IFC (Industry Foundation Classes)
IFC is the ISO 16739 open Building Information Modeling (BIM) data standard for the architecture, engineering, construction, and facilities-management (AEC/FM) sector — the AEC analogue of STEP for discrete manufacturing. Maintained by buildingSMART International, IFC is the substrate for openBIM workflows where multiple disciplines (architectural, structural, MEP, FM) collaborate on a single building model.
Scope
- Spatial structure — projects, sites, buildings, storeys, spaces.
- Building elements — walls, slabs, columns, beams, doors, windows, MEP components.
- Properties and quantities — typed property sets attached to elements.
- Relationships — aggregation, containment, connectivity.
- STEP/EXPRESS lineage — IFC schema is written in EXPRESS and exchangeable as STEP-21 files.
Why include AEC standards in a PLM KB
CIMdata’s PLM scope explicitly includes AEC and process-plant industries. The capital-equipment, energy, and infrastructure verticals increasingly run shared digital threads spanning manufactured equipment (PLM) and built facilities (BIM) — IFC is the BIM-side counterpart that PLM-trained engineers encounter at handoff boundaries.
Relationships (see sidebar)
- Normative for CAD 3D Design in the AEC profile of CAD (architectural/structural authoring tools).
Steward
buildingSMART International; published as ISO 16739 by ISO/TC 59/SC 13.
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