Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Automation in Construction
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon

Connecting building component catalogues with BIM models using

semantic technologies: an application for precast concrete components
G. Costa , L. Madrazo
ARC, Engineering and Architecture La Salle, Ramon Llull University, Quatre Camins 2, 08022 Barcelona, Spain

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 27 November 2014
Received in revised form 30 April 2015
Accepted 26 May 2015
Available online 22 June 2015
Keywords:
Product Catalogue
BIM Service
Semantic Web
Linked Data
Ontology
Interoperability

a b s t r a c t
Existing BIM technologies do not provide links to product components that are needed to facilitate the participation
of manufacturers in the design and building processes. A deeper integration between product component
catalogues and BIM is necessary for this purpose. Through the Linked Data approach, information about building
products can be obtained from multiple sources and linked to create semantic descriptions of components that
can be retrieved from a BIM model via component catalogues. In this article, we present the case of an application
of Semantic Web technologies to connect BIM models with a catalogue of structural precast concrete components,
carried out within the research project BAUKOM. As a proof of concept we have implemented a service which
accesses the information provided by the catalogue to assist the design team in the assembly and dimensioning
of structural components during the project phase.
2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Building Information Model/Modeling (BIM) technologies are
expected to facilitate the collaboration among different actors involved
in a building project: architects, engineers, consultants, construction
and facilities managers, and owners. These different actors are supposed
to interact with the BIM model during the different stages of the
building design and construction process, and afterwards in the operational phase. Building component manufacturers are also important
actors in the building modeling process. However, their participation
is hindered by the lack of dynamic links between their product
catalogues and the BIM model.
Typically, during the design process, the design team needs to identify
the most adequate components to fulll specic design requirements.
The information they need can be accessible in on-line product component catalogues. For example, a 3D model of a product component can
be downloaded from catalogues such as Autodesk Seek. However, the
information dened in these catalogues is still very limited, generally
isolated and rarely associated with other domains (building regulations,
energy performance, etc.).
These limitations can be overcome by creating stronger links between product catalogues and BIM models using semantic technologies.
By using the technologies of the Semantic Web, BIM models can be
linked with external information from other ecosystems (product catalogues, libraries of design elements, public procurement requirements,
Corresponding author. Tel.: +34 93 290 24 20.
E-mail addresses: gcosta@salleurl.edu (G. Costa), madrazo@salleurl.edu (L. Madrazo).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2015.05.007
0926-5805/ 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

etc.) on the internet. To facilitate an accurate and efcient selection of

products and materials, searches based on different criteria can be performed simultaneously on different information sources. These searches
can result in the identication of products which meet the project requirements in terms of costs, availability, regulations, applicability,
structural conditions, in combination with others. To achieve this, however, two difculties need to be overcome. Firstly, the information about
product components, which is now available online is usually scarce
and not very detailed. Secondly, much of the information related to
building components is found in different places (e.g. in the server of
the architectural ofce, in the internet) and formats (e.g. PDF and text
les, HTML pages, Excel, databases, Web Services, handbooks).
To overcome these difculties it is necessary, rst of all, to provide
product manufacturers with mechanisms that enable them to distribute
information about their products in the internet, taking advantage of
the already existing information, facilitated by the manufacturers
themselves or by third parties. Then, additional procedures are
necessary for other stakeholders operating with BIM models to have
easy access to that information within their specic working contexts
(e.g. identifying a set of building components to create a model during
the conceptual phase, evaluating the performance and costs of
components in the construction phase).
1.1. Component-based modeling
In the AEC industry, each of the physical elements which makes a
building (doors, windows, walls, slabs, etc.) can be dened as a
component. The assembly of these components as abstract

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G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

