Same acronym, genuinely different meaning — and the mix-up has caused real, documented coordination failures on real projects.
Ask someone what "LOD 300" means and they'll often describe how polished a model looks — fine geometry, rendered materials, a convincing sense of realism. That's a reasonable guess, and it's the wrong axis entirely. In professional BIM practice, LOD means Level of Development — a BIMForum/AIA E202 standard describing how reliable an element's information is for a specific use, not how visually rich it looks. There is a separate, genuinely different idea called Level of Detail — pure geometric/visual complexity — and confusing the two is one of the most consequential misunderstandings in digital design.