DETAILED ACTION
Claims 1 and 2 are presented for examination.
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Drawings
The drawings received on 2 August 2023 are accepted.
Claim Interpretation
Claim 2 is missing a transitional phrase. See MPEP §2111.03. Examiner interprets the absent transitional phrase as being inclusive or open-ended which does not exclude additional, unrecited elements or method steps.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 103
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
The factual inquiries for establishing a background for determining obviousness under 35 U.S.C. 103 are summarized as follows:
1. Determining the scope and contents of the prior art.
2. Ascertaining the differences between the prior art and the claims at issue.
3. Resolving the level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art.
4. Considering objective evidence present in the application indicating obviousness or nonobviousness.
Claims 1-2
Claims 1-2 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 103 as being unpatentable over Li, X., et al. “Developing a BIM-based Integrated Model for CAD to CAM Building Production Automation” 34th Int’l Symp. On Automation & Robotics in Construction (2017) [herein “Li”] in view of US patent 11,795,680 B2 Meagher, et al. [herein “Meagher”] and US patent 11,651,115 B2 Bruya, et al. [herein “Bruya”].
Claim 1 recites “1. A system for prefabricated construction.” Li abstract discloses “Modular construction has gained momentum in North America as an emerging construction paradigm in recent years. Modular buildings are assembled from components that are prefabricated in manufacturing plants and transported to the construction site for assembly.”
Claim 1 further recites “comprising: a computer implemented design system accepting building design constraints data inputs including … and building design data.” Li section 3 disclose:
The BIM model provides rich information for wall assembly such as wall dimensions, stud details, and prefabricated opening component details. As shown in Figure 2, the methodology used to generate operation locations from the BIM model consists of the following three procedures: (1) load framing information into the BIM model; (2) extract framing information from the BIM model to Microsoft Excel;
Extracting framing information from the BIM model corresponds to accepting building design input data. The wall dimensions and prefabricated opening details are further building design data of the computer implemented design. See further Li section 4.2 “Extract information from BIM model.”
Claim 1 further recites “including site data, ….” Li does not explicitly disclose site data; however, in analogous art of prefabricated building construction, Meagher column 1 lines 59-64 teaches:
For some construction sites, for example, remote sites which are in primitive locations or otherwise too difficult to access, or where resources are difficult to acquire, or when weather conditions or environmental restrictions do not permit, construction using prefabricated modules are often the only practical option.
Weather conditions and environmental restrictions of a construction site correspond with site data for the prefabricated construction project.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Li and Meagher. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to use construction site restrictions into the system of BIM-based CAD-to-CAM building production for the advantageous purpose of using the “practical option[s]” for the construction site. See Meagher column 1 lines 59-64.
Claim 1 further recites “including …, regulatory data and ….” Li section 3 teaching of “wall dimensions” and “stud details” relate to regulatory building code requirements. But Li does not explicitly disclose regulatory data; however, in analogous art of prefabricated building, Bruya column 8 lines 46-47 teaches “a municipal or county housing code may describe limitations on dimensions of a housing feature.” A municipal or county housing code corresponds with regulatory data.
Bruya column 8 lines 28-32 teach “a refined housing design of a house is generated by adjusting design dimensions. A housing design requirement is identified from a housing code (block 302), the housing design requirement describing a limitation on a dimension of a housing feature.” Bruya column 9 lines 16-19 teach “A refined housing design of the house is generated based on the adjusting (block 308), the refined housing design including the at least one prefabricated component.” Using the housing code to generate a refined housing design incorporates the regulatory data into the computer-implemented design system.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Li, Meagher, and Bruya. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to use housing code design requirements into the system of BIM-based CAD-to-CAM building production for the advantageous purpose to avoid onsite modification and losing “the economic advantage of using prefabricated components in construction can be lost if the construction requires even a small amount of onsite modification of the prefabricated components.” See Bruya column 3 lines 9-12.
Claim 1 further recites “and outputting building design data including design drawings data and prefabricate building component data.” Li section 3 discloses:
and (3) generate the cutting, drilling, and nailing locations guideline based on real-world on-site experience and construction specifications. Based on the operation coordination and each machine station location, the sequence and interval distance of each operation can be determined.
The generated cutting, drilling, and nailing locations and construction specifications correspond with output building design data including prefabricated building component data. Li figure 2 shows “Model Output: Wood framing machine motion plan.” The model output machine motion plan corresponds with output prefabricated building component data.
Li abstract disclose “By integrating external databases with building information modelling (BIM)-based software and generating wall panel combination plans and assembly information intelligent wall panel prefabrication is achieved.” Li section 1 first paragraph right column disclose “Guidelines are proposed for improved panel assembly practice, and the linkage between drafting (i.e., computer-aided design) and manufacturing (i.e., computer-aided manufacturing) is developed.” Drafting BIM-based wall panel combination plans and the BIM model itself correspond with output design drawing data.
Claim 1 further recites “flat-pack construction components manufactured according to the building design data, including prefabricated panels.” Li section 3 disclose “The key contributions of this methodology are the generation of wood panel framing assembly motion plans, which implement the industrialized manufacturing of intelligent wall panels.” Implementing the manufacturing of the wall panels corresponds with flat-pack construction components manufactured according to the building data. The assembly motion plans correspond with building design data.
Claim 1 further recites “and a plurality of connectors for manually joining selected ones of the prefabricated panels.” Li section 4.3.3 first sentence discloses “Wall studs and pre-assembled window and door frames are joined with top- and bottom-plates using nails.” Nails are a plurality of connectors for manually joining selected prefabricated panels.