representations takes place in the construction of a BIM model. In a

BIM model the components are described by means of parametric
rules, geometric properties, and other attributes (materials, costs, spatial relations, manufacturer, regulations and others) [1]. These attributes
rely on the availability of comprehensive, accurate and up-to-date
information on the components.
Bevill and Aresnoult [2] contended that there are three key features
of interest for architects and contractors when they need to select a
component for a building model: 1. Complete and up-to-date embedded information, with all product specications (cost, pricing information, etc.), 2. Parametric modeling capability, and 3. Complete and
open interoperability. The reuse of data and object models is an important feature supported by BIM which facilitates the collaborative
creation of building models. Given that the reuse of models not only
the models of buildings but also those of objects is gaining interest
in the building industry, more manufacturers are providing versions of
their products in BIM formats (e.g. Revit families). However, according
to the SmartMarket Report series, recently published by McGraw Hill
Construction, the availability and use of product models and content
provided by manufacturers are still limited: Although a growing number of manufacturers produce BIM content for their products, most BIM
users need additional content that supports their specic activities.
Typically a combination of internal skills and third party content
creation consultants are lling this need [3].
Nowadays, manufacturers are providing parametric models of their
products using different BIM software to create them without adhering
to a common standard. This is because each software has its own rules
on how to model and handle components. For this reason, different
models of the same component are currently needed to ensure that
they can be imported by different programs. At present, the diversity
of modeling rules adopted by the different BIM software makes it
difcult to come up with a common procedure to create standardized
parametric objects in. In particular, the interoperability problems that
arise due to the lack of standardized denitions of BIM-based component models can be mainly attributed to the insufcient capacity of
the existing BIM software to interpret them unambiguously when
they are dened using a standard, for example, IFC. This problem
also arises when a BIM model, or a part of it, has to be exchanged
among different BIM software, or distributed between them and other
applications.
1.2. Role of standards for interoperability
The most commonly used mechanism to ensure the interoperability
among applications is to exchange les using common standards. This
exchange can be done in two ways: by using proprietary formats,
whose scope is limited to the programs of the same suite or, alternatively, by using open and neutral standards such as STEP [4], IFC [5] or
CityGML [6]. Although the way in which these les are exchanged has
become more efcient in recent years with the advent of the cloud,
the interoperability problem has yet to be solved [7].
Interoperability plays a key role in the AEC industry by providing a
large variety of tools and applications used by the variety of professionals involved in the design and construction of a building. With
BIM, the different experts involved are expected to exchange information via the building model. Each expert works on a part of a building
model, but the decisions they take have an impact on the overall project.
Even though BIM should assure the congruence of the information
stored in a model jointly built by different experts, often the extraction
of a part of the model (to export it to a structural engineering application, for example) results in experts having to make a new partial
model from scratch [8]. This is mainly due to two shortcomings: 1. the
lack of mechanisms to facilitate the extraction of parts of a model,
which contain only the information required for each expert, and 2.
the limitations of standards to anticipate the multiple ways to dene a
model to satisfy the needs of the various experts involved. Nowadays,

there is no clear solution to overcome these obstacles. The diversity inherent to AEC projects, the various methodologies used by the multiple
stakeholders involved in the building sector, and the commercial strategies of the software vendors make it difcult to nd a generic solution
[9].
In an attempt to overcome the interoperability problems, the
BuildingSMART consortium has developed different technologies
based on the IFC standard such as BuildingSMART Data Dictionaries
(bsDD) [10], Model View Denition (MVD) [11] and Information Delivery Manual (IDM) [12]. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) are the
most extended ISO open and standardized data schema which started
to be developed in 1994 by the BuildingSMART consortium (formerly,
the International Alliance for Interoperability) to support data exchange
in the AEC industry. The IFC schema is based on a set of concepts such as
classes, attributes, relationships, property sets, and quantity denitions,
to describe information of building models to be exchanged between
different software applications. Using IFC, BIM data can be extracted
from proprietary software and be exchanged with other applications.
BuildingSMART is currently working on the development of new
versions of the IFC schema to increase the level of interoperability of
the BIM model. The IFC4 specication (formerly known as IFC2x4)
enhances the previous version with new geometric and parametric
features, among others. Each new version of the IFC specication solves
some of the persisting shortcomings from previous ones while some
deprecated parts, which are no longer used, are removed or updated
[13].
As a general purpose data model that facilitates the exchange
between different software applications, the IFC schema cannot
anticipate the multiple ways of representing information of the different
BIM software that may exist. Furthermore, its ability to dene the characteristics of a model in different ways might hinder its interpretation.
Semantically validated IFC models can facilitate the exchange of information to members of the project team. However, the lack of mechanisms to
restrict the way in which the constraints are dened in the model
becomes a problem in keeping this semantic validation [14]. This often
leads to a lack of practical use of the IFC exchange format aside from
the most common use cases (e.g. data exchange between architectural
design applications and structural analysis programs), unless this
limitation is previously considered by the BIM modelers. In this regard,
integrating all the existing modeling rules adopted by BIM vendors
represents a big challenge considering the particular underlying
data structures, the ongoing evolution of CAD/BIM software and the
diverse design approaches (e.g. a creative design approach versus an
industrialized one).
Finally, other problems with the use of standards are related to their
use. In the case of the IFC standard, the use of large les can hinder the
effectiveness of the exchange format. For example, with large IFC les
downstream editing sometimes becomes impossible [15]. Sometimes
these les are large because they are generated as faceted geometry,
represented by faces and edges, which usually requires storing much
more information than that contained in a parametric model. However,
limitations are more critical at the component level. Most of the current
BIM software tools do not allow users to import/export component
models in IFC separately from the building model. Today, only specic
software developed by third parties provided as plug-ins that can
be included in the BIM program enables importing parametric models
of components. An example is the plug-in for importing and exporting
IFC les of components in Autodesk Revit 2014 developed by the
GeometryGym Company.
The creation of standards for interoperability is a complex issue
which requires an in-depth knowledge of how the software used by
the industry works as well as how the data is described in them [16].
In the AEC industry, the buildingSMART standard, together with
CityGML, an open data model for a common representation of 3D
urban objects, have become the most widely used and accepted
mechanisms for interoperability. These standards have been successful

