Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505

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Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

BIM-enabled computerized design and digital fabrication of

industrialized buildings: A case study
Rui He a, Mingkai Li b, Vincent J.L. Gan c, *, Jun Ma d
a
School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chang’an University, Xi’an, China
b
School of Civil Engineering and Transportation, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China
c
Department of Building, School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, Singapore
d
Department of Urban Planning and Design, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Industrialized construction leverages factory-based manufacturing and lean-site assembly to achieve
Received 22 April 2020 higher industrial efficiency. Building information modeling (BIM) offers new opportunities to underpin
Received in revised form the computerized design and fabrication of industrialized buildings, providing greater productivity and
11 July 2020
cost-effectiveness. In this study, attempts are made to review the state-of-the-art BIM applications on
Accepted 26 July 2020
Available online 10 August 2020
design and prefabrication automation of industrialized buildings, with more emphasis on the recent
achievement in concrete 3D printing technology. Following this, a BIM method is proposed to support
Handling editor: M.T. Moreira the detailed geometry design and digital fabrication of modular housings. A program interfaced within
BIM is developed and demonstrated through discussions on its capacity in generating the geometry
Keywords: details of 3D-printed modules. In addition, robotic simulation of 3D printing is performed to explore a
3D printing flexible plan in producing the 3D-printed modules or components. The lessons learned from the study
Building information modeling are discussed to highlight the future research challenges and opportunities. First, as current Industry
Computational design Foundation Classes-based BIM model provides limited support to prefabrication, research on BIM open
Construction automation
standards demands more attentions to interoperate the computerized design and computer-aided
Industrialized building
manufacturing. Moreover, today’s industrialized buildings consist of sophisticated architectural, struc-
Prefabrication
tural, and mechanical systems that are intervened across the whole life cycle, more research on the
interdependent building systems is needed (via digital twins) to optimize the life cycle performance.
When moving towards data-driven decision making, there are research needs to expand Internet of
Things and Artificial Intelligence to collect the big data from prefabrication, perform predictive analysis,
and optimize the control decisions for manufacturing facilities operations. This study illustrates the
process and future work in BIM design and prefabrication automation that can assist practitioners to
enhance the quality of industrialized construction.
© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction is moving towards environmental and social sustainability. First,

Industrialized building system is an innovative technology that
shifts the value of building activities from traditional construction
sites to off-site factory-based manufacturing. It provides greater
automation and productivity, increases project cost efficiency, and
improves site safety. A range of international initiatives have
fostered the adoption of industrialized off-site construction (WEF,
2016; Zhang et al., 2019). Today’s industrialized buildings face
new challenges which are gaining more attentions as the industry
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: vincent.gan@nus.edu.sg (V.J.L. Gan).
there is a growing interest for modularity as it has been proven to
be powerful for design simplification, lower product variation, and
mass production (Baldwin et al., 2000; Viana et al., 2017). However,
the concept of modularity demands more detailed computerized
design and modeling at the early stage to avoid failures in the
module manufacture. In addition, although the rising idea of mass
customization fulfils the efficiency of mass production and specific
requirements of different customers (Viana et al., 2017), it demands
a more feasible process in the off-site prefabrication in factories.
Building information modeling (BIM) is increasingly used to
overcome the emerging challenges of industrialized building sys-
tems due to its capability of design visualization, improved data

