GC BIM Elements Update?

Hi All,

Just wondering about what is happening with GC BIM Elements.

I stumbled upon B-Processor; an open source project being developed by some Danish academics, with input from a number of Scandinavian building firms. The project was presented by Kristian Agger at CAADE '07. See the links to the powerpoint and short paper, and the really impressive tutorial vids. There is also a PhD blog by Sebastian Gmelin, who is using it for his dissertation.

IMHO, GC BIM Elements need to avoid being developed as just GC versions of BA’s walls etc, that are slaved to the GC ‘god script’ DAG way of working. Buildings are not designed using law curves and we don’t place doors using sliders. The option to work this way is great, but not sufficient on its own.

 

I think B-Processor’s origins as an architect-centric building modelling tool is responsible for the simple (but functional) way it handles / aggregates the relationships and 'reactions' between its intelligent scripted objects.

 

On the face of it, B-Processor offers a very clear and ‘natural’ (a bit of Knowledge Representation at work?) way to break up and control the ‘intelligence’ pent up in each building object, thereby negating the problematic requirement for a ‘master script’ or ‘master-scripter’.

 

B-Processor’s simple use of 'fields' to form ‘functional’ and ‘constructional’ spaces that have nested ‘Element’ and ‘Parts' is a flexible way to aggregate objects that also allows a ‘natural’ way to control LOD and component variation. It may not provide all the answers, but I think a good 'running-mate' to have?

 

The whole ‘building as aggregation of spaces, defined by skeleton geometry’ way of working also reminds me of the usefulness of having an available ‘topology’ in the GIS world. The way 'simple' geometric info like lines and shapes are looked at in terms of inside, outside, neighbouring etc (Implicit mathematical representation instead of parametric) and how this informs the way they are handled using rules-based processing is pretty amazing. Maybe a way to provide the ‘spatial indexing’ mentioned by Marques and Woodbury when they suggested that ‘explicit relationships’ were less desirable than ‘implicit’ ones.