Integration of manufacturers' product data in BIM platforms using semantic web technologies

As building information modeling (BIM) gains popularity in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, manufacturers are required to distribute their product specifications in digital product models. Currently, manufacturers mainly employ proprietary formats, such as BIM objects...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Automation in construction Vol. 144; p. 104630
Main Authors: Kebede, Rahel, Moscati, Annika, Tan, He, Johansson, Peter
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier B.V 01.12.2022
Subjects:
BIM
Dynamo
Information exchange
Linked Data
Product Data
Semantic Web technologies
Visual programming language
Linked Data
BIM
Semantic Web technologies
Dynamo
Product Data
Visual programming language
Information exchange
Standards
ISSN:0926-5805, 1872-7891, 1872-7891
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:As building information modeling (BIM) gains popularity in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry, manufacturers are required to distribute their product specifications in digital product models. Currently, manufacturers mainly employ proprietary formats, such as BIM objects supplemented by PDF documents to represent their product data descriptions. However, these formats do not support flexible automated product search and data integration. This paper describes the use of Semantic Web technologies in combination with BIM-based visual programming language (VPL) to automatically integrate product data from external databases. To facilitate data integration, we introduced a method to semantically represent product data linked with the CEN/TS 17623:2021 standard using ontologies in web ontology language (OWL). The study has focused on the use case of a manufacturer of lighting products. Results show that building designers are able to execute a more efficient product search that satisfies their query requirements and returns suitable products of their choice from the manufacturer's database based on their requests. This approach eliminates the time-consuming and error-prone process of manually entering product data into BIM software. •Semantic Web technologies and a visual programming language is employed for automated product data processing and integration in BIM software.•Product data is expressed in web ontology language using the CEN/TS 17623:2021 standard as a base.•A connection to an example remote server owned and maintained by the product manufacturers is established for accessing and retrieving product data directly from the manufacturers database.
ISSN:0926-5805
1872-7891
1872-7891
DOI:10.1016/j.autcon.2022.104630