The article which was assigned to us this week for reading was about data interchange and interoperability. AS was said by many others who have posted, this is a very important concept within BIM and intelligent building design. The assigned reading article discussed what the different types of interoperability are, and what different kinds of exchange formats are being used throughout the AEC industry. Although the article was relevant to what we are study, it was a little bit hard to read and follow as the information which it provided was dry and tedious. Ultimately though the main idea of interoperability which it discussed is important as it speeds up building design and makes transfer of data more consistent.
One of the main concepts discussed within the assigned reading article was the idea of IFC. Since I was curious to find out more information about this, the two other articles I read focused on this concept. The articles I read were:
"The IFC Building Model: A Look Under the Hood"
"The Implementation of Industry Foundation Classes in Simulation Tools for the Building Industry"
The article "The IFC Building Model: A Look Under the Hood" was an article which summarized IFC and how it relates to interoperability. As opposed to the assigned reading, this article broke down what IFC was in a more easy to understand way. It emphasized the fact that IFC models use building-specific data models, which is ultimately what BIM is. It also discusses the idea that IFC is composed of four different layers, which makes it a more appropriate tool in terms of interoperability. This is because within the layers there are entities. According to the article, some of these entities may contain IFC-compliant parameters which are interoperable and therefore can be transferred between different programs. This creates interoperability between software applications, and in the future will help to create a more cohesive AEC field.
The article “The Implementation of Industry Foundation Classes in Simulation Tools for the
Building Industry” is another article about what IFC is, but it also discusses how it was developed and what is being done to develop it more. One of the most important things that the article discusses is the idea that a software program must be IFC-compliant in order to be interoperable within an IFC model. This was one of the ideas that was also discussed within the first article I read. This article however talked about the fact that there are different levels of IFC-compliancy. For example, a IFC model can be fully-compliant, partially-complaint, or non-compliant. This is an interesting idea because it means that even if a software program didn't want to become a complete IFC-model, it could change some of its programming to accept some IFC information (or be partially-compliant). Ultimately though, the most important thing discussed within the article was the idea that if IFC is implemented correctly throughout software programs in the future, it can eventually “provide an environment of true interoperability for building simulation tools.” (Bazjanac, et. al., 1997).
I agree with what you said about the reading being dry and hard to understand without a greater knowledge. The description that you got from your additional articles helped me to gain a better understanding of what IFC is and does. It seems that the articles you read would have been more helpful in understanding the concept of data exchange that the handbook was. I agree with your statement about the programs having different levels of compliancy to be interesting. It seems that even if a program was non-compliant, they would be able to write a patch to allow for importation of an IFC model. Or this could also advance a program that in semi-compliant. The articles you found seemed to give a more “beginner” level explanation of how data exchange really works.
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