BIM Methodology in Structural Design: A Practical Case of Collaboration, Coordination, and Integration

Building Information Modelling (BIM) is a methodology focused on the centralization and sharing of project information among all experts involved. The use of BIM platforms allows professionals to improve coordination, collaboration, and integration along with the development of all disciplines and tasks required in a complete building project. Currently, the construction industry has witnessed a growing adoption of BIM, mainly caused by the constant technologic achievements, contributing to the improvement of the integration capability of the available software. However, concerning structural design, BIM implementation still presents some difficulties, especially in the interoperability of BIM-based systems. In the present study, a structural design case was considered, using Revit as the modeling software and Robot as the structural system. A bidirectional exchange of information between the two systems was required and the interoperability capacity was evaluated. In the process, the main identified remarks concern the fundamental aspects of information sharing, collaboration, integration, and interoperability. Despite the limitations found, essentially related to the software interoperability, the BIM approach presents significant advantages in a structural project, supported by 3D visualization, model overlapping, easy accessibility to the model database, streamlined coordination, and enhanced collaboration.