Optimal brick layout of masonry walls based on intelligent evolutionary algorithm and building information modeling

Abstract The Masonry wall (MW) is an important element of buildings. Currently, the detailed brick layout of a non-modular MW mostly relies on the experience from a bricklayer. The manual building information modeling (BIM) technique can facilitate the modeling of bricks, but is error-prone and time-consuming. This paper presents a BIM-based framework to generate the layouts and brick take-offs automatically. A computation module is developed to find the optimal brick layout using the three-stage optimization. For a MW, the first-stage determines the vertical position of each course and the second and third stages obtain the horizontal positions and sizes of bricks for odd and even courses respectively. The intelligent algorithm neighborhood field optimization is applied to the computation module. The proposed framework is applied in the automated detailing design of MWs with different bonds in two rooms to demonstrate its practicability and efficiency.