Construction Product Data and Building Information Models

This book presents a solution concept that links continually updated and extensible life-cycle product data to a software independent building information model (IFC) all over the life span of the product itself. The solution concept has managed to reach a reliable building information model that is capable of being kept up to date and containing valid information about construction products. In the meantime, the solution concept presented in this book is capable of referencing, retrieving, updating, and merging product data at any point in time. A distributed network application that represents all the involved parties in the construction product value chain is simulated by real software tools to demonstrate the proof of concept of this research work. The work is entirely based on the IFC STEP/EXPRESS technologies in addition to Java Remote Method Invocation and 2D graphics. The research work presented in this book has won the first ranking prise in the field of IT in Civil Engineering in the "Auf IT gebaut 2007" competition in Germany.