Building Information Modelling (BIM) is an integrated informational process and plays a key role in enabling efficient planning and control of a project in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) domain. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)-based BIM allows building information to be interoperable among different BIM applications. Different stakeholders take different responsibilities in a project and therefore keep different types of information to meet project requirements. In this paper, the authors proposed and adopted a six-step methodology to support BIM interoperability between architectural design and structural analysis at both AEC project level and information level, in which: (1) the intrinsic and extrinsic information transferred between architectural models and structural models were analyzed and demonstrated by a Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) model that the authors developed; (2) the proposed technical routes with different combinations, and their applications to different project delivery methods provided new instruments to stakeholders in industry for efficient and accurate decision-making; (3) the material centered invariant signature with portability can improve information exchange between different data formats and models to support interoperable BIM applications; and (4) a developed formal material information representation and checking method was tested on a case study where its efficiency was demonstrated to outperform: (1) proprietary representations and information checking method based on a manual operation, and (2) MVD-based information checking method. The proposed invariant signatures-based material information representation and checking method brings a better efficiency for information transfer between architectural design and structural analysis, which can have significant positive effect on a project delivery, due to the frequent and iterative update of a project design. This improves the information transfer and coordination between architects and structural engineers and therefore the efficiency of the whole project. The proposed method can be extended and applied to other application phases and functions such as cost estimation, scheduling, and energy analysis.
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Invariant Signatures of Architecture, Engineering, and Construction Objects to Support BIM Interoperability between Architectural Design and Structural Analysis
There has been an increasing demand in building information modeling (BIM) for structural analysis. However, model exchange between architectural software and structural analysis software, which is an essential task in a construction project, is not fully interoperable yet. Various studies showed missing information and information inconsistency problems during conversion of models between different software; the lack of foundational methods enabling a seamless BIM interoperability between architectural design and structural analysis is evident. To address this gap and facilitate more use of BIM for structural analysis, the authors develop invariant signatures for architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) objects and propose a new data-driven method to use invariant signatures for solving practical problems in BIM applications. The invariant signatures and the data-driven method were tested in developing the interoperable BIM support tool for structural analysis through an experiment. Ten models were created/adopted and used in this experiment, including five models for training and five models for testing. An information validation and mapping algorithm was developed based on invariant signatures and training models, which was then evaluated in the testing models. Compared with a manually created gold standard, results showed that the desired structural analysis software inputs were successfully generated using the algorithm with high accuracy. The invariant signatures of AEC objects can therefore be expected to serve as the foundation of seamless BIM interoperability.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1745378
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10300533
- Editor(s):
- de la Garza, J.M.
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of construction engineering and management
- Volume:
- 147
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 0733-9364
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0001943
