Among different phases of the life cycle of a building or facility, design is of the utmost importance to ensure safety, efficiency and sustainability of the building or facility. How to control and improve design quality and efficiency has been explored for years, and more studies emerged with the popularization of Building Information Modelling (BIM). However, most of them focused on the extraction of design behaviors, while paying less attention to how a design is formed. Therefore, this study proposes an approach to tracking and replaying the BIM-based design process by integrating data logging and 4D visualization techniques. First of all, potential design behaviors and procedures are analyzed and extracted by observing how a designer designs a BIM model. Meanwhile, the required data for logging design process is defined and a relevant method to collect these data is developed based on the APIs of BIM software. Then, strategies on how to visualize different design procedures are designed and implemented via 4D visualization. Finally, a prototype system is developed based on Autodesk Revit and validated through a case study. Result shows that the proposed approach enables intuitively and interactively review of the design process, and makes it easier to understand design behaviors and even identify potential pitfalls, thus improving the design efficiency and quality.

翻译：在建筑或设施生命周期的不同阶段中，设计对于确保其安全性、高效性和可持续性至关重要。如何控制并提升设计质量与效率已历经多年探索，随着建筑信息模型（BIM）的普及，相关研究日益增多。然而，现有研究大多聚焦于设计行为的提取，对设计如何形成的过程关注较少。为此，本研究提出一种通过集成数据记录与四维可视化技术来追踪和回放基于BIM的设计过程的方法。首先，通过观察设计师构建BIM模型的过程，分析并提取潜在的设计行为与操作流程；同时，界定记录设计过程所需的数据，并基于BIM软件的应用程序编程接口（API）开发相应的数据采集方法。其次，设计并实现通过四维可视化呈现不同设计流程的策略。最后，基于Autodesk Revit开发原型系统，并通过案例研究进行验证。结果表明，该方法能够直观且交互式地回顾设计过程，有助于更易理解设计行为、识别潜在缺陷，从而提升设计效率与质量。