A simplified IFC guide for general Revit and ARCHICAD users

The streamlined and engaging Danish IFC guide that targets general users (not BIM experts and BIM Managers) has been recently translated to English. This guide that is aimed to make IFC more accessible developed jointly by Molio and buildingSMART Denmark with the help of a team of experts from different institutions such as Nicklas Verdier Østergaard (SHL), Thomas Graabæk (GRAPHISOFT Center Danmark), Peter Tranberg (NTI), Aidin Irandoust (Municipality of Hillerød) and Erik Falck Jørgensen (DTU Byg). Although Molio claimed that the English translation is mainly requested by Nordic buildingSMART chapters, we found this guide very useful for most of Revit and ARCHICAD users around the world. So, we recommend reading this guide if you are using any BIM software platform (at any level).

Without focusing on what are the capacities or competencies of different BIM authoring software, we may all know that there are differences between Revit and ARCHICAD in IFC files production. Therefore, this guide prepared in a way to show how to export IFC from both software for project coordination and delivery purposes. Although the guide intended for general BIM users, of course, it can also be a useful comparative document for experts and BIM managers. 

DOWNLOAD THE GUIDE IN ENGLISH 

What is IFC? 

The IFC format has been developed by buildingSMART, and the term IFC stands for “Industry Foundation Classes”. buildingSMART International explained IFC as “a standardized, digital description of the built environment, including buildings and civil infrastructure. It is an open, international standard (ISO 16739-1:2018), meant to be vendor-neutral, or agnostic, and usable across a wide range of hardware devices, software platforms, and interfaces for many different use cases”. 

Why is IFC important? 

Because it is a universal file format that is based on an open standard, it is readable with no software independency. So, we can say it is a green file format that enables building and infrastructure information sharing between disciplines and across software platforms. Nowadays, in many countries include Spain, day by day, this open file format become the only valid and fair source of data exchange between disciplines as well as different sets of project coordination and quality assurance.  

Why is it essential to read this guide? 

This is a visual and straightforward guide that helps users to have high-quality IFC exports either from Revit, ARCHICAD or both. The guide uses a single sample project that is modelled in both Revit and ARCHICAD and with a comparative approach, export an IFC file from both software platform. The techniques used in this guide set to ensure smooth coordination and quality assurance workflow through coordination and validation solutions such as Solibri and Navisworks. 

Download the guide in English