Although our country has established its own BIM standards, related standards have actually existed for quite some time. For example, the well-known IFC is one of the earliest BIM standards. Today, I want to discuss the standards and specifications for BIM and introduce some of the key BIM standards.
1. IFC (Industry Foundation Classes)
IFC was developed to facilitate information exchange between construction industry software applications. It serves as an extensible framework model that provides a broad range of universal object and information definitions. When modeling information in IFC, each object defined by an application includes its type, associated geometry, relationships, and properties. IFC is the only publicly available, non-proprietary, and fully developed information model, and its standard version is continually updated. Many governments around the world are gradually adopting IFC as the standard for their countries or regions, including the United States, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Germany, Japan, South Korea, and others.
2. IFD (International Framework for Dictionaries)
With globalization, the European Community identified challenges related to naming attributes and object categories. Construction projects often involve multiple stakeholders from different countries and regions, bringing variations in language, culture, and customs. For instance, the concept of a “door” can vary widely, even within the same country. To address this, IFD was established to develop vocabulary relationships across different languages for use in architectural models and interfaces. Additionally, IFD plays a crucial role in developing specifications and standards for building products, especially regulatory information, to be used across various applications. Currently, organizations such as the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) in the United States, Construction Specifications Canada, buildingsMART in Norway, and the STABU Foundation in the Netherlands are actively working on IFD development.
3. Omniclass™
In the United States, MasterFormat© and UniFormat© are used primarily for standardization and cost estimation, under the supervision of the American Construction Specifications Institute. These are document structure outlines well-suited for integrating information in project drawings. However, they are less appropriate when mapping to independent objects within a building model. To address this, European and American experts developed a new classification system called Omniclass™. Originating in the early 1990s through collaboration between the International Organization for Standardization and the International Construction Information Society (ICIS), Omniclass™ is a building-related classification system. It currently includes 15 tables, with classification terms that are frequently updated and widely used in BIM tools and methodologies.
4. CoBie (Construction-Operations Building Information Exchange)
CoBie is a standardized method for collecting essential information throughout the design and construction phases. It primarily manages information transfer between the construction team and the owner, covering operations and maintenance (O&M) as well as broader facility management data. The CoBie standard was updated in 2010 and is now known as CoBie2. It supports both human- and machine-readable formats. The human-readable format resembles a traditional computer spreadsheet, while CoBie2 also leverages the buildingsMART open standard IFC (or ifcXML) to facilitate the exchange of facility management information. CoBie2 supports initial data entry into Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) such as MAXIMO, TOCMO, Onuma, and several European facility management and design applications. Major adopters include NASA, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the Veterans Affairs Hospital, and government agencies in Norway and Finland.
5. XML-Based Schemas
XML (Extensible Markup Language) offers various architectural languages and delivery mechanisms, making it a popular format for information exchange between web applications. There are multiple ways to define XML schemas, such as XML Schema, RDF (Resource Description Framework), and the OWL Web Ontology Language. While XML files tend to be larger, they process faster than plain text files, resulting in improved exchange efficiency. The construction industry is actively developing effective XML architectures and processing methods, including gbXML (Green Building XML), ifcXML, aecXML, ageXML, BCF (BIM Collaboration Format), OpenGIS, and CityGML. Each of these XML schemas defines its own entities, attributes, relationships, and rules. However, because these schemas differ and are often incompatible, coordinating peer-to-peer mapping and ensuring consistent information model representation across XML schemas remains a significant challenge.
That concludes our overview of the standards and specifications for BIM. I hope this article has been helpful to everyone!
Must log in before commenting!
Sign Up