Trimble Business Center

Hi Ben,

That's correct.  SIteworks does not currently support IFC.  We do have plans to work with IFC eventually, but we have been focusing lately on the Trimble-Specific file format VCL which confers several benefits over IFC for Trimble Users.  One logisitical benefit from the Trimble side, is that since we at Trimble control all the specifications for VCL and the associated source code, etc., it is easier to engineer, develop and incorporate VCL support, than dealing with IFC, which while publicly specified, also has internal variations (like LandXML does too).  Also since this a well known format to Trimble that natively works in TBC, it can be more robust in containing additional metadata and functionality than what is contained in IFC files, which may not be able to handle all types of TBC type data.  There's a lot of nuance in being able to open both VCL and IFC, yet since VCL is Trimble owned, we're going to better be able to handle more complex objects, and ideally offer additional functionality with VCL over IFC.

One other consideration is that there has not as of yet been much demand for IFC in "horizontal BIM" or "Civil Information Management - CIM" applications.  While certain customers and certain parts of the word are indeed taking BIM/CIM models to the field to build off of, this has not yet reached a critical mass yet, at least in the customers I speak with.

All that said, once the the VCL work is more complete, it will lay some good groundwork for using IFC data.  So we are working towards support for it, we just have a few other things to work through first.  

I certainly would be interested to hear more about your applications of IFC data, like what you are building with it, how it's produced, what software is used to create it, and what might be the benefits of it.  

Hi Ben,

That's correct.  SIteworks does not currently support IFC.  We do have plans to work with IFC eventually, but we have been focusing lately on the Trimble-Specific file format VCL which confers several benefits over IFC for Trimble Users.  One logisitical benefit from the Trimble side, is that since we at Trimble control all the specifications for VCL and the associated source code, etc., it is easier to engineer, develop and incorporate VCL support, than dealing with IFC, which while publicly specified, also has internal variations (like LandXML does too).  Also since this a well known format to Trimble that natively works in TBC, it can be more robust in containing additional metadata and functionality than what is contained in IFC files, which may not be able to handle all types of TBC type data.  There's a lot of nuance in being able to open both VCL and IFC, yet since VCL is Trimble owned, we're going to better be able to handle more complex objects, and ideally offer additional functionality with VCL over IFC.

One other consideration is that there has not as of yet been much demand for IFC in "horizontal BIM" or "Civil Information Management - CIM" applications.  While certain customers and certain parts of the word are indeed taking BIM/CIM models to the field to build off of, this has not yet reached a critical mass yet, at least in the customers I speak with.

All that said, once the the VCL work is more complete, it will lay some good groundwork for using IFC data.  So we are working towards support for it, we just have a few other things to work through first.  

I certainly would be interested to hear more about your applications of IFC data, like what you are building with it, how it's produced, what software is used to create it, and what might be the benefits of it.  

Hi Ben,

That's correct.  SIteworks does not currently support IFC.  We do have plans to work with IFC eventually, but we have been focusing lately on the Trimble-Specific file format VCL which confers several benefits over IFC for Trimble Users.  One logisitical benefit from the Trimble side, is that since we at Trimble control all the specifications for VCL and the associated source code, etc., it is easier to engineer, develop and incorporate VCL support, than dealing with IFC, which while publicly specified, also has internal variations (like LandXML does too).  Also since this a well known format to Trimble that natively works in TBC, it can be more robust in containing additional metadata and functionality than what is contained in IFC files, which may not be able to handle all types of TBC type data.  There's a lot of nuance in being able to open both VCL and IFC, yet since VCL is Trimble owned, we're going to better be able to handle more complex objects, and ideally offer additional functionality with VCL over IFC.

One other consideration is that there has not as of yet been much demand for IFC in "horizontal BIM" or "Civil Information Management - CIM" applications.  While certain customers and certain parts of the word are indeed taking BIM/CIM models to the field to build off of, this has not yet reached a critical mass yet, at least in the customers I speak with.

All that said, once the the VCL work is more complete, it will lay some good groundwork for using IFC data.  So we are working towards support for it, we just have a few other things to work through first.  

I certainly would be interested to hear more about your applications of IFC data, like what you are building with it, how it's produced, what software is used to create it, and what might be the benefits of it.