Introduction

The Building Information Modelserver (short: BIMserver) enables you to centralize the information of a construction (or other building related) project. The core is based on the open standard IFC and therefore handles IFC data very stable. The BIMserver is nót a fileserver, but uses the Model-driven architecture approach. This means that IFC data are interpreted by a core-object (EMF/ecore) and stored in an underlying database (BerkeleyDB). The main advantage of this approach is the possibility to query, merge and filter the BIM-model and generate IFC files on the fly.

Due to the multi-user support multiple people can work on their own part of the model, while the complete model is merged on the fly. Other people can get update notifications when the model (or a part of it) is updated. Of course BIMserver has revisioning, advances queries, change alerts, change finder, and lots of other features. The source has a plugin infrastructure so extending and linking the software is very easy and agile. Basic plugins like exporting to KML/GoogleEarth, COBie, Collada, CityGML and several WebGL viewers are included in the build.

Technical guys can interact with BIMserver via several interfaces like SOAP, REST, ProtocolBuffers or direct via the ServiceInterface. This project has the intention to be a stable (boring) core for IFC applications on the web.

The core of the BIMserver is published under the Affero GPL licence. Other parts of BIMserver have different licenses. For more info have a look at the License page.