TUM OpenInfraPlatform: The Open-Source BIM Visualisation Software

The backbone of building information modeling (BIM) processes and exchanges are digital models which contain the relevant design and production data. Thus, the quality of models being exchanged is of utmost importance to ensure transparency and avoid ambiguities. There are many BIM model viewers available on the market, being proprietary or open, free or costly. Nevertheless, the current BIM software landscape lacks open-source solutions providing user and developer friendly, versatile application programming interfaces (APIs) for management of BIM data up-to-date. TUM OpenInfraPlatform (OIP) is a open-source C++ software which provides format independent data visualisation and inspection tools. OIP supports the whole programming process – from early-binding class generation to complex computations during geometry generation, visualisation and import/export functionality for various data formats. This paper presents the architecture of the framework and more importantly the rationale behind it. It should serve as a reference to everybody interested to join the cause.