BIM-Based Plan Modeling System at Preliminary Stage for Residential Real Estate Projects

The preliminary stage of a residential real estate project is of great importance, but it is also known to be inefficient. However, a residential real estate project contains numerous built standard units such as dwelling units and floors. By introducing BIM, this research tapped the full potential advantage for improving the performance of the preliminary plan modeling in residential real estate projects. This research proposed a standard-unit-based modeling approach which contains 3 main steps: (1) standard unit management; (2) rapid plan modeling; and (3) in-time estimation. By integrating functions such as intelligent standard unit boundary revision, sun analysis, multi-level and information-based model visualization, a prototype system was developed based on this approach and was applied to a real estate project in Xian, China. The results indicate that this approach has the potential to improve the efficiency and quality of a preliminary plan.