What is IFC?
IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) is an open, vendor-neutral data format for describing building and construction data. Maintained by buildingSMART International, IFC is the standard for exchanging BIM data between different software systems (Revit, ArchiCAD, Tekla, etc.). It covers geometry, spatial structure, properties, and relationships.
IFC and product data
For product manufacturers, IFC matters because it defines how product properties are structured in BIM models. Each product type has an associated IFC entity (e.g., IfcSwitchingDevice, IfcPump) with property sets that specify which attributes the model expects. If your product data doesn't match these property sets, the BIM integration breaks.
Property sets (Psets)
IFC uses "Property Sets" (Psets) to group product attributes. For example, Pset_SwitchingDeviceTypeCircuitBreaker includes properties like rated current, breaking capacity, and number of poles. These map closely to ETIM features for the same product class — which is why the ETIM-BIM initiative exists.
How FacetFlux helps
FacetFlux ensures your product attributes match the properties that IFC/BIM systems expect, by classifying to ETIM and filling all required technical attributes during AI enrichment.
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