Texture mapping and IFC material retrievement for virtual reality applications

Most current software support the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) transfer of Building Information Models (BIMs) to applications enabling Virtual Reality (VR) navigation (BuildingSMART, 2020; Kiviniemi, Tarandi, Karlshøj, Bell, and Karud, 2008; Poljanšek, 2017). However, a review of current industry practice and scientific literature shows a rupture between the information concerning the materiality of objects stored in the IFC model data and the texture mapping image-source determining the objects' appearance in VR environments. This document presents an application based on the IfcOpenShell library (IfcOpenShell, 2020), which provides a mapping table allowing to align the retrieved relevant IFC model data to any chosen set of image or pattern files. It produces a DAE file and a linked repertoire defining texture mapping onto model objects visualised in VR. The application also allows the automatic updating after modification of the original model.