Presentation given at the 2nd Workshop on Ontology and Engineering in Tandem, at LOA in Trento, Italy: Product and 3D geometry ontologies at action in construction industry: from manufacturer to demolition.

1. Product and 3D geometry ontologies at
action in construction industry: from
manufacturer to demolition
2nd Workshop on Ontology and Engineering in Tandem
20 September 2017
Pieter Pauwels
Ghent University
Department of Architecture and Urban Planning

3. UGent SmartLab
Ghent University
Faculty of Engineering
and Architecture
Department of Architecture
and Urban Planning
UGent SmartLab
Prof. Ronald De Meyer
Prof. Pieter Pauwels
Dr. Ruben Verstraeten
Dr. Tiemen Strobbe
Mathias Bonduel
Willem Bekers
Sebastiaan Leenknegt
Nino Heirbaut

4. Pieter Pauwels
• 2003-2008: Ba-Ma Civil Engineering - Architecture (UGent)
BIM
• 2008-2012: PhD Civil Engineering - Architecture (UGent)
BIM -> SemWeb
• 2012-2014: Postdoc University of Amsterdam (UvA)
• 2014-2017: Postdoc Ghent University
SemWeb + BIM
• 2017: Lecturer (50%) Ghent University
SemWeb + information management

5. Outline
1. Linked Building Data!
2. ifcOWL
3. Product ontologies
4. Geometry and ontologies

6. Building data and linked data

8. Linked Open Data cloud (LOD)
http://tomheath.com/blog/2009/03/linked-data-web-of-data-semantic-web-wtf/

9. Bring BIM into the Semantic Web
BIM

10. Three key advantages
1. Interoperability
2. Linking across domains
3. Logical inference and proofs
Pauwels et al. Semantic web technologies in AEC industry: A literature overview. Automation in Construction 73 (2017) 145–165.
Two key advantages

11. Community efforts!

12. Linked Building Data Community
12

13. LDAC 2015
LDAC 2014
LDAC 2012

14. LDAC2017
5th Linked Data in Architecture and
Construction Workshop
13 - 15 Nov. 2017
http://linkedbuildingdata.net/ldac2017/

15. Official Community Groups
linkedbuildingdata.net
www.w3.org/community/lbd/
linkedbuildingdata community
LDAC event
ifcOWL

16. W3C LBD Community Group
Official community webpage:
https://www.w3.org/community/lbd/
Working documents webpage:
https://w3c-lbd-cg.github.io/lbd/
GitHub repository:
https://github.com/w3c-lbd-cg/
=> Minutes! Register!
=> Google Docs!
=> Ontologies! Examples!

17. A number of key ontologies at W3C LBD
• Building Topology Ontology (BOT)
• Product Ontology (PRODUCT)
• Geometry Ontology (GEOM)
• Properties Ontology (PROPS)
• Ontology for Property Management (OPM)

18. And alignments!!
• SSN / SOSA
• DogOnt
• Brick
• ifcOWL
• SAREF
• …

19. Outline
1. Linked Building Data!
2. ifcOWL
3. Product ontologies
4. Geometry and ontologies
19

20. Adherence to the standard…

21. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)
http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/

22. 22

23. EXPRESSIFC-SPF
XSDXML
ifcOWLRDF
Pieter Pauwels and Walter Terkaj, EXPRESS to OWL for construction industry: towards a recommendable and usable ifcOWL ontology.
Automation in Construction 63: 100-133 (2016).

24. Pieter Pauwels and Walter Terkaj, EXPRESS to OWL for construction industry: towards a recommendable and usable ifcOWL ontology.
Automation in Construction 63: 100-133 (2016).

25. Simplification for the end user

26. Pieter Pauwels, Ana Roxin. SimpleBIM: from full ifcOWL graphs to simplified building graphs.
Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Product and Process Modelling. p.11-18.
Chi Zhang, Jakob Beetz. Querying Linked Building Data Using SPARQL with Functional Extensions.
Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Product and Process Modelling.

