To enhance the standardization of prefabrication, modular design oriented to Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) has been widely adopted in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry in recent years by designing integrated volumetric modules instead of individual building components for on-site installation. However, the oversized or overweight modules escalate logistical challenges, which in turn adversely affect design flexibility, cost control, and environmental sustainability. Furthermore, standardization leads to a significant amount of repetitive design work. To narrow these gaps within the context of prefabricated frame-tube structures, design is generated through modularization and automated transformation, both of which are based on Building Information Modelling (BIM). In BIM-based modularization, a modularized floorplan is designed to derive different component-level floorplans that enable designers to combine both volumetric modules and individual components. These component-level floor plans are preliminary, while complete component-level floor plans are further generated through automated transformations, for which a design workflow is established. In this workflow, building information is initially automatically extracted from Industrial Foundation Class (IFC) files, further processed, stored in a graph data model, and retrieved using a graph database. After analyzing and integrating the data through established transformation rules, an automated BIM-based transformation scheme is generated. The design of a prefabricated residential building is presented as a case study to verify the BIM-based modularized design process and the automated design workflow, and finally, it implements automated transformations by developing a plug-in for the BIM authoring tool. This study can enhance design standardization and improve design efficiency for prefabricated frame-tube structures.     «

To enhance the standardization of prefabrication, modular design oriented to Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) has been widely adopted in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry in recent years by designing integrated volumetric modules instead of individual building components for on-site installation. However, the oversized or overweight modules escalate logistical challenges, which in turn adversely affect design flexibility, cost control, and environmental s...     »