Integration of BIM Processes in Architectural Design, Structural Analysis, and Detailing: Current Status and Limitations

As new and innovative design concepts push the boundaries of constructability, interoperability of analysis, design, and detailing technologies has become essential for maintaining evermore demanding schedules, accurate budgeting, quality, safety, and cost control. Architectural, engineering, and detailing integration is an essential component of future best-practice in the construction industry. Recent developments in BIM-based design and detailing platforms have potentially enabled engineering analysis models to communicate seamlessly with the architectural design model as well as the detailing model. Despite the development of integration solutions among various BIM-based platforms, there is still a lack of data interoperability. The disconnected processes resulted in siloed data and design efforts leading to rework and delays. In this paper, the authors investigated collaborative workflows between architectural, structural, and detailing platforms to study current practices and limitations of the state-of-the-art technologies. An experiment was conducted to study the integration of selected BIM-based applications in this process. The experiment investigated the round-trip data transfer between BIM authoring tools, structural analysis applications, and detailing suites developed by various software vendors. Results from the experiment showed that round-trip data transfer is possible but requires adjustments of the BIM model during various stages in the design and delivery processes.