Building Information Modelling has promised a lot of added-value automation out of a well-constructed object model. After a few years of inflated expectations, it is good to start witnessing an increase in the availability of industrial-quality (as opposed to research-quality) tools targeting the rich data embedded within models. One of these 'tools' is SMARTcodes, an initiative by the International Code Council (a US-body). The ICC has produced a couple of demos intending to show how to "automate code compliance checking":
After registering here, you can participate in a couple of demos: one is labelled 'automatic' where the user theoretically uploads the BIM model (IFC format of course), inputs the location and decides on the code checking engine...The resultant deliverable can be a 'Solibri Model Checker Report' (a PDF document with images, summary table and element compliance list) or a Solibri Model (viewer required). The other demo is labelled 'manual' and relies on the user to input all relevant information into the tool...You can see the section reports being generated in real time and you end up with a printable collated one.
Of course, the automatic version is more BIM-like while the manual version caters for 'model-poor' consultants - an error prone double entry approach if you ask me. It is hard to understand why both approaches fall under the SMART banner - only the automatic approach fulfils the declared mission statement!
In a nutshell, SMARTcodes is a very promising tool indeed and I think it can be extended quite significantly...I look forward to uploading my own model and sifting through the results.
To read a tad more about SMARTcodes, you can start here (PDF Presentation - 967KB) or read the Frequently Asked Questions on ICC's website.