27. MVDusability

28. Pieter Pauwels, Ana Roxin. SimpleBIM: from full ifcOWL graphs to simplified building graphs.
Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Product and Process Modelling. p.11-18.
Rewriting PSETs and property values (1)

29. Pieter Pauwels, Ana Roxin. SimpleBIM: from full ifcOWL graphs
to simplified building graphs. Proceedings of the 11th European
Conference on Product and Process Modelling. p.11-18.
Rewriting PSETs and
property values (2)

30. Simplification strategy
1
• Removing geometric information
2
• Unwrapping data types
3
• Rewriting properties
4
• IfcRelationship instances
Pieter Pauwels, Ana Roxin. SimpleBIM: from full ifcOWL graphs to simplified building graphs.
Proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Product and Process Modelling. p.11-18.

31. RDFIFC-SPF
ifcOWLEXPRESS
RDF
company-
specific
ontologies
Converter?
Rules?
…?
Converter?
Rules?
…?

32. ifcOWL
simplified X
simplified Y
simplified Z
simplified W

33. ProdExt X
ProdExt Y
ProdExt Z
DevExt Z DevExt X
DevExt Y
PRODUCT
DEVICES
GEOM
BOT
Geom
Ext XGeom Ext Y
Geom
Ext Z

34. Building Topology Ontology (BOT)

35. Mads Holten Rasmussen et al. Proposing a central AEC ontology that allows for domain-specific extensions. LC3 Conference 2017.

36. BOT as of July 2017
Mads Holten Rasmussen et al. Proposing a central AEC ontology that allows for domain-specific extensions. LC3 Conference 2017.

37. Linking outside from within BOT (July 2017)

38. BOT as of September 2017

39. SAREF4BLDG ontology (part)
http://ontoology.linkeddata.es/publish/saref4bldg/index-en.html

40. Outline
1. Linked Building Data!
2. ifcOWL
3. Product ontologies
4. Geometry and ontologies
40

41. Building products

42. PRODUCT as of August 2017

43. Definitions
• A product:Product is an article or substance that is manufactured or
refined for sale
• An bot:element is a constituent of a construction entity with a
characteristic technical function, form or position [12006-2, 3.4.7]
• A gr:ProductOrService is the superclass of all classes describing
products or services types, either by nature or purpose. Examples for
such subclasses are "TV set", "vacuum cleaner", etc. An instance of this
class can be either an actual product or service (gr:Individual), a
placeholder instance for unknown instances of a mass-produced
commodity (gr:SomeItems), or a model / prototype specification
(gr:ProductOrServiceModel).

44. Definitions in the GoodRelations Ontology
• A real product like my laptop, my car with this VIN and mileage, a
particular item on an eBay auction - gr:Individual.
• A product model, i.e. a datasheet, like "Nikon T90", "iPod Nano 16 GB",
or similar. - gr:ProductOrServiceModel.
• Then we have a third case, in which the entities exposed on the Web
are neither products nor product models, but instead "black boxes" of
products. - gr:SomeItems.

45. PRODUCT as of September 2017

46. Products in IFC

47. But we actually need product
properties (PROPS)

48. #6=IFCPROPERTYSINGLEVALUE('IsExternal',$,IFCBOOLEAN(.T.),$);
#4=IFCPROPERTYSET('2pW3mRfBr7EwHldYmKP$PD',#33,'Pset_WindowCommon',$,(#1,#6));
#2=IFCRELDEFINESBYPROPERTIES('2yVDnLFbzAzx6B70P6n3aU',#33,$,$,(#1),#4);
#1=IFCWINDOW('1BYB9o9k5FZAAI8V0ct4P4',#33,'BK_tower_window:BK_tower_window:BK_tower_window:145729',
$,'BK_tower_window',#90910,#90904,'145729',2200.000000000015,1200.000000000011);
Properties (PSETS)

49. Properties (PSETS)

50. About 400 PSET XML files…

52. PROPS - outline

53. Implementation in practice: from
manufacturer to demolition

55. The profile of a product manufacturer
• Small
• Regional company
• Limited ICT capabilities and resources
95% less than 20 people
G. Gudnason and P. Pauwels. SemCat : publishing and accessing building product information as linked data.
ECPPM Conference 2016. pp. 659-666.

