Industry Foundation Classes

Industry Foundation Classes

The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) data model is intended to describe building and construction industry data.

It is a neutral and open specification that is not controlled by a single vendor or group of vendors. It is an object-based file format with a data model developed by buildingSMART (International Alliance for Interoperability, IAI) to facilitate interoperability in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, and is a commonly used format for Building Information Modeling (BIM). The IFC model specification is open and available. It is registered by ISO as ISO/PAS 16739 and is currently in the process of becoming the official International Standard ISO 16739.

Because of its focus on ease of interoperability between software platforms the Danish government has made the use of IFC format(s) compulsory for publicly aided building projects. Also Finnish state owned facility management company Senate Properties demands use of IFC compatible software and BIM in all their projects.

Read more about Industry Foundation Classes:  History, IFC/ifcXML Specifications, File Formats, Architecture, Software Vendors Supporting IFC

Famous quotes containing the words industry, foundation and/or classes:

    “What more is necessary to make us a happy and prosperous people? Still one thing more … a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from labor the bread it has earned.”
    —Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)

    “Wonder is the foundation of all philosophy; research, the progress; ignorance, the end. There is, by heavens, a strong and generous kind of ignorance that yields nothing, for honour and courage, to knowledge: an ignorance to conceive which needs no less knowledge than to conceive knowledge.”
    —Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592)

    “Genocide begins, however improbably, in the conviction that classes of biological distinction indisputably sanction social and political discrimination.”
    —Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)