Integration of manufacturers' product data in BIM platforms using semantic web technologies
Rahel Kebede, Annika Moscati, Tan He, Peter Johansson
Abstract
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.