BIM Project2_Nursing Unit Layout Evaluation

BACKGROUND
This project is related to my final thesis which is low-cost Shanghai general hospital. The project design focus on inpatient department design, because the balance between quantity and quality of inpatient units is a major challenge in this era of rapid population growth. According to related research on relative costs of building the various departments within the hospital building, inpatient nursing units represent the single largest components of the hospital cost (35-39%). (Ahmed H.Sherif) Efficient inpatient units design is crucial to cost control of the whole project.

The efficiency of the layout is the major factor of inpatient unit efficiency. It includes the average travel distance from nursing station to patient rooms, the  proportion of  NSF of patient rooms to the total square footage of the inpatient unit, length/width ratio, number of patient rooms in an inpatient unit.

INTRODUCTION

The BIM API model is a preliminary model of the inpatient unit  of my final project. I select the most relevant factors as parameter of my BIM model.  I use BIM API to retriever and caculate these data. According to a paper researching efficiency of general hospital, I weigh these data and finally generate a score for a certain type layout of inpatient unit.

This very basic inpatient unit model includes one nursing station and seven patient room. According to Chinese building code, all the patient rooms face toward either south or east.

When I run the API program, this form will show up. I made the interface semi-transparency so that it won't block the floor plan. The two numbers are weigh factor of travelling distance and patient room proportion. They are predefined in Command.cs.

Once click the button "show it" , the overall score will be shown in the textbox. After I slightly change the layout of the unit, you can see the score rises about ten points. The routes are automatically generated through a series of location points ( nursing station, opening of nursing station, door of a patient room and the patient room). I use splines to generate the routes because we cannot create curve in a Revit project. The way to create HermiteSpline is different with Curvebypoints.

In this case, there are only seven patient rooms in a inpatient unit compared to about 40 rooms in a real project. It will be a huge task if I calculate the length and room area separately.  Hence I use loop function to deal with collection of IDs.

Another challenge is to link form.cs to command.cs.   We need to make the parameter as public,   assign calculated value to it and create form using updated values.

BIM Project1_Sendai Mediatheque

                                          Fig.1  Sendai mediatheque (from Flicker)


Intro:
TheSendai Mediatheque by Toyo Ito is revolutionary in it’s engineering and aesthetic.Six steel-ribbed slabs slabs, each 15-3/4″ thick, appear to float from the street, supported by only thirteen vertical steel lattice columns that stretch from ground plane to the roof. This striking visual quality that is one of the most identifiable characteristics of the project is comprable to large trees in a forest, and function as light shafts as well as storage for all of the utilities, networks and systems.(Archdaily)                   
                                                                   
This is a video about Sendai Mediatheque in the earthquake.

http://www.archdaily.com/120114/video-experiencing-the-japan-earthquake-from-the-sendai-mediatheque/

In the earthquake, the floors are damaged while the columns are still in good condition. It was proved that the building was succeeded in resisting earthquake. 

Modeling Process:

0.       Figure out what the building is like.

1.       Scratch floor plans from pictures into AutoCAD file and import into Revit.

2.       Create site and masses of different building parts; create floors, ceilings and roof. Define the material according to real building components.

3.       Create walls and define doors and windows

4.       Add circulation components, including ramps and stairs.

5.       Create shafts on the floors and import the structural tube.

6.       Detailing the model: define different types of curtain wall; add furniture, lights, trees and people.

7.       Rendering

The main challenge of modeling the main building is the amount of work since there are ten totally different floor plans and the height of the floors varies. 
When I was modeling the basement, I imported a CAD file of wrong proportion. I didn't realize it until I finished all the walls, ramps, stairs and parking lots on the basement and I cannot scale it. There is a question came up with: IPD requires us to put more efforts into the beginning phase of an architecture design when change of the design offten occurs. Revit provides high efficiency of modifying a model but it is difficult to change the model, so what 's the design process with BIM.
  

Critics: 
+ =positive comments   - = negative comments    != Tips  ?=not figured out yet

+ Mass Tool is easy to create irregular form and we can add floors quickly with the help of mass

- Relay too much on mouse operation which slower the process of modeling

- Visibility control is too complicated than layers in other CAD software

- For example, if we want to change the thickness of a wall, we have to duplicate the wall type and edit type properties. It is very slow...
! Create from a template: otherwise you will not have predefined plan views and elevations.
! Create irregular ramps or stairs: modify the boundary and riser separately.
! Fillet the wall: draw a new wall and there is an option with which you can fillet the existing wall.
? How to trim the wall underneath a ramp: do we have to create it in  a mass family?


Parametric modeling

It is parametric component of the structural tube

We can change the dimension of it to control the height, location, radius of it.

My first attempt: Create  two circles on different plans and then use array tool to find segment points on each circle. Connect the points with lines and create form

Problems:  1.We cannot array items in a conceptual mass family.
                  2. I succeeded in creating "spokes" in generic model and I can control the rotation angle of it.
                       But I cannot draw inclined vertical lines in  a generic model family


My Final Solution: