Development and Implementation of an Industry Foundation Classes‐Based Graphic Information Model for Virtual Construction

Abstract

Virtual Construction (VC) applications encounter difficulty in sharing and exchanging information with one another due to the long periods of interoperability limitation. To address these issues, an Industrial Foundation Classes-based graphic information model (IFC-GIM) is developed according to the exchange requirement of VC, and using the representations of three models in the IFC schema and its extension by defining the dynamic property set and properties for animation. The three models include the physical object model, the construction information model, and the realistic model. An OpenGL-based VC platform is developed and applied to a 440-m-high building to implement the IFC-GIM. The results demonstrate that the proposed IFC-GIM lays the foundation for data sharing and exchange among VC systems and other IFC-compliant applications, which, in turn, significantly reduces the modeling effort for VC and increases the value of VC results. Furthermore, animation is applied to simulate construction activities by the VC platform in addition to color and transparency, enhancing realistic feelings in 4D applications.

Multi‐Scale Geometric‐Semantic Modeling of Shield Tunnels for GIS and BIM Applications

“…As opposed to the CityGML standard, the IFC standard is not defined as a UML or XML schema. Instead, the model is specified using the data modeling language EXPRESS, which forms part of the ISO standard 10303 “STEP – Standard for the exchange of product model data.” Other import particularities of the IFC model are the comprehensive use of objectified relationships and inverse attributes (Eastman, ; Yang and Eastman, ; Zhang et al., ). The model is very fine‐grained and provides more than 600 entities for the detailed description of the semantics and the geometry of buildings and building components.…”

“…Thus, a semantic object can be associated with multiple geometric representations (2D, 3D, BRep, CSG, etc.) (Zhang et al., ). This would, in principle, facilitate multi‐scale modeling providing different LoDs in the geometric part.…”

A Video-Enabled Dynamic Site Planner

“…This educational virtual construction environment was used to help students develop their decision-making skills. Zhang et al (2012) indicated that physical objects, construction information, and process animation are essential elements in a practical 3-D virtual construction system designed to aid planners. As is clearly evident from these related research works, virtual construction has multiple applications in construction management.…”

Measuring the potential of augmented reality in civil engineering

“…Adequate standards, e.g. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), have the potential of solving the problem of interoperability of software and representation of information in designing [15].…”