G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

in providing generic vocabularies for exchanging data between AEC

applications. However, they do not provide the exibility that is needed
in specic conditions, for example, when it comes to meeting the requirements of local building codes. This sort of problems could be
avoided by converting semantically rich information [17].
As an alternative to the use of standardized formats, other interoperability forms can be obtained by creating ad-hoc solutions to resolve
specic problems in scenarios where required. However, standardized
solutions are needed to overcome the limitations in these formats in
a general way through alternative BIM technology methods and
approaches. Several initiatives based on Semantic Web technologies
have been studied over the last years as a valid and an alternative
approach for interoperability.
1.3. Application case: services connected to the BAUKOM catalogue
In this article, we focus on a particular case of application of the
Semantic Web technologies to connect services to BIM models and
linked data of structural precast concrete components, via a building
component catalogue we created as part of the research project
BAUKOM, co-nanced by the Spanish National Research Plan 2009
2012. Starting from the basis that information from different data
sources related to the building components has been integrated in the
catalogue, we have implemented a service as a proof of concept which
accesses the catalogue in order to assist the design team (architects,
structural engineers) in the assembly and dimensioning of structural
components during the project phase. In this service, features and
models of products integrated within the catalogue are retrieved using
the SPARQL query language.
From the data integration perspective, the development of services
that link the component catalogue with the BIM model implies: 1. the
integration of different heterogeneous data sources to create the
denitions of the building components in the catalogue, and 2. the linkage of building component models from the catalogue into the BIM
model. Semantic models (e.g. ontologies) are essential to facilitate access to different heterogeneous data sources. They act as intermediaries
between queries formulated by users based on a particular domain
(e.g. building components) and the various data sources required to
answer them (e.g. product data bases, building regulations). For this
purpose, an ontology has been created in the BAUKOM catalogue to
enable the specication of product data in a parametric format and to
combine it with other integrated data (e.g. taxonomies, building
standards and regulations). Semantic information of products described
according to this ontology, and accessible through a SPARQL endpoint,
can be queried by third parties. Since ontologies can be understood by
humans, different queries can be written based on them using the
SPARQL language to develop services to exploit their information.
Once a product is retrieved from the catalogue as a result of invoking
the services we have implemented, a model of the product is integrated
in the BIM model. However, the BIM model is not only the destination of
the building component models extracted from the catalogue. It is also
the data source to be consulted in order to nd out which products t
the project under development.
In the following section, we discuss the benets of using Semantic
Web technologies and ontologies to integrate and describe building
product information provided as linked data on the Web and to
create services that interact with building component catalogues.
Sections 3 and 4 describe the work carried out in the BAUKOM research
project. Finally, conclusions and future work are discussed in Section 5.

