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Offsite construction (e.g., wood modular houses) has many advantages over traditional stick-built construction, ranging from schedule/cost reduction to improvement in safety and quality of the built product. Unlike stick-built, offsite construction demands higher levels of design and planning coordination at the early stages of the construction project to avoid cost overruns and/or delays. However, most companies still rely on 2D drawings in the development of shop drawings, which are required for the fabrication of the building components such as walls and roofs. In practice, the process of developing shop drawings is usually based on manually interpreting the 2D drawings and specifications, which is time-consuming, costly, and prone to human errors. A 3D information model can improve the accuracy of this process. To help achieve this, the authors developed a semi-automated method that can process 2D orthographic views of building components and convert them to 3D models, which can be useful for fabrication. The developed 3D information model can be further transformed to building information models (BIMs) to support collaboration amongst users and data exchanges across platforms. The developed method was evaluated in the development of wall components of a student apartment project in Kalamazoo, MI. Experimental results showed that the developed method successfully generated the 3D information model of the wall components. A time comparison with the state-of-the-art practices in developing the wall components was performed. Results showed that the developed method utilized approximately 22% of the time it took the state-of-the-art manual method to generate the 3D models. 

Modular construction has been proven to be more time-efficient comparing to stick-built construction. However, the lack of automation technologies adoption shows a missed opportunity in modular construction, where the time efficiency of the modular process can be further improved, along with quality and safety. To address this problem, the authors proposed a new simulation method for modular construction using BIM, game simulation, and robotics technology, to help analyze and promote automation in modular construction of wood structures in a controlled indoor environment. As a first stage, the authors presented their simulation methodology, definition of the parameters and constraints for the construction simulation, and creation of the interactive simulation model. This first stage will be the foundation for further development that will enable the assessment of construction productivity when integrating robotic systems into the modular construction workflow.