A Study on Design of Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) System Model for Cloud Computing BIM Service

Recently BIM technology has been expanded for using in construction project. However its spread has been delayed than the initial expectations, due to the high-cost of BIM infrastructure development, the lack of regulations, the lack of process and so forth. In design phase, especially, collaboration based on BIM system has being a key factor for successful next generation building project. Through the analysis of current research trend about IT technologies, virtualization and BIM service, data exchange such as drawing, 3D model, object data, properties using cloud computing and virtual server system is defined as a most successful solution. In various industrial fields, virtualization technology is utilized as a promising solution which can reduce cost of hardware infrastructure. Among the cloud computing technology, VDI(Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) has an advantage to easy main device management, because it has a virtual machine form with on-board user OS and application accessible in remote and local network environment. In construction industry, Yoon(2013) proposed a 3D BIM viewer solution based on cloud computing server to provide to domestic small and medium design firm. These kinds of cloud computing-based BIM server should need virtualization solution model that able to apply to collaboration design phase properly. The consideration for virtual desktop infrastructure includes arrangement of initial server resource, selection of memory assignment method, the plan of server expansion and etc. The purpose of this study is enable the cloud computing BIM server to provide several main function such as edit a model, 3D model viewer and checker, mark-up, snapshot in high-performance quality by proper design of VDI system. Concurrent client connection performance is a main technical index of VDI. Through test-bed server client, developed VDI system's multi-connect control will be evaluated. The performance-test result of BIM server VDI will effect to development direction of cloud computing BIM service for commercialization.