EXPRESStoOWL is a set of reusable Java components that allows to parse EXPRESS files (.exp) and convert them into OWL ontologies in the context of the Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). This library supports the conversion of express schemas available at https://technical.buildingsmart.org/standards/ifc/ifc-schema-specifications/, namely:

• IFC2X3_TC1
• IFC4_ADD1
• IFC4_ADD2
• IFC4_ADD2_TC1
• IFC4x1
• IFC4
• IFC4x3_RC1

The resulting OWL ontologies are published in https://technical.buildingsmart.org/standards/ifc/ifc-schema-specifications/.

If you simply want to run your computer on your device, you are advised to download

• the shaded executable JAR archive from the GitHub Release folder at https://github.com/pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL/releases; or
• the shaded executable JAR archive from the Maven Central repository at https://search.maven.org/artifact/com.github.pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL Both are identical, and include all necessary dependencies to be able to run the code out of the box.

Run the following command to generate an OWL ontology for either of the supported IFC schemas:

java -jar EXPRESStoOWL-0.4-shaded.jar IFC4x3_RC1 outputFile.ttl

This Java code is managed using Maven. If you plan to re-use this code, you are advised to do this through maven. The code is published as a Maven module in Maven Central (https://search.maven.org/artifact/com.github.pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL). Therefore, you can directly include and use this code by adding the following lines to your pom.xml file.

<dependency>
  <groupId>com.github.pipauwel</groupId>
  <artifactId>EXPRESStoOWL</artifactId>
  <version>0.4</version>
</dependency>

This code mainly reuses the IFC Parser Library (v.0.2) through Maven.

All source code is accessible through the EXPRESStoOWL GitHub repository in the master branch. Anyone is free to fork the repository, make changes, and potentially suggest updates and changes through Git pull requests.

Issues can be posted in https://github.com/pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL/issues.

A change log is available at CHANGES.md.

The API Documentation is very limited, yet it is available at: https://pipauwel.github.io/EXPRESStoOWL/0.4/apidocs/

Previous versions are available:

• Version 0.3 (31 Jul. 2019): https://github.com/pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL/releases/tag/EXPRESStoOWL-0.3
• Version 0.2 (23 Feb. 2018): https://github.com/pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL/releases/tag/EXPRESStoOWL-0.2
• Version 0.1 (8 Jun. 2017): https://github.com/pipauwel/EXPRESStoOWL/releases/tag/EXPRESStoOWL-0.1

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0.

See License details at LICENSE.

Want to know more? Contact:

Pieter Pauwels
Eindhoven University of Technology
[email protected]