ARCHITECTURE FOR IMPLEMENTING IFC-BASED ONLINE CONSTRUCTION PRODUCT LIBRARIES

摘要

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.