Yong-Cheol Lee

The Critical Role of Accessible Data for BIM-Based Automated Rule Checking Systems

This paper proposes a concept of an accessible BIM database that supports integration with geometry enabling simplified and efficient queries of the IFC-based building model. The simplified schema, BIMRL, is shown to be significantly effective for the purpose of an implementation of an automated BIM-based rule checking system. The schema has been shown to successfully work in both traditional RDBMS and the NoSQL graph database. It complements a missing piece in the current research of automated rule checking, which mostly focuses on the formulation and representation of computable rules involving logic, checking algorithm, and parameterization. Even though these present approaches have largely assumed that data is available and easily accessible from a building model, this assumption is typically infeasible in a real-world implementation. Building rules require not only base data explicitly available in the model but also higher level semantic concepts that typically involve multiple relationships and spatial operations, which cannot be captured explicitly in the model. Without addressing this issue, a rule checking system will severely underperform and will be filled with opaque algorithms that act as black-boxes.

Modularized Validation of a Building Information Model According to the Specifications of the Facility Management Handover and Cobie

With increasing requirements and complexity in building projects, diverse domain experts employ a neutral file format, which is exchangeable and interoperable among heterogeneous BIM authoring tools and applications in diverse disciplines. The Construction-Operations Building Information Exchange (COBie) is a set of the specifications of building data exchange pertaining to building asset information. For interoperability, COBie is defined as a model view, which is the subset of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) schema. For ensured interoperability of BIM data, using COBie model view, domain professionals and software developers need to identify 1) whether their IFC instance files include required information on building asset management and 2) whether their IFC interfaces accurately import/export IFC files according to the COBie specifications. However, since no approach currently supports this validation testing, professionals manually evaluate an IFC instance file and their IFC binding processes in order to identify semantic errors, technical problems, and translation mapping issues. To enhance the efficiency of this time-consuming and labor-intensive evaluation process, this study proposes a validation framework for evaluating IFC instance files pertaining to the conformity to the COBie specifications. In addition, this study formalizes the requirements of the COBie model view using identified rule logic. For validation, rules are implemented on a modularized validation platform developed on top of the IfcDoc tool, which is a model view documentation and validation tool.

In Search of Open and Practical Language-Driven BIM-Based Automated Rule Checking Systems

Significant progress has been made towards BIM-based automated rule-checking systems. There are multiple approaches that show varying potentials as crucial components for open and practical rule checking systems. However, in the current state, we are not yet quite there as they are still several barriers that prevent the needed shift from proof-of-concept to the real-world implementation. This paper reviews various language-based rule checking systems that have been proposed and assesses their potentials and gaps that need to be overcome for them to become practical. It introduces metrics of eleven criteria to analyze various approaches to assess their readiness for the real-world implementations. The criteria cover a wide range of aspects including language expressiveness, ease of use to define a rule, openness, level of maturity, and performance. These criteria help to identify gaps that currently exist that need to be overcome to allow a leap from a proof-of-concept to the real-world implementation. From the assessment, it is obvious that no one single approach is currently capable of covering the entire spectrum of requirements for automated rule-checking systems. The assessment also shows that the possibilities of combining two or more approaches may accelerate the realization of an open and practical language-driven automated rule checking system.

Reusability and Its Limitations of the Modules of Existing BIM Data Exchange Requirements for New MVDs

Model View Definition (MVD) is developed as a subset of the IFC schema to define BIM data exchange requirements of the architecture, engineering, construction, and facility management industries. Several domains such as the Precast/Pre-stressed Concrete Industry, the American Concrete Industry (ACI), the American Industry of Steel Construction (AISC), and the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (Brim MVD) have defined or are currently defining model views for formally representing their BIM data exchange requirements and assisting their exchange processes using the neutral data format, IFC. However, even though several domain industries involve the same or similar sets of data exchange requirements for their MVDs, a lack of a proper approach for reusing existing MVDs results in that a data exchange process of new MVD including the same entities, attributes, and relationships of other MVDs contains inconsistent and heterogeneous sets of data exchange requirements. For accelerating the consistent MVD development reusing previous efforts and the interoperable BIM data exchange environment, this paper involves the investigation of existing MVDs and their module-based definition processes to identify the current problems in MVD development regarding reusability and contains the discussion of the promising method for utilizing predefined MVDs for new MVD development.

Modularized BIM Data Validation Framework Integrating Visual Programming Language with LegalRuleML

A building design must satisfy diverse requirements including building codes, owner’s specifications, design guidelines, and project requirements. In addition, there is a growing need for an automated design evaluation process involving intelligent checking and reporting capabilities that addresses the inefficiency and error-prone nature of the current manual checking practice. To leverage the automated rule checking procedure, we need to overcome two existing key challenges, which are the inherent complexity of rules and the impracticability of checking methods. To address these challenges, this research proposes a node-based visual language approach integrated with the emerging open standard LegalRuleML, which allows the flexibility in defining and executing design rules in a machine-readable and implementable format. The approach effectively facilitates the entire rule-checking process including the rule interpretation from natural language-based requirements to machine-readable forms, rule categorization, rule parameterization, and checking execution with a BIM model. The LegalRuleML-based visual programming language approach for rule checking will help automatically and iteratively evaluate the quality and defects of information conveyed in a given building model interactively as an essential part of design process.