Implementation of IFC-based web server for collaborative building design between architects and structural engineers Po-Han Chen a, * , Lu Cui a , Caiyun Wan a , Qizhen Yang b , Seng Kiong Ting a , Robert L.K. Tiong a a School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798, Singapore b Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Singapore 638075, Singapore Accepted 27 August 2004 Abstract This paper presents the implementation of an Industry Foundation Class-based (IFC-based) information server for web- enabled collaborative building design between the architect and structural engineer. In this research, the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE) standard is employed to build the framework of a design information server; the web and XML technologies are used to implement the collaboration and information sharing mechanisms in the server. The Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs) are adopted as the information model of the server to facilitate the interoperability among multidisciplinary AEC software applications. The current implementation of the server system supports the automatic transformation of the design model contents and representations from the architectural domain to the structural domain, and remote visualization and interaction by Java applet and the Java3D technology. An algorithm that is able to deduce the topological relationship among different structural elements has been proposed in this paper. A case study is presented at the end of the paper to illustrate the use of the information server for the architectural and structural design collaboration. D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Industry Foundation Classes (IFCs); Information server; Collaborative building design; Web-enabled services 1. Introduction Traditionally, architectural design and structural design are two separate steps with distinct objectives in the building design process. Architectural design is focused on defining the space arrangement of various architectural elements, while structural design on analyzing the mechanical properties of building ele- ments and structure. The two design processes are closely related as architecture design, which defines the geometric information about building elements, pro- vides the input information for structural design. Thus, the success of a building design process is highly dependent upon effective coordination among diverse design teams. With the prevalence of information technology (IT) applications in the AEC industry, the 0926-5805/$ - see front matter D 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2004.08.013 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +65 6790 4562; fax: +65 6791 0676. E-mail address: CPHChen@ntu.edu.sg (P.-H. Chen). Automation in Construction 14 (2005) 115– 128 www.elsevier.com/locate/autcon