When working on construction projects, various teams use different modeling software. For instance, architects can use Archicad, structural engineers – Tekla Structures, and the MEP engineers use Revit.

All these programs have different providers and save files in different file formats.

When we coordinate models we need to gather disciplinary models and merge them into one federated one. So how do we set these models into one if they are created in 3 different programs?

Here the IFC schema (format) comes in handy. In short - IFC - Industry Foundation Classes is an open standard used in the construction industry to exchange data between different software. IFC was developed to solve interoperability issues between BIM programs - (very simple explanation).

<aside> 💡 Recommended read about IFC: Everything worth knowing about the IFC format

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The IFC in BIM ****world is something like PDF in the document world.

Nowadays most BIM software provides a feature to export the models to IFC. We export the models to the IFC file and then combine them into one multidisciplinary model, e.g: in Solibri or Navisworks.

Exporting the IFC model may seem like a simple task, but actually, it isn’t really true. You should be very careful how you are doing it. Always pay attention to mapping the data from the native file to the IFC file and also what kind of 3D view we use when exporting.