In the scope of I&D initiatives the ISEPBIM group has today two projects on course: one related to the development of BIM support tools to foundations design, and another in the scope of development of geometrical survey techniques based on photogrammetry and with the support of an unmanned aerial vehicle.

The project of development of BIM support tools to foundations design has as an objective the automatization of the design of half-deep foundations, well foundation type, based on the rigid block method. Within this framework, it was developed a C# calculation program, using the Revit platform API. The interaction between the calculation program and the BIM model is made in the Revit environment, from an intuitive graphic interface by modeless forms, allowing the model’s handling as the calculation parameters are entered. The detailing of the well in drawn parts is made automatically by Revit by the creation of an autonomous object that includes various advanced proprieties.

The application of the tool in real study cases allowed to prove its efficiency and robustness bearing in mind to obtain the most economical and Eurocode’s requirements compliant solutions. Furthermore, this tool allowed to designers to take more sustainable decisions and less based on experience, allowing the creation of multiple sceneries swiftly and enabling the most adequate solution.

As part of the activities on course it matters to highlight some of the developments in implementation phase: i) the development of the Add-In and the Revit family in a way to allow the usage of associated parameters to physical quantities while complying with the IFC guidelines, allowing so, the interoperability with other programs; ii) the connection to the structural calculation software Autodesk Robot bearing in mind the automatic importation of the results on the base of the columns from numerical models, e iii) the development of an Android application for cell phone, that will allow to access the developed tool remotely.