An automated IFC-based workflow for building energy performance simulation with Modelica

Steadily increasing use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in all phases of building's lifecycle, together with more attention for openBIM and growing software support for the most recent version of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC 4) have created a very promising context for an even broader application of Building Energy Performance Simulation (BEPS). At the same time, an urgent need for modeling guidelines and standardization becomes evident. A well-defined BIM-based workflow and a set of tools that fully exploit and extend the possibilities of the openBIM-technology can make the difference when it comes to reliability and cost of BEPS to design, build and operate high-performance buildings. This paper describes the essential elements of this integrated workflow, explains why openBIM comprises much more than just a standardized file-format and what is achieved with the already available technology, namely the Information Delivery Manual (IDM) and a newly developed Model View Definition. This MVD is tailored to the needs of Building Energy Performance Simulation (BEPS) that uses the Modelica language together with a specific library (IDEAS) and can easily be adapted to other libraries. In this project, several tools have been developed to closely integrate BEPS and IFC4. The simulation engine now gets the vast majority of the required input directly from the IFC4-file. For the implementation of the tools, the PYTHON language and the open source library IfcOpenShell are used. A case study is presented, that was used for extensive tests of the proposed approach and the implemented tools. The essential benefits of this new workflow are illustrated, and the feasibility is demonstrated. Opportunities and remaining bottlenecks are identified to encourage further development of BIM software to fully support IFC4 as an information source for BEPS. Besides some improvements of the proprietary class structure and functionality, enabling the export of IFC4 files based on custom MVDs is one required key feature.