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IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) is an open, vendor-neutral data format for Building Information Modelling (BIM). When architects, structural engineers, and MEP contractors need to share building data without locking into a single vendor's ecosystem, IFC is the format they reach for — or are contractually required to use.
The format uses ISO 10303-21 (STEP) encoding to represent building elements: walls, doors, windows, slabs, beams, columns, HVAC ducts, pipes, electrical circuits, and their spatial relationships. Every element carries semantic meaning — an IFC wall isn't just geometry, it knows it's a wall, what materials it's made of, its fire rating, and which spaces it bounds. The schema (IFC4 / IFC4x3) is enormous, covering everything from structural analysis results to construction scheduling.
IFC is mandated by government BIM requirements in many countries (UK, Germany, Singapore, Norway). It's the antidote to vendor lock-in in an industry where switching your CAD platform means retraining hundreds of people. The format isn't perfect — round-tripping between IFC and native BIM tools often loses parametric relationships — but it's the only truly open option for cross-disciplinary building data exchange.