ITcon Vol. 20, pg. 518-535, http://www.itcon.org/2015/30

Automatic building information model query generation

submitted:April 2015
revised:October 2015
published:December 2015
editor(s):Amor R
authors:Yufei Jiang, Ph.D. Candidate,
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University;
yzj107@psu.edu

Nan Yu, Software Engineer,
IBM Watson;
nyu@us.ibm.com

Jiang Ming, Ph.D. Candidate,
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University;
jum310@ist.psu.edu

Sanghoon Lee, Assistant Professor,
Civil Engineering Department, University of Hong Kong;
sanghoon.lee@hku.hk

Jason DeGraw, Mechanical Engineer,
National Renewable Energy Laboratory;
Jason.DeGraw@nrel.gov

John Yen, Professor,
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University;
jyen@ist.psu.edu

John I. Messner, Professor,
Department of Architectural Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University;
jmessner@engr.psu.edu

Dinghao Wu, Assistant Professor,
College of Information Sciences and Technology, The Pennsylvania State University;
dwu@ist.psu.edu
summary:Energy efficient building design and construction calls for extensive collaboration between different subfields of the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) community. Performing building design and construction engineering raises challenges on data integration and software interoperability. Using Building Information Modeling (BIM) data hub to host and integrate building models is a promising solution to address those challenges, which can ease building design information management. However, the partial model query mechanism of current BIM data hub collaboration model has several limitations, which prevents designers and engineers to take advantage of BIM. To address this problem, we propose a general and effective approach to generate query code based on a Model View Definition (MVD). This approach is demonstrated through a software prototype called QueryGenerator. By demonstrating a case study using multi-zone air flow analysis, we show how our approach and tool can help domain experts to use BIM to drive building design with less labour and lower overhead cost.
keywords:BIM, data integration, query generation, case study
full text: (PDF file, 0.59 MB)
citation:Jiang Y, Yu N, Ming J, Lee S, DeGraw J, Yen J, Messner J I, Wu D (2015). Automatic building information model query generation, ITcon Vol. 20, pg. 518-535, https://www.itcon.org/2015/30