Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) Reader
The IFC data model provides access to data used in the building and construction industry, and so some of the concepts like Assembly, B-rep and PMI are not exactly the same concepts as they are with our other formats. A file does not need to have a particular extension to be read correctly by HOOPS Exchange; however, the file extensions of IFC files that you can expect to be loaded by HOOPS Exchange are:
- .IFC
- .IFCZIP
Our readers are updated to the latest released version within 90 days of the release of the authoring software. You can see the exact version supported in the current release here.
Assembly
The full assembly tree definition is supported. This includes maintaining any hidden attributes which may be set.
B-rep
The B-rep definition within IFC is based upon STEP. HOOPS Exchange supports specific IFC B-rep definitions by creating a tessellated solid; see details below.
IFC-Specific B-rep
HOOPS Exchange can create primitives by performing simple geometric operations on 2D entities.
The list of geometric objects available in IFC is:
- IFCBOOLEANCLIPPINGRESULT
- IFCEXTRUDEDAREASOLID
- IFCOPENINGELEMENT
- IFCSURFACECURVESWEPTAREASOLID
- IFCSWEPTDISKSOLID
The list of surface types available in IFC is:
- IFCSURFACEOFLINEAREXTRUSION
- IFCSURFACEOFREVOLUTION
The list of curve types available in IFC is:
- IFCBEZIERCURVE
- IFCBSPLINECURVE
- IFCCIRCLE
- IFCCOMPOSITECURVE
- IFCELLIPSE
- IFCPOLYLINE
Please note that for performance reasons, the level of detail of the generated tessellation is limited to a low setting.
Visualization
This visualization data for this format is generated by the HOOPS Exchange tessellation engine.
Views
Views are not a concept supported by IFC.
PMI
IFC has a concept which is close to PMI called Notes and these are supported by HOOPS Exchange. The names of the Notes in IFC are:
- IFCCANNOTATIONTEXTOCCURENCE
- IFCTEXTLITERAL
- IFCTEXTLITERALWITHEXTENT
Miscellaneous
All attributes are read from the file.
Limitations
Support for IFCXML is not currently available.