ifc export and copyright protection

[Anonymous]

Hi

I have a question and a problem.

Question:
We are an architect company and very protective when it comes to the use of our model and and files in other hands. It could be contractors and other architects that wants to build or sell our architecture at half the price.
When I export an entire AC model to IFC, what are the risks? is the ifc model locked for changes? If not is there a way to lock it? if it is locked what are the chances of any one being able to luck it up? When i open a IFC model in archicad it looks to me has its locked for changes and editing, however i am not sure.

Problem:
We want to tag every exported elements in the ifc model with our company name. How can i do that? I did trie to write our company name in the tag under ifc proprieties under selection settings command. When i exported the ifc and opened it in archicad and solibri viewer, then i could not find the tag anywhere. I tried then to mess with the owning user of owner history in the ifc options but could not find any solution.

[Paul King]

Perhaps a silly question, but why provide an IFC at all if you seriously worry others might copy your design?

If your design is any good, of course others will copy it! and so they should - just as 98% of what you do is copied or heavily derived from the work of your peers and predecessors down through time.

Imagine if my early ancestor copyrighted the idea of "roof"? Is it reasonable to expect no one else to imitate this? Surely it is your skill in tailoring a specific solution to a specific client in a specific context that is what you offer? - a design outcome you have put together for a specific project (using a specific combination of the ideas of your forebears) is like a fitted suit - not so useful to anyone else if simply copied verbatim

An IFC is useless to anyone if it cannot be manipulated. If no ability to edit individual components is what you really want, perhaps just export your project as a dumb 3D format like 3DS?

[Anonymous]

Hi

An IFC is useful since we are all working in BIM.
Ventilation sanitary statics electric drawings are drawn in the ifc. We surely We don't want to delegate the esthetic of the construction to the plumber. Therefor I don't se any reason for them to being able to edit the project.

There will always be people getting inspired of you design and imitate the work you do, but we surely don't want someone to steal the whole project in IFC.
Not to forget that we are offering our clients a "Unique Design" which means that it is there personnel design. We guaranties our clients the they are the only one to have that design and they will surely sue us if we did sell the same house design to the neighbor.

I am looking fore a way to tag the elements in the ifc. so if anny one came across and wanted to do the same house from a ifc. the will have to redraw the whole house with new elements.

[Laszlo Nagy]

I got word back from the IFC guru from Graphisoft.
His answer was the same: there is no way to make an IFC read-only.

[Anonymous]

Thank you for looking it up.
Does that mean that even if I tag all the components with our company name someone could untag them?
That is very scary!
Has a BIM project leader it should be thankful to let sum component editable and other locked.