Abstract

Interoperability issues have been well acknowledged as an impediment to improve productivity in the Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry. The current information exchange between building design and energy models has numerous problems, including object parametric information deficiencies, geometric misrepresentations and re-input data confusion. These problems inevitably lead to huge money, time and effort losses. This thesis presents an automated solution that works towards unified information exchange between building design and energy modeling in building performance. First, an Extensible Style-sheet Language Transformation (XSLT) is designed to specify a set of transform instructions. Based on the instructions in the XSLT, building elements and their attributes in the design open schema are matched to the corresponding energy analysis patterns. The contents in the design open schema can then be automatically transformed through meticulous checking and comparison.
The proposed solution has been implemented with Microsoft Visual C# Studio 2013, through the creation of a Windows form application and a software plug-in component. This method would facilitate the information exchange between existing open standard schemas, gbXML and DOE-2 INP, supported by Autodesk Revit and eQUEST. The effectiveness of the solution has been tested with three real case studies. The results from the proposed solution have demonstrated the overall rectification of the geometric and material misrepresentations inherent to the current software interoperability process.