IFC4 Software Certification Delivers First Milestone

London, (April 25, 2019) – buildingSMART International announces the first approved IFC4 Reference View 1.2 Export Certification (Architectural Reference Exchange) as software provider Vectorworks, Inc. This certification is the first of what is anticipated to be many, with other vendors such as Autodesk,GRAPHISOFT, Solibri and others close to completion. It is also the first certification since the upgrade to IFC4 on the new certification platform.  

The new IFC4 certification means Vectorworks officially meets the export criteria for the buildingSMART certification requirements. This standard gives users a publicly-defined and accepted standard to serve as the basis for contracts. “Supporting the needs of BIM workflows for our customers has always been a top priority,” said Darick DeHart, vice president of product management at Vectorworks. “Receiving certification for our IFC4 export is a recognition of our commitment to openBIM workflows with Vectorworks."

About the Software Certification Program

buildingSMART’s software certification program spreads the spectrum of stakeholders in the industry and provides open and neutral approval for software applications. Certification enables clients to specify the delivery of services and data without worrying about format, compatibility, or versioning of platforms used by the service providers or the client internally. The only requirement, which can even be specified in contracts, is that IFC certified software and data exchange and/or delivery is used.

The buildingSMART IFC Certification processes provide the participating software developers with a quality assurance methodology, a series of testing tools, a series of test cases for export and import (at different scales and complexity), and access to a team of IFC experts.

In 2017 there was a significant upgrade to the previous IFC2x3 certification program with a new cloud-based platform for IFC4.

About IFC4

IFC4 Certification has been split into two more specific view definitions to better support the purpose of IFC data exchange. Design Transfer View aims to support the transfer of model data to be used for further design, analysis, estimating and facility management tasks. This can be understood as a CV2.0 with some extended range. Reference View aims to support the coordination of the planning disciplines; architecture, structural analysis and building services, especially to support clash detection and resolution of issues resulting from geometry.

To register for IFC4, you can visit this site: http://www.b-cert.org/