The IFD Specification

The International Framework for Dictionaries (IFD) (ISO 12006-3) standard is developed by ISO TC 59/SC 13/WG 6. Many of the members of the work group are also members of International Construction Information Society (ICIS ). The IFD standard has many similarities with the EPISTLE standard for the Oil and Gas industry.

While the IFC standard describes objects, how they are connected, and how the information should be exanged and stored, the IFD standard uniquely describe what the objects are, and what properties, units and values they can have. IFD provides the dictionary, the definitions of concepts, the relationships between them and the common understanding necessary for the communication to flow smoothly.

The IFD standard gives each concept a global unique identifier, or “personal number” and a set of names and definitions in different languages. While the identifier is used to capture the information the names and definitions are used merely for communicating the idea to the end user. IFD also enables multiple ways of classifying and structuring information. In theory all existing classification and specification systems can be recreated and interconnected within one common library by the use of the IFD framework.

The IFD Group, consisting of representation from USA, Canada, Netherlands and Norway, will provide one global library, the IFD Library (http://ifd-library.org). This library can be accessed through a web service based (standard SOAP) API, enabling any application to access the content of the library. For more information on how to develop applications toward this library and obtaining access credentials, please visit the developer site, http://dev.ifd-library.org.

Quick links to more detailed information on IFD and IFD development:

• "IFD in a Nutshell"
  
• IFD Web Service API documentation
  
• Step By Step Guides for implementation using the API
  
• How to use IFD in IFC models
• Users and developer forum

For more information pleace contact Havard Bell, the MSG member responsible for the IFD integration.