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.
A DWG file is a database of 2D or 3D drawings created with AutoCAD. It contains vector image data and metadata describing the contents of the file. DWG files are related to .DXF files, which are ASCII versions of DWG files.
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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