What are IFC Standards?

Open Standards - the basics

We are in effect creating a new digital language which will allow advanced information technology to openly and freely exchange structured information throughout the lifecycle to improve construction, operation and portfolio management of the built environment. Technical Overview 5 basic standards

The Basic Standards Process Standard – Information Delivery Manual (IDM) BuildingSMART processes (IDMs) capture (and progressively integrate) business process whilst at the same time providing detailed specifications of the information that a user fulfilling a particular role would need to provide at a particular point within a project. To further support the user information exchange requirements specification, IDMs also propose a set of modular model functions that can be reused in the development of support for further user requirements. Data Standard – Industry Foundation Class (IFC) Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) BuildingSMART is all about the sharing of information between project team members and across the software applications that they commonly use for design, construction, procurement, maintenance and operations.Data interoperability is a key enabler to achieving the goal of a buildingSMART process. BuildingSMART has developed a common data schema (IFC) that makes it possible to hold and exchange relevant data between different software applications Change Coordination – BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) BCF is a ‘simplified’ open standard XML schema that encodes messages to enable workflow communication between different BIM (Building Information Modeling) software tools. Developed by Tekla Corporation and Solibri Inc, it is currently a pre-release that has been submitted to buildingSMART under the new “Affiliation Scheme” to become an official buildingSMART specification. Mapping of Terms – International Framework for Dictionaries (IFD) The Data Dictionary is one of the core components of the buildingSMART technology. The bSDD is a reference library based on the IFD standard and intended to support improved interoperability in the building and construction industry. The bSDD provides a flexible and robust method of linking existing databases with construction information to a buildingSMART based Building Information Model (BIM). Process Translation – Model View Definition (MVD) Model View Definitions (MVDs) define the subset of the IFC data model that is necessary to support the specific data exchange requirements of the AEC industry during the life-cycle of a construction project A Model View Definition provides implementation guidance (or implementation agreements) for all IFC concepts (classes, attributes, relationships, property sets, quantity definitions, etc.) used within a particular subset. It thereby represents the software requirement specification for the implementation of an IFC interface to satisfy the exchange requirements