After doing my small research with different BIM authoring tools I came to the conclusion that there is no common agreement of how these GUIDs should be handled during import/export of IFC files.
The test relied in a creation of a template IFC File where certain parameters have been defined and then this template imported by 4 different software solutions. As you can see in the below table, each software reacts differently.
These values represent the content of the exported IFC file (after importing the IFC template) to identify which of the imported values could be taken over. So, the more green cells we see, the better.
To my very big surprise Autodesk Revit came with the best results, but it does not mean it is ideal for further workflow. The Revit user reported that this method (import IFC and convert into RVT) was not the best since his revit template had to be generated from the beginning, meaning a bit time investment for each project and maybe even faulty libraries.
Archicad on the other hand imported correctly the GUIDs until the level of the IfcBuilingStorey, the same results as in DDS-CAD. In Plancal there are a bit more problems since not only the GUIDs but also parameters such as ProjectName cannot be manually changed.
There are other alphanumeric parameters that showed red in the table but can be adjusted by the user after import for future IFC exports. Sadly in most of the tested software, the GUID is locked and cannot be adjusted. There might be secondary software solutions that allow such manipulation, but is the the scenario we want to favor?
In my opinion the ideal way would be to create this ultimate template for the project which could be used by all stakeholders. Maybe the subject of Linked Data could be the solution, but sadly I don’t have much knowledge about that. This master IFC template could have also different GUID definitions and not necessarily always the same levels as in my test, for ex. IfcBuilding and especially IfcBuildingStorey in the project initiation are not clear, meaning they are defined later on during the development of the project. In this case IfcProject and IfcSite with their attributes are defined for the template.