Automatic design, planning and drawing of scaffolding system for constructions

Temporary scaffold systems in the construction site play an important role for ensuring the safety of the workers and for constructing the stable structures. To assemble the scaffold, the pipe scaffolding system, the wedge binding scaffolding system and the particular materials have been utilized. To design the material arrangement of a scaffold, firstly the configuration was determined considering the construction geometry. Then, the strength of the scaffold was confirmed and the quantity of the material was accounted. In this paper, the design method of the temporary scaffold was proposed for intending the semi-automatic procedure. In the proposed design method, the geometric design and the safety requirement were specified by the safety standard and the design flow was followed by the designer's knowledge. The size and the quantities of the materials were calculated by referring to the relation between the scaffold and the constructing structure. In the calculating procedure, three dimensional positions of each scaffold materials were calculated and recorded simultaneously. Then, three dimensional scaffold structural was drawn semi-automatically on the CAD software by using the obtained material sizes, positions and directions. The proposed design method provides us the precise quantities of scaffold materials and enables us to reduce the design effort and the cost estimation processes. In addition, the obtained results can be applied to BIM software after converting to IFC format.