Entrant details
Role or Job Title on the Project
Architect. Software developer
Employer
BiMMate, modelado BIM avanzado
Employer Role
Technology or Software Development Company
Are you or your employer a member of buildingSMART?
No
Submission details
Submitting Party Company Name
BiMMate, modelado BIM avanzado
Submitting Party Company Location
Murcia (Spain)
Submitting Party Role on Project
Chief Developer
Submitting Party Company Website
Full Project Name
Mediciones Automatizadas de Modelos BIM AECO
Project Location (Country)
Spain
Project Objectives
Development of a software tool able to:
- Turn accurate cost, mass/volume, waste generation and classification, carbon-emission and/or embedded calculation end-term processes into an earlier-stage design tool that can help designers build better and more efficient designs.
- Completely automate accurate cost-estimating processes of CIVIL and AEC IFC projects based on parametric work-units rulesets.
- Completely automate accurate mass/volume calculation, waste generation and classification, carbon-emission and/or embedded energy analysis of CIVIL and AEC IFC projects.
openBIM Achievements
MAMBA has effectively connected two open standards in Spain: open IFC schemas for BIM models and open BC3 parametric work-unit definitions of AEC and CIVIL projects.
Doing it so, MAMBA can perform instant, one-click, accurate cost-estimating, mass/volume calculation, waste generation and classification, carbon-emission, and/or embedded energy analysis throughout parametric rulesets every time IFC models get updated.
openBIM used
IFC 2x3, IFC4
openBIM or open standards used other than those listed above
Spanish open parametric cost estimating BC3 format.
Software used
xBIM C# library
IFCengine C++ library
Strategic Alignment
CIVIL and AEC projects use a wide variety of copyrighted software tools to model the design, each of them specific for a certaing task or type of design.
By aligning MAMBA with IFC standars, we open the range where the tool can be useful. Having a software that can read any type of BIM design, no matter if it is AEC or CIVIL, based on ArchiCAD or Revit, allows to quickly get useful data and analysis for the designers, even those not using BIM modelling tools.
Highlights
Automatic cost-estimating.
Automatic embbed energy and carbon emission calculations.
Automatic CDW quantifications.
Project Website
Project and Stakeholder Logos (compiled into one .ppt/pptx file for upload)
Project Address
Project Type
(Other)
Size of Project
Detailed description of the project
INTRODUCTION
Every person, every place has its own unique attributes that make it different from any other, even if sharing more features than the ones that point out the difference. This is especially true in Spain where we share with the rest of the European citizens so many things that one can travel across Europe feeling comfortably fine, but after few weeks away all of us are willing to return home.
After decades of sharing a common future and destination, these differences have been relativized to the point of becoming simple details out of the core of the standardization, so quality standards or process workflows are very similar from one country to another of the European Union.
Nobody here is to discuss the importance of standardization, whereas BIM standards are the key stone of the AEC and Civil processes. However, in this madness of the uniqueness regulations, there are still small bits of tradition, developed along decades, that still have something to say to improve a bigger, wider, and more internationalized context.
Hidden among the chorus voices of the same melody played by all of us, there is an impressive, incredibly flexible, powerfully parametric and widest-open cost-estimating standard in Spain, that worth to be recover from the oblivion and delivered to the acknowledge of all European people.
GOALS
No body is to discuss that the funny part of the building design process is the design itself. Accurate cost analysis, CDW generation quantifications, carbon emission and/or embedded energy calculations is something certainly complex that it is only done after the design process is completed, all material properly defined and quantification and measures of design elements can be precisely taken; therefor these calculations are merely end-term processes done only after design is over.
This is obviously a wrong approach. Reducing carbon emission, use construction technics that reduce energy consumption and have the opportunity of knowing the real cost of one decision is something that should be included in the DNA of the design process…
The pursuit of this ideal is the main goal why MAMBA was conceived for. MAMBA is the Spanish acronym of Automated Measurement of AEC BIM Models, and expresses the goal that we intend to achieve:
- A universal tool that can be used by anybody on any type of model, AEC or CIVIL, no matter what source modelling tool was used originally, that can deal with exceptionally large projects of any complexity.
- A tool that can easily measure any BIM project using any database built on a standard open format. The models in the BIM project should not be prepared in any way; instead, the tool should use whatever algorithm is required to filter elements, gather data, and connect items in a flexible way. The workflow should be so easy that any person with a minimum training could use it to produce accurate results.
- A tool that can exchange all the definitions made in the ruleset of a project with any other project to reduce the amount of manual work to be done to one in a lifetime for any challenge.
- Superfast and super easy calculations so everybody is willing to click the magic button to update results as BIM models get updated frequently. Affordable calculations that only takes few seconds mean that the analysis can be done once after another, so end-term processes become part of the design process.
TASKS
Once MAMBA project goals are listed, a clear overview of IFC schemas and its related technologies has been exposed and a brief definition of what open BC3 format can do, it is time to write down the list of task followed during the research:
- Load, read, parse, process and manage large IFC models using a a powerful C++ IFC engine.
- As FIEBDC-3 is the core technology adopted for cost-estimating and other calculations, a complete library to handle CRUD operations on BC3 classes should be developed (using C# under .NET standard framework in our case), so it can be consumed in OS other than Windows.
- Once the application can properly read and manage IFC elements and BC3 concepts, it is time to connect them. We have created a class that holds those relations, called ‘MeasurementRule’. This object is intended to be used as a collector:
- First there must be defined what IFC elements must be collected. Any number of conditions can be added. For each condition there is an equality comparer and a possible value or range of values. Processing all those conditions over all IFC elements results in a subset of IFC elements that match all of the criteria exposed.
