IV – Data and Process Modelling II

7U4X0 REAL ESTATE, URBAN DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

Ekaterina Petrova, Assistant Professor, Information Systems in the Built Environment

Department of the Built Environment

Agenda

• Design workflow
• Model integration
• Open standard
• Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)

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Design workflow

What differentiates the building sector from many other industries is the wide range of
different products in use and number of software vendors in the market.

In other industries (e.g., automotive and aircraft manufacturing), the main

manufacturers decide which software products their suppliers must use. At the same
time, large, global software manufacturers provide complete solutions for these
industries that cover many parts of the design and engineering processes.

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Design workflow

4 Data and Process Modelling II

Design workflow

5 Data and Process Modelling II

Design workflow

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Design workflow

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Design workflow

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Design workflow

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Design workflow

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Small recap

BIM means Building Information Modelling

• Modelling the information about a building
• All of the information, not just the geometry
• The process of creating a Building Information Model

BIM also means Building Information Model

• The result of the Building Information

BIM provides a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a

facility.

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Need for model and data integration
A problem is that many of these tools
are still islands of automation i.e. have
no or only limited support for data
exchange between the separate
applications.

Consequently, data and information

that already exists in digital form needs
to be re-entered manually, which is
laborious and prone to introducing new
errors. As a result, islands of data are
also created (siloes).

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Need for model and data integration

To remedy this situation, a data exchange format is required that makes it

possible to transfer building data between software products with as little data
loss as possible. Such a format must set out uniform, unambiguous descriptions of
geometric information that are clear in their meaning and therefore not open to
misinterpretation.

A further important aspect is the detailed description of semantic information,

including the classification of building components within a common hierarchy of
types, the description of the relationships between them and the definition of their
relevant properties (material, building times, etc.

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Need for model and data integration

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Need for model and data integration

This is where the term interoperability comes into play, which means
the loss-free exchange of data between software products by different
vendors.

A Building Information Model is a shared digital representation founded on

open standards for interoperability.

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Open standard

Definition:
A standard is a document recognized agreements, specifications
or criteria about a product, service or method.

Standards can be established within a company or organization within a consortium of

organizations or by authorized standards-organizations.

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Open standard

An open standard is a standard that is publicly available.

Open standards which specify formats are sometimes referred to

as open formats.

An open format is a file format for storing digital data, defined by a

published specification usually maintained by a standards organization,
and which can be used and implemented by anyone.

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Open standard

When we say ‘open standard’. In the built environment, what do we

mean?

First, it means sharing data using the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)
standard

• The full ‘de facto’ standard is available through buildingSMART

(www.buildingsmart.org)
• The core of IFC is defined as ISO / PAS16739
• buildingSMART are committed to making ISO 16739 a full standard for data
exchange

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BuildingSMART Standards

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BuildingSmart: home for OpenBIM

• Huge source of information for the use of building data (IFC-based):

https://www.buildingsmart.org/the-buildingsmart-international-virtual-summit-26
-october-6-november-2020/
for all presentations shown at the latest buildingSMART Summit

• Technical Roadmap:
https://www.buildingsmart.org/about/technical-roadmap/

• Digital Twin position paper:

https://www.buildingsmart.org/buildingsmart-positioning-paper-enabling-an-ecos
ystem-of-digital-twins/

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Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)

Data Standard – Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)

IFC represents a data schema for sharing construction and facility

management data across various applications used in the AEC/FM
industry domain. It is an object-oriented data schema based on class
definitions.

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IFC

SCHEMA Vehicle;

ENTITY Car
color: STRING;
brand: STRING;
type: STRING;
fuel: STRING;
END_ENTITY;

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IFC
• There are no licensing fees for using the IFC model.
• Numerous software products have since implemented the IFC model.
• More than 160 implementations of the standard in individual software products.
• In many countries it has now become an obligatory data exchange format for
construction tendering and approval procedures.
• IFC has become the definitive format for realizing Open BIM.
• IFC data model focuses on the description of buildings. Extensions for describing
other built structures, such as civil engineering infrastructure, are currently in
development.

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IFC

Layers

The general principle is that elements in the upper layers can reference elements in
the layers below but not vice versa. This ensures that the core elements remain
independent.

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IFC

• Domain layer
• Interoperability layer
• Core layer
• Resource layer

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IFC
Inheritance hierarchy

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IFC

Division Between Semantic Description and Geometric Representation

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IFC Technical Roadmap

https://www.buildingsmart.org/about/technical-roadmap/

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IFC for collaboration and coordination

29 Fundamentals of BIM: IFC, STEP, and EXPRESS

Example: IfcWindow
#121 = IFCDIRECTION((0., 0., 1.));
#122 = IFCDIRECTION((1., 0., 0.));
#123 = IFCDIRECTION((0., 0., 1.));
#124 = IFCWINDOW('0LV8Pid0X3IA3jJLVDPidY', #2, 'Window xyz', 'Description of Window', $, #125, #130, $, 1.400, 7.500E-1);
#125 = IFCLOCALPLACEMENT(#98, #126);
#126 = IFCAXIS2PLACEMENT3D(#127, #128, #129);
#127 = IFCCARTESIANPOINT((0., 1.000E-1, 0.));
#128 = IFCDIRECTION((0., 0., 1.));
#129 = IFCDIRECTION((1., 0., 0.));
#130 = IFCPRODUCTDEFINITIONSHAPE($, $, (#150));
#131 = IFCRELFILLSELEMENT('1CDlLMVMv1qw1giUXpQgxI', #2, $, $, #97, #124);
#132 = IFCPROPERTYSET('0fhz_bHU54xB$tXHjHPUZl', #2, 'Pset_WindowCommon', $, (#133, #134, #135, #136, #137, #138, #139, #140, #141, #142, #143,
#144));
#133 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('Reference', 'Reference', IFCTEXT(''), $);
#134 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('FireRating', 'FireRating', IFCTEXT(''), $);
#135 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('AcousticRating', 'AcousticRating', IFCTEXT(''), $);
#136 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('SecurityRating', 'SecurityRating', IFCTEXT(''), $);
#137 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('IsExternal', 'IsExternal', IFCBOOLEAN(.T.), $);
#138 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('Infiltration', 'Infiltration', IFCBOOLEAN(.F.), $);
#139 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('ThermalTransmittance', 'ThermalTransmittance', IFCREAL(2.400E-1), $);
#140 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('GlazingAresFraction', 'GlazingAresFraction', IFCREAL(7.000E-1), $);
#141 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('HandicapAccessible', 'HandicapAccessible', IFCBOOLEAN(.F.), $);
#142 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('FireExit', 'FireExit', IFCBOOLEAN(.F.), $);
#143 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('SelfClosing', 'SelfClosing', IFCBOOLEAN(.F.), $);
#144 = IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('SmokeStop', 'SmokeStop', IFCBOOLEAN(.F.), $);
#145 = IFCRELDEFINESBYPROPERTIES('2fHMxamlj5DvGvEKfCk8nj', #2, $, $, (#124), #132);
#146 = IFCELEMENTQUANTITY('0bB_7AP5v5OBZ90TDvo0Fo', #2, 'BaseQuantities', $, $, (#147, #148));
#147 = IFCQUANTITYLENGTH('Height', 'Height', $, 1.400);

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EXPRESS: A data modelling language for the IFC standard

Definition of an entity type using the data modelling language EXPRESS

31 Fundamentals of BIM: IFC, STEP, and EXPRESS