What technology is required to unlock BIM data?

Fundamentally, it requires that you can access all your 3D models, their objects and properties programmatically i.e. through a web API.

Why a web API Christian? You might ask.

The goal here is to enable asynchronous (background) tasks to be executed at scale, which rules out human interaction in the process.

Web technology is ideal for that.

So all your 3D models accessible through a web API. What is next?
One thing is to have an API another thing is to have a useful API. You need to be able to filter and sort model objects with the API.
It is not much help if you have to receive the whole model before you can do your operation.
For example: You should be able to make a query (ask the API for data) for all windows per model or the concrete slabs in a specific model.

So API with filter and sort capabilities. Then what?
This is all a waste of time if you can't enrich your model via the API. You should be able to get data from the API, process it and then update the model with the processed results. That update should also propagate through to your BIM model software.

To sum up:

• BIM models accessible through web API
• Access to all models, all objects and all properties
• Filter and sort capabilities on API
• API should allow for updates and that should propagate through to BIM model software