This blog post explores how BIM technology is reshaping the future of architectural design and its impact on efficiency and safety.
Have you ever seen the blueprints for the house you live in? While blueprints may appear to be simple drawings composed of lines and shapes, they contain a wealth of detailed information and specifications. Do you know how those blueprints are drawn? Architects perform countless calculations and analyses to create these drawings, which hold meaning far beyond simple pictures. Hard to believe, but all those blueprints were drawn by hand. Now, with the emergence of a tool called BIM, the way we design is about to change dramatically.
Currently, most design drawings are created using a program called CAD. CAD stands for “Computer-Aided Design,” and it’s essentially software optimized for drawing blueprints. Simply put, you can think of CAD as an advanced drawing board for creating blueprints. Of course, for user convenience, tools like layers allow you to categorize elements—walls with walls, numbers with numbers. But in CAD, these lines are just individual strokes created by the designer double-clicking the mouse. There’s a significant difference between a computer recognizing four individual lines and recognizing them collectively as a wall.
This is where the problem arises. The numerous drawings for a single building are not linked at all on the computer screen. For example, suppose you need to correct a single incorrect column. In that case, you must individually modify all the floor plans, elevations, and sections where that column appears. This process is extremely complex and time-consuming. For a single apartment unit, the design drawings can be about 10 centimeters thick. Drawing all of this individually means that no matter how much effort and attention is paid, mistakes are inevitable. Even today, most drawings are created this way, so discrepancies between drawings often go undetected. These problems are only discovered when construction actually begins, potentially causing major issues during the building process. Particularly in large-scale projects, the financial loss from such minor errors can be enormous. Currently, computers merely draw blueprints in place of pens and rulers; they do not perform any additional functions.
The new tool designed to solve these problems is a technology called BIM (Building Information Modeling). BIM is not simply a tool for drawing blueprints; it is a system that integrates and manages all building information within a 3D model. Using BIM allows drawings to be created in 3D, offering an approach fundamentally different from current 2D drawings. While current 2D drawings cannot accurately extract a 3D model, BIM makes it much simpler to first create a 3D drawing and then extract 2D drawings from it. This process also significantly reduces potential drawing errors. Furthermore, since the 2D drawings extracted from the 3D drawings are identical to those currently in use, communication issues with the workers actually performing the construction do not arise.
When creating drawings using BIM, the computer recognizes concrete walls as concrete walls, not just simple lines, and steel columns as steel columns. This enables structural analysis of the building using the computer, allowing for more thorough assurance of the structure’s stability. While building safety is fundamental, this analysis enables more efficient and safer design.
Furthermore, the computer’s understanding of materials and structure yields even more compelling results. By inputting basic information like the time required for construction into the program, the computer can predict the estimated completion time. Not only that, it can determine which construction methods will allow the project to be finished in a shorter timeframe. Time management directly impacts construction costs. This process allows for precise calculation of material deliveries and removals, thereby reducing unnecessary expenses. In other words, using BIM enables accurate pre-calculation of the total or partial costs required for the entire construction project, facilitating the selection of economically advantageous construction methods.
Building blueprints are often overly complex and unintuitive for the general public. However, utilizing BIM allows even non-expert building owners to intuitively visualize the building’s form before construction begins. In fact, the Beijing Olympic Main Stadium was constructed using BIM. Furthermore, there is a growing trend domestically and internationally where building owners request BIM models when designing large, complex structures. This enables owners to gain a clearer understanding of the building they intend to construct and proactively prevent potential errors during the design phase.
The advantages of BIM are truly limitless. It goes beyond simply converting design drawings into 3D models; it can simulate heat flow to calculate winter heating costs in advance and estimate maintenance expenses by considering material lifespans. All of this becomes predictable using only the drawings before the building is actually constructed. However, the reason this groundbreaking program is not yet widely used is due to limitations in computer performance. While the very existence of BIM programs demonstrates technological advancement, the technology has not yet reached a stage where it can be fully utilized. Even with today’s high-spec computers, using BIM requires significant time, leading to the judgment that employing BIM can realistically cause greater time losses.
BIM remains a technology requiring further refinement. Nevertheless, its potential impact on the architecture industry is immense. How profoundly BIM will transform the field and whether it can fully realize its potential are questions that require time to observe. It will be intriguing to see whether this technology evolves to become the standard for architectural design in the future or remains merely one tool among many.
