Visual Language-based approach for the Definition of Building Permit Related Rules

This paper describes the visual language-based approach for the definition of building permit related rules. The conventional design phase of architecture has a high possibility of occurring error and time consuming because of the necessary handling of human resources. The introduction of BIM (Building Information Modeling) enables those inconvenient and repetitive process to be compact and automatize. Especially in the field of building design assessment, by comparing building regulation with a digital 3D model, checking building permit related rule became possible in the early phase of design. Accordingly, Korea government also proceeding the KBim project which about employing BIM in the overall process of building permission system. As the part of project, KBimLogic is the logic rule-based mechanism which in charge of rule-making by translating natural language in Korea Building Act into the computer executable form-KBimCode. However, because of the intricate relational structure of the Korea Building Act and script-based code structure, much intuitive and visualized approach for composing KBimCode must be developed for expanding usability of KBimCode. Therefore, this paper aims to introduce a visual language-based approach to defining building permit related rules. Since the KBimCode is also written in the scripting-based textual form, instinct understand of complicate regulation relation still takes time and effort. This paper introduces the KBim Visual Language (KBVL), the extended way of composing the rule module of building related regulations by the visual elements for the intuitive and immediate identifying the process and result. The language supports user to combine and generate KBimCode with visual symbols and connection of them according to the user-defined nesting relation. Thus, visual composing shorten the time for generating rule modules and defining the logical relation between the modules. By utilizing object-oriented nodes based on the KBim Logic meta database which the collection of building element and method from analysis of Building Act sentences, the user can handily query the building element and method to compose tailored ruleset. In the KBVL, for logically defined relation between each rule module, nesting component composes specific several rule modules as the other single set of rule. Therefore, the even highly complicate relation between rule modules can be refined as simple visual representation with nesting composition. Generated KBVL automatically writes down KBimCode at the background of the system and can be exported as the KBimCode ruleset file to be executed in the rule checking software. As the result of utilizing KBVL, the BIM applicable range in building regulation assessment is expanded to the not only the Building Act but design guidelines, international standards, or the other different form of the regulation contents. In conclusion, the user can much easily manage and identify the process and result of building rule checking they want.