Standardized rule checking of BIM
There is almost no limit to what you can do with a building information model (BIM), once you have the data. Imagine all the different analysis or simulations you can do, once you have a virtual building to play with! Useful software is already showing up, a very good example of this i Solibri Model Checker. The real challenge with this, however, is to develop a way to standardize the rules.
Statsbygg in Norway, Standards Norway and the National Office of Building Technology and Administration in Norway has all seen this challenge, and produced a report, “Standardized Computable Rules” that Catenda was the main contributor to. The report asked software vendors about the challenge and everyone agreed that the challenge must be resolved. The report outlines a methodology and looks at ways to resolve the technological challenge.
We think that IFD (part of the buildingSMART standards) will be the key to resolve this, obviously in combination with IFC and IDM (the rest of the buildingSMART standards), but IFD will act as a key that can unleash the potential of standardized rule checking already inherent in the IFC model. However, there is also a bigger picture. Countless potential rules are already written down and exist in more or less formal documentation. The solution must be able to convert this to computable rules, in an inexpensive way. It must be cheap to develop and maintain the computable rules.
We are investigating using Solibri for rule checking in our organisation