Merging IFC-Based BIM Models: A New Paradigm and Co-Design Support Tool

Abstract

Interoperability is a key factor for BIM and helps to simplify the communication and the cooperation between different actors during the project life-cycle. IFC appears as the best option to exchange data between different software platforms. The purpose of this paper is to offer a proposal for exchanging data by merging IFC-based BIM models. We consider a BIM project model like a large system of multi modules where each part represents a structure (building, road, bridge and tunnel) and should be completed by an IFC model. This article presents a numerical tool which allows the co-design step through a Graphical User Interface (GUI) developed in Java language using the IfcToolsProjects libraries. This work is situated in non-automatic merging models being problematic. The proposal is clearly a co-design assistance. This Interface allows the merging of many buildings represented by different IFC files and produces a new IFC-based buildings complex model. The result is fully exploitable without any data loss. The new merging approach avoids the disadvantages of the “linking” function.