Fabrication Information Modeling: Closing the gap between Building Information Modeling and Digital Fabrication

Additive manufacturing (AM) is no longer a new technology and is already being used profitably in many sectors of the economy. AM is also becoming increasingly popular in the construction industry, and more and more research is focused on unlocking new building materials for AM. As a digital fabrication method, AM provides many new opportunities for the design of innovative and complex architecture and also has the potential to increase the productivity of the construction industry. However, the planning effort can increase accordingly and only experts in this field are able to apply this technology to construction projects. A methodology to improve planning efficiency has already been developed for the construction industry in the form of Building Information Modeling. In BIM, however, only conventional manufacturing processes have been taken into account so far, meaning that computer-aided manufacturing processes such as AM are still considered separately. Even more importantly, the granularity of product and process information is normally not sufficient for automated manufacturing. For this reason, this study proposes a framework, Fabrication Information Modeling, which can be used to generate BIM-supported fabrication information for the use of AM in the context of construction projects. Additionally to an expected reduction in planning effort, FIM would also provide the means of realizing an end-to-end digital chain from the first draft to the production of a construction project.