241

an initiative introduced by [18] in 2001 with the aim of turning the current web dominated by unstructured and semi-structured documents
into a web of data. The basic idea behind the Semantic Web is to add
semantic metadata to the existing data in order to describe data content
and their relations in a formal way so that the meaning of the data can
be processed by machines.
2.1. Introduction to Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data approaches
A basic tenet of semantic technologies is the separation of meaning
from data. The purpose of the Semantic Web is to apply these technologies to the Web of data. This way, applications can query data on the
Web for different purposes such as integrating data or drawing
inferences from the data available in the Web. To make this possible,
the data on the Web should be available in the standard formats
required by the tools developed by the Semantic Web, especially those
data that concern the relationships between the data. The creation of
these links between data on the Web enables people and machines to
explore them. BernersLee coined this relationship as Linked Data [19].
The application of semantic technologies transforms the Web into a
semantic network that is globally interconnected. Semantic Web
technologies enable an explicit representation of the meanings of the information on the Web by means of ontologies. According to Gruber [20],
an ontology can be described as a formal and explicit specication of a
shared conceptualization. These specications are dened by means of
classes, attributes, values, relationships, roles and rules. OWL is the most
used language created by the World Wide Web Consortium to describe
ontologies in a formal way.
The Resource Description Framework Schema (RDFS) [21] and Web
Ontology Language (OWL) [22] are the most frequently used Semantic
Web languages to construct ontologies. They are supported by the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) whose mission is to develop
protocols and guidelines to ensure the long-term growth of the web
[23]. The specication of ontologies using these languages is done
through RDF statements. RDF [24] is one of the specications provided
by the W3C, a general-purpose language designed to be read and
understood by computers. Information can be formalized in RDF graphs
made of RDF triples, that is, subjectpredicateobject statements,
which represent facts and relations. Therefore, RDF statements can be
diagrammed as a directed graph representing facts. In this way, by
dening explicit links in these statements as unambiguous references
that may refer to data specied in other graphs, it is possible to create
a network of linked data available for any application [25].
***The use of Semantic Web technologies to address interoperability
problems in the AEC sector has been proposed by several authors [26,
27]. Pauwels et al. [28] has suggested using the semantics and syntax
of RDF graphs to combine models from different CAD/BIM applications.
Abdul-Ghafour et al. [29] have proposed an ontology-based approach
based on OWL DL language for capturing, interpreting, and reusing the
semantics of product information, where OWL DL is an OWL sublanguage based on description logics which provides the maximum expressiveness while maintaining the computational completeness and
decidability. They point out that the denition of mapping rules is one
of the real challenges to address in the future. Going a step further,
Bhms et al. [30] have developed a prototype of a Semantic Webbased Open engineering Platform (SWOP) to model products. To implement this platform, a reusable ontology for product modeling called
PMO (Product Modeling Ontology) has been created, which acts as a
bridge between semantic and non-semantic information (documents,
drawings, etc.).

2. Creating Building component specications with

semantic technologies

2.2. IFC standard and semantic technologies

In the last decade, the Semantic Web has provided new methods and
technologies to enable users to nd, share, and combine information in
the internet more easily. The Semantic Web can be briey described as

Although the IFC standard permits the representation of many

domains of the AEC industry, the lack of mechanisms to extend the semantics of the model represents remains one of its major limitations.

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G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

In an attempt to overcome them, Beetz et al. [31] have developed an

ifcOWL specication to translate the EXPRESS language denition of
IFC into an OWL-based notation. The semantic interoperability provided
by this specication enables the extension of BIM models with new concepts and properties that facilitate its interpretation by applications
[32]. This approach is opposed to the current IFC denitions (IfcProxies
and IfcPropertySets) which are circumscribed to the lexical and syntactic interoperability levels [33]. Thereby, ifcOWL provides a semantic
interoperability capability, not offered by any other implementation of
the IFC, for example, ifcXML, an ISO STEP 10303-28 [34] that species
the mapping of EXPRESS language denitions to the XML schema and
the associated serialization of instance data les. IfcOWL adds a layer
of semantic metadata enabling formalizing data instances in a way
that they may be processed by reasoning engines such as Pellet [35],
RACER [36], and others. An advantage of this type of data formalization
lies in its capacity to extract partial models by using graph query languages such as SPARQL [37]. Thereby, it is possible to obtain a graph
containing only the strictly necessary information for a specic use or
type of application by creating queries on the y. Furthermore, the
formalization of the IFC model using Semantic Web technologies
enables to distribute both the denition of the model itself and their
specic instances through the Web.
Similarly, Pauwels et al. [38] have developed a version of the IFC
ontology in OWL. They have also implemented a converter where an
IFC ontology in EXPRESS is partially transformed into the OWL ontology.
This converter has been used within an on-line web service developed
to provide the conversion of le-based IFC models (uploaded) into
le-based IFC/RDF graphs [39]. This way, a service can be accessed by
using a command-line tool (in Java) or by using a RESTful Web interface
(https://github.com/mmlab/IFC-to-RDF-converter). To transform the
EXPRESS version of IFC into an OWL version, ENTITY elements were
mapped into equivalent OWL classes and the EXPRESS attributes to
the corresponding equivalent OWL properties. However, the authors
state that this process could not be fully completed automatically,
since some elements of the EXPRESS schema have no direct equivalent
in OWL (e.g. WHERE rule constraints, procedural FUNCTION calls).
Other approaches attempt to facilitate the standardization of BIM
models right from the start, ensuring that all building products instantiated in such models contain a minimum of standardized parameters.
This is, in fact, the main objective of the BuildingSMART Data Dictionary,
a standard created by buildingSMART that relates the terminology of
the properties of building products in different languages with
properties of the IFC, which are used as references.

