AN INTEGRATED BIM-POWER BI APPROACH FOR DATA EXTRACTION AND VISUALIZATION

Abstract

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is one of the most promising advances in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. Even though BIM models are rich and very structured, they are not suitable for extracting information quickly and efficiently to respond to some specific queries required for making decisions. Hence, extracting information from BIM models is a very important and challenging issue. This motivated us to propose an integrated solution based on Dynamo and Power BI to allow extraction and visualization of BIM data according four relevant use cases in the AEC domain: cost extraction, clash detection, change detection and plan extraction. The research presented in this paper is based on programming algorithms on Dynamo for information extraction and creating dashboards on Power BI for the visualization of the extracted results. Additionally, we used a Revit plug-in which automates the execution of Dynamo scripts through customized buttons that correspond to each of the analyses treated in this research.