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Industry Foundation Classes: A Standardized Data Model for the Vendor-Neutral Exchange of Digital Building Models

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Building Information Modeling

Abstract

The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) provide a comprehensive, standardized data format for the vendor-neutral exchange of digital building models. Accordingly, it is an essential basis for the establishment of Big Open BIM. This chapter describes in detail the structure of the data model and its use for the semantic and geometric description of a building and its building elements. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the IFC data model.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In this chapter, the use of the term class is synonymous with entity type.

  2. 2.

    The example is available online from: http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/implementation/get-started/hello-world/example-1

References

  1. BuildingSMART. (2013a). IFC and related data model standards documentation. Retrieved from http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/. Accessed on 26 Sept 2017.

  2. BuildingSMART. (2013b). Industry Foundation Classes, version 4, documentation. Retrieved from http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/ifc/IFC4/final/html/. Accessed on 10 Feb 2018.

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  4. ISO 10303-21. (2002). Industrial automation systems and integration – Product data representation and exchange – Part 21: Implementation methods: Clear text encoding of the exchange structure. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.

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  5. ISO 10303-11. (2004). Industrial automation systems and integration – Product data representation and exchange – Part 11: Description methods: The EXPRESS language reference manual. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.

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  6. ISO 16739. (2013). Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) for data sharing in the construction and facility management industries. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization.

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  9. Liebich, T. (2009). IFC 2x edition 3 model implementation guide. Retrieved from http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/implementation/ifc-implementation/ifc-impl-guide. Accessed on 10 Apr 2018.

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Correspondence to André Borrmann .

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Borrmann, A., Beetz, J., Koch, C., Liebich, T., Muhic, S. (2018). Industry Foundation Classes: A Standardized Data Model for the Vendor-Neutral Exchange of Digital Building Models. In: Borrmann, A., König, M., Koch, C., Beetz, J. (eds) Building Information Modeling. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92862-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92862-3_5

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-92861-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-92862-3

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