Why should we care about IFC and OpenBIM

Why should we care about IFC and openBIM? IFC is seen by most as just a file format that is used to exchange (export/import) models between BIM software.

In BIM, be it proprietary BIM softwares like ArchiCAD, Revit or openBIM IFC, they all have their own data schema with underlying database which defines and stores different data type (like a wall, or a window, or an actor ... All these are data types). With proprietory BIM softwares, the end user is not exposed to this underlying data schema and can be considered as a blackbox. With IFC though, this schema is open to all to view, understand and even work directly on the schema. You can easily check and understand on all the different entities, their properties and their relationships with each other helping you understand all about the data in your BIM model.

This makes IFC a super powerful tool for BIM, data science and even AI/ML in our industry.

And did you know that you can author and work directly on IFC files through free and opensource software and libraries like blenderbim and ifcopenshell giving you access to reliable, high quality and non-vendor locked data.