Therefore, this study aimed to establish the life cycle process, including design, fabrication, and construction, of free-form structural members that are components of free-form buildings. This affects the cost, construction period, and quality of projects. Owing to these technical limitations, optimized processes or management methodologies for the life cycle management of free-form construction members, including design, fabrication, installation, and construction, are not sufficient, despite the rising demand for free-form buildings in South Korea.
In particular, although the level of digital fabrication requirement is very high for free-form buildings because each material has its own free-form shape, development of the elementary technologies required for actual fabrication and construction has been slow. Automatic member shape recognition and fabrication are possible by inputting parametric BIM fabrication data into the member production process of the computerized numerical control (CNC) machine.ĭespite this advantage, the digital fabrication process remains very inefficient in South Korea. Moreover, from a fabrication productivity perspective, construction member manufacturers can utilize the data input from BIM objects to assist the fabrication process, and these are parametric data that are not provided by conventional 2D-based fabrication methods. Based on this advantage, BIM-based digital fabrication technology simplifies the procurement process in construction and improves the productivity of the workflow between designers, builders, and those involved in the manufacturing of construction components. īIM can integrate design, manufacturing, and construction processes to increase the level of transparency and interoperability among partners in construction projects that use prefabricated components. Through BIM-based digital fabrication, designers, builders, and manufacturers of construction materials can perform detailed design and examination of the products to be fabricated as digital objects. Digital fabrication is one such technology developed through the application of BIM and virtual design and construction (VDC) methods in the construction industry. īuilding information modeling (BIM) technology has been rapidly replacing conventional construction models, such as two-dimensional computer-aided design (2D CAD), paper documents, and Excel chart-based schedules, by improving the technical level of construction automation, introducing BIM-based innovations, and application of integrated project delivery (IPD) method in several countries. However, since the BIM concept was introduced in Korea in 2008, efforts have been made to overcome the problem of productivity degradation in the life cycles of construction projects. Therefore, the cost and time requirements for design, fabrication, and construction of complex types of structures will increase, eventually leading to construction errors and deterioration of building quality. Existing architectural techniques and paradigms are mostly available only in fragments, such as the optimal design technology for complex structures, techniques for fabrication of components, and precise installation technology. These needs have increasingly decided that the buildings be massive and the shapes be more complex thus, the design of free-form and complex elements, manufacture of building components, and construction technology at the site must be supported to meet these needs. The main trend of the construction industry in the 21st century is the creation of different spaces to improve the quality of human life and in forms that were previously unavailable to meet various user needs. It is expected that the digital fabrication process and productivity analysis model proposed here will be applied to complex digital fabrication works.
In addition, a productivity analysis method based on the queuing model is proposed using personnel input and performance calculation data to verify productivity. This study proposes a BIM-based digital fabrication process for prefabricated parts of buildings. Moreover, an optimized process has not been developed thus far because the productivity of digital fabrication has not been quantitatively verified for various projects in the field. However, the digital fabrication process is inadequate in terms of efficiency and productivity because of the need to convert from conventional two-dimensional (2D) drawings to a BIM design this adversely affects the unified design, fabrication, installation, and inspection processes.
Since the concept of building information modeling (BIM) was introduced in South Korea in 2008, digital fabrication concerning free-form shapes and complex parametric information has been expanding owing to the development of BIM software and tools.