Usability of BIM in preliminary design: a study of the relevance of the different representations allowed by BIM

In this article, we adopt an interdisciplinary approach incorporating cooperative design, construction and ergonomy perspectives to analyze the use of low-tech analog tools versus high-tech digital tools. We do so through the ar- ticulation of traditional design with Building Information Modeling (BIM) me- thods. This paper aims to study how components of projects in the design concept phase can be prepared to further stages that use BIM tools and methods. To achieve this goal, we used a case study of cooperative design in building archi- tecture. It takes place in a collaborative design process and consists of the collec- tion and analysis of project information required by BIM and how they are rep- resented at the end of the design concept phase.