IFC and BMS data

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Arash Hosseini

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Aug 27, 2020, 10:46:11 AM8/27/20
to Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
Hello everyone,

I am new to Brickschema and have looked at brickschema's webinar.
I am intending to develop a Fault detection and diagnostic model using IFC and BMS data.
I wanted to know the general approach for incorporating the building data from IFC and BMS data into brickschema.
I have created a fault list that I would like to make it into a Fault class with 18 subclasses (if that's how the terminology works here)

Thanks
Arash 

Gabe Fierro

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Sep 2, 2020, 1:45:31 PM9/2/20
to Arash Hosseini, Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
Hi Arash:

Thanks for reaching out! Always great to grow the Brick community.

We have an ongoing thread discussing how to convert BMS metadata to Brick models here: https://groups.google.com/g/brickschema/c/zY_zqh-Dz8Y . Some tools are being investigated and developed, and we have a couple videos linked in the google doc in the most recent post that demonstrate how those may work. IFC data has long been something we'd like to automate, but it has been hard to get access to IFC models to help us develop the translator. We have a gbXML translator and Revit translator under development, so I can send you links to those if those would help you out. Otherwise, it would be great to have a short video chat with you to discuss the IFC model you have to see how we can help develop a translator that fulfills your needs and can be of use to the broader community. Can you send me a direct email if that's of interest to you?

Regarding fault classifications: I think putting these into a class hierarchy (subclasses is the right terminology!) is the right idea. I know there is a Fault Detection research effort at LBNL (https://faultdetection.lbl.gov), and I believe a classification scheme of faults is being developed there. I'll reach out to them to see if any of that is available, but it might be helpful to combine the efforts.

Best,
Gabe

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majid.a...@gmail.com

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Apr 27, 2021, 11:06:11 AM4/27/21
to Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
Hi Gabe.

I was looking for the 'drivers' described in your "Shepherding Metadata". I'm interested in Revit and gbXML. Is it posted somewhere?

Daniele Antonucci

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Apr 29, 2021, 3:21:59 AM4/29/21
to Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
Hi Gabe,

I'm also working on an IFC and Revit file. 
Could you share how are you translating these models in brick?.
Now, I'm working on the IfcSpace and I have doubts about how to translate this class (as example) into brick. In my case, the IfcSpace is used to represent different rooms and not the general class Space. 

Many thanks,

All the best

Daniele

Daniele Antonucci

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Apr 30, 2021, 3:46:00 AM4/30/21
to Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)

Just to be more precise.
I was wondering if there was a way when describing the name of an IfcSpace to redirect it to a more specific brick location class.
Example:

if the LongName is 'Storage'  link to the brick class "Storage_Room" or 'Service' --> brick:'Service_Room' ...

Best

Daniele

Ambuj Shatdal

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Apr 30, 2021, 9:34:44 AM4/30/21
to Daniele Antonucci, Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
So IFCSpace maps to the brick:Space concept.

If you know a bit more about the space type (e.g. by parsing its description i.e. LongName or some other metadata in IFC) you can use that info to make a more precise classification.Say a space is described as “Meeting Room”, and use can use this information to classify it as a brick:Conference_Room type. Whereas one can hope that many of the descriptions might make for easy classification, we currently don’t have any tool for it. 

If there is any industry standard regarding IFC descriptions (LongName) that can be used for automated mapping, please let the Brick community know.

Thanks.

Ambuj

Majid al-Dosari

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Apr 30, 2021, 10:57:31 AM4/30/21
to Ambuj Shatdal, Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
On the ifc note, the paper that I referred to mentioned that it's not easy to map ifc to brick.

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Gabe Fierro

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Apr 30, 2021, 12:14:38 PM4/30/21
to Majid al-Dosari, Ambuj Shatdal, Brick User Forum (Unified Building Metadata Schema)
Hi all:

Unfortunately, the IFC -> Brick process has proven to be difficult, as Ambuj has mentioned

The code encapsulating our gbXML converter (not 100% complete, but functional) can be found here: https://github.com/gtfierro/shepherding-metadata/. I am currently in the middle of graduating (!!) but I plan to start cleaning up the server code and documenting the repository once I'm done (mid-May). There's an older research paper the documents IFC and Brick conversion (https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3276774.3276790) but keep in mind that it uses older versions of Brick and IFC.

I think I have some code lying around that attempts to do IFC -> Brick conversion, using IFC_Space -> Brick Space, IFC_Zone -> Brick Zone (usually HVAC? but I don't think there is an easy way to tell), IFC_Storey -> Brick Floor, and then analogous mappings for site and/or building if memory serves.

One significant barrier to realizing the translation is access to "real" IFC models of recent versions. Just going from the IFC spec is difficult because the EXPRESS format is so hard to parse, even with some nice available tools. Maybe there is a good path by importing into Revit and using Rhino or other in-Revit tools to do automatic processing?

Best,
Gabe

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