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.123505
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
exchanges, etc. (Afzal et al., 2020). BIM enables designers to
virtually represent the built assets (i.e., buildings, components and
materials) and optimize their design performance in the physical
world to meet client’s requirements (Zhang et al., 2016). The state-
of-the-art BIM approaches for computerized design and optimiza-
tion of buildings were investigated. Among these, Solnosky et al.
(2014) proposed a structural BIM process to support the design
and construction of multi-story modular buildings. The previous
studies have indicated that the integration of certain design rules
within BIM environment can increase the radical use of BIM for
prefabrication industry (Singh et al., 2015). BIM provides the digital
representation of a building along with its geometric and semantic
information, allowing stakeholders to identify the key parameters
and the intervention among different geometric entities. Such
predefined parametric relationship and intervention can be used
for generating and optimizing the industrialized building model,
and it has evolved into a trend in architectural engineering. By
integrating BIM and parametric design tools, Gan et al. (2019b)
proposed a novel hybrid metaheuristic approach to optimize the
structural layout of high-rise reinforced concrete buildings. Huang
and Fan (2018) built a BIM-enabled parametric prototype system
for calculating the life cycle carbon emissions of industrialized
buildings. Recent studies (Yuan et al., 2018) have also attempted to
leverage the cutting-edge Design for Manufacture and Assembly
(DfMA) concept into the parametric modeling process of pre-
fabricated buildings. For industrialized buildings, the use of BIM
and parametric design facilitates the adjustment of building models
for a wide-ranging exploration of design options to meet client’s
requirement on customized features.
In addition to the computerized design, BIM has been used to
automate and/or optimize the cost estimation (Barkokebas et al.,
2015), layout planning (Gan et al., 2019c), off-site manufacturing
(Abanda et al., 2017), site logistics planning and control (Bortolini
et al., 2019) of industrialized buildings. Lu et al. (2011) presented
a BIM-based lean-agile supply chain to manage the trade-off be-
tween builders’ standardization and clients’ customization re-
quirements. The results indicated that BIM serves as an effective
platform to systematically analyze the trade-off amongst both
builders and clients. The prefabricated units can be also produced
according to the fabrication schedule generated from the BIM
model and then transported to the construction site for assembly
(Alwisy et al., 2012). However, the benefits of using BIM for onsite
assembly of prefabricated construction can be hardly cultivated
with an incomplete data exchange and the lack of real-time visi-
bility (Li et al., 2018). As such, Li et al. (2018) presented a novel
Internet of Things (IoT)-based BIM platform to underpin the onsite
assembly services for prefabricated housing projects in Hong Kong.
Another study (Cu

