IMPACT OF IFC EVOLUTION ON BIM IMPLEMENTATION AND DATA EXCHANGE STANDARDIZATION IN INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS
Abstract
The development and application of Building Information Modeling (BIM) in infrastructure projects were long limited by the lack of open and neutral data exchange standards. Industry Foundation Classes (IFC), a key openBIM standard, began its development with a focus on vertical construction, but its application later expanded to the field of infrastructure projects. This paper analyzes the evolution of the IFC schema, with a special focus on the transition from the limitations of the IFC 2x3 version to the extensions introduced in IFC 4.3, as well as the conceptual directions of the development of IFC 5.0. Early implementations based on IFC 2x3 were problematic for infrastructure projects. Since the schema did not contain native infrastructure entities, there was a loss of semantic precision in the models with limited possibilities for automated processing. The paper further discusses how IFC 4.3 improved the application of BIM in infrastructure projects by introducing native support for infrastructure entities. Through the analysis of this evolution, the paper provides insight into how improvements to the IFC standard contribute to a more stable and wider acceptance of the openBIM approach in large-scale infrastructure projects.
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