2.3. Building product catalogues on the Semantic Web

In recent years, different solutions and prototype implementations
based on Semantic Web technologies have been proposed to deal with
the problem of modeling information of building products in a
standardized way. For example, Patil et al. [40] have proposed an
ontology-based framework that enables the exchange of meanings
between product information resources across different application
domains. Product information is described using a language called
Product Semantics Representation Language (PSRL) and a semiautomatic procedure is used to determine mappings between equivalent concepts used in the ontology and the ones used by the applications. In this way, through a product ontology described in PSRL, the
meanings associated to a product can be captured. The outcome is a
set of minimum requirements necessary to describe product data to
be exchanged among applications rather than a new data model as
STEP does. The most critical part of the process is the mapping between
ontologies. This is achieved by comparing all the term denitions from
both ontologies using some logical reasoning. However, to represent
the semantic equivalence between terms requires dening one-byone relationships for each new CAD application in a mapping table.

Beetz and de Vries [41] propose an architecture for semantic services

based on building product information. As a central part of this architecture, the authors have created a lightweight ontology consisting of
concepts and instances based on the IFC standard applied to building
components made of concrete. This ontology is part of a four-layer
framework implemented as a prototype. In this framework, the ontology is serialized via RDFa statements that can be indexed by web search
engines. This architecture is presented as an alternative to the
buildingSMART Data Dictionary (bsDD) standard, which is too wide
and leaves too much scope to interpret the structure and use of concepts
and their instances. The architecture includes interfaces based on SOAP
APIs and SPARQL endpoints to facilitate complex searches in a direct
way compared to other implementations based on STEP/SOAP, a feature
that enables to address the problem of heterogeneity of the contents of a
large number of product catalogues from different manufacturers.
Taking a step further to improve semantic interoperability,
Chaparala et al. [42] have proposed a methodology based on a neutral
core product ontology that can be combined with the STEP standard
to dene product data from multiple CAD applications in a standardized
way. After exporting a product component model from a CAD application as a STEP le, the les are loaded in an ontology editor such as
Protg by using the OntoSTEP [43] middleware, a plug-in for Protg
created by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
that is used to convert EXPRESS schemas to OWL-DL. This approach
has to face the problem of the large amount of the information on the
products and the lack of mechanisms to manage them.
2.4. Integration of building product data
One of the applications of the Semantic Web technologies is data
integration. By using semantic technologies, it is possible to collect
and combine data from multiple heterogeneous sources using
ontologies to provide a homogeneous view of the information to specific users [44]. The use of ontologies for data integration across different
domains has been investigated by various authors over the recent
decades [45-48]. Different methods and techniques, based on mapping
and matching, have been used to deal with the problems of semantic
heterogeneity that may arise in the process of data integration.
Semantic Web technologies can be used to create building component descriptions that combine and link different types of information
(for example, product specications, building regulations and costs).
In this way, by applying semantic data integration techniques, isolated
and disconnected data from different sources (text les, databases,
spreadsheets and web pages) can be linked and formalized using the
OWL language specication, and the instance data integrated as RDF
statements. Thereby, relationships between the diverse data can be explicitly and unambiguously established using standardized descriptions.
As the development of services for the BIM process increasingly
adopts a web-oriented approach, a product catalogue based on different
integrated information provided as Linked Data accessible on the web
seems to be a feasible solution to satisfy the search needs and the
reuse of product information for building modeling.
2.5. BIM component providers
One way to achieve greater efciency in the BIM process is to forge
links between the model and the building products for example:
doors, windows, precast concrete components available in the web
portals of the manufacturers, product catalogues and commercial libraries (e.g. National BIM Library [49], Autodesk Seek [50], Bouw-Connect
[51], BIMObject [52], BauBook [53], among others). Most of these
catalogues provide component models in open (IFC) and proprietary
(Revit [54], Allplan [55]) formats that can be used by different BIM
applications. However, open formats are barely chosen because they
usually include less information than those created for each specic

