006 - Enrich IFC for Facility Management: Get Assets by Room

This is an easy dataflow to organize MEP and architectural assets by room and apartment, creating a clear spatial structure for facility management and maintenance workflows. In this example, objects from different disciplines (MEP and architectural) are merged and automatically connected to rooms and apartments based on their spatial position. Depending on your needs, you can apply this to any combination of asset types and room structures.

Start with separate MEP and architectural IFC models where assets have no spatial connection to rooms or apartments, and enrich them by merging the models, creating apartment and room groups, and automatically linking every asset to its containing room and apartment — all in one dataflow.

Why This Matters

In many BIM handover scenarios, the models delivered for facility management are not structured for day-to-day operations. Assets from different disciplines — HVAC, electrical, plumbing, fire safety — exist in separate models with no spatial relationship to the rooms they serve.

One of the key challenges is that asset-to-room connections are rarely included in the original models in a usable way. Even when room information exists in an architectural model, the MEP assets are not linked to those rooms. This means facility managers cannot easily answer basic questions like "what assets are in this room?" or "which rooms does this apartment contain and what equipment do they have?"

At the same time, the need for room-based asset organization is highly practical. Maintenance schedules, inspection plans, and work orders are typically organized by location — such as rooms or apartments — rather than by discipline. Without a clear spatial structure, facility teams must manually cross-reference models, drawings, and spreadsheets to build these lists.

Another important limitation is that models change. When a model is updated — a new asset is added, a room is reconfigured, a wall is moved — any manually created connections become outdated. Without an automated process, maintaining accurate asset-to-room relationships over the life of a building is nearly impossible.

To solve this, models need to be merged and enriched with spatial relationships that reflect how the building is actually used and maintained — and these relationships must be easy to update when models change.

Without Simplebim - The Traditional Way

Traditionally, asset-to-room connections are handled outside the BIM model. Facility managers and maintenance teams often build asset lists manually using 2D drawings, spreadsheets, or separate FM tools.

This approach provides some flexibility, but it comes with clear drawbacks:

• Asset information is not connected to the spatial model
• Room-to-asset relationships must be created and maintained manually
• The process is time-consuming and difficult to keep up to date
• Results are hard to reuse or verify
• There is a high risk of human error when matching assets to rooms

Even when BIM models are used, the lack of spatial connections between disciplines means that users must manually filter, cross-reference, or approximate which assets belong in which rooms. If an asset sits on a room boundary or spans multiple rooms, there is no reliable way to assign it without additional processing.

In practice, this leads to duplicated work, inconsistent asset lists, and limited scalability — especially for large buildings with hundreds of rooms and thousands of assets.

With Simplebim Dataflows - The Smart Way

With Simplebim, you can merge models from different disciplines and automatically connect assets to rooms and apartments based on their spatial position — regardless of how the models were originally created.

Here is how you can get the job done with Simplebim: quickly, reliably, and automatically. If you have Simplebim open, let’s walk through the dataflow and results together.

1. Select the Dataflows & Configure the Parameters
2. Run the Dataflow
3. Check & Use the Results

1. Select the Dataflows & Configure the Parameters

The dataflow for this use case is straightforward to configure and highly flexible. In the Dataflow Palette, click Add Step, select the required dataflow steps, and add them in the correct order.

This use case consists of five steps: merging models, adding apartment groups, adding room groups, and adding spatial location information at two levels (rooms to apartments, then assets to rooms). The dataflow steps used are listed below. Documentation for each dataflow is available via the link.

Dataflow Merge IFC File
Add or Modify Group
Dataflow Add Location Using Nearby Space
 

Step 1 Merge MEP Model with Architectural Model.
Start by adding the Merge IFC File step. Import your MEP IFC file and merge it with the architectural model. This brings all assets (HVAC, electrical, plumbing, etc.) together with the room and space objects from the architectural model into one unified model.

Step 2 Add Group: Apartments
Next, add a group to define the apartment level of your location structure. Why? In many architectural models, rooms do not have unique room numbers that can be reliably used to identify assets. We can add a more specific identity to the rooms by linking them to the apartment they belong to. Use Add or Modify Group to create an "Apartments" group. Select the apartment space objects from the architectural model and add them to this group. This establishes the top level of your spatial hierarchy, providing a clear identifier for organizing the rooms and assets that follow.

Step 3 Add Group: Rooms with Assets
Then, add another group to define the room level. Use Add or Modify Group again to create a "Rooms with Assets" group. Select the room objects that contain assets and add them to this group. This establishes the second level of your spatial hierarchy — the rooms where assets are located.

Step 4 Add Location Using Nearby Space: Connect Rooms to Apartments
Now, use Add Location Using Nearby Space to connect each room to its containing apartment. First, select the spaces to detect objects from — in this case, the apartments. Then, select the objects to look for — the rooms. Set the tolerance to 10 mm — since rooms are typically well-contained within their apartment boundaries, a tight tolerance works well here. Select a property to be copied from apartments to the rooms as the 04_Connected space property value, and set a parent group name for the autogrouped rooms.

Step 5 Add Location Using Nearby Space: Connect Assets to Rooms
Finally, use Add Location Using Nearby Space to connect selected assets to their containing rooms. First, select the spaces to detect objects from — in this case, the rooms. Then, select the objects to look for — the assets from both the architectural and MEP models. Set the tolerance to 130 mm — since assets can sit close to room boundaries or extend slightly beyond them, a wider tolerance ensures reliable matching. Select two properties to be copied from rooms to the assets: the 04_Connected space property (created in the earlier step), which passes the connected apartment information down to the assets automatically, and the Space Name property. Set a parent group name for the autogrouped assets.

2. Run the Dataflow

When your setup is ready, just click Run Dataflow. You can run the entire dataflow at once or execute it step by step by selecting individual parts.

3. Check & Use the Results

Now you are ready to review and use the results. Your model now contains:

• Merged objects from MEP and architectural disciplines in a single model
• Apartment-based grouping at the top level
• Room-based grouping at the second level
• Spatial location information connecting every room to its apartment
• Spatial location information connecting every asset to its room
• Standard property values in the Simplebim property set on all linked objects
• Object groups automatically created by location for easy selection and verification
• Automatically maintained relationships that stay current when models are updated

With this setup, you can easily generate asset lists by room or by apartment — and when source models are updated, simply re-run the dataflow to refresh all spatial connections.

How You Can Use the Results

Generate asset lists for maintenance:

• By room
• By apartment
• By asset type within a room
• By asset type within an apartment

Plan and manage maintenance work:

• Define inspection schedules per room or apartment
• Create work orders based on spatial location

Export and use the data:

• The enriched IFC model can be used in downstream FM tools, enabling room- and apartment-based asset management without manual rework
• Extracted data tables (Excel/CSV) can be used for reporting tools (e.g. Power BI) or integrated into existing FM workflows

The Power of Simplebim®: Automated BIM Data Processing

This is one high-impact use case of how you can turn raw BIM models and data into usable and scalable information.

Is it valuable for your work? We look forward to your comments, thank you!