The Mechanism and Challenges of Validating a Building Information Model regarding data exchange standards

Abstract

Abstract The complicated requirements of projects and the increasing number of project participants have resulted in numerous, iterative BIM data exchange processes for diverse domain professionals. When BIM data are imported into and exported from BIM authoring tools, the seamless sharing and consistent maintenance of BIM data throughout a building project require homogeneous BIM data exchange standards and robust validation frameworks. Several versions of the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) schema provide the schematic foundation of BIM data exchange standards. In addition, diverse disciplines have developed the Model View Definition (MVD), which refers to data exchange specifications defined as a subset of the IFC schema. However, BIM data validation against the requirements of the MVD and the limitations of this data evaluation process have not been thoroughly investigated, which results in syntactic problems, semantic errors, and unintended geometrical transformation. In an effort to address these issues, the research study involves the development of the MVD-based rule-checking features on the IfcDoc tool and includes the in-depth discussion of the complexity and challenges of BIM data validation following the Precast Concrete National BIM Standard. In addition, this paper describes identified knowledge regarding BIM data validation using the MVD relating to procedures, scope, and complexity, and includes the challenges and limitations of automated rule-based BIM data checking to which future researchers can refer in order to avoid revealed problems in their MVD development and evaluation processes.