G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

program. Furthermore, not all applications can import models in

formats such as IFC.
Component models from different manufacturers can be downloaded
from these catalogues and inserted into a BIM model. However, after
being downloaded and inserted in a BIM model the components do not
keep the links with the catalogues. Because of this, an update of the
product information would not be recognized in the BIM model. There
are other catalogues (e.g. BIMObject, National BIM Library) that provide
add-on services as plug-ins to enable the connection between the components of the BIM model and the catalogues, although these connections
operate at the software level instead of at the data level, so they might
be lost if the BIM model which includes the components is accessed
from other programs.
Semantic Web technologies can be applied to overcome these limitations. In the rst place, component models can be referenced through
a Uniform Resource Identier (URI), which is used to identify a resource
on the Web. Through this URI, information on a component can be
retrieved by accessing the linked dataset described as an RDF graph.
The information described in this graph can include links to other
resources related to this component which can be found in the Web.
This approach is the one adopted in the development of the BAUKOM
catalogue introduced in the following section.
3. An architecture to create building components catalogues using
semantic technologies
In the BAUKOM project, carried out from 2005 to 2009 by the research group ARC Engineering and Architecture La Salle in collaboration
with PRECAT Hormigones Prefabricados de Catalunya, S.L. a precast
concrete company an on-line catalogue of building components has
been developed which is compatible with BIM technology (Fig. 1). The
products of the catalogue and services associated to them enable a

243

design team to retrieve the information that is necessary to model

a structural frame made of precast concrete components in a BIM
software from the catalogue [56].
An information system architecture has been developed in BAUKOM
to interlink: 1. building product catalogues, 2. associated services and 3.
BIM software. In this architecture, an ontology has been developed to
integrate information on building components provided by product
manufacturers and other available data sources from multiple domains.
3.1. Catalogues of building components
In the BAUKOM catalogue, information of products is described by
templates created by specialists (technical team, consultants) for each
type of building component (Fig. 2). By means of these templates,
manufacturers can describe their products. The data model that
facilitates the creation of templates and associated products has been
implemented in a relational database. However, this data model has
also been implemented as an ontology (BAUKOM ontology) where the
data from the relational database are integrated into a data warehouse
to facilitate data interlinking operations with other data sources.
Templates and products can be created through a set of interfaces.
Templates stand for representations of the manufacturer product
datasheets where the different relations among the information
name, description, creation date, and classications among others as
well as the related data models parametrically described, are explicitly
dened. In a template, parameters are used to describe a component.
These parameters can be related according to parentchild categories
(e.g. a parent concept can be dened by two or more children
measures), or be referenced to other parameters (the value will be set
by the referenced parameter). Different units can be selected for each
parameter (length, area, volume, etc.). Each type of unit is linked to a
magnitude, for example, the Length unit is linked to the meters

Fig. 1. Structure of the BAUKOM showing the connection between product catalogues, services and the BIM software.

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G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

Fig. 2. Interface to dene objects for product templates.

magnitude. Once created by specialists with the aid of the manufacturers,

templates can be selected by manufacturers to describe their products.
Products are described using a template selected in the catalogue.
Since a product can be described in multiple ways, the attributes included in a template can be congured in various ways too. For example, a
precast concrete beam component could have wires in the upper or
lower parts of the section. Therefore, the template of this component
takes these two possibilities into account. Once they have been created
using the templates, products can be searched by end users.
Both templates and products are stored in an SQL database. Each
time a template or product is published, the data corresponding to the
part of the ontology schema of the catalogue are stored in a triple
store database. This way, the information about components (products
and templates) can be combined with other information, obtained
from external data sources that have been integrated using semantic
technologies.
The solution adopted in this catalogue helps to overcome the
problems of data integration of building components mentioned in
the introduction. With this solution, the information about components
is transformed into a common RDF/OWL representation format. D2RQ
platform tools [57] are used to carry out this transformation process.
This data integration process has been described in more detail in [58].
3.2. Access to building component data
In the BAUKOM catalogue, product data are generated through different modules that are interlinked (Fig. 3). These modules provide
the necessary infrastructure to integrate and combine information,
making it accessible to different services through a SPARQL endpoint.
In the process of specifying the product data in the catalogue, manufacturers can assign different categories from existing taxonomies
(for example, those of MasterFormat, OmniClass, IFC) to the products.
They can also assign them product codes. Altogether, the properties
assigned to the products enable services to identify the type of component that suits the project requirements as specied in the

