Industry Foundation Classes : A study of its requested use in Configura

Configura Sverige AB is developing the software solutions Configura and CET Designer for companies dealing with highly configurable and complex products that also require space planning. The aim is to simplify the selling process. Configura Sverige AB has received requests from their customers to be able to read and write files according to an ISO standard called Industry Foundation Classes (IFC). IFC is an open international standard within Building Information Modeling (BIM) to exchange data between different software applications used for projects in the building industry and facility management. To assist Configura Sverige AB in a decision on how to further proceed, questions why users request IFC, how they need to work with IFC, and about possible workflows with IFC are considered in this thesis. To answer the questions, an interpretive case study method was used to view the questions from different perspectives. A qualitative approach was used to collect and analyze data, involving for example a survey among users requesting IFC and input from two different contractors requesting IFC files from these users. The results show that users have been requested by architects and contractors to supply IFC files, and a conclusion is that demands on the use of BIM and IFC within the public sector in certain countries is a major reason to these requests. The results has much focus on import and export of IFC files and on possible workflows using IFC files. With IFC files, users may be a part of a collaboration between several different disciplines within the building industry. Users need to base their work on other disciplines models, which in many cases will be the architect's IFC file. An IFC export shall only include the user's products, it will be up to another application to integrate these products in a coordination BIM. The IFC export will be used for interdisciplinary coordination, visualization and collision detection and it is important to use simple graphical representation of the products