The planning method Building Information Modeling (BIM) has become a fixed component in marketing and reporting, especially when innovation is to be communicated. In reality, BIM offers many challenges in addition to opportunities. Because: With BIM, a new era is dawning in the planning culture. BIM is not a new tool, but a new method. Today, the collaboration of different planning teams and the resulting interface problems cost a lot of energy and effort. In the future, all planners should work on the same model simultaneously and across companies.
Learning from industry A look at the bigger picture shows that other industries have long since found ways and means to develop products jointly. Automotive and aircraft manufacturers work with so-called PLM platforms. Entire jumbo jets can be modeled on these platforms and provided with all the information they need. So what could be more obvious than to transfer and adapt these methods to the planning processes in timber construction?
The research project
DeepWood refers to the future further development of the BIM maturity level 2 to 3 and takes up the challenge of how a collaboration of several users can be realized simultaneously in a common model. DeepWood uses the Catia platform for this purpose. It enables real-time, cross-company and collaborative planning to develop and test in timber construction. An important part of the research project is the exemplary application of the new findings to a real construction project. A new apartment building at Blüemlimattweg in Thun serves as a so-called Living Lab.
Participating universities
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Dr. Sonja Geier
Bern University of Applied Sciences, Prof. Thomas Rohner