BIM Design

CHAPTER 7

ASSEMBLIES AND THEIR SIMULATION

In the 1980s, alternative visions of computers and the future of design were expressed in competing views about programming. Some architects believed that designers needed to learn advanced programming. If designers did not understand how their tools were constructed, they would not only be dependent on computer experts but less likely to challenge screen realities. Other architects disagreed. They argued that, in the future, creativity would not depend on understanding one’s tools but on using them with finesse; the less one got tied up in the technical details of software, the freer one would be to focus on design.¹

Sherry Turkle, Simulation and its Discontents

Traditionally the driving issues at the beginning of the design process have been siting and environmental orientation, formal configuration, programmatic layout, and access and circulation. What if these could be paired with simulation operations such as environmental and solar performance, structural stability, natural and electronic lighting systems, and thermal analysis; how would this change the conventional workflow of design development? Coupled with notions of use and occupancy, the initial schematic design (information) model could test a large array of factors in design optimisation prior to later design stages involving large multi-disciplinary teams of consultants.

An assembly is defined as a series of components that are each linked to the assembly file, in the same ...