corresponding BIM model. Besides, manufacturers can specify the compatibility of their products with other products, even from other manufacturers. Knowing which products can be combined with other
products is important in order to create a BIM model as an assembly
of subsystems of compatible elements.
Since resources in the Semantic Web are identied by URIs, each
product in the catalogue is identied by a URI (e.g. bhttp://www.
baukom-catalog.org/baukom/cpo/resource/product/-precat/beam_IN).
The last part of the URI corresponds to the internal code used by manufacturers to identify the components in their management systems.
3.3. Semantic services to link building components with BIM
Services that implement Semantic Web technologies, or Semantic
Web Services, are usually associated to service-oriented computing
where data, within a shared domain, are described in terms of concepts,
roles and rules [59]. However, in the context of our research, a service
refers to a piece of software (services on the Web, desktop applications,
or plugins for different BIM software) that uses semantic data on the
Web to solve some specic needs that arise in a design process supported by BIM models. In this context, and to further automate BIM actions
by using external linked data information (in this case, provided by the
BAUKOM catalogue), several services have been developed using
semantic technologies.
As a proof of concept, we have developed two services: one to assist
in the assembly and dimensioning of structural components (described
in Section 4), and a second one to calculate beam sections. A detailed description of this service has been the subject of another publication [58].
The information stored in the catalogue can be accessed through a
Web Service and a SPARQL endpoint, enabling services to access the
data to operate with them. The ontology developed in BAUKOM facilitates the creation of ad-hoc solutions for modeling (e.g. implemented
in services), based on the features of a particular template, or on the
combination of several when this is required. For example, structural
precast concrete components are part of a system based on hierarchical

Fig. 3. Overview of the data ow in BAUKOM project.

G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

Fig. 4. SPARQL Query to retrieve products with a valid height value.

relationships (e.g. slabs are connected to girders that can be connected

to a column through corbels or brackets, or directly). This way, during
the assembly of the structure in the BIM model, slab products can be
obtained from the catalogue based on the properties of the beams
previously selected. All products can be congured with values to suit
the design criteria of the manufacturers. Moreover, different templates
to describe the different types of features can be used to describe a product, features such as the dimensions for structural calculations, material
properties and embodied energy.
However, there are some limitations in this data model in order to
facilitate the creation of templates and associated products. For example, it is not possible to specify mathematical formulas in these
templates. This could be necessary, for instance, to include formulas to
check if a product meets the specication of a particular building regulation. Some research works have started to deal with these issues using
Semantic Web Rule languages such as RuleML [60], SWRL [61], N3Logic
[62] or JenaRules [63] and rule-based inference engines such as the EYE
Engine [64] or Jena Inference Engine [63]. This way, inference processes
based on semantic rules can be applied on BIM models and the outputs

245

of the inferences can be used to search products in the catalogue that

suit the requirements of a service.
An example of product search in the catalogue is to retrieve all the
hollow core slab components that meet the requirements of structural
modeling. In most cases, these slabs are supported on beams, so their
lengths can be obtained from the boundary of the beams. Knowing
the length of the beam, together with the information about other
parameters that end-users can specify (for example, width and loads),
a valid range of height values for hollow core slabs can be calculated
through a formula provided by the building safety code on hollow
core slabs [65]. Once a range of heights is obtained, a SPARQL query
can be executed to obtain all the hollow core slab products of the
catalogue with a height within this range (Fig. 4).
The following section describes a service created as a plug-in for
Autodesk Revit 2014 to assist in the modeling of structural frames
with precast components. The implementation of the service demonstrates that structural modeling with BIM can be better supported by
using Semantic Web technologies to provide more exible ways to
describe, search and retrieve product information from component
catalogues.
4. A service to assist precast structural modeling
Along with the catalogue of prefabricated concrete components
accessible in BAUKOM, different services can be developed to enhance
the functionalities of BIM software. One of them is a service implemented as a plug-in for Revit that facilitates the search of structural precast
products in the process of their assembly to create building modeling
structures with these components (Fig. 5).
This service enables the automation of searching and integrating
catalogue components corbels and hollow core slabs into a BIM
model, tasks that often involved a substantial amount of manual work.
In the case of corbel components, the service enables users to search
for this type of product in the BAUKOM catalogue. After a search, the
service retrieves all the instances that are compatible with the type of
possible components connected with them (columns and girders).

