The ATC-75 Report, Improvements to BIM Structural Software Interoperability, was developed under a Research Grant from the Charles Pankow Foundation. (Published 2013, 155 pages)
Developed to improve “interoperability” in the use of Building Information Modeling, or BIM, the ATC-75 Report defines a basis for incorporating and integrating structural design parameters, codes, analysis tools and methods into the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) data model, an open-source object-oriented exchange language (file format) that is being developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) for BIM software. The IFC data model is viewed as a critical component of the building industry’s efforts to save time and money by enabling software platforms to “talk to each other” intelligently.
Topics addressed include: (1) the structural engineering business processes that a BIM model needs to represent in the design and construction phases of a project; (2) the process for developing and testing needed Industry Foundation Classes for key structural elements; (3) example IFC exchange requirements; (4) example structural member properties defined and used by vendors for exchange (IFC Binding); (5) IFC model view definition diagrams; and (6) four IFC structural testbed validation studies by leading software vendors.
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