Building is increasingly carried out with digital information and tools. Design, planning, construction, provisional acceptance and maintenance: in every phase, information is created, adapted or processed. Sadly, information is very often lost along the way. Various systems form islands that exist side by side or are incompatible. The spatial ETL tool, FME, brings the interoperability required to allow data to flow efficiently. 

About spatial ETL with FME

Thanks to the support of over 400 formats and application, FME is the platform to convert, integrate and automate spatial data. FME creates a link between your BIM, CAD and GIS systems allowing your data to flow freely. With FME, geometric and non-geometric building information is read from formats such as IFC, Revit, Civil3D and AutoCAD DWG/DFX. 

Using the handy FME transformers, you can then validate and transform your data, make clear analyses, before storing it in databases in Postgres, SQL Server, Oracle, or file formats such as IFC, DWG, Cesium 3D Tiles. 

Our customers use FME to validate and transform BIM data, as well as to link the different systems to each other and visualise them in powerful web applications. 

BIM-naar-GIS dataverwerking: linken en visualiseren from GIM_nv

Increasing numbers of applications

A better integration of these systems generates ever-increasing perspectives for useful applications:

• Asset Management
  In managing infrastructure on a large scale, such as roads, rail and public utilities, detailed information (BIM, CAD) and the wider context (GIS) are seamlessly integrated. Infrabel therefore uses FME to gain a clear view of its technical infrastructure. 

• Inspection, control and issue management
  Incidents, inspections and maintenance can be followed up much more efficiently by combining various data sources. In this way, information from CAD and GIS systems is combined for the maintenance of a new motorway between Bruges and Zeebrugge. 

• Indoor navigation
  Large sites, such as airports (like Schiphol) and shopping centres, provide visitors with mobile apps with BIM and GIS data to help them find their way around. 

• Facility Management
  Efficient building maintenance succeeds or fails depending on management of the right information. By cleverly combining BIM, GIS and CAD data, you gather just the right information at just the right moment. 

• 3D visualisation
  City planners depend on BIM data as a valuable source for 3D illustrations of buildings and even complete cities in webGIS or other platforms. With Augmented Reality, your insight into reality is enhanced thanks to virtual 3D presentation of buildings or underground cables and pipelines. 

Validation and visualization of Revit BIM Models with FME from GIM_nv

Find out more about the integration between BIM, CAD and GIS? Let us know!