Claim 2 recites “2. A method for building construction: inputting in a computer implemented design system building design constraints data inputs including … and building design data.” Li section 3 disclose:
The BIM model provides rich information for wall assembly such as wall dimensions, stud details, and prefabricated opening component details. As shown in Figure 2, the methodology used to generate operation locations from the BIM model consists of the following three procedures: (1) load framing information into the BIM model; (2) extract framing information from the BIM model to Microsoft Excel;
Extracting framing information from the BIM model corresponds to accepting building design input data. The wall dimensions and prefabricated opening details are further building design data of the computer implemented design. See further Li section 4.2 “Extract information from BIM model.”
Claim 2 further recites “including site data, ….” Li does not explicitly disclose site data; however, in analogous art of prefabricated building construction, Meagher column 1 lines 59-64 teaches:
For some construction sites, for example, remote sites which are in primitive locations or otherwise too difficult to access, or where resources are difficult to acquire, or when weather conditions or environmental restrictions do not permit, construction using prefabricated modules are often the only practical option.
Weather conditions and environmental restrictions of a construction site correspond with site data for the prefabricated construction project.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Li and Meagher. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to use construction site restrictions into the system of BIM-based CAD-to-CAM building production for the advantageous purpose of using the “practical option[s]” for the construction site. See Meagher column 1 lines 59-64.
Claim 2 further recites “including site data, regulatory data and ….” Li section 3 teaching of “wall dimensions” and “stud details” relate to regulatory building code requirements. But Li does not explicitly disclose regulatory data; however, in analogous art of prefabricated building, Bruya column 8 lines 46-47 teaches “a municipal or county housing code may describe limitations on dimensions of a housing feature.” A municipal or county housing code corresponds with regulatory data.
Bruya column 8 lines 28-32 teach “a refined housing design of a house is generated by adjusting design dimensions. A housing design requirement is identified from a housing code (block 302), the housing design requirement describing a limitation on a dimension of a housing feature.” Bruya column 9 lines 16-19 teach “A refined housing design of the house is generated based on the adjusting (block 308), the refined housing design including the at least one prefabricated component.” Using the housing code to generate a refined housing design incorporates the regulatory data into the computer-implemented design system.
It would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to combine Li, Meagher, and Bruya. One having ordinary skill in the art would have found motivation to use housing code design requirements into the system of BIM-based CAD-to-CAM building production for the advantageous purpose to avoid onsite modification and losing “the economic advantage of using prefabricated components in construction can be lost if the construction requires even a small amount of onsite modification of the prefabricated components.” See Bruya column 3 lines 9-12.
Claim 2 further recites “outputting from the computer implemented design system building design data including design drawings data and prefabricate building component data.” Li section 3 discloses:
and (3) generate the cutting, drilling, and nailing locations guideline based on real-world on-site experience and construction specifications. Based on the operation coordination and each machine station location, the sequence and interval distance of each operation can be determined.
The generated cutting, drilling, and nailing locations and construction specifications correspond with output building design data including prefabricated building component data. Li figure 2 shows “Model Output: Wood framing machine motion plan.” The model output machine motion plan corresponds with output prefabricated building component data.
Li abstract disclose “By integrating external databases with building information modelling (BIM)-based software and generating wall panel combination plans and assembly information intelligent wall panel prefabrication is achieved.” Li section 1 first paragraph right column disclose “Guidelines are proposed for improved panel assembly practice, and the linkage between drafting (i.e., computer-aided design) and manufacturing (i.e., computer-aided manufacturing) is developed.” Drafting BIM-based wall panel combination plans and the BIM model itself correspond with output design drawing data.
Claim 2 further recites “manufacturing flat-pack construction components manufactured according to the building design data, including prefabricated panels.” Li section 3 disclose “The key contributions of this methodology are the generation of wood panel framing assembly motion plans, which implement the industrialized manufacturing of intelligent wall panels.” Implementing the manufacturing of the wall panels corresponds with flat-pack construction components manufactured according to the building data. The assembly motion plans correspond with building design data.
Claim 2 further recites “and manually joining selected ones of the prefabricated panels.” Li section 4.3.3 first sentence discloses “Wall studs and pre-assembled window and door frames are joined with top- and bottom-plates using nails.” Nails are a plurality of connectors for manually joining selected prefabricated panels.
Li abstract discloses “Modular construction has gained momentum in North America as an emerging construction paradigm in recent years. Modular buildings are assembled from components that are prefabricated in manufacturing plants and transported to the construction site for assembly.” Assembling at the construction site corresponds to manually joining respective prefabricated panels.
Conclusion
Prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure.
US 20020066256 A1 Oberpriller, Lon E. et al.
teaches
Construction system for building housing and other shelters
WO 2019240597 A1 HUBBARD NICHOLAS
A Method for Designing and Constructing a Building;
“snap to grid” CAD
Lopes, G., et al. "A systematic review of Prefabricated Enclosure Wall Panel Systems: Focus on technology driven for performance requirements" Sustainable Cities & Society, vol. 40, pp. 688-703 (2018)
Technology background on prefabricated wall panel systems.
Gunawardena, T., & Mendis, P. "Prefabricated Building Systems—Design and Construction" Encyclopedia, vol. 2, pp. 70-95 (Jan. 2022)
Technology background prefabricated building systems; load design.
§2.1 constraints and limitations, installation and manufacturing.
§5 design of connections
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/Jay Hann/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2186 4 September 2026
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