Chapter 6 - Industry Foundation Classes - A standardized data model for the vendor-neutral exchange of digital building models

Oct 28, 2026

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The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) define a comprehensive, standardized data format enabling vendor-neutral exchange of digital building models. As a foundation for Big Open BIM, the chapter explains the data model’s structure and how it supports semantic and geometric representation of buildings and their elements. It also evaluates the IFC model by discussing key advantages and disadvantages for practical interoperability across software tools.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages45

Reading Time1 h 53 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

6.1 Background

Building Information Modeling and data exchange needs

Limitations of current tool ecosystems

Requirements for a standardized exchange format

Interoperability and industry boundary conditions

Fragmented participants in the building sector

Chapter 6 Industry Foundation Classes – A standardized data model for the vendor-neutral exchange of digital building models Andr Borrmann, Jakob Beetz, Christian Koch and Thomas Liebich Abstract The Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) provide a comprehensive, standardized data format for the vendor-neutral exchange of digital building models. Accordingly, it is an essential basis for the establishment of Big Open BIM. This chapter describes in detail the structure of the data model and its use for the semantic and geometric description of a building and its building elements. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the IFC data model. 6.1 Background The idea of Building Information Modeling is based on the consistent use of a comprehensive building model as a basis for all data exchange operations (see Chap. 1) . This avoids the need to manually re-enter data or information already created, and reduces the accompanying risk of errors. In addition to the numerous data exchange Andr Borrmann Technical University of Munich, Chair of Computational Modeling and Simulation, Arcisstraße 21, 80333 Munich, Germany e-mail: [andre.borrmann@tum.de](andre.borrmann@tum.de)[ ](andre.borrmann@tum.de)Jakob Beetz RWTH Aachen University, CAAD-Design Computation, Schinkelstr. 1, 52062 Aachen, Germany [e-mail:](e-mail: beetz@caad.arch.rwth-aachen.de)[ beetz@caad.arch.rwth-aachen.de](e-mail: beetz@caad.arch.rwth-aachen.de) Christian Koch Bauhaus-Universitt Weimar, Chair of Intelligent Technical Design, Marienstraße 13a, 99423 Weimar, Germany e-mail: [c.koch@uni-weimar.de](c.koch@uni-weimar.de)[ ](c.koch@uni-weimar.de)Thomas Liebich AEC3 Deutschland GmbH, Joseph-Wild-Str. 13, 81829 Munich, Germany e-mail: [tl@aec3.de](tl@aec3.de) 1 2 A. Borrmann et al. scenarios between participants in the planning process, this principle also enables building data to be transferred digitally to the contractors in the building phase, and on completion for the “handover” of building data to the client or operator of the building. A wide range of software tools already exist for the numerous different tasks involved in planning buildings, for example for the geometric design of the building, for undertaking a range of analyses and simulations (structural design, heating requirement, costing, etc.), for operating the building (facility management) as well as other applications such as those detailed in Part IV of this book. These tools address different tasks and application areas, and for the most part serve their purpose well. A problem, however, is that many of these tools are still islands of automation (Fig. 6.1), i.e. have no or only limited support for data exchange between the separate applications. Consequently, data and information that already exists in digital form needs to be re-entered manually, which is laborious and prone to introducing new errors. To remedy this situation, a data exchange format is required that makes it possible to transport building data between software products with as little data loss as possible. Such a format must set out uniform, unequivocal descriptions of geometric information that are clear in their meaning and therefore not open to misinterpretation (see Chap. 2) . A further important aspect is the detailed description of semantic Fig. 6.1 Islands of automation in construction. The image was created in 1998 (􀀍c Matti Hannus, reprinted with permission) 6 Industry Foundation Classes 3 information, including the classiﬁcation of building components within a common hierarchy of types, the description of the relation-ships between them and the deﬁnition of their relevant properties (material, building times, etc. see Chap. 3) . This is where the term interoperability comes into play, which means the loss-free exchange of data between software products by different vendors. What differentiates the building sector from many other industries is the

FAQs

Why is achieving loss-free data exchange more difficult in the building sector than in industries like automobile or aircraft manufacturing?

Building projects involve different companies, multiple planning phases and offices, many independent specialist planners, and a highly fragmented industry structure, which makes uniform standards and interoperability harder to enforce.

Oct 28, 2026

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