Development of cloud-based collaborative BIM modelling software

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Construction practitioners, researchers, and other stakeholders of construction in Canada are becoming increasingly cognizant of the need for a transformation in home building methods. The automotive sector has enjoyed the benefits of automated design and manufacturing for years, and now the time has come, with the skilled labour shortage and high demand for affordable housing, to propel that same automation toward the home building industry. There has been an increasing demand for extensions (i.e., add-ons enabled by Application Programming Interface) to existing design and drafting products in order to address the specific needs of the modular building industry and a cloud-based information sharing environment intended for direct collaboration among multiple project stakeholders (e.g., consumers and building designers). Therefore, the aim of this research is to develop cloud-based building information modelling (BIM) tools for collaborative editing and sharing of a model by users of widely different skill sets, from consumer to panelized home designer, estimator, and production manager. In order to achieve the proposed objective, three activities will be conducted: (1) migration of the collaborating company's (Cadsoft Corporation's) code base to a service-oriented architecture; (2) real-time collaborative model editing; and (3) automated manufacturing-centric BIM. It can be expected that through this project the industry partner can benefit by redefining their current BIM software, and the building industry can improve its productivity and efficiency of design and drafting, decision making, and production. The proposed research will form a BIM system that is suitable to the modularization/panelization construction industry, and which optimizes the material usage of projects and reduces carbon chemical emissions incurred during construction. These combined efforts will increase the workforce in the housing industry, will lead to wider adoption of Cadsoft's Envisioneer software by home builders, and will create increased demand for skilled jobs in the manufactured housing and design markets.