Fig. 5. Service to assist in precast structural modeling.

246

G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

Fig. 6. Interface for conguring the automated positioning of corbels.

Such relationships between the components are implicitly dened by a

taxonomy built-in in the catalogue. Nevertheless, the manufacturer can
dene explicit relations between certain products. Based on these relationships, the user is provided with a list of compatible products.
Besides, this list can be ltered by the user according to different criteria
(e.g. type of material, shape). After selecting a product and downloading
the corresponding parametric component model in BIM Revit, this can
be automatically positioned in those places in which a column is connected to a girder. Through the service interface, the type of positioning
of the corbels can be congured for each oor level (Fig. 6).

The service works in a similar fashion in the case of hollow core

slabs. Users can search for products of this component in the catalogue
based on different criteria (e.g., number of hollows, dimensions,
compression layer). After selecting the type of hollow core slab, it can
be downloaded, placed and congured automatically in the BIM model.
In Revit, the placement of structural components such as beams and hollow core slabs can be handled with the Beam System tool. However, this
tool does not facilitate the automatic adjustment of a component to the
boundary conditions of the area of the model where it is inserted. For example, the Revit tool does not cut a slab component so that it ts within a

Fig. 7. Representative situations in which hollow core slabs must t the perimeter..

G. Costa, L. Madrazo / Automation in Construction 57 (2015) 239248

non-orthogonal polygonal area. Neither is this tool able to derive the

height of the slab from the model. Precisely, what the plug-in we have
developed does is to get from a BIM model information about the context
in which the component is going to be inserted to set the value of the
component parameters (Fig. 7).
This service was developed in collaboration with Precat [66]. It was
proved to be successful for saving production time for modeling their
projects. It was implemented with Dot NET technologies [67]: WPF
through Framework 3.5 and 4.0, according to the version of BIM Revit.
DotNetRDF library [68] has been used to implement the management
operations of the ontology and the connections with the product
catalogue.
5. Conclusions
The Semantic Web can be understood as a network that interlinks
multiple domains describing their data by means of exible and
standard languages such as RDF(S) or OWL. In the AEC sector, Semantic
Web technologies can be applied to integrate and connect information
that is necessary to describe building components stored in catalogues
that are accessible to BIM applications via dedicated services.
The aim of our research work has been to apply Semantic Web
technologies to fulll these two objectives: 1. to produce building
component descriptions using linked data from different sources available on the Web, and 2. to provide services that make the linked data
available in the product catalogue accessible to end-users working
with BIM models. Accordingly, a product component catalogue has
been developed and two services have been implemented, one to assist
in the assembly and dimensioning of structural components that we
presented in this article, and a second one to calculate beam sections.
The implementation of a catalogue and the associated services in the
modeling of precast concrete frames with BIM Revit has enabled to
validate the application of Semantic Web technologies in a real case.
One of the conclusions that can be derived from this research is that
more efforts are needed to provide parametric descriptions of products
in a more standardized way to facilitate their integration and processing
by BIM software. Semantic Web technologies applied in combination
with the IFC standard seem to be the most promising path to improve
the interoperability between BIM models and product catalogues. This
interoperability is also necessary to facilitate reusing parametric models
of products provided in catalogues which are interlinked with other
information outside BIM.
Future research work should contribute to expanding the capabilities
of the BAUKOM catalogue by integrating new domains related to building energy efciency. This will require an upgrading of the interfaces so
that domain specialists can specify new types of relation between different domains and the existing ones. Furthermore, the addition of new
domains in the catalogue would enable the creation of new services to
support the design of energy efcient buildings.
Acknowledgments
The work presented in this article has been carried out with the
support of the Plan Avanza Competitividad (TSI-020100-2010-327)
co-funded by the Spanish National RDI Plan, grant number TSI020100-2010-327. We would like to thank PRECAT Hormigones
Prefabricados de Catalunya for their collaboration in the development
and implementation of the service to dimension structural components
that interact with the BAUKOM catalogue.
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