Publications / 2021 Proceedings of the 38th ISARC, Dubai, UAE

A Systematic Review of Automated BIM Modelling for Existing Buildings from 2D Documentation

Cheng Zhang, Yang Zou and Johannes Dimyadi
Pages 220-226 (2021 Proceedings of the 38th ISARC, Dubai, UAE, ISBN 978-952-69524-1-3, ISSN 2413-5844)
Abstract:

Building Information Model (BIM) with rich geometric and semantic information of facilities has increasingly been used to establish the City Information Model (CIM). Although BIMs for new buildings are becoming more available, BIMs for most existing buildings can only be modelled from 2D drawings and specifications. Manual BIM modelling is an error-prone and time-consuming process, which becomes more challenging for the city scale. Recently, automating the 3D BIM modelling process for existing buildings from their 2D drawings has been an emerging research trend. To understand the state-of-the-art and guide future research, this paper presents a systematic review of automated BIM modelling for existing buildings from 2D drawings. Fifty-five publications, including 34 journal articles and 21 conference papers identified from Scopus from 1998 to 2021, were reviewed and analysed. A chronological distribution shows that most papers (60%) aimed to generate 3D geometric model, and BIM modelling with semantic information appeared in 2015 and increased dramatically. This review classified the existing work into three aspects: geometric modelling, semantic modelling, and model quality checking. The results show fully automated conversion of 2D drawings to semantically enriched BIM has not been eventuated, future work may consider overcoming the following challenges: (1) height information is either set as default or entered manually, and complex components such as staircases are barely studied; (2) most research only focused on floor plans and ignored semantic information contained in other drawings; (3) drawing errors have not been well addressed, and the validation of the generated model is still cumbersome.

Keywords: Building Information Model (BIM); Existing building; 2D drawings; City information model (CIM)