I'm getting lots of requests for information on BIM support in SolidWorks, and give the standard .ifc answer.

However Autodesk are strong in this arena and we are losing opportunities to them.

One of our UK customers has made the following enhancement requests:

• IFC4 adopted (Solidworks currently supports IFC2x3, however, on March 12, 2013, buildingSMART officially released IFC4, http://www.buildingsmart-tech.org/news/ifc4-officially-released)

• Adoption of Uniclass2 classification system (Solidworks, only supports the Omniclass classification system. http://www.cpic.org.uk/en/uniclass/new-uniclass-proposals.cfm)

• IFC takes all data within the file properties menu

• Exports the part material and also single body material when using multi-body parts. Also takes all the material properties

• Ability to export multiple IFC files from within the assembly i.e. all parts, sub-assemblies get exported as single IFC files.

In summary, the IFC file should have the ability to export as much data as possible from the Solidworks assembly/part. Due to the nature of how Solidworks assemblies are built up, it's necessary to export the majority of parts via the assembly to allow for geospatial co-ordination with other infrastructure groups. With this in mind, ideally the data of those parts should be fed via the assembly and into the IFC file.

As well as increasing the exporting capabilities of IFC, the import IFC function to have the ability of importing all the relevant data from IFC files exported from other software is required. This would then allow additional amendments to these models within Solidworks, adding more data, before exporting back to IFC.

Currently the IFC schema for Infrastructure is at the infancy stage and is not expected to be made available for at least another year. Once this has been published we would ideally like this implemented within Solidworks.

Further development for Solidworks would be to have the ability to import/export as IFCxml, which currently is not supported by many software vendors, if any, but allows for further manipulation or additional data to be added outside of the Solidworks environment.