Implementation of a BIM Domain-specific Language for the Building Environment Rule and Analysis

Abstract

This paper describes an implementation process for a domain-specific computer programming language: the Building Environment Rule and Analysis (BERA) Language. As the growing area of Building Information Modeling (BIM), there has been a need to develop highly customized domain-specific languages for handling issues in building models in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry sector. The BERA Language, one of the domain-specific languages, deals with building information models in an intuitive way in order to ensure the quality of design and assess the design programming requirements using user-defined rules in the early design phases. To accomplish these goals, the BERA Language provides the capabilities for an effectiveness and ease of use without precise knowledge of general-purpose languages that are conventionally used in BIM software development. Furthermore, the design and implementation of the BERA Language focuses on building objects and their associated information-rich properties and relationships. This paper represents the implementation issues of the BERA Language associated with the building information models, their mapping into the building data structure, and their instantiation and execution. In addition, Portability of the language, extensibility and platform-dependent issues are involved in the BERA Language implementation. The implementation described in this paper is based on the use of Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) as given building information models, Solibri Model Checker (SMC) as an IFC engine, and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) as a compilation and execution environment.