What is the relationship between IDS and IDM or MVD?

Activities & Projects Tech-IDS
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Hi, I am confused with the new standard - IDS (Information Delivery Specification), which is described as a computer interpretable document that defines the Exchange Requirements of model based exchange on the IDS website. What is the relationship and difference between IDS and IDM or MVD?

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Hi @Feifei, I had a closer look at IDS when developing its IfcOpenShell implementation. IDS is a standard dedicated to specifying and validating requirements for IFC models. The intention is to have a simple but trustworthy solution that gives unequivocal results in all software implementations. Because it reuses common technologies it is quite easy to implement with existing libraries.
MVD is made primarily for software certification and even though it also allows for Exchange Requirements, it is less convenient in my opinion, for example, if you want to restrict values with RegEx.
idmXML is defined in a structured format and allows for mapping requirements to business processes, but it is not much oriented at constraining parameter values, so I wouldn’t call it computer interpretable.
I would say that MVD is good for defining a subschema of IFC, IDM for the business use case with actors and so on, while IDS is better suited for (just) model/project requirements.
From the bSI roadmap I read that IDS is supposed to be more generic and easily adopted than MVD and IDM.

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Hi @Feifei
Just a comment about MVD and IDS comparison. I am used to check if models are compliants to specifications. I verified that both MVDxml and IdsXML permit to specify allowed values of an attribute which is very common in information requirements.

Whatever the standard we’ll use, end users need applications to generate “machine readable Information Delivery Specification”. I noticed that Datacubist proposes mvdXML plugin for SimpleBIM and this company participates also to IDS development (IDS/Existing initiatives and proposals at master · buildingSMART/IDS · GitHub). ACCA was one of the finalists of Awards 2021 with usBIM.ids (Awards 2021 Finalists - buildingSMART International). To follow…

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You might be interested to know @BFerries that @artur_tomczak has made an online IDS generator. It is one of several end user applications to generate machine readable IDS’s

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Thank you for this. It’s very helpful. I will have a look at this IDS creator.

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Thank you for your reply.
I read the mvdXML specification, and it’s a bit complicated from my perspective.

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Thank you for your comments. I totally agree that “machine readable Information Delivery Specification” is the final deliverable for end users.

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I wanted in my page for osarch.org at IDS - Information Delivery Specification - Wiki.OSArch to mention usBIM’s IDS generator, but the URL I found is dead. Anyone know of a working link?

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An Information Delivery Specification (IdS) is a computer interpretable document that defines the Exchange Requirements of model based exchange. […] This is the standard to use to define your Level of Information Needs.

About the part in bold… If you refer to Level of information need as the standard EN 17412-1:2020 (and probably future ISO 7817) than this is not correct. IDS is complementary to Level of information need, in so far as that it can support a subset, namely only the alphanumerical part. IDS does not support geometrical information nor documentation, which are an integral part of Level of information need.

Moreover, IDS assumes the use of the IFC scheme. This is not compulsory for Level of information need.

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Thanks for this information. I tested IDS Creator: very promising !