BIM-Aided Prefabrication for Minimum Waste DIY Timber Houses

Abstract

The continuous housing shortage demands efficient ways of design and construction. In the context of rising construction standards and shrinking manpower, one of the possible answers to the problem is prefabrication oriented towards do-it-yourself (DIY) construction methods, which could contribute to the low and middle income housing supply in the market. The article covers the process of developing an experimental tool for aiding single-family housing design with the use of small-element solid timber prefabrication, suitable for DIY assembly. The presented tool uses the potential of BIM technology adapting a traditionally-designed house to the needs of prefabrication and optimizing it in terms of waste generated in the assembly process. The presented experiment was realized in the Autodesk Revit environment and incorporates custom generative scripts developed in Dynamo-for-Revit. The prototype analyzed an input model and converted it into a prefabricated alternative based on the user-and technology-specified boundary conditions. The prototype was tested on the example design of a two-story single-family house. The results compare the automated optimized model conversion with manual adaptation approach. The implemented algorithm allowed for reducing the construction waste by more than 50%.