IFC - fools rush in where angels fear to tread?

[Petri]

Some preliminary thoughts on the IFC implementation:

The Good: The semantic concept seems to be as good as it can get. Congrats to everyone involved!

The Bad: The biggest problem I have detected relates to beams; we do not have generic/genuine beams in VW. Joists are translated as beams but they can't be used to model "real" beams in large projects.

The Beautiful: Unlike with Certain Competition, one can easily apply an arbitrary classification. Thus, one can model a construction with the most suitable objects and tell them to become whatever one wants. Some typical cases would be

- walls that act as beams

- solid balustrades drawn with the wall tool but again acting as beams

- multiple extrusions that are structurally columns

- solids that are, hmm, anything

The Ugly: I can't import IFC-files I have just created...

Ah well. You can't get everything, can you!

[Guest]

You'll be able to import and export IFC files in VW 2008.

[Petri]

OK. Downloaded the IFC plug-in immediately when it was released, but was only able to import the sample files, not anything I had created myself.

The samples were, however, OK. Took them to ArchiCAD as well. B-dy awesome compared with DWG/DXF! Now, if we could also just reference native IFC...

[Petri]

Replying in public to a response/comment received via email:

Stairs are, in my view, best considered as objects per se. Extracting a stair balustrade, which serves the purpose of a beam, does not serve any purpose.

In the whole BIM-business one has to consider the relevant level of detail and apply eg. IF-classes in such a way that makes sense to others and has some meaningful meaning to them. Thus: a stair is usually a singular item, not a conglomerate of materials and work, beams and slabs.