Building Information Modeling

Introduction

Régine TEULIER^1,2 and Marie BAGIEU³

¹CNRS, CRG, Institut polytechnique, Paris, France

²Projet MINnD, Paris, France

³ESITC Caen, France

I.1. Genesis of building information modeling

The evolution of computer-aided design (CAD) and the development of computing capacity in the 1970s led to 3D modeling (Baba and Nobeoka 1998). Parametric modeling tools, based on object-oriented programming, became widespread throughout the industry, but their adaptation to the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector took several decades (Penttilä et al. 2007).

I.1.1. Concept

Eastman et al. (1975) introduced the concept of building description systems (BDS) in the 1970s and proposed a prototype for developing a general building description system. BDS has since been recognized as the precursor to building information modeling (BIM) tools, with several intermediate steps leading to the BIM process as we know it today (Latiffi et al. 2014), in the following sequence:

• GLIDE: Graphical Language for Interactive Design (Eastman and Henrion 1977);
• BPM: Building Product Model (Bjork 1989);
• GBM: Generic Building Model (Eastman and Siabiris 1995).

I.1.2. Acronym

Aish (1986) was the first to describe a CAD system in which information about the structure to be built would be integrated into the design, in a coherent and coordinated manner, by an entire multidisciplinary design team. In this regard, he spoke of building modeling. Later, Van Nederveen and Tolman (1992) proposed ...