Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)
This page contains resources and downloads associated to Industry Foundation Classes (IFC).
The content on this page is split as follows:
- 1. An introduction to IFC – a short introduction setting out what IFC is and a little bit about the future of IFC.
- 2. buildingSMART International – useful general and technical information published by buildingSMART International.
- 3. Software – resources to support the delivery of IFC from various authoring tools.
- 4. Viewers – links to free viewers which will enable the opening of IFC.
- 5. Downloads – links to downloadable information.
- 6. Archived – resources which have been archived.
If you have any comments or would like to suggest additional resources to be added or a resource that you’d like us to help create, please let us know!
1. An introduction to IFC
What is IFC?
Industry Foundation Classes or simply IFC for short, enables objects (when we say objects we mean anything from a whole project, bridge, building, space, system, roundabout, pump, task, resource or actor) with basic ID metadata and history to be connected to things like single properties, whole documents, geometrical data, materials, classifications, external databases or importantly other objects. It basically sets out how objects are ordered and how they relate to each other. From this you can quite quickly build up a very detailed connected data set that represents a physical built asset. This is a data model – but it’s not necessarily a 3D model it can contain geometrical data but it doesn’t have to – it’s a model which sits in the background helping to connect data in databases. We can then visualise it in many ways from dashboards, to tables, to reports, to even drawings to provide information for people to consume. It is the information model from ISO 19650 and when we move away from file-based working to discrete data, it has the potential to be main dataset of a Common Data Environment (CDE), where the data model is enriched by many sources after the designers create the initial objects and even into the operational phase where it is kept up to date with the physical asset.
IFC in simple language
Currently most of the time you’re going to encounter IFCs as an exported file format from your modelling software. What’s going on behind the scenes isn’t critical to understand, especially if the most you’re going to need to know is how to set things up correctly and get a decent output. But basically, IFCs are standardised (that’s important) digital definitions of building objects. The standardisation part is crucial as it allows information to be created, interpreted, and imported into totally different software tools. Compare an IFC to your phone – it doesn’t matter whether you’re an iPhone user, or an Android fan, or which network provider you’re contracted to. You can still make voice or video calls and send text messages knowing they’ll get through looking the same as when you sent it. That’s the way IFC works: not only is it the file format you’ll generate and send, but it’s a series of standardised definitions behind the scenes which carry the necessary geometry and data.
Foundations for the future
This lays the foundations of everything digital, from the golden thread to digital twins to knowledge graphs and accelerates Artificial Intelligence (AI) in a more controlled way. Combined with the activities from ISO 19650 it creates filtered, consistent, trusted and predictable information. The use of a common data model utilising IFC actually simplifies the whole information management process, as it gives us an open, neutral and transparent common data framework to plug into. This is everything! But we need the technology to do it and that is currently lacking in the mainstream.
2. buildingSMART International
buildingSMART International – General
The following are general links for buildingSMART International:
buildingSMART International – Technical
The following are useful links to buildingSMART International’s Technical pages:
buildingSMART International – Software Certification
The following are useful links related to buildingSMART International software certification:
buildingSMART International – Future
buildingSMART UK&I – Resources
General
Other
AEC Magazine
BIMcorner
BIM Voice
OSArch
3. Software
Autodesk Civil 3D
Autodesk – BIM Me Up! (YouTube)
Autodesk Revit
Autodesk – BIM Me Up! (YouTube)
BIM Corner
Createmaster Information Management (Blog)
Evolve (Blog)
OSArch Wiki
Practical BIM Resources (YouTube)
BlenderBIM
BlenderBIM
Graphisoft Archicad
Graphisoft
Nemetschek Vectorworks
Vectorworks
Tekla Structures
BIM Corner
4. Viewers
The following are viewers which can be used to open the IFC-SPF format:
5. Downloads
IFC File Analyzer (National Institute of Technology and Standards (NIST), US Department of Commerce) – Downloadable to generate a spreadsheet or CSV files from an IFC-SPF file (Windows Only) :
6. Archived
n/a.
