Design-Integrated Process Planner for Rebar Placement

Abstract

To remain competitive in the global market, the U.S. construction industry is looking at drastic productivity increases. In recent years, developments in reinforced-concrete construction have been rapid and sweeping. Therefore, reinforced-concrete construction is an area of construction in which improvements in work methods and labor efficiency could result in major cost savings. The placement of reinforcing bars (rebar) is an integral part of this type of construction. This is an assembly-type operation with fabricated rebar being placed and tied one by one. Process-oriented intelligent planning for the placement of rebar aims to automate development of detailed plans that depict the assembly sequences of individual bar or set(s) of bars. Traditionally, rebar is fabricated, bundled, and delivered without considering their sequential placement. As a result, a considerable amount of time is wasted for searching, identifying, rehandling, etc., of rebar. To eliminate this waste, the rebar has to be delivered according to the need of the assembly process. The two main objectives of this paper are to present: (1) A feature-based and process-oriented planning framework; and (2) an intelligent and computer-aided-design–integrated (CAD-integrated) process-planning system for the placement of rebar. This paper demonstrates that data generated within a computer-aided design (CAD) package can be extracted and utilized by other applications needed for automated process planning. A prototype that has been implemented on a 486 personal computer (PC-486) using LEVEL5 OBJECT, AutoCAD, and dBASE III PLUS will be used to discuss some specific elements of such a system. The paper will conclude with a short description of a successful field assessments of such a system.