Industry Foundation Classes: A Standardized Data Model for the Vendor-Neutral Exchange of Digital Building Models

Borrmann, André; Beetz, Jakob; Koch, Christian; Liebich, Thomas; Muhič, Sergej

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-92862-3_5

Cited by 42 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…Under the universal approach to collaborative design, implementation and operation of infrastructures based on workflows and open standards (open BIM), it is required for all users to export the models in the same exchange language under open standards. It is for all the above that different standards have been developed, of which in civil engineering we can highlight: IFC [33,34], OGC LandInfra (InfraGML), LandXML [35]. This research uses the IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) format, a common standard for data exchange in the construction industry that allows information to be shared regardless of the software application being used.…”

Section: Export To Bim Formatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimizing Shadow Area in Mountain Roads for Improving the Sustainability of Infrastructures

et al. 2021

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The lack of sunlight on mountain roads in the wintertime leads to an increase in accidents. In this paper, a methodology is presented for the use of sunny and shady areas to be included as a parameter in road design. The inclusion of this parameter allows for the design of an iterative method for the projected infrastructures. The parameterization of the road layout facilitates the possibility of applying an iterative process of modifying the geometric elements that constitute it, examining different layout alternatives until a layout is achieved in which the surface area in the shady area is minimized, increasing the road safety and minimizing environmental impact. The methodology has been defined, generating and analyzing the results of the solar lighting study using a file in IFC format capable of integrating with the rest of the design elements (platform, signaling, structures, etc.) and thus obtaining a BIM format which allows the model to be viewed in three dimensions and moves towards 4D and 5D. The model used for the study was a high mountain road located in the province of Teruel (Spain). It is a road section characterized by successive curves in which several traffic accidents have occurred due to running off the road, partly because of the presence of ice on the platform.

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Section: Export To Bim Formatmentioning

confidence: 99%

Minimizing Shadow Area in Mountain Roads for Improving the Sustainability of Infrastructures

et al. 2021

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“…According to Borrmann et al (2018), all geometry representations in IFC data model can be grouped into four classes: 1) Bounding Boxes; 2) Curves; 3) Surface models; and 4) Solid models. Bounding Boxes can be represented using IfcBoundingBox.…”

Section: Ifc Geometric Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital twinning of existing reinforced concrete bridges from labelled point clusters

Brilakis

2019

Automation in Construction

156

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The automation of digital twinning for existing reinforced concrete bridges from point clouds remains an unresolved problem. Whilst current methods can automatically detect bridge objects in point clouds in the form of labelled point clusters, the fitting of accurate 3D shapes to point clusters remains largely human dependent largely. 95% of the total manual modelling time is spent on customizing shapes and fitting them correctly. The challenges exhibited in the fitting step are due to the irregular geometries of existing bridges. Existing methods can fit geometric primitives such as cuboids and cylinders to point clusters, assuming bridges are comprised of generic shapes. However, the produced geometric digital twins are too ideal to depict the real geometry of bridges. In addition, none of the existing methods have explicitly demonstrated how to evaluate the resulting Industry Foundation Classes bridge data models in terms of spatial accuracy using quantitative measurements. In this article, we tackle these challenges by delivering a slicing-based object fitting method that can generate the geometric digital twin of an existing reinforced concrete bridge from four types of labelled point cluster. The quality of the generated models is gauged using cloud-tocloud distance-based metrics. Experiments on ten bridge point cloud datasets indicate that the method achieves an average modelling distance of 7.05 cm (while the manual method achieves 7.69 cm), and an average modelling time of 37.8 seconds. This is a huge leap over the current practice of digital twinning performed manually.

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“…IFC is not a fully open and extendable format like the single model schema presented in the present dissertation. It is possible to add new property sets for objects and use IfcProxy for entities that are not supported by IFC (Borrmann, Beetz, Koch, Liebich & Muhic, 2018). However, this will lead to a remarkable number of IfcProxies having totally different content if the applications start to export all the native data.…”

Section: Recommendations For Future Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Single Shared Model Approach for Building Information Modelling

Ruokamo¹,

Heikkilä²

2020

Proceedings of the 37th International Symposium on Automation and Robotics in Construction (ISARC)

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The current practice for information sharing with building information modelling (BIM) is distributed data sharing based on conversions. Conversions are problematic due to data loss, redundancy, and conflicting information. The hypotheses of this research were that i) a conversion-free data exchange is a feasible approach for BIM, ii) benefits can be achieved with a conversion-free information sharing, and iii) no impediment in principle exists for wider industrial use. The use of a single data schema by all applications is a requisite for a conversion-free data collaboration. For enabling the free evolution of the data content, a version free data schema is necessary. A model arrangement implementing partial models is needed for the growing size of models. A single shared model approach eliminates data conflicts and duplicates. For the best availability, the location for the shared model should be on a cloud service. Accessing the cloud model only through a web service, which encapsulates all model handling functionality, will ensure data integration and validity. The validity of IT solutions can only be confirmed with real software. For testing the conversion-free BIM method, a software development kit (SDK) with required functionality was programmed. Three applications and a cloud service for handling the shared model were developed with the help of SDK. In the experiments, Leonardo application was used for modelling walls, 3DTrussme for trusses, and Viewer for viewing the model. All applications were using the same shared model on the cloud. In the experimental test, the information exchange occurred without conversions, and all the data were saved only once on the cloud database. Without conversions, less conflicts and redundancies occurred, which lead to better data integrity and integration. Using SDK, there was no technical barrier for applications to join the single shared model ecosystem, but a drawback was that existing BIM programs are not compatible without remarkable changes. The performance was acceptable in the test run, but in real use, the size of the model and the number of applications and users will be much larger. However, a conversion-free single shared model approach can be a possible trend to the next generation BIM as well as a potential alternative for current data sharing methods using distributed files, conversions, and linked data.

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Industry Foundation Classes: A Standardized Data Model for the Vendor-Neutral Exchange of Digital Building Models

Cited by 42 publications

References 2 publications

Minimizing Shadow Area in Mountain Roads for Improving the Sustainability of Infrastructures

Minimizing Shadow Area in Mountain Roads for Improving the Sustainability of Infrastructures

Digital twinning of existing reinforced concrete bridges from labelled point clusters

Single Shared Model Approach for Building Information Modelling

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