AutoGen-based AI assistant for improving the interactions between BIM and project teams for design coordination

Abstract: In the construction industry, building information modeling (BIM) has been widely utilized in design coordination. However, this process is time-consuming to query the required element information and still requires the support of the BIM coordinator. Meanwhile, during diverse participants’ discussions, it is challenging to record knowledge and experiences residing in their minds and timely respond to them in the BIM model. GPT-based Large Language Models (LLMs) enable providing automatic solutions but lack accuracy and consistency, specifically for the construction domain. To bridge these gaps, we propose to develop an AI BIM coordinator by integrating basic construction knowledge and skillset into the current AutoGen model. It aims to alleviate high-skill requirements and specific functions of traditional BIM development while enhancing the interdisciplinary interpretability and performance of AI models. Specifically, we first identify the frequent and common interactions between BIM and project teams during the design coordination meetings. Correspondingly, we build the skillset that includes basic functions regarding building element semantic, geometric, and topological information. With this skillset, our designed workflow can interpret 3D BIM space and answer specific questions from users through flexible revisions and extensions. Beyond the text responses that describe relations among elements, the BIM tool can be automatically invoked to execute this task and the model can be directly built in the 3D environment for stakeholders’ discussions in the design coordination meetings. If failed, our designed checker agent will regenerate the code until execution is succeeded. As users continually communicate with the AI BIM coordinator and provide feedback, the assistant can collect and annotate these data for fine-tuning the current model to make it more adaptive to specific construction tasks. For validation, a prototype system is developed with building design coordination meeting data. The results demonstrate that our designed workflow has better performance in execution succeeded rate (84.62%) and accuracy (76.92%) despite consuming more time (1 min 12 secs – 3 mins 1 sec) than general agent workflow.

Keywords: Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC), Building Information Modeling (BIM), Large Language Models (LLMs), AutoGen, Design Coordination

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005750

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