IFC Model: North Orientation

Users IFC
1

Hello everyone,

I have a question regarding the orientation of the IFC model for a best practice OpenBIM coordination.

Should the model be oriented to the true geographic north?
I personally prefer to have the building rotated to an orthogonal position and work with local coordinates (Origin is not georeferenced). This allows for an orthogonal creation of bounding boxes in Solibri (or any other Model-checking software) and a better overview of the issues.
Native softwares, such as Archicad, also recommmend rotating the building (not the drawing) to an orthogonal position to avoid innacuracies.

If the building is oriented to the true geographic north, the bounding boxes will not be orthogonal and the location to the origin is confusing for al lot of planers. This makes the documentatin of issues and coordination very annoying.

However, I am skeptical here because I am not aware of the impact in the late construction phases of the building when working with a rotated IFC model.

I appreciate any insight on this matter.

Thank you very much.

2

I say no.

In my opinion, it depends on the project goals and the possibilities in the project team. I found one of the best summaries for this type of information at: Georeferencing - BlenderBIM Add-on 0.0.