Introduction
The BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) is currently a pre release, submitted to buildingSMART under the new "Affiliation Scheme" to become an official buildingSMART specification.
Background
Tekla Corporation and Solibri, Inc. have introduced to the buildingSMART organization an idea of using open standards to enable workflow communication between different BIM (Building Information Modeling) software tools. These firms have developed such a XML schema, called BCF, to encode messages that inform a software package of issues found in the BIM model by another software tool. The implication is that only those issues and not the entire BIM need to be communicated between software and that this simple capability will enable a degree of collaboration. This XML schema and capability have already been built into several software package including, Tekla Structures, Solibri Model Checker and DDS Architecture.
Initial experience shows that it would provide a much improved workflow as well as a reduction in the transfer of large BIM files over the internet. This is an example of unexpected innovation that buildingSMART must cultivate and encourage. The original developers wish to transfer the ownership and rights of the BCF schema to buildingSMART for adoption as an open standard and maintaining it for the benefit of the industry.
Links
The schema for the exchange of markup information
Database listing all IFC capable applications launched