56. paper
html and web portals
CSV, XML, JSON
2D
3D
BIM
…
G. Gudnason and P. Pauwels. SemCat : publishing and accessing building product information as linked data.
ECPPM Conference 2016. pp. 659-666.

57. https://bimobject.com/

58. BIM Objects

59. BIM Objects
Ontologies

60. BIM Objects
Ontologies
CLIENTS
Designer Installer Contractor

61. BIM Objects
Ontologies
CLIENTS
Designer Installer Contractor

62. Ontologies
CLIENTS
Designer Installer Contractor
BIM Objects
API

63. Ontologies
CLIENTS
Designer Installer Contractor
BIM Objects

64. CLIENTS
Designer Installer Contractor
BIM Objects
Ontologies

65. Outline
1. Linked Building Data!
2. ifcOWL
3. Product ontologies
4. Geometry in an ontology
65

66. Geometry kernels and
transformations

68. Pauwels et al., Three-dimensional information exchange over the semantic web for the domain of architecture, engineering, and
construction. AIEDAM 25: 317-332 (2011).

69. Pauwels et al., Three-dimensional information exchange over the semantic web for the domain of architecture, engineering, and
construction. AIEDAM 25: 317-332 (2011).

70. Pauwels et al., Three-dimensional information exchange over the semantic web for the domain of architecture, engineering, and
construction. AIEDAM 25: 317-332 (2011).

71. Pauwels et al., Three-dimensional information exchange over the semantic web for the domain of architecture, engineering, and
construction. AIEDAM 25: 317-332 (2011).

72. ONTOBREP ontology

73. Perzylo et al., An Ontology for CAD Data and Geometric Constraints as a Link Between Product Models and Semantic Robot Task
Descriptions. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2015.

74. Example: cylinder
Perzylo et al., An Ontology for CAD Data and Geometric Constraints as a Link Between Product Models and Semantic Robot Task
Descriptions. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2015.

75. Perzylo et al., An Ontology for CAD Data and Geometric Constraints as a Link Between Product Models and Semantic Robot Task
Descriptions. IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems 2015.

76. GEOM ontology

77. P. Bonsma – RDF.bg
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ltaT0_0ajG10BXBTKaTY57_ppuXmBk2v0GCFicqArc/

78. P. Bonsma – RDF.bg
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ltaT0_0ajG10BXBTKaTY57_ppuXmBk2v0GCFicqArc/

79. Well-Known Text (WKT)

80. WKT: representing IfcPolylines as LineStrings
Pauwels et al. Enhancing the ifcOWL ontology with an alternative representation for geometric data.
Automation in Construction 80 (2017) 77-94

81. Geometry in IFC
Pauwels et al. Enhancing the ifcOWL ontology with an alternative representation for geometric data.
Automation in Construction 80 (2017) 77-94

82. Pauwels et al. Enhancing the ifcOWL ontology with an alternative representation for geometric data.
Automation in Construction 80 (2017) 77-94

83. IFC-based WKT string
Pauwels et al. Enhancing the ifcOWL ontology with an alternative representation for geometric data.
Automation in Construction 80 (2017) 77-94

84. 3D Viewers

85. Solution multi-threaded

86. Pauwels et al., Three-dimensional information exchange over the semantic web for the domain of architecture, engineering, and
construction. AIEDAM 25: 317-332 (2011).

87. In conclusion
1. Linked Building Data!
2. ifcOWL
3. Product ontologies
4. Geometry in an ontology

88. Thank you
Pieter Pauwels
pipauwel.pauwels@ugent.be