s-Babi

c et al., 2014) also highlighted the inter-
operability of BIM, as a transparent information hub about the
material resources across the design, manufacturing, and con-
struction processes, which would bring huge benefits to the
stakeholders of industrialized construction projects.
BIM models provide rich geometric and semantic information
such as materials, resource and manufacturing data, that can also
be put into simulating different manufacturing strategies and
identifying a flexible prefabrication plan. In light of this, the
cutting-edge 3D printing technology is considered as a promising
solution to enhance the flexibility of off-site prefabrication (Wu
et al., 2016). This is because formwork is not needed in 3D print-
ing, manufacturing customized components becomes more feasible
at no extra cost, giving more design freedom (Wu et al., 2016). On
the other hand, prefabricated components are usually designed as
standard repeated units to meet the requirements of transportation
and assembly. It is considered more suitable for the adoption of 3D
printing in term of personalization of components (Lim et al., 2012).
The wide-ranging application of 3D printing is subject to many
factors such as the large-scale development of industrialized
buildings, the structural integrity of 3D-printed components, and
the cost of the printing technology. For this reason, Hager et al.
(2016) has studied the effectiveness of 3D printing technology as
an alternative construction method to be embraced by the building
industry. By far, most variations of 3D printing in construction are
categorized as Contour Crafting (Khoshnevis, 2004), Concrete
Printing (Lim et al., 2009) and D-shape (Tay et al., 2017). Contour
Crafting method was introduced at the University of Southern
California for the rapid prototyping to produce large complex-
shaped concrete with smooth surfaces (Khoshnevis and Dutton,
1998). Two trowels were used in this process and served as solid
plane surfaces, allowing the smooth surfaces of the object to be
accurately printed (Khoshnevis, 2004). The use of software plat-
form for data retrieval and analysis from BIM models was proposed
for robotic construction contour crafting (Davtalab et al., 2018). Due
to the limited capacity of controlling the printed object’s geometry,
a research group of University of Loughborough, UK (Lim et al.,
2011) proposed the Concrete Printing technology to enable a bet-
ter control method. A practical example to illustrate the design and
manufacture of a concrete component was provided by Lim et al.
(2009), which demonstrated a suitable reinforcement strategy for
printing large components. D-shape was a relatively new kind of
binder jetting method, depositing selectively a liquid binder on top
of layers that bonds the material powder to produce the object. The
need of removing large amounts of unbound material powders
could limit its applicability to the large-scale prefabrication.
The practical use of concrete 3D printing were explored in the
literature (Ding et al., 2014; Sakin and Kiroglu, 2017). For example, a
gantry printer with 3 or 4 degrees of freedom (DOF) is used in
producing large-scale standardized components (Paul et al., 2018).
The crane system is another practical concrete 3D printing
approach successfully adopted (Sakin and Kiroglu, 2017). While
gantry and crane printers are advantageous to scale in size, the
lower DOF also constrains their applicability to manufacturing a
wide variety of customized complex-shaped objects. As such, ar-
ticulated robots with higher speed and DOF were developed (Paul
et al., 2018). Although robot arms are usually fixed and have the
difficulty in scaling up the printed object’s size, the advantages of
using a robotic arm lies in its high DOF, enabling more flexible
prefabrication and complex printing tasks. Most currently, a
replacement with a single large robot was proposed, where mul-
tiple mobile robots concurrently used localization and path plan-
ning technology to print an object together (Zhang et al., 2018).
While BIM was used in the computerized design or off-site
prefabrication of industrialized buildings, fundamental under-
standing of the relationships between design, detailed modeling,
and fabrication automation (e.g., 3D printing) is still very limited.
Yin et al. (2019) has emphasized the need of using BIM to incor-
porate the design knowledge (such as DfMA) to optimize the design
for off-site prefabrication projects. Especially, 3D printing as a
promising computer-controlled manufacturing method is utilized
to improve the flexibility of off-site prefabrication, it becomes more
important to study the intervention between the computerized
design in BIM and the 3D printing process. Therefore, this study
aims to develop a BIM-enabled approach to underpin the
computerized design and prefabrication of industrialized buildings.
Specifically, the present study focuses on BIM applications to sup-
port the detailed geometry design and digital fabrication (i.e., 3D
printing) in the prefabrication of modular housings. A customized
program interfaced within the BIM is introduced through discus-
sions about its capacity in generating the geometry details of 3D-
printed modules. Next, robotic 3D printing simulation is carried out
to explore a flexible production plan in manufacturing the 3D-
 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
printed modules/components. The findings are discussed to
emphasize the parameter relations in design and prefabrication,
and to highlight the future research challenges. This study illus-
trates the current process and future work in BIM, design and
prefabrication automation that can assist practitioners to further
enhance the quality of industrialized construction.
2. Methodology
This section presents the methodology for applying BIM in the
computerized design and digital fabrication of modular housings.
Fig. 1 provides an overview of the process map. The proposed BIM
method starts by creating a group of architectural models for
standardized components and modules, which is composed of the
basic geometry, material property, dimension, etc. The BIM
designed 3D models of standardized modules are combined to
generate the floor plan of the modular housing, which is then
analyzed to support the development of detailed geometry models
of the printed objects.
The detailed geometry models could be developed in accor-
dance with specific material requirements and mechanical con-
straints. While it is advised to undergo an optimization process for
the layer pattern and topology distribution to remove unnecessary
materials, this study considers the use of a customized parametric
design tool interfaced within BIM to generate and manipulate the
geometry of 3D-printed objects. The detailed geometry models in
BIM, expressed usually in Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data
format, is transformed to STL (backronym as “Standard Triangle
Language”) for prototyping, wherein a small scale in-house 3D
printer is used to produce the geometry models for identifying the
potential design defects and then resolving the interferences at
Fig. 1. Process map of BIM-enabled computerized design and fabrication of industrialized buildings with applications to modular housings.
3
early stage. Thereafter, virtual simulation of 3D printing is exam-
ined to evaluate a feasible tool path and production plan for the 3D-
printed modules or components. The basic motion and trajectory of
the robotic arm are studied to evaluate the efficiency of 3D printing
in prefabrication.
2.1. BIM-enabled computerized design
As Fig. 2 shows, the developed BIM method first creates the
architectural models for a group of fundamental precast elements
(such as façade panels, washroom and kitchen room) with refer-
ences to the practical design adopted by local engineers and
manufacturers. Designed BIM model provides the basic geometry
including the standard length, width, depth, number of opening,
window type, etc. of the standardized components. In addition, BIM
model provides the semantic information such as materials (like
reinforced concrete, plaster/wooden walls, their properties) and
the component functionality (structural or partition elements).
When moving towards the design exploration of industrialized
buildings, the designed 3D models of the fundamental precast el-
ements are combined to form standardized modules in various
sizes, consisting of smaller-sized modular units for one or two
persons, and larger-sized modules for bigger families. The stan-
dardized modules can be further combined to generate the floor
plan of the modular housing, taking into consideration the
enhancement of indoor air ventilation and environmental sus-
tainability. Following this, the designed 3D models of the modular
units are analyzed in order to provide the detailed geometry
models and prototyping. In this study, one or more design variables
and constraints are defined to characterize the 3D model of
modular housings, as follows:
4 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505

The function represents the entire floor plan at orientation t changed by different geometrical combinations of the fundamental
with a total number of modular units J, each of which consists of a precast elements, which in turn influence the layout configuration
set of precast elements I. The size and position of a module can be of the modular housing. The function ensures that each part of the

