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Townhouse BIM: open the house before you build it

A five-storey townhouse as a BIM model, ready to use below. Structure, architecture, interiors, plumbing and power sit in one model of 1,544 elements; with nothing to install you can turn it, pull the floors apart, walk inside and watch a year of sunlight come in. Hand us your drawings and this is what you get: a link like this one, plus the model and quantity tables ready for tender.

Client
Five-storey townhouse (demo model)
Practice
Construction Intelligence
Scope
BIM modelling · web 3D viewer · plumbing & power view · walkthrough · sun study · quantity tables
Status
Drag to rotate · scroll or pinch to zoom · right-drag or two fingers to pan · click an element for its data・Needs WebGL; on a phone, use “Open full screen”.Open full screen ↗

Scroll the page from outside the model.

  1. Pull the floors apart

    Press “分層展開” at the bottom, then use “樓層” at top right to isolate one floor; click any column or wall for its data.

  2. Walk inside

    Switch to “漫遊”, click the floor to walk there and drag to look around; arrow keys or WASD to move, the joystick at bottom left on phones.

  3. Follow the pipes and cables

    Press “水電”: supply, hot water, drainage and vents, rainwater and power light up while everything else goes translucent; click a system to toggle it.

  4. See the winter light

    Switch to “日照”, pick the winter solstice or any day, then drag the hour or press play to see which room gets sun when.

The challenge挑戰

The dearest mistakes
are found after building.

  • Drawings are hard to read

    Plans, elevations and sections are read separately, so it's hard to picture the finished house; by the time it's clear, you're already on site.

  • Quantities are guessed

    Guess the quantities wrong and every quote is wrong with them; each contractor counts their own way, so nothing compares.

  • The file won't open

    BIM needs specialist software, so family, contractors and the bank never get to see it.

What we built做法

One link,
the whole building.

01

One link, the whole house

Nothing to install: it opens on a phone, tablet or computer. Send it to family, the contractor, the bank or the designer, and everyone looks at the same model, the same version.

02

Every floor comes apart

Pull the floors apart, isolate one floor, or make the upper structure translucent to see the foundation and ground-improvement piles. Click any column, wall or window for its type, floor and size.

03

Plumbing and power are in there too

Supply, hot water, drainage and vents, rainwater and power are modelled too, as an assumed layout. Press “水電” and they light up while everything else goes translucent, so the plumber and electrician see the runs before they quote.

04

Walk through it before you build

Walk in through the front door and check each room's height, the width of the corridors, how the stairs turn. Too narrow, a door that won't open, a beam at head height: fixing it in the model costs far less than fixing it on site.

05

A year of sunlight

Pick any day and drag to any hour to see which room gets sun when, how long the roof's solar panels are lit, and which window needs shading.

06

Quantities, not estimates

Every element in the model can be counted, so the concrete, formwork, rebar and earthwork tables come straight out of it. Every contractor quotes against the same table, so the differences finally show.

07

The files are yours

The IFC4 model (tied to no software), the Blender model (.blend / .glb), the BIM drawing set as PDF, door, window and fitting schedules, and the excavation calculation (Excel / PDF).

Results數字

Where it stands

1,544

elements in one model

LOD 300

level of development

5

storeys, plus roof levels

0

programs to install

Built withStack

  • three.js
  • IFC4
  • Blender

Construction Intelligence營建工程數位化

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like this?

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