Industry Foundation Classes for the C3dQ Software Platform

Under the Name C3dQ („see 3D and query“) the Consolidated Constructors Company in Athens develops and distributes a software platform, which provides an intuitive tool set for the virtual design, construction and use of buildings, e.g. 4D modeling to support decision making processes in AEC environments and controlling tools for the resource and materials management.
The Institute for 4D Technologies was assigned to develop an interface to the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC).

 

Starting Position

The Internation Alliance for Interoperability – (IAI) was founded in 1995 to develop a basis model the Industry Foundation Classes – (IFC) – for the model based
mode of operaton in the AEC industry. The IAI is a federation of 650 companies and university institutes in 22 countries. With the IFC standard (ISO 16739) the
vision of a redandance free unique model, which will be shared, modified, enriched and managed by all stake holders during the whole life-cycle of buildings (e.g. planning, building, operation and demolition resp. re-use) should become reality.
Typical in an IFC modell the following information is stored:

  • 3D geometrie of the building
  • components e.g. walls, slabs, doors, etc. and their attributes
  • process, project, planning, cost information
  • HVAC and MEP elements etc.
  • relatios between various elements, analyses, actors and organizations

This information can be accessed, modified, enriched and later be exported by software tools with an IFC interface. Such applications are e.g. CAD/CAE systems.
An IFC model grows in the course of the work of the different AEC disciplines over time and contains increasingly percise information. The C3dQ platform needs an IFC interface as an additional means to communicate with the stake holders of an AEC environment and will later integrate additional services to the building information models which are
stored in IFC format.

Objectives

  • Import of IFC files (geometry, structures, relationships, attribute data) and conversion into the object model of C3dQ.
  • Adaption and expansion of C3dQ to integrate and model additional IFC information.

Approach

  • Development of a parser for the EXPRESS modeling language to generate for each IFC entity a Java class
  • Development of a parser for the IFC clear text format
  • Mapping of IFC data to the object model of C3DQ

Projekt Participants

Lead

  • Prof. Dr. Manfred Breit

Projektteam

  • Markus Benz
  • Samuel Gerber

Partner