Fig. 2. BIM-enabled computerized design including the creation of fundamental precast elements, the combination of precast elements into module, and the detailing/prototyping
of 3D-printed modules.
 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
modular housing meets the design geometry constraints including
floor area FA(t) and side aspect ratio AR(t) respectively. Specifically,
Ca refers to the minimum total floor area for the building, whereas
CLar and CHar stand for the minimum and maximum aspect ratios,
respectively. D(Zji, Ck) is the distancing constraint, wherein Cd is the
maximum allowable distance between a modular unit and its
closest public area Ck. Upon establishing a new layout configura-
tion, data-driven models based on deep neural network can be
established in accordance with wind tunnel experiments and/or
computational fluid dynamics simulations from the literature. The
floor plan (such as the position of each modular unit) is described
based on several criteria, and assigned as the input features for the
deep neural network, such as module type, module position,
building orientation, floor height, etc. All the features are converted
to tabular data and normalized. The building air ventilation,
expressed as air change per hour, for different modular units are
labeled and served as the output for training a robust deep neural
network to assist the ventilation performance prediction and to
enhance the ventilation design.
The floor plan is further analyzed to check the integrity of the
modular fabricated units in order to provide the detailed geometry
models for 3D printing. Geometry detailing includes the develop-
ment of the infill shape and pattern of the printed object. The first
task is to determine the geometry of the infill, in which case ma-
terial properties, construction sequence and geometrical
Fig. 3. The customized program in BIM using Dynamo virtual programming.
5
constraints should be taken into consideration to improve both
structural performance and construction efficiency of the printed
object. For example, maintaining a minimum radius of curvature is
essential when introducing corners to alleviate the difference in
deposition rate between the outside and inside of the filament.
Currently, there is no standardized pattern for the infill in 3D
printing processes, though in most projects periodic zigzag curves
are employed for the internal area. Fig. 3 demonstrates a custom-
ized program in BIM using Dynamo virtual programming
(Autodesk, 2019), which can be utilized to generate the infill ge-
ometry of 3D-printed objects. The program first extracts the control
lines of the elements selected CL(e), which then generates the ge-
ometry G of customized infills and the exterior layers with con-
trolling parameters specified by users. In addition, information
including the locations and dimensions of doors and windows can
be further extracted, and corresponding solid B will be removed
from G to achieve the final detailed geometry model. The detailed
procedure is shown below.
Since formwork-free 3D printing does not have extra difficulties
in creating elements with different sections, the developed pro-
gram could be used to vary, improve and optimize the infill pattern
of individual component and/or modular units, as shown in
Fig. 4(a). As the object is usually not printed in solid form, an
additional prototyping process is required to validate the designed
6 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
Fig. 4. Conceptual illustration of (a) customized programs for geometry detailing and (b) prototyping of 3D-printed objects.
geometry model in BIM and resolve any interferences at the early
stage. For this purpose, the detailed geometry model in BIM in IFC
data format is transformed to STL file. Next, a small in-house 3D
printer (Fig. 4(b)) can be used to produce the geometry model for
identifying the design defects and then resolving the interferences
at early stage. The prototyped models can then be used in robotic
simulation to evaluate a feasible tool path and production plan for
3D printing.
2.2. Virtual simulation of 3D printing
In this study, a robotic 3D printing system with four DOF is
proposed (see Fig. 5). It consists of four DOF with translation ca-
pacity along a sliding rail in the x direction (denoted by ① in the
figure) and in-plane rotation of each robotic arm (denoted by
②~④). The basic motions of the robotic arm are studied to evaluate
the efficiency of 3D printing. In the material extrusion process, the
3D model in STL format is first sliced into layers with desired
printing parameters (such as nozzle diameter and layer thickness),
Fig. 5. Prototype of a four DOF robotic 3D printing system (a robotic arm installed on a
sliding rail that allows the robotic arm to move horizontally to complete the 3D
printing task).
and then the layer pattern is segmented into several sub-regions to
generate a tool path. Current concrete printing processes involve
tool paths for the component’s boundary and the internal area (e.g.,
zigzag-shaped infill). In these cases, the optimization problem can
be considered as a traveling salesman problem (Zhang and
Khoshnevis, 2013), which means evolutionary algorithms can be
employed to solve the problem. A desirable tool path not only
enhance the precision and surface quality of 3D printing, but also
minimize the construction time and forming material
requirements.
There is a space for optimization of the tool path considering
material properties (such as viscosity, flowability and setting time),
machine parameter (such as pump flow rate, velocity and acceler-
ation) and collapse avoidance of the printed part, to allow unifor-
mity of material deposition and appropriate deposition sequence.
In this study, two different tool paths are compared to avoid ma-
terial over-printing, minimize the idle period of the deposition
head, and improve the printing quality. Specifically, the flow rate
should properly match with the print head speed to avoid incon-
sistency in the layer thickness. In addition, the time interval be-
tween layers should be controlled in an appropriate range based on
material properties to ensure the adhesion between layers (Buswell
et al., 2018).
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Prototype of geometry models
The proposed BIM method is examined to explore the detailed
geometry design of a smaller-sized modular unit that consists of a
kitchen, a bathroom and a living room in standard sizes. Fig. 6(a)
shows the computerized design of the modular unit using the
customized Dynamo program interfaced within BIM. The devel-
oped program further applies parametric modeling to conveniently
generate and manipulate the geometry details (such as the infill
pattern) of the modular unit, as shown in Fig. 6(b). Following this, a
small in-house 3D printer is used to prototype the BIM designed
models by identifying and resolving the potential defects and in-
terferences at early stage. Fig. 6(c) and (d) show the material
extrusion process of 3D printer and the printed solid 3D model.
Once the 3D-printed model is verified, the geometry details in BIM
are transformed to virtual simulation to study the motion and
trajectory of 3D printing.
 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505 7

