Implementation of BIM is crucial for obtaining efficiency and accuracy during structural design In today’s competitive market scenario, structural engineers confront with a lot of difficult situations and for tackling them they have to take the support of cutting edge tools and technologies. Structural engineers as well as architects and MPE engineers face huge pressure from building owners in terms of accomplishing the construction project in minimum project cost. And in the absence of high-end tools and technology it becomes seriously very difficult for building professionals like architects and engineers etc. to meet the requirement of building owners.

Hence building professionals associated with different building disciplines focus on the implementation of Building Information Modeling, which is a model-based design approach.

Use of BIM during design development

• I think no one is going to disagree with me when I say, development of structural design remains one of the most complex things in building construction.

• But application of BIM definitely makes it simple and systematic if it is applied right from the beginning of the project.

• Once building professionals are equipped with basic drawings belonging to structure, they can go ahead with the execution of structural modeling services.

• The software which is mostly implemented by 3D modelers for the execution of structural modeling services is Revit Structure.

• Apart from that Tekla is also a very powerful and productive software which is used for the development of structural models, which contain precise information about the height, width and depth of structural components.

• Building stakeholders can obtain detailed information about the structural columns, braces, beams, joists and trusses etc. from BIM models.

• When BIM model is created for structure, all the design members can easily participate in the modeling process with the support of Revit’s ‘Worksharing’ feature.

• This feature supports the collaboration of team members, while they continue to work on their own computers.

• All the team members working on individual computers can be connected through Revit server.

• Design members or modelers save a central model in a shared place, which contain all the structural elements in it and if in case changes are made to these elements they can be spontaneously viewed by others.

• Once required structural model is developed, it can be used for accomplishing multiple things such as for clash detection, for extracting bill of materials, material takeoffs and for extracting structural drawings etc.