Developing a BIM-Based Integrated Model for CAD to CAM Production Automation

Modular construction has gained momentum in North America as an emerging construction paradigm in recent years. Modular buildings are assembled from components that are prefabricated in manufacturing plants and transported to the construction site for assembly. The current manual-based approach to modular construction, which typically applies the traditional stick-building-under-a-roof method, is time-consuming and labour-intensive. However, the application of automated prefabrication of components has the potential to significantly advance the productivity, worker safety, and competitiveness of the Canadian construction industry. This research, focusing on the construction of wood-framed panels, presents a methodology which allows intelligent wall panels with different design properties to be analyzed. By integrating external databases with building information modelling (BIM)-based software and generating wall panel combination plans and assembly information, intelligent wall panel prefabrication is achieved. The study of panel prefabrication for a sample house from an Edmonton-based panel manufacturer is presented in order to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.