ABSTRACT
The application of BIM as new working methodology in AEC has many facets ranging from team collaboration tasks to the support of individual engineering work and enhanced tool interoperability. Great progress has been made in the last decade with regard to the BIM-based support for design communi cation, data exchange and data sharing but the use of BIM for creative design work performed with the help of specialized engineering applications is still limited to partial solutions with considerable interoperability constraints. The idea of an open, configurable and vendor-independent BIM-based design platform acting as a virtual lab for design practitioners is thus yet to be realized. In this paper we describe the concept and a first reference implementation of such a platform, which was initially developed by the TU Dresden for the domain of energy-efficient building design, and discuss options for possible further development and use of the platform in research and practice. Drawing upon results from the EU projects HESMOS and ISES the paper presents the current achievements accomplished in the frames of the on-going open eeBIM initiative supported by the EU projects eeEmbedded, Streamer, HOLISTEEC and Design4Energy.
