It is an object-based data schema with a data model developed by buildingSMART (formerly the International Alliance for Interoperability, IAI) to facilitate interoperability in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry, and is a commonly used collaboration format in Building information modeling (BIM) based projects.
Because of its focus on interoperability the Danish government in 2010 made the use of IFC format(s) compulsory for publicly aided building projects.
[2] In 2017 the Finnish state-owned facility management company Senate Properties started to demand use of IFC compatible software and BIM in all their projects.
The popularity of the IFC data schema in construction has continued to grow, primarily for the purpose of exchanging geometry.
[8] IFC defines an EXPRESS based entity-relationship model consisting of several hundred entities organized into an object-based inheritance hierarchy.
Examples of entities include building elements such as IfcWall, geometry such as IfcExtrudedAreaSolid, and basic constructs such as IfcCartesianPoint.
Rooted entities derive from IfcRoot and have a concept of identity (having a GUID), along with attributes for name, description, and revision control.
Occurrences and types are further subdivided into six fundamental concepts: actors ("who"), controls ("why"), groups ("what"), products ("where"), processes ("when"), and resources ("how").
IFC defines various quantities specific to each element type and the method of calculation according to geometry and relationships.
In addition to project-specific information, an IfcProject may also reference external projects from which shared definitions may be imported such as product types.
Projects support revision control where any IfcRoot-based entity has a unique identifier and may be marked as added, modified, deleted, or having no change.
Such capability allows multiple IFC files to be merged deterministically, ensuring data integrity without human intervention.