IFC

Over the last three years the understanding, adoption and use of BIM has gained international momentum.

Significant progress has been made in the area of common data exchange in the building industry with the development of information technology. Currently, the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) and Green Building XML (gbXML) are two prevalent informational infrastructures in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry.

The simulation of building efficiency and cost is a crucial driver to contemporary building design today. This paper presents the development of a software tool to simulate the lifecycle costs of building construction and maintenance. It is a part of the nD modelling tool development and also based on the overall system architecture of the nD modelling tool. nD modelling aims to integrate a number of design dimensions into a holistic model, which would enable users to portray and visually project the building design over its complete lifecycle.