IFC or Industrial Foundation Classes is a 3D file format, used in the Architecture Engineering Construction (AEC) segment. It’s supported in the major software packages like Revit and AutoCAD by Autodesk, Tekla Structures by Tekla or SmartPlant3D by Intergraph.
The main value of the IFC is accordance to the Building Information Modeling requirements. BIM is a concept of design, construction and exploitation of the buildings prescribing creation of the large volume of the digital data around architectural objects.
This data may include not only 3D geometry, but tons of information pieces like authors, milestones and deadlines, supplier information and so on. Prior to beginning of the construction, the data base is created. It will include all the information, related to the building. Once the process kicks off the project team members will populate the data base with all the aspects of the future building.
3DXML is an open-standard proprietary 3D file format developed and supported by Dassault Systemes. 3DXML files are typically created as exports from Dassault Systemes' 3DEXPERIENCE application. The 3DXML file is a zip archive file consisting of a BOM file and one or more 3D representations stored in either XML or binary format. Compact file size allows users to transfer 3D XML quickly and embed it into websites, emails, and various MS Office documents. Therefore, the format is commonly used to integrate 3D data into technical documentation.
A CAD file is an output of a CAD software, containing key information about the designed object: its geometry and topology representation, 3D model hierarchy, metadata, and visual attributes depending on the format of the file.
Read moreIn the eighth part of the series, we touch upon the neutral data exchange standard in Building Information Modeling
Read moreIn the 4th part of the series, we will take a look at the features of working with wireframe models in 3D CAD software.
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