Autodesk
ENH: IDS auditing
Enhancement Description
Maybe completely out of scope but wasn't sure what other channel to discuss this in.
IDS is awesome. IDS runs on IFC. Revit exporting to IFC is slow. It would be awesomer if you could run the IDS within Revit prior to exporting IFC. That would save a lot of time and prevent the need to have two auditing systems (audit Revit parameters, then audit IFC properties again afterwards).
Revit Version
2026.0.x
IFC for Revit Addon Version
26.1.0
Windows Version
11 24H2
Hi Dion, I think this is the right place for this discussion - while this is for IFC open code, we are starting to discuss openBIM as a whole, which has IFC at the center, but definitely includes IDS. How much do you see IDS being used at the moment, and how do you see that changing in the next 1-2 years? I am myself trying to give advice internally about when, where and how to support IDS, and would love your input. Note that there are 3rd party IDS integrations with Revit, most notably Onestruction, so there are ways to integrate at the moment.
Chiming in here. I would second this request. IDS seems to become a thing on the German market. I see it as a mixed bag, though. We've seen client BIM managers requiring attributes/properties to have a value no matter what, leading to a lot of "N/A" attribute/property values and just causing IFC model size to bloat unnecessarily.
Having said that, I would like to see an OOTB solution for IDS auditing after you have tackled parameter mappings. Give us a GUI that lets us define & override attribute/property mappings (and that also exposes the pre-existing / built-in mappings - users need that transparency to understand what is happening under the hood on export). With import/export capability, of course. Or at the very least a mapping preview based off built-in mappings, common pset overrides (txt file), custom pset overrides (txt file and schedules) and any shared parameters used in loadable and system families in the IFC parameters section.
I wasn't aware of the Onestruction tool (which in terms of Revit seems to be ACC only), but I know there's a Revit addin from DiRoots as well (haven't tested it yet, though).
I'm pretty biased, because I think it was Lendlease's work on the "microMVD auditing" that helped start IDS, so naturally when IDS was fledgling we adopted it as much as possible. Right now every single project at work where we check IFC also uses IDS, and it's part of our standard project contractual template. We've also shared IDSes with clients (i.e. they have requirements, we give them back an IDS interpretation of their requirements). My impression outside Lendlease is that IDS is a very, very rapidly adopted tech.
We've seen client BIM managers requiring attributes/properties to have a value no matter what
:(
One thing we've also started asking CDE devs is to allow the ability to run these audit events on model upload event hooks. We've got systems that do this but it would be awesome if the moment something is uploaded to ACC, an IDS report is run.
@andydandy74 : please consider signing up for the Revit Preview Release if you are truly interested in that GUI!
@AngelVelezSosa I think I'm still signed up, but I should carve out some time to log in every now and then. Wasn't aware that you're already working on this. Nice!