How Nvidia’s Omniverse can unlock building innovation with IFC

Years ago, the construction industry began working on a data model to describe industry foundation classes (IFC) – architecture, engineering, construction and operations (AECO) data. The specification helped facilitate the export of data between tools. A significant bottleneck is that IFC tells building software vendors only what type of information to include, not how to submit it in a specific file format, which can lead to uncertainty and significant manual effort to share data between tools.

Now, however, Nvidia is implementing IFC on top of the Universal Scene Description (USD) file format. Nvidia Omniverse. This complements Nvidia’s broader efforts develop connectors For various 3D authoring tools for the AEC industry, including Autodesk Alias, Autodesk Civil, Siemens JT, SimScale and Open Geospatial Consortium formats.

The implementation of USD for IFC is still in its early stages, but once efforts are ramped up, it promises to simplify construction with multiple tools from different vendors. This will make it easier for engineers to benefit Nvidia’s rich AI tools analyze 3D datasimulate the impact of various design decisions and automatically create a 3D inventory to improve maintenance and operations.

“Ensuring cross-platform compatibility has been a challenge for different software companies,” George Matos, senior product manager of Omniverse AECO at Nvidia, told VentureBeat. “Previous development of standardized and open file formats allowed bridges between different AECO authoring programs. As the technology and its functions advance at AECO, we are looking at more extensible formats to allow full cross-platform interoperability, as well as expanded functionality in the open file format. This means enabling an open dialogue between design programs and USD. While technology is constantly evolving, we strive to allow full fidelity and consistency between authoring programs and formats and Nvidia Omniverse, as well as allowing proprietary functions and computations in the authoring source or within Omniverse.

Matos sees these efforts as planting the seeds for using construction data more in the process. For example, a car manufacturer can build a physically accurate car digital twin works with its factories and vehicles and then uses these same ground truth assets in sales, marketing and customer configurators. This requires all AECO data from the company’s factories, CAD data from assembly lines, design data from production models, and even the autonomous robots that operate these facilities to fully contribute to a virtual model. These workflows require a standardized data format and framework to synchronize all 3D assets and data with high resolution and accuracy.

IFC facilitates the transfer

In the late 1990s, there was no easy way to transfer data between different engineering and design tools. So AECO firms and software providers have come together to simplify the process. However, rather than focusing on a specific file format, such as GIF for images and MP3 for audio, they developed a data standard and left it up to each vendor to implement it in the file format. IFC makes it suitable for understanding how different elements in a building, such as a handrail, door, wall and room, fit together in a structure.

This made data sharing easier, but with limitations.

“In most cases, IFC is used as a one-way transmission mechanism,” says Greg Schleusner, IFC’s director of design technologies and co-director of the technical room at BuildingSmart, which administers the IFC standard.

This one-way flow helps teams export data for analysis, scheduling problems, or simulation. But when changes were required, organizations generally reverted to the original tool.

One of the main problems is that different CAD tools can use different ways to represent 3D information. For example, some use a mesh approach, while others consider the world as solids.

“These tools all have separate views of the world and how they represent geometry, and that’s where interoperability is the hardest,” Schleusner said.

As a result, the tools are tied to the data as a reference rather than performing a design migration, which will allow teams to take the data into a new tool and develop it.

“It’s certainly possible and technically feasible, it’s just not used often,” he said.

To modulate USD data

Nvidia’s implementation promises to make it easier to present IFC and other data about the built world in a more consistent format. In addition, it makes it easy to extract information for specific use cases. Schleusner believes this will make it easier to share some information with a contractor. It can also facilitate the implementation of recommendation systems that recommend specific types of door combinations for a given project. GitHub The Copilot tool provides coding recommendations.

Nvidia is betting on the USD to become the dominant format for allowing collaboration, computing, AI workflows and design across industries. Omniverse is built entirely on the US dollar. Matos said they are working with AECO leaders including Autodesk, Bentley Systems and Graphisoft to create connectors to the Omniverse platform.

Nvidia, IoT, BOM data, pipeline and device diagrams (P&ID) etc. actively developing capabilities internally and with ecosystem partners to connect more integrated systems and data types to Omniverse, including

“Simulating real-world and virtual data together will allow objects to function optimally,” Matos said. “This is one of the main drivers behind the open data format approach of using USD with Omniverse.”

Down the road, Matos expects, this could allow the AECO industry to move from creating a few static stand-alone models to creating live comprehensive digital twins. It will provide a vibrant, single-source virtual representation of buildings, environments and cities. This can help train AI agents on thousands of scenarios before live applications in the real world.

“I’m happy to see products like Nvidia, Unity, Unreal finally stepping into the built environment arena. Better late than never,” said Steve Holzer of HolzerTime, an architecture and planning consultancy and member of the Digital Twin Consortium’s infrastructure working group. “As the innovation of these tools wears off, it will reveal the incredible value of engagement in a physical space available to a wider audience.”

He believes that one of the biggest opportunities is to facilitate contextual analysis of data for specific use cases. He believes that IFC is a very heavy data structure. Only a few groups have found ways to use it across domains, such as COBie for operations, SPARKie for electrical, HVACie for HVAC, and WSie for water. USD can facilitate the development of new AI models to analyze the structure NLP tools analyze medical facilities from health records.

“AI/ML will exponentially increase the value of data across all dimensions when the industry figures out how to use it beyond innovation,” Holzer said.

Digital twin technical expert Barry Bassnet has been using photogrammetry techniques to capture 3D models of the built environment for 43 years. He is excited about the US dollar’s potential to transform the construction industry.

“USD gives us a language to mimic to some degree how our brain works and apply it to new processes, especially artificial intelligence,” he said.

He believes that the missing link is a tool that automatically meta-tags the built environment. Today, people need to create links about and between spatial objects in other types of documents, such as PDF documents and their content. The combination of USD and auto-tagging capabilities will make it easy to identify a lock for a window and then switch to a 3D repair manual or obtain a replacement key.

Bassnet excitedly watched VRML arrive and then faded due to bandwidth constraints.

“USD is the best chance to find a way to make the metaverse and digital twins concept work,” he said.

Schleusner believes the AEC industry can learn from the US dollar’s success in entertainment. The entertainment industry is increasingly developing USD rather than proprietary file formats. As a result, entertainment workflows can exchange data directly between tools, rather than through more complex transformations via an API. Schleusner believes the AEC industry needs to take a similar approach to achieve the kind of innovation that digital twins promise for the built environment.

“The most instructive thing for the world to take away from USD is that it’s easier to talk to one database than to talk to many application APIs,” Schleusner said. “The new IFC implementation for the US dollar will move the needle towards an exchange approach rather than an interoperability approach. This is the only way we will get closer to success.”