A web service-based framework for an online 3D model viewer

Building Information Model (BIM) is an IT methodology to construct a facility virtually in details. The digital format representation is essential to facilitate information sharing and exchange among multiple contractors. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is utilized to embed the shared data in an XML standard structure to improve the interoperability among all interrelated participants within the facility construction process. Web Service (WS) is an XML component which encapsulates and transfers a business process and its contiguous data safely, concurrently, and less-cost among several sides through accessing the web. In this paper, a web service-based framework is introduced to enhance the performance of IFC elements exchange and accessibility through the web. The framework employs multiple web service replicas in order to obtain a fast real-time 3D view. Each individual service replica retrieves a specific section of the IFCs information from the DB backend and draws its corresponding object. Experimental evaluation shows that the framework effectively enhances the time required to sketch the overall 3D view for the participant.