SpecNotes and viewer extension[Egan, CSIRO] 2004-014-B

The SpecNotes component of the project was envisioned as a way of linking a building specification with components of a building model, and then leveraging those linkages to enhance the BIM by, for example, adding covering elements to building components. This has required three software components to implement.

The first component parses and interacts with the specification documents. This running depends on a consistent document format and style, and is based around NATSPEC specifications.

The second component associates sections of the specification with building elements in the BIM. The associations are defined implicitly using a rule-based framework, or explicitly on an element by element basis.

The third component acts on the associations. This may prove to be far more useful when combined with other BIM related projects such as LCADesign and an extended Building Estimator.

The View Extensions, developed as a part of this project, enables new forms of interaction between all the tools in the Construction Innovation software suite, along with enabling non-CAD users to interact with the relevant 3D CAD building models without having access to a specific CAD licence.

Note the final research report is confidential and not available