Industry Foundation Classes

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The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) is an object oriented file format with a data model developed by the International Alliance for Interoperability (IAI) to facilitate interoperability in the building industry. The IFC model specification is open and available [ref]. Using Building Information Modeling (BIM) with the IFC standards is sometimes "branded" as buildingSMART [ref]. 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 [ref].

[edit] Software vendors supporting IFC

Graphisoft: Archicad supports IFC 1.51, IFC 2.00, IFC 2x, IFC 2x2 from Archicad 7 version onwards.^[1]
Solibri: Solibri Model Checker, Solibri IFC Optimizer
Data Design System (DDS)

[edit] External links

Understanding the different purposes of IFCs and aecXML in achieving Interoperability at the International Alliance for Interoperability, North America, website
Data Design System Building services engineering CAD software - working with IFC building models
A list from DDS of products supporting IFC
IFC for Structural Steel at NIST
AECbytes Feature (March 30, 2004) on the IFC data model.
IfcWiki Beginning of an open-for-all Wiki on the IFCs (initiated by Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe)
Solibri IFC Optimizer is an IFC file optimization tool.