Principles of the information modeling of cultural heritage objects: The Case of Wooden Buddhist Temples

This article describes the principles and prospects of using the BIM (building information modeling) technology, which was for the fi rst time used to reconstruct wooden Buddhist temples, to assess cultural information relating to them, and to evaluate the impact of the environment and exploitation. Preserving and restoring such temples is diffi cult because their construction includes wooden brackets-dougong. The BIM technology and our own method based on treatises of old Chinese architecture have enabled us to generate an information model of the temple (a new means of information processing) and to test it for geometric consistency. To create a library of elements, the Autodesk Revit software was used. To test the effi ciency of the library we applied the information model to the Shengmudian temple in the Shanxi province. The adaptation of the dougong library elements to wooden Buddhist temples provides the possibility for applying such technologies to generate a unifi ed system regardless of the software.