Fig. 6. Conceptual illustration of module prototyping and manufacturing including (a) computerized design using the customized program in BIM, (b) geometry detailing of 3D-
printed models, (c) 3D printing using small scale in-house 3D printer, and (d) prototyped model for identifying and resolving interference.

Fig. 7. The two proposed tool paths to complete each layer of the 3D-printed component (l - length of long boundary; b - length of short boundary; s - length of zigzag path (s > l); E
- extrusion of materials; L - lift of nozzle to next layer).

3.2. 3D printing simulation
Fig. 7 compares the two typical tool path strategies to complete
a simple printed object and illustrates the idle time between points
in two adjacent layers. Tool Path 1 refers to the strategy of
completing each layer in the same sequence of nozzle movement,
while Tool Path 2 starts the printing of a new layer at the end of the
previous layer. Fig. 8 shows the time gap of each point in two
adjacent layers. Basic assumptions are made to simplify the anal-
ysis: (1) the nozzle moves at a velocity of v1 during printing and
8 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505

Fig. 8. Time gap of each point in adjacent layers between the two proposed tool paths.

moves at a velocity of v2 during idle time (v2 > v1); (2) the accel- and it is closely associated with the forming material’s properties.
eration/deceleration process is neglected when the nozzle ap- To be specific, the time gap should only be minimized if this value
proaches the corners. It’s worth noting that it may not be necessary shows a negative correlation with the components’ mechanical
to minimize this value at different zones of the print components properties; if the time gap has no remarkable effect on the

Table 1
Basic motions in fabricating a panelized component.

Motion (side view) Illustration Formulation

(1) Translation of the nozzle along y axis to print the short boundaries x1 ¼ x0
y1 ¼ y0 þ △y
z1 ¼ z0
l1 (sin q1’ - sin q1) þ l2 (cos q2’ - cos
q2) ¼ △y
l1 cos q1’ - l2 sin q2’ ¼ z0
q2’ þ q3’ ¼ p/2

(2) Translation of the printer along x axis to print the long boundaries x1 ¼ x0 þ △x
y1 ¼ y0
z1 ¼ z0
q1’ ¼ q1
q2’ ¼ q2
q3’ ¼ q3

(3) Translation of the printer along x axis and translation of the nozzle along y axis to print the x1 ¼ x0 þ △x
zigzag path y1 ¼ y0 þ △y
z1 ¼ z0
l1 (sin q1’ - sin q1) þ l2 (cos q2’ - cos
q2) ¼ △y
l1 cos q1’ - l2 sin q2’ ¼ z0
q2’ þ q3’ ¼ p/2

(4) Lift of the nozzle to allow transition from one layer to the next x1 ¼ x0
y1 ¼ y0
z1 ¼ z0 þ △z
l1 (cos q1’ - cos q1) - l2 (sin q2’ - sin
q2) ¼ △z
l1 sin q1’ þ l2 cos q2’ ¼ y0
q2’ þ q3’ ¼ p/2

