This is meant to be an interop for various BIM (building information modeling) applications. The first generation of technical progress in AEC had been largely about computer generated geometry, but the lagging needs now are on the information attached to the geometry. In the US autodesk's Revit is dominant (and reviled) but the IFC open source development, namely ifcOpenShell & BlenderBIM, is rapidly reaching feature parity. The first computerized cohort of architects knows only AutoCAD, the current cohort will be all Revit, and I predict right now there is a new split coming as much better tools get built. Hypar.io, testfit, speckle etc are some of those tools. Ifc is likely to be a part of that, it's a fresher, cleaner take than awful Revit and opens up the information to much wider platforms.
This is meant to be an interop for various BIM (building information modeling) applications. The first generation of technical progress in AEC had been largely about computer generated geometry, but the lagging needs now are on the information attached to the geometry. In the US autodesk's Revit is dominant (and reviled) but the IFC open source development, namely ifcOpenShell & BlenderBIM, is rapidly reaching feature parity. The first computerized cohort of architects knows only AutoCAD, the current cohort will be all Revit, and I predict right now there is a new split coming as much better tools get built. Hypar.io, testfit, speckle etc are some of those tools. Ifc is likely to be a part of that, it's a fresher, cleaner take than awful Revit and opens up the information to much wider platforms.