Automatic unit layout of masonry structure using memetic algorithm and building information modeling

Abstract

Masonry materials has been widely used in building construction. During the design of a masonry structure, engineers need to manually arrange the position of each masonry unit to reduce the waste of masonry units on construction site. This manual approach is inefficient and error-prone. With the development of computer-aided design, attention has been paid to the use of a computer-aided method to improve the efficiency of masonry design. However, the existing work has focused on the visual representation of masonry structures, while lacking the study on automatic masonry unit layout. Therefore, in this paper, inspired by the 0–1 knapsack problem, a 2-step memetic algorithm is proposed first for the automatic masonry unit layout considering the Chinese code for construction of masonry structures engineering (GB 50924–2014) and the feasibility of construction. The models for layout results are then automatically generated through the tool which developed by the Revit API. Validation experiments are conducted on five sets of masonry structures with the different lengths and a building case, which confirmed the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.