Mapping of industry building product model for thermal simulation and analysis

The   Industry   Foundation   Classes   (IFC)   has established a standard for defining interchangeable data formats among various computer models in  Architecture/Engineering/Construction (AEC) domains. Researchers and practitioners are encouraged to make their data models compliant to the IFC standard through either adopting new data structures or creating bridges that can convert IFC data to be used by the various proprietary models. SEMPER II (S2), which is an active, multi-domain, spaced-based, object-oriented design support tool for integrated building performance computing, was developed before the IFC standard was established. An add-on data mapping engine has been integrated to extract embedded information in the IFC compliant data models based on eXtensible Markup Language (XML) format. This paper demonstrates a seamless link between IFC compliant industry building product model (e.g., CAD) and the Shared Object Model (SOM) of S2 to facilitate building performance simulations.