Note: continuous lines represent the original poses of robotic arms, while dot-and-dash lines represent the poses after movement.
 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
Fig. 9. Schematic diagram of robotic 3D printing simulation (the four basic motions are highlighted by different colors in accordance with the description in Table 1). (For
interpretation of the references to color in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
mechanical property when it is increased/decreased to a specific
value, it can be considered as a constraint for the optimization
problem. Besides, the time gap may not be too small for some
concrete mix with a high slump, since it requires time to develop
strength to bear the weight of upper layers. A trade-off may also
exist when it comes to the fabrication quality and machining effi-
ciency, since a longer idle time between adjacent layers has
remarkable effects on mechanical properties of printed concrete
components due to setting time and bounding between the two
layers.
After the critical tool path is determined, the basic motions of
the robotic 3D printing system can be identified, as shown in
Table 1. In this study, Tool Path 1 is selected for the analysis. The
robotic motions are decomposed into four individual movements,
which include (1) translation of the nozzle along y axis to print the
short boundaries; (2) translation of the printer along x axis to print
the long boundaries; (3) translation of the printer along x axis and
translation of the nozzle along y axis to print the zigzag path; and
(4) lift of the nozzle to allow transition from one layer to the next.
All the values of DOF can be determined by the original set of
values, which mean all the DOF value can be determined explicitly
for every moment given the initial values of DOF and the tool path
(instructing the nozzle’s movement in 3D space). Supposing that x0
and y0 are the starting points of the zigzag path, △y and △x need
to follow a certain mathematical formulation to generate auto-
matically the infill. For example, if the infill has a sine-shaped curve,
△y should be expressed as a function of sin(△x).
The basic motions of the 3D printing process are simulated to
validate the manufacturing strategy. The simulator can be adjusted
to evaluate different manufacturing strategies and to determine the
most appropriate production plan. Fig. 9 shows a schematic dia-
gram of the 3D printing simulation, in which the 3D-printed
components are fabricated layer by layer on the top of a work
platform in accordance with the sliced geometry model from BIM.
Starting from point A, the 3D printer first translates the nozzle for
printing the short edge AB in accordance with the formulation of
Motion 1. The degree of rotation can be derived from the length of
the short edge, i.e., l1 (sin q1’ - sin q1) þ l2 (cos q2’ - cos q2) ¼ △y.
Next, the 3D printer remains its gesture and moves on the sliding
rail along x direction to print another boundary BC (Motion 2),
which is perpendicular to the short edge AB. Once the nozzle rea-
ches the end of the long edge, the 3D printer translates again to
printing another short edge CD and moves horizontally to complete
9
printing DA. After the 3D printer produces a completed boundary,
the robotic arms translate repeatedly (based on Motion 3) to pro-
duce the infill which follows a zigzag shape in this study. Following
this, the robotic arm returns to the starting point A, lifting the
nozzle to the next layer (Motion 4). In the present study, the height
of the printed component is within the reach of the robotic arm.
4. Lessons learned
4.1. Design aspect: structural integrity of industrialized buildings
Developing a proper design strategy to obtain sufficient
robustness and ductility for structural integrity is one of the con-
cerns when applying concrete printing (Bos et al., 2016). In con-
ventional construction, reinforcements or post-tensioning steels
are added to the concrete for better anti-seismic performance and
structural reliability. While post-tensioning reinforcement and
imbedded reinforcements or steel mesh on intermediate layers are
used in some projects, these methods are carried out manually. To
achieve the potential benefits of construction automation, the
process of placement of the reinforcements in different directions
should be fully automated. Van Zijl et al. (2016) provided a solution
for the extrusion of strain-hardening cement-based composites
with steel bars. In this case, steel bars are entered horizontally and
drawn automatically through special openings. Bos et al. (2018)
developed a device to directly entrain a reinforcement medium
into the filament of the printed concrete. In this method, wire re-
inforcements with high flexibility are used, allowing the print head
movement in 3D space. Using composite fiber mixed into printing
filament is another technology, which has been found effective for
improving the structural capacity and ductility of concrete (He
et al., 2020). Nevertheless, placed reinforcements on intermediate
layers or between the filament layers have limited effects on
improving the shear capacity of the layer interface.
Another strategy is to choose an appropriate structural system
to enhance the stability and robustness of the whole industrialized
building. A structural system with one or several concrete cores is
widely used for modular high-rise buildings, in which cases pre-
