical prefabricated frame structure office building was used as a case study to test the self-adaptive reinforcement plug-in. The results showed that the modeling efficiency of the developed plug-in was nearly 3 times higher than that of manual modeling. After changing the section size parameters of the members, the reinforcement could successfully achieve self-adaptive adjustment, hence significantly saving the modeling steps and time. The developed self-adaptive reinforcement plug-in contributed to the fully interoperable and multi-disciplinary coordination in prefabricated building design.