My Experience with Archicad IFC Mapping Methods

[davdelven]

Hi, all! 

After working extensively with both IFC mapping approaches in Archicad, I wanted to share my findings.

The IFC Translator's Property Mapping excels at maintaining IFC schema compliance without cluttering our models. It's ideal for mapping to standard Psets and creating export-specific property sets. The separation between Archicad data and export data creates a clean workflow for consultant coordination.

However, I've hit significant limitations with complex data transformations in the IFC Translator. While it does offer basic concatenation for text values, it lacks more advanced capabilities for mathematical operations or applying conditional logic based on element parameters. I've had to create workarounds or pre-process data elsewhere. Since mappings only exist in export settings, I find myself repeatedly reconfiguring them across different export scenarios or when requirements change mid-project.

Property Manager expressions with Classification Manager offers significantly more control. I can create sophisticated conditional expressions, maintain consistent classification systems, and use this data for schedules and quantity takeoffs. This data lives in our model, available for multiple purposes. The downside is increased model complexity, and I still need additional IFC Translator mapping for schema compliance.

I've settled on a hybrid approach: using Property/Classification Managers for data serving multiple purposes in our workflow, while using the IFC Translator for export-specific mappings. This seems efficient, but I'm curious if others have found better workflows?

Has anyone developed best practices for deciding which properties belong in which system? I am aware of @Nathan Hildebrandt  best practices, shared from Skewed and also his COBie guide's tasks...etc... But I'm convinced there are many interesting use cases here.

Operating system used: Windows 10 22H2