fabricated modules are designed to resist compression whereas the
core provides overall stability. Modules are either clustered sur-
rounding a concrete core or connected to in-plane trusses placed
within the corridors (Lawson et al., 2012). In the former case, the
horizontal load is directly transferred to the concrete core, while in
10 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
Fig. 10. Information exchange using BIM and open standards for the design and prefabrication automation of industrialized buildings.
the latter case, the horizontal load is first transferred to the trusses
and then to the core. However, 3D-printed modules have lower
inter-layer shear capacity due to the layer-by-layer manufacturing
process and the difficulty of adding reinforcements in the printed
object. Therefore, practical reinforcement installation using
different arrangements in the 3D-printed modules, and appropriate
connections between modules should gain more attentions in the
future.
4.2. Prefabrication aspect: infomration exchange and integration
Proper information exchange between BIM and computer-aided
manufacturing (CAM) systems are fundamental needs for the
integrative design and prefabrication of industrialized buildings.
However, current IFC data model in BIM provides limited support to
represent the information related to off-site prefabrication.
Although interoperability standards such as information delivery
manual (IDM) was explored to specify the information exchange
requirement for industrialized buildings (Ramaji and Memari,
2015), research on the extension of existing IFC data model still
demands more attentions. Fig. 10 shows the potential future
enhancement based on BIM and open standards (See et al., 2012).
The first task in delivering IFC-based data exchange is to identify
the information requirement in the prefabrication industry. The
next step is to develop interoperability standards (i.e., IDM) which
include (1) a process model to describe the configuration of activ-
ities in prefabrication, (2) an exchange requirement to specify the
information exchange (e.g., level of details) for a particular fabri-
cation process, and (3) a model view definitions (MVD) diagram
representing a group of concepts and their relationships. Following
this, an instantiation diagram can be developed to display the
extended precast entities in IFC according to the MVD concept
description. The prefab-related information in BIM can then be
automatically extracted and converted into the fabrication data
format (e.g., PXML/UXML for precast concrete) to facilitate
manufacturing operations.
The interdependent parameters through the design and pre-
fabrication processes can be analyzed more efficiently. For example,
the mortar or cement-based materials for concrete 3D printing
solidify slower than the conventional construction, and therefore
could result in pre-setting. The quality and environmental
sustainability of concrete 3D printing can be improved by using
biochar as a carbon sequester (Marou
sek et al., 2017) in concrete
and/or fly ash-based geopolymer (He et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2020)
as potential substitutes for Portland cement. Based on the infor-
mation integration, these new material properties can be param-
eterized and integrated in BIM designed models to analyze the
influence of material design changes on the quality and sustain-
ability of the printed object. Hence, the manufacturing decisions
can be optimized up front at the early design and development
stage. A holistic computerized platform can also be developed to
optimize the tool path and control algorithms, such as (1) boundary
filling which tackles how to fill up a patch of internal area contin-
uously and (2) tool sequencing which focuses on an appropriate
order to connect sub-paths (Jin et al., 2014). The platform can
collect historical manufacturing data (geometry details of the
modules, 3D printer’s motions, etc.) to generate appropriate
boundary filling and tool sequencing strategies.
4.3. Digitalization aspects
4.3.1. Data-driven industrialized construction
When moving towards Industry 4.0 and smart manufacturing,
the advancement of IoT, big data, and Artificial Intelligence offers
new opportunities for the industrial transformation. There are high
quantities of data generating in the design and prefabrication
processes, including building design features, structural perfor-
mance, quality of the manufactured modules, 3D printer’s oper-
ating status, etc. The standard IoT can hardly conform to the
growing application performance to sense the physical realm and
distribute the data collected (Graessley et al., 2019). In light of this,
Graessley et al. (2019) have described the beneficial use of Indus-
trial IoT with cognitive computing techniques to offer a new
cognitive manufacturing approach. Fig. 11 shows a generic frame-
work for data-driven industrialized construction, where the big
data generated from design and manufacturing processes are ac-
quired by different kinds of measures (such as application pro-
gramming interface, IoT network sensors). The big data could be
stored in the data management system as well as to be processed by
machine learning techniques, smart computing algorithms, simu-
lation and optimization to extract valuable information, derive
hidden knowledge, and then support automatic algorithmic
 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505 11

