Assessment of the LoD Specification for the Integration of BIM-Derived Building Models in 3D City Models
Abstract
Although level of detail (LoD) is a central concept in 3D city modelling, specifying different LoDs in an unambiguous manner is not straightforward. To resolve this, a set of frameworks have been developed. This paper evaluates the suitability of the LoD framework of (Biljecki et al. 2016) for 3D building models that have been generated directly from BIM models. The output of two BIM shell extractors are tested on how well they can be defined by the framework. It was found that although BIM-derived models can be specified by the framework to a certain degree, the framework is not fully capable to also specify lower quality models and to support all the output that may come from BIM shell extractors. This can be resolved by either addressing issues in the shell extractors’ output or in the framework itself. The results of this research can be used to improve the LoD framework and to adjust the shell extractors output to better comply with unambiguous definitions of building models at different LoDs and could be a first step to standardise the conversion of BIM models at different LoDs to be used in urban applications.
