VISUAL PRODUCT CHRONOLOGY AS A SOLUTION FOR ACCESSING BUILDING PRODUCT MODEL DATA

Building product modelling technology is principally aiming for solutions which are capturing the data of gradually developing buildings. In simple terms these solutions can be characterised as storages where the most recent data and its updates exist. At the moment IFC standard is providing a common starting point for sharing building product model data between various applications. Having this as a starting point one major current challenge is to build methods and practical tools for accessing building product models. Here the term access means both data input and different analyses over building product model data. For example, the user needs to find out all building components where changes have appeared during certain period and visualise those in an appropriate level of detail. It is considered that these types of operations shall provide a true basis for wide acceptance and impact of building product modelling technology. Visual Product Chronology is an application, which can be used for linking data from various sources with the objects of building product model and for analysing the content of the resultant data storage. Development of Visual Product Chronology is proving improved understanding of various problems and their potential solutions when we are on way to develop applications enabling versatile but an easy access of building product model data.