Development of an integrated product information management system

This thesis reports on a research project undertaken over a four year period investigating and developing a software framework and application for integrating and managing building product information for construction engineering. The research involved extensive literature research, observation of the industry practices and interviews with construction industry practitioners and systems implementers to determine how best to represent and present product information to support the construction process. Applicable product models for information representation were reviewed and evaluated to determine present suitability. The IFC product model was found to be the most applicable. Investigations of technologies supporting the product model led to the development of a software tool, the IFC Assembly Viewer, which aided further investigations into the suitability of the product model (in its current state) for the exchange and sharing of product information. A software framework, or reusable software design and application, called PROduct Information Management System (PROMIS), was developed based on a non-standard product model but with flexibility to work with the IFC product model when sufficiently mature. The software comprises three subsystems namely: ProductWeb, ModelManager.NET and Product/Project Service (or P2Service). The key features of this system were shared project databases, parametric product specification, integration of product information sources, and application interaction and integration through interface components. PROMIS was applied to and tested with a modular construction business for the management of product information and for integration of product and project information through the design and construction (production) process

Architecture for implementing IFC-based online construction product libraries

Construction product information providers have responded to the demand for electronic delivery by providing online access, CD-ROMs and DVDs but these solutions have limited usability and are generally incapable of supporting prevalent and emerging industry practices. The product library implementations attempt to replicate the functionalities of the paper versions, which serve for independent specification and procurement but gives little thought to teams and tools integration through support for automated information exchange and sharing. The IFC standard provides common terminologies, technologies, syntax and semantics necessary to address present and future compatibility and integration issues, hence IFC-based implementation of product libraries have good prospect for meeting the industry requirements. This paper reviews current product information delivery methods and examines the applicability of the IFC and other standards. The requirements for IFC-based construction product libraries are identified and an architecture for realising the requirements was presented

Towards implementing integrated building product libraries

Electronic product catalogues and brochures are gaining popularity but there is little agreement on content, format and searching methods. This limits their usability and integration with existing construction software tools. This paper examines a productmodelling approach to delivering building product information and describes a proposed multi-tier client-server environment. ISO/STEP and IAI/IFC building product models are considered to facilitate representation, exchange and sharing of product information. The proposed architecture incorporates scalability with middleware components that would provide single or few points of entry to integrated product information. This paper is part of a research project, which builds on the results of related projects including ConstructIT Strategy, PROCAT-GEN, Active Catalog, COMBINE and ARROW, towards implementing the required software components

Development of an Industry Foundation Classes Assembly Viewer

The construction industry has invested considerable effort into integration of project information in the last decade. One such effort is the definition of Industry Foundation Classes IFCs to facilitate data sharing across applications through a shared project model. In order to achieve the integration objectives, the industry software vendors need to commit to the implementation of IFC in their products. IFC is defined in EXPRESS, which is a platform-independent, object-flavored, data modeling language. The EXPRESS-based models must be translated into some programming language model for specific implementation. To achieve this, developers need to evaluate and select a suitable model and programming language for their implementation. Developers therefore need to understand both EXPRESS and a host of programming languages. This initial knowledge requirement may hinder the take-off or adoption of IFC-based implementation. This paper describes a software solution that reduces this initial knowledge requirement considerably by providing a .NET class library translation and an implementation view of the IFC model, based on the EXPRESS definitions. Complemented by the online documentation provided with the IFC definitions, the software provides a hierarchical view of the IFC-based programming objects with drill-down facility for developers to capture and appreciate the information requirement for specific objects