IFC vs Adesk

[Rob]

I have recently attended a quite interesting seminar about the green building design. Apart from usual fancy words about sustainability there was a really interesting outcome based on the recent study about energy efficiency of already built green-designed buildings. It said that the total amount of used energy was not different to non green-designed buildings at all. The study actually suggested that it is not the design that determines the green rating but how a building is being run within its life span.

The relevancy to this forum would be that Adesk attempts to potentially eliminate IFC is really short-sighted. There is no way that one company could effectively establish a standard that goes well beyond the design process and cover multinational standards, climate conditions etc. That makes me wonder about all that excitement in regards to Adesk acquisitions as it puts all of it in the light of market driven decisions which IMHO is destined to an utter failure. The market itself is reacting mostly to the current demand (by its definition along demand-supply lines). It does not look further (that is a building facility/energy management) as it is not possible to define building running costs precisely enough in a long run to determine the value of a building in regards to green initiatives.

A long story short:
- I am not trying to say that IFC is the perfect one but at the moment it is only serious (and viable) world-wide adopted initiative. So AC should stay with it.

- getting rid of (or ignoring) IFC in the future will leave our design attempts in vain, virtually reducing it to a 'green tick' on our building permits without any real impact to a life of the building itself.

- any attempts to sway IFC format to a 'dictate' of one company will result in a distorted market-preferred output (usable perhaps in design stages however ignoring the post-construction stage at all). In other words I use the interoperability format which is suitable when designing a building on a certain platform only however the further use in the post-construction stage is very limited as a platform developer is not covering this by their software solution (as I doubt it would be possible due to a huge diversity in that particular field). I think Adesk wants to cash on this ‘blinkers-on view’ but unfortunately from our accounts at the end.

[Anonymous]

stefan wrote:
So only when you can roundtrip an App X model into App Y and back into App X through IFC, without loss of your functionality, will people start using IFC on a server level.

Like Rob, I disagree with this. The server only has to retain (and the subscriber apps maintain) the data necessary to the particulars of the project. The specifics of this will vary depending on these particulars including the size and scope of the work, the available resources, the capabilities of the participants and the limitations of the software.

The enabling technology is just the set of management tools that can allow this to be set up and administered. The other main issue is performance. Even if the arrangement is possible in principle, it is useless in practice if the processes take longer than the time available.

The perfect world of totally transparent interoperability will never come. All we can do (and the best we can hope for) is to keep improving the tools and the process while we also keep getting the job done in the field.

[SeaGeoff]

The fancy features tend to be more in the realm of tools and workflows. The product of those tools can and should be digital representations of real-world building assemblies, the vast majority of which are quite standard even if their particular geometry varies by region. That’s what IFCs are supposed to codify. I don’t think anyone expects a perfect world, just one where interoperability is recognized as a requirement and thus considered a development priority.

[stefan]

And the opinion from the new Graphisoft CEO:

http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2009/issue_43.html

[Anonymous]

stefan wrote:
And the opinion from the new Graphisoft CEO:

http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2009/issue_43.html

Looks like GS finally came up with THE structural package and it is called Revit Structural