~ BuildingSMART Data Dictionary
The IFC standard holds agreements on about 800 objects with 12.000 properties. But still not all objects used in a construction project are standardised in IFC. The goal of IFC was to make agreements on objects that need to be exchanged by project partners.
A few years ago, a number of organisations started making agreements to expand the standardisation of objects from IFC. Together they are collecting an entire library of architectural concepts. Architectural concepts are e.g. plasterboard panels, hinges, etc. These are architectural elements that are called ‘concepts’ and do not have a specific supplier, nor geometry. They also expanded the properties of certain standardised IFC elements such as ‘door’.
They assembled this collection in a so-called library that they call the ‘IFD library’. Later is was rebranded to ‘buildingSMART Data Dictionary’ (BSDD). This library is still being completed and the concepts (physically on a server in Norway) can be viewed through a web service interface. It is expected that money will be charged per visit to the library, but no statements can be made as of yet.
Good to know is that everyone can also set up their own library according to the IFD principles.
The practical use for the BSDD has not been proven yet. A typical use case could be: A hinge from supplier A has a maximum load, which is called ‘maxNm’. Because supplier B, with his own library, uses the same ‘concept’ for a hinge, he also records the maximum load in ‘maxNm’ and these objects can be compared to each other.
The ‘concepts’ from the BSDD are thus used as a ‘mapping’ between different specific object libraries.