OPENBIM VISUALIZER – A VISUALIZATION TOOL FOR VIEWING THE IFC DATA MODEL
Yang-Hsiu Tong1, Chih-Hsiung Chang2, Yi-Wei Chen3 and I-Chen Wu4
1) Graduate Student, Department of Civil Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
2) Undergraduate Student, Department of Civil Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
3) Undergraduate Student, Department of Civil Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
4) Associate Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan.
Abstract: The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data model is an open standard design to support the goals of Open BIM for data sharing and information integration in building information modeling (BIM). It is an object-oriented data model based on class definitions representing the items (elements, processes, shapes, and so on) that are used by software applications during a construction or facility management project. However, large volumes of IFC data are difficult to comprehend when displayed in text-views or tree-views. The project participants cannot know the project status completely if they do not have a good and user-friendly visualization tool to display the related project information. Therefore, this research develops OpenBIM Visualizer for facilitating IFC data model visualization. The design and implementation of these useful graphs employs HTML5 and JavaScript. HTML5 is a unified and multi-platform content enabler that is capable of realizing mobile applications and websites. JavaScript can support the creation of interactive elements and effects for expanding the manipulation ability of a graphical user interface (GUI). These graphs can provide multiple visualization styles for assisting project participants to obtain the required information from an IFC data model, as well as to consider a wide variety of information when controlling the project and making project decisions.
Keywords: Building Information Modeling (BIM), Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), Data Visualization, Infographic.
Bibliographical Reference:
Yang-Hsiu Tong, Chih-Hsiung Chang, Yi-Wei Chen and I-Chen Wu. “OPENBIM VISUALIZER – A VISUALIZATION TOOL FOR VIEWING THE IFC DATA MODEL.” In Proceedings of International Conference on Civil and Building Engineering Informatics (ICCBEI 2015), 66. Tokyo, Japan, 2015.