| Preferred term | Abbreviation | Deprecated Term(s) | Rough Definition |
| Industry Foundation Classes | IFC | – | Standard (agreement) for the semantic definition of objects, and structuring of information within the built environment. IFC consists of descriptions of objects, relations, properties and the definition of several file formats to exchange the data. |
| IDS | – | – | Information Delivery Specification. An XML Based buildingSMART standard to define (project) requirements. Supports objects, properties, attributes, materials and more. |
| IFC Dataset | IFC File (some call this ‘IFC Model’) | Dataset with data structured according to the IFC standard. Usually exchanged in a file, but could also be exchanged through an API. | |
| IFC Schema | – | – | Definition of the core elements, resources and relations in IFC. This is the part of IFC that is common for every extension and domain. |
| IFC Specification | – | – | Definition of extensions and specialisations on top of the schema. buildingSMART defined Property Sets are also on this level. These can be domain specific. |
| Model View Definition | MVD | – | An MVD has three purposes: (1) defining a subset of IFC required to fulfil a purpose (comparable with EIR); (2) adding additional restriction to that subset; (3) defining an expected level of implementation in software (comparable with Conformance Levels). |
| Exchange Information Requirements | EIR | Functional Parts | A machine-readable file (within buildingSMART usually in JSON) that defines the information requirements for a project. This is often the combination between IFC plus additional classifications and property sets. Definitions from the bSDD can be included as well. |
| Conformance Level | – | – | The level of IFC that a software implementation supports. |
| PSet_ | – | – | International agreed Property Set definition for a specific object(type) or purpose. Part of IFC. |
| Property Set | – | – | Dynamic, often per project defined, set of properties for a specific object(type). |
| buildingSMART Data Dictionary | bSDD | – | data dictionary with classifications, properties, relations and translations. The data in the bSDD can be connected to IFC and to each other. The bSDD is a service of buildingSMART |
| Information Delivery Manual | IDM | – | ISO Standard to define workflows (BPMN), exchange requirements and machine readable ‘Functional Parts’. |
| Business Process Modelling Notation | BPMN | OMG standard for specifying business processes in a business process model. | |
| International Framework for Dictionaries | IFD | ISO standard (12006 part 3) defining a framework for object-oriented information. Is was an inspiration to built the first bSDD. | |
| BIM Collaboration Format | BCF | Standard to exchange information about the contents inside an IFC Dataset. Can be exchanged in a ZIP file (xml) or through an API (JSON). | |
| BCF Dataset | BCF File | Dataset with data structured according to the BCF standard. Can be exchanged in a (zip)file, or as JSON through an API. | |
| Open Common Data Environment Application Programming Interface | openCDE API | Standard API to exchange information between online connected data environments. | |
| BIM Collaboration Format Application Programming Interface | BCF API | Standard API to exchange BCF data between online applications. | |
| Industry Foundation Classes Query Language | IfcQL | Standard query language to filter IFC Datasets. Basis for future buildingSMART APIs | |
| Use Case Management Tool | UCM Tool | Service from buildingSMART to share and find exchange (information) requirements (EIR) and workflows (BPMN). Use-cases are organized with meta information to search and filter. | |
| Industry/International Alliance for Interoperability | IAI | IAI | Former names of buildingSMART |
| Serialisations: | |||
| ifcOWL | OWL Ontology of IFC | ||
| ifcXML | XML formatted IFC dataset | ||
| ifcJSON | JSON formatted IFC dataset | ||
| ifcSPFF | STEP formatted IFC dataset |
Terminology
Updated on July 29, 2022
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