- Over that set of IFC elements we apply several BC3 concepts (work-units). Each unit has its own ways of mapping the quantification in terms of IFC parameters; an algebraic expression is used to evaluate the result. Minimum opening area can be described also.
- Over a fully functional environment it is time to develop a desktop app for consuming the exposed features. We have chosen Windows as the main operating system, and WPF technology for the user interface controls. However, as expansion to other devices is planned, newly launched .NET Core 3 has been used instead of traditional .NET Framework.
CONCLUSIONS
MAMBA is a technology software research focused on the automation on a specific task in AEC sector: accurate cost-estimating, waste management, carbon emission and embedded energy analysis, conceived upon two standards used in the AEC industry, the international IFC schema for BIM models, and the Spanish FIEBDC-3 for cost estimating and quantification.
The goals achieved in this project have been:
- Developing a universal tool that can be used by anybody on any type of model.
- Developing a tool that can quickly measure any BIM project using any database built on a standard open format, without preparing the models in any way.
- Developing a tool that can take advantage of the already done job in previous projects.
- Developing a superfast and super easy tool to perform analysis and calculations that bring end-term processes into the design phase.
Detailed description of openBIM on the project
MAMBA has been developed having in mind open BIM as the core of the technology.
Indeed, the main goal is to perform instant, accurate, one-click, cost-estimating, mass/volume calculation, waste generation and classification, carbon-emission and/or embedded energy analysis, and that can only be achieved by extracting the 3D quantification data from BIM models. Instead of focusing in every single BIM modelling, copyrighted, existing tool, if focused on IFC standards, one single tool can provide the same result for many software pieces.
Moreover, having a tool that is built upon the open IFC standards gives us the opportunity of serving a wide range of designers and analysts, even those whose job is not focused on BIM modelling itself but on analyse somebody’s else models.
The IFC open formats represent another added value in MAMBA, which is the ability of instantly update all analysis as the IFC models get updated, not depending on the original source where those models have been created. In other words, several BIM modelling tools can work together in the same project, working throughout the open BIM exchange workflow, where as MAMBA becomes another piece in the game.
Software ecosystem map
openBIM Supporting Evidence
Benefits from using openBIM
Despite the main and more obvious benefit of having a single tool for everyone instead of developing one tool for every existing authoring BIM modelling software, there are more reasons why IFC schemas and open BIM exchange workflows are they key in MAMBA core:
- The stability that IFC schemas bring to any ecosystem that disengage the yearly software authoring tool update. Having the ability of running the tool over a format that is going to always be valid, no matter of the time spent since it was initially created is clearly something to consider.
- Developing a tool that must read, parse, visualize and operate IFC models is a complex task that takes huge efforts on the process. However, once implemented, navigate through BIM elements and search among properties and values is very simple, even for those not used to model BIM projects. This feature opens the BIM world to others than architects, engineers and BIM modellers, like accountants, waste managers, construction managers, etc.
- Instead of asking every single engineering firm take care of the measurement and cost-estimating of the part of the BIM model they are taking charge of in a project, every participant can deliver IFC models and one single centralized operation can measure all of them at the very same time, increasing the consistency of prices and work-units.
- In very large projects, it is usual that all participants deliver new updated models (normally in IFC formats) weekly, which is the core of the open BIM exchange workflow. This workflow suits perfectly well with MAMBA, as it can provide a weekly update of the cost-estimating, mass/volume calculations, waste generation and classification, carbon emission and embed energy analysis as the IFC models come.
"We were able to innovate using openBIM."
Cost-Estimating is usually a first-stage process as it is commonly based on average cost ratios depending on the type of building, the complexity of the design, or the place it is going to be built, but it is not meant to be an accurate process.
Spanish open BC3 standard format is a way of splitting each work-unit into smaller pieces, over and over again, so at the end, very simple concepts are involved such as one brick, one ton of sand, one hour of a builder, etc. where can all easily be described in terms of cost, waste generation and classification, carbon emission and embed energy. As every child keeps a relationship with the father it belongs to, it is quite direct to get calculations over any concept that belongs to a tree-like structure.
These calculations allow MAMBA to accurately get the total cost of the whole project or any part of it, but the same can be achieved in terms of total mass or volume included, generated waste, carbon emitted or embed energy.
So this research can be consider as an evolution of the cost-estimating based on average ratios, and thanks to IFC schemas, open BIM workflows and the automation of MAMBA core, it can be used in earlier stages compared to the end-term calculation that is commonly used.
"We were able to identify where we need openBIM to develop further."
The research project is still in the final developing stages, but we have already identified several key points where MAMBA can still add more value to open BIM workflows:
- Ability of identification of BC3 work-item in MAMBA and push it to BCF format for reviewing the original BIM modelled element in order to update it for next releases of the IFC model.
- Development of an augmented reality mobile application where IFC model elements and linked BC3 work-items can be easily identified, certified and accounted on-site.
I agree to be contacted about the project BIM uses outside of this awards program.
Stakeholders
BiMMate, modelado BIM avanzado, Murcia (Spain),
http://www.BiMMate.com, Chief Developer, José María Abellán Alemán
BiMMate, modelado BIM avanzado, Murcia (Spain),
http://www.BiMMate.com, Developer, Manuel Antúnez Rodríguez
