Virtual trial assembly of a complex steel structure by Generalized Procrustes Analysis techniques

•Virtual trial assembly methods are much less costly and complex than physical ones.•Our method is ideal for reticular frame steel structures of great complexity.•Generalized Procrustes Analysis furnishes the optimal joining of the elements.•Boltable and unboltable joints are automatically detected.•Manual check and adaptation of unboltable joints are very limited.

The physical trial assembly of a complex steel structure is very expensive in terms of time, costs and logistics. For this reason, the trial assembly of the structure in a virtual way, starting ideally from the data contained in the structure BIM, represents a worthwhile alternative to the physical one.In this paper an innovative method for the virtual trial assembly, based on the Generalized Procrustes Analysis, is proposed. This method allows to find out the optimal analytical least squares assembling of the various built elements. The technique permits to verify the feasibility of a structure assembly, and the fulfillment of the design geometries, starting from the real data obtained by an accurate metric survey of the fabricated elements.The method has been applied to a real case, and the obtained results largely satisfy the prefixed research objectives. At the end, some comments will be given in order to further improve the proposed method.