"The market launch of IFC Viewer underpins our strategy of driving forward IFC as a powerful future format for the exchange of component-oriented data", says Michael Westfahl, member of the managing board responsible for Sales and Marketing at Nemetschek. "We are thus pioneers not only in the implementation of the open data standard, but also in the development of tools for practical everyday use", explains Westfahl. The IFC format is designed to facilitate communication between the three core products Allplan, ArchiCAD and VectorWorks. It complements Nemetschek's strategy of establishing an additional independent data exchange format in the building industry beside PDF.
Open data exchange between planners and building clients
Nemetschek IFC Viewer was developed jointly with the Karlsruhe Research Center's Institute for Applied Computer Science (IAI), which plays a leading role in IFC certification. As well as displaying 2D floor plans and 3D model data, the visualization tool provides an insight into the alphanumeric properties of components and clearly reveals the topological structure of a building. With additional walk-through capabilities and a movie sequence generator, this tool is the first universal viewer for IFC files.
In addition to offering pure visualization capabilities, users can also utilize this tool to perform analyses and generate structured schedules of doors, windows and rooms. Furthermore, building models can be exported from IFC Viewer to GoogleEarth and thus transferred to a real environment.
With Nemetschek IFC Viewer, simple building coordination processes that include all the members in a project are well within reach. Architects, for example, can send a modeled object to their building clients as an IFC file. The client opens the file in IFC Viewer and obtains access to all the building information without having to get to grips with complex specialized software or deal with vendor-specific formats. Users can thus communicate more efficiently and more easily with all the members of a team.
The viewer is available on the Internet at www.nemetschek.com/ifc.