Checking building regulations automatically
Nowadays, the plethora of rules and codes of national or European origin makes engineering a very complicated process. For instance, schools, company offices, post-offices and other public buildings need to fulfil certain criteria, such as security, usability and accessibility for the disabled. Aiming at facilitating human capabilities by providing supportive knowledge, the ISTFORCE project developed the Code Checking Service (CCS) that offers automatic means for checking projects. This web-based service has already been implemented as a software application tool in the field of accessibility of public buildings for the disabled. Due to the wide use of CAD applications, input data involves IFC models that are capable of working with the large variety of CAD-related data formats. The design of CCS allows plugging of rule bases representing a specific regulation code in the system's core engine. The output of the automatic code checking is a verification report displaying all unverified rules and project items that do not comply with the rules. If the provided IFC data are insufficient, the report lists also detailed coverage limitations. The user-friendly CCS offers increased capabilities of browsing rule-related documentation including official documents and multimedia data. Currently, there is a CCS application concerning compliance checking of French legal regulations for accessibility of public buildings by the disabled. The CCS may be either integrated to the project's ISTforCE platform or used as a standalone software package. Potential partners may be CAD software vendors or building construction oriented portals.
