A Generic Framework for BIM Component Naming

Abstract

The advent of Building Information Model (BIM) has established a new paradigm of project management. BIM contains more and more information generated with the evolution of projects. Most of the information in BIM is organized in an object-oriented way. Thus, the unit of information management is every single component in BIM. The name of every component, one of the metadata, provides an efficient tool to manage a wealth of information. However, there are very few studies and standards focusing on the component names. In practice, the disorder in component names and incompatibility with stakeholders’ requirements can be easily identified. To solve these problems, this study proposed a list of criteria that component names should fulfill and developed a naming framework following these criteria. The major contribution of this study is the generic framework that can help to formulate an appropriate naming convention and facilitate information management at a project level.