A Comparative Analysis Of Five Rule-Based Model Checking Platforms

With the boom in building information modeling, the need for an automated rule- based design checking has increased to elevate the speed of design requirement evaluation pertaining to building rules, regulations, and other necessary requirements. Over the past decade, various efforts to develop an efficient rule-based checking process and platform have been made in different countries. Even though there is one commercial tool named Solibri Model Checker, none so far has been advanced enough to fully automate the design checking process and meet the requirements of the industry. This study aims at investigating and comparing the current rule-based design checking approaches including IfcDoc, KBim, ePlanCheck, ACABIM, and SNACC, identifying the similarities and the differences of the existing approaches. The authors who have been involved in each process of rule-checking tool development had a long discussion regarding their experience and lessons learned and found that the five approaches were based on a similar process and method to translate requirements, define rules, check design procedures, develop validation features, and report checking results.