Robot-Oriented Design for Production in the context of Building Information Modeling

Construction industry must make more extensively use of automation and robots in order to increase its productivity and reduce its impact in the environment. It seems that the first steps in this direction was taken with the Building Information Modeling (BIM) paradigm. Wide adoption of BIM, particularly for the activities of project and construction planning, could be exploited also in trying to introduce more control to the final processes of building construction through a computer interface, from design to production. The main motivation for this research is to study the impact of BIM in bridging the gap between design and construction. Considering the growing interest in applying additive manufacturing technology for future building construction, this paper proposes a computer-aided system that translates a generic architectural project in a set of pieces to be fabricated with 3D printers. The system uses a proposed set of algorithms to process the architectural project: it considers the division of the building in different parts or pieces to be fabricated, based on the work volume of the printer; it also considers the relative position of the part in the bed of the printer, for best results in production; minimum dimension of features to achieve mechanical resistance; and geometric features that would demand support material. IFC standard, in its fourth version, was analyzed for validation in the process to carry all the relevant information produced in design phases to fabrication.