Automated BIM parametric design for optimal external wall tile planning

External wall tile planning is a time-consuming process, even when Building Information Modeling (BIM) is used, due to the numerous attributes that must be created and defined. To address this problem, an attribute creation system for BIM-based external wall tile planning was developed in this study using parametric design (PD). First, a tile database was established in accordance with Knowledge Base (KB) requirements and then converted into pattern-matching rules. Second, a system was developed to automatically input, label, and calculate wall tile layouts through the connection between the BIM and PD platform. Third, this system was implemented using the Symbiotic Organisms Search 2.0 (SOS 2.0) to obtain the minimum necessary percentage of truncated tiles. The developed system is completed using five modules: import tile database, create tile attributes, input wall tile data, label and calculate tile, and optimize truncated tiles percentage. The system was tested on a case study involving an eight-story building, with the truncated tile percentage reduced to 7.86% for fixed starting points and 7.77% for free starting points for 400 × 800 mm tiles. The findings indicate the system may be used to significantly reduce the effort and cost involved in external wall tile planning.