Design patterns for BIM-based service-oriented architectures

Abstract

Today Integrated Project Delivery together with Building Information Modeling is being realized as a process of managing a project over a single shared information backbone. In the near future, Building Information Models (BIMs) will be used as unique resources for enabling seamless data level interoperability, which will greatly facilitate the processes in the Building Life Cycle. In this context, enabling the collaborative use of BIMs is becoming essential and is much required by the industry for addressing the issues associated with the poor efficiencies in Information Systems (IS) and productivity. On the other hand, in the new IS architectures, service and resource orientation are becoming widely used, in terms of supporting collaboration over distributed environments. This paper introduces three design patterns which will help in facilitating BIM-based information sharing over the web, and web-based collaborative use of the BIMs. The patterns were developed to formalize the approaches in interacting with the shared BIMs over the web. The first pattern – BIM AJAX – explains how AJAX techniques can be used for supporting information retrieval from BIMs. The second pattern – BIM SOAP Façade – provides a standard coarse-grained interface to reach multiple BIMs over the web. The third pattern – RESTful BIM – elaborates on how BIM-based systems can benefit from the REST (Resource Oriented) Architectures. The paper starts with providing an overview on Building Information Models focusing on their characteristics and functions. Following this, the conventional approaches for exchanging and sharing BIMs are presented. The third section elaborates on IS Integration, AJAX and Web Services. Finally, three design patterns that have been developed are presented and discussed in detail. ► Patterns for BIM based service oriented architectures are presented. ► BIM AJAX explains how AJAX can be used for supporting information retrieval. ► BIM SOAP Façade provides a standard interface to reach multiple BIMs. ► RESTful BIM elaborates on how BIM-based systems benefit from the REST.