Application And Development Of BIM Technology In Spatial Structure

BIM(Building Information Models)is a building information model that covering each subject throught the whole life cycle of a project, including the geometric, physical and socal informations. In the field of spatial structure, BIM technology is still at the early stage. The IFC(Industry Foundation Classes) specification is not able to define the member of spatial structure. Most BIM supported softwares can not transform the correct member information. Some existed researches on BIM-based application of spatial structure are limited to the interface re-development pointing at special software, instead of exchanging information based on the IFC specification.On the basis of the research of the IFC specification’s framework, the usage of the IFC language to express the spatial sturctual member is put forward in this paper in the aspect of geometric model and structre analysis model, including the IFC-based expression methods of the circular steel tube, the bolted spherical joint, the spatial surface and the finite element model. The IFC interface for STCAD, the spatial structure design software, is developed to express the frequently used geometry and structure analysis model. The problem of free-form surface meshing method in spatial structure is solved based on BIM technology, with the methods of the geodesic line meshing and the isometric member meshing, which lays the foundation of BIM-based spatial structure parametric design. The application of BIM in simulation of important load lifting is discussed, using IFC models to manage the information associated with the lifting. Finally a software architecture based on BIM for spatial structure design is put forward and some basic development work has been done for it.