Parametric building object behavior of steel structures

There exist direct links between programs for detailed modeling of steel structures in Building Information Modeling (BIM) and structural analysis programs. The designer may need the parametric representation of the steel... [ view full abstract ]

There exist direct links between programs for detailed modeling of steel structures in Building Information Modeling (BIM) and structural analysis programs. The designer may need the parametric representation of the steel structure to control the design following his/her ideas e.g. for optimization of the structure. Typically, BIM programs and analysis programs do not include the possibility to use parametric representation of the structure but the user must provide parametric representation. In this paper, an extremely simplified steel structure is considered by which it is demonstrated how parameters of the structure, cross-section, unit material cost and steel grade of the member, can be set as parameters to resist the given load with minimum cost. By these means we can deal with the Parametric Building Object Behavior (PBOB): the ability of an object such as steel beam to respond to internal or external stimuli, in this case the moment resistance based on Eurocodes for the given design load. The parametric form is a simple product model of the beam made by MS Excel by which the designer can set many kinds of parameter sets or rules between the parameters. The BIM program, which is used in this study is Tekla Structures and the analysis program Autodesk Robot™ Structural Analysis Professional. The interoperability is completed using the .NET framework of C#. Some general problems and lack of standardized naming for products are demonstrated and finally a simple search of a defined product catalogue is shown to find the most suitable product for the case. Due to flexibility of APIs the similar approach can be used for the design of more complicated structures.