IFC Import Component

Overview

The Open CASCADE IFC Import SDK provides applications with the capability of reading BIM (Building Information Modeling) data from the files in IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) file format. The supported versions of the IFC format are IFC2×3 and IFC4, used by the most modern applications.

Features

• Reading geometric and visual data

The hierarchy of objects, their geometry (shapes), and generic attributes such as names, colors, and transparency are converted to the XDE format commonly used by the applications based on Open CASCADE Technology to store annotated CAD data. This enables immediate use of this data in applications, such as displaying in 3D viewer, geometric analysis and measuring, conversion to other formats, etc. It should be noted that objects in IFC file may be defined by pure tessellation (mesh) without definition of underlying surfaces and topology. Such objects will not be suitable for the OCCT algorithms that expect CAD objects to be in B-Rep (boundary representation) form.

• Accessing properties and attributes

Properties and attributes associated with the IFC objects, such as GUIDs, types, materials, other BIM properties, 2D sketches, etc. are accessible via the dedicated interface provided by the IFC reader.

Benefits

• Fast and robust conversion of complex IFC models.
• Possibility to translate only data of specific types to avoid unnecessary conversions.
• Use of standard XDE API allowing easy integration in the applications that use Open CASCADE Technology for the CAD data.
• Its source code can be licensed.

Configuration

The IFC Import interface is based on the latest version of Open CASCADE Technology and optimized version of IfcOpenShell library which, in turn, is also based on Open CASCADE Technology (both are open source libraries available under LGPL license). The IFC Import component is available on all platforms supported by the corresponding version of Open CASCADE Technology and IfcOpenShell. Operational mode and possible limitations are described in the documentation accompanying the module.