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| Emperor Constantine I, Presenting the first Clash Free BIM Model of the City to the Blessed Virgin Mary |
We all have role models in our lives, people we look up to and wish we can be like (mine is Nassim Nicholas Taleb for example).
But can BIM Revit models have role models too? Yes they can!
I'm pretty sure any design engineer who works with Revit has come across projects where the project is divided into several packages, with the client begging the consultant to have consistency across all packages, to which the consultant replies with "Sure!" but usually doesn't achieve the desired consistency due to human error.
But, what if we can solve this problem with Machine Learning?
Using Memory Based Reasoning algorithms and Decision Trees, I was able to achieve this just last week.
Two weeks ago, I was assigned to the 4th package of a project. The first three packages were already delivered to the client. I had two choices; one, go through all the models, find the pattern of design and try to understand the way each system was designed, or two, let the machine do the learning and implementation? You guessed right.
I exported all the data from the previous 3 models to an SQL Server, trained the machine learning model on the merged data, and then provided the model with the rooms/spaces of the 4th package, and the result was each room with all the system requirements and elements placed on the Revit model automatically through Dynamo.
How much did all this take me to finish? Two days. Imagine this compared to the time it would have taken me to understand the previous 3 models and then the time to implement/design the systems manually, and the amount of errors I would have committed as a normal human being/engineer.
With more time to spare, I used the next few days for tweaking, fine tuning, and making sure the annotations are placed correctly.
Next step: expand the SQL database to be able to have a role model for upcoming projects with different clients.
Data science has endless possibilities and applications in BIM, can't wait to explore more opportunities/applications!
Cheers,
Edmond