IDS-Constrained Text-To-Graph Querying for IFC Models

Ivan Smirnov1, Tanya Bloch2, Fulvio Re Cecconi1, Sebastiano Maltese3, Lavinia Chiara Tagliabue4, Silvia Meschini4, Shabtai Isaac5
1 Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy
2 Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, Israel
3 University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland, Mendrisio, Switzerland
4 University of Turin, Turin, Italy
5 Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel
DOI: 10.35490/EC3.2026.306
Abstract: Accessing Building Information Model (BIM) data encoded in Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) remains difficult for non-expert stakeholders due to heterogeneous property sets and nested relationships. This paper presents a constrained text-to-graph querying framework that transforms IFC data into a labeled property graph, queried via Cypher, while project-specific Information Delivery Specification (IDS) requirements define admissible entity labels, relationships, and property keys. A regular-expression grammar restricts Large Language Model (LLM) generation to executable, schema-compliant queries. Evaluation shows grammar constraints eliminate schema hallucinations, achieving 100% Semantic Compliance and improved execution accuracy, with competitive performance from smaller open-weights models.
Keywords: building information modelling (BIM), Constrained Decoding, Graph Database, Information Delivery Specification (IDS), Large Language Models (LLM)

Presentation video

Successfully submitted

Your submission has been received. We will review your details and contact you soon.