Model healing: Toward a framework for building designs to achieve code compliance

Abstract

When non-compliance against building regulations occurs in construction projects, architects and engineers analyze the design and iteratively revise the model to overcome those violations. With the help of state-of-the-art code compliance checkers, practitioners interpret the results and adjust the design manually based on their expertise. Currently, no methodology is available to automatically connect the compliance violations to solving the related design issues. To address this gap, a generalized framework, Model Healing, is introduced for adjusting BIM models to overcome non-compliance. Violation-related parameters are selected to create comparable variants. We define metric indices representing the checking conformance and the difference to the initial design to support the search toward Model Healing. Finally, valid design variants close to the initial design are elected. The paper concludes with a case study indicating the applicability and limitations of the proposed workflow. This framework will facilitate building design adjustments and error correction with higher efficiency.