Fig. 11. Data-driven framework for the collection, analysis and applications of big data to support the design, manufacturing and construction of industrialized buildings.

Fig. 12. Integrated digital delivery across the whole life cycle (e.g. design, fabrication, construction, and facilities management) of industrialized buildings.

decision making. Data-driven decision making can be implemented manufacturing facilities, thereby providing greater automation and
in different phases to support design optimization, robotic process product quality. Hu et al. (2019) also presented a novel iRobot-
automation, predictive maintenance and control of the Factory system based on the cutting-edge IoT and cognitive
12 R. He et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 278 (2021) 123505
manufacturing, which allows improvements in the fundamental
metrics such as economic growth and productivity. The imple-
mentation of a data-driven framework provides computing ser-
vices on demand, derives deeper insights into customer’s design
preferences, and identifies pathways towards the smart
manufacturing of industrialized buildings.
4.3.2. Integrated digital delivery
As today’s industrialized building systems are getting complex -
the architectural, structural and mechanical systems are inter-
vened, coordinating actions across different building systems to
enhance the building life cycle performance should gain increasing
attentions. Milward et al. (2019) performed analyses on the top
barriers faced by manufacturers in the era of Industry 4.0, which
includes the coordination of actions across the organization units.
Cyber-physical system is a cutting-edge prospect that comprises a
network of systems and physical objects, it provides far-reaching
upsides to enhance the operational efficiency and revenue
growth for organizations (Ludbrook et al., 2019). The innovative
application of cyber-physical system in smart buildings and
manufacturing was explored in the literature (Schmidt and Åhlund,
2018; Tao et al., 2019). Fig. 12 shows a system architecture to
explore the application of cyber-physical interaction to enhance the
life cycle performance and integrated digital delivery of industri-
alized buildings. Cyber-physical system serves as the key enabler to
digitally represent various building systems, through which de-
signers can predict, understand, and improve the performance of
the constructed facilities more efficiently. Via parametric modeling
of designed 3D model, engineers can analyze the structural integ-
rity of industrialized buildings to avoid design failure and optimize
the design performance in the physical world to meet customers’
preferences. The proven design can accurately determine and
handle the defect of manufactured components (3D-printed mod-
ules, etc.), and thus the output and performance of off-site pre-
fabrication can be improved. The possible disruptions and
deficiencies across building operations can be identified and
resolved at early stage, meanwhile monitoring, diagnosis, fault
detection and predictive maintenance can be realized in the
physical world for optimal facilities management. It provides an
integrated digital delivery process to enhance the total life cycle
performance of industrialized building systems, and demands more
research efforts in the future.
5. Conclusions
This paper explores the application of BIM to link the comput-
erized design and digital fabrication of modular housings. A
customized program interfaced in BIM authoring tool is developed
to generate the detailed geometry models of the 3D-printed
modules, enabling users to check and resolve interferences at the
early stage. This prototyping process supports the design validation
and provides more accurate geometry models for production. In
addition, this study simulates the operation of a robotic 3D printing
system and investigates its applicability to the automatic fabrica-
tion of 3D-printed modules. The result discussion reveals the
challenges for the adoption of 3D printing (information integration,
early validation of structural integrity, etc.), and elimination of
them would support full design and prefabrication automation
with the benefits of better accuracy control, higher productivity and
reduced material waste.
Although the application of 3D printing offers many benefits, its
successful implementation is still subject to the large-scale devel-
opment of industrialized buildings (e.g., government subsidy public
housings), the mass customization of precast components, the
buildings structural integrity (e.g., robust connection between
modules), and the cost of the printing technology. Therefore,
developing a reliable methodology that can explore a proper design
strategy of industrialized buildings, precast components, practical
installation and material configurations, can greatly prompt the
adoption of 3D printing technology. For this purpose, the interop-
erability between computerized design and CAM systems requires
further exploration. Integration of the two systems can drive
greater automation in the prefabrication of industrialized buildings.
The development of open standards and IFC data model plays an
important role to support design and production automation. The
information integration also brings more opportunities to incor-
porate the cutting-edge IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and other new
construction information technology to empower the design and
prefabrication. Last but not the least, the adoption of 3D printing in
industrialized construction not only imposes technological im-
pacts, but also influences the social and economic aspects (e.g.
reduced workforce and manpower). A life cycle analysis is needed
to evaluate the technological, social, and economic impact of digital
fabrication.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Rui He: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing, Funding
acquisition. Mingkai Li: Formal analysis, Validation. Vincent J.L.
Gan: Methodology, Investigation, Writing. Jun Ma: Visualization.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by National Key R. & D. Program of
China (No. 2017YFB0309903), China Postdoctoral Science Founda-
tion (No. 2019M663602), the Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities, CHD (No. 300102310501), Promotion Plan for
Innovative Talents in Shaanxi Province (No. 2020KJXX-043). Small
scale in-house 3D printing was carried out in part in Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology.
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