6.4 IfcSharedFacilitiesElements

6.4.1 Schema Definition

The IfcSharedFacilitiesElements schema defines basic concepts in the facilities management (FM) domain. This schema, along with IfcProcessExtension and IfcSharedMgmtElements, provide a set of models that can be used by applications needing to share information concerning facilities management related issues.

The IfcSharedFacilitiesElements schema supports ideas including:

• Furniture.
• Grouping of elements of system furniture into individual furniture items.
• Asset identification.
• Inventory of objects (including asset, furniture and space objects within separate inventories).

6.4.1.1 Furniture and System Furniture

In the IfcProductExtension schema, the IfcElement entity is decomposed into a number of subtypes. One of these is the IfcFurnishingElement entity from the IfcFurniture and IfcSystemFurnitureElement entities are derived.

Figure 277 illustrates a furniture object (instance of the IfcFurniture entity, which is considered to be a discrete item of furniture in its own right (for example, a table or chair).

Figure 277 — Furniture

Figure 278 illustrates a system furniture element object (instance of the IfcSystemFurnitureElement entity), which is an identifiable item (such as a modesty panel, side, or desktop) that participates in the assembly of a discrete item of furniture.

Figure 278 — System furniture element

Each IfcFurniture object and each IfcSystemFurnitureElement object is of a particular type. It may be a chair, desk, table etc for discrete furniture or modesty panel, side panel, desktop etc. for system furniture. Specification of the type is left to the user of the application providing the information. For applications however, there are a number of predefined property sets for types of furniture that can be assigned to furniture objects. Other property sets may be defined as necessary.

6.4.1.2 Asset Identification

An IfcAsset allows for the grouping of objects to form a unit that has an identifiable financial value and/or upon which specific facilities management operations take place, as shown in Figure 279.

Each asset carries a unique identifier, cost, ownership,location and other information that is required.

Figure 279 — Asset identification

6.4.1.3 Inventory

An IfcInventory provides a list of objects of a particular type, the type of objects that are contained being identified by the IfcInventoryEnum.

Each inventory has one or more responsible persons and an organizational jurisdiction (which is valuable in facilities management situations where more than one functional group or organization is concerned).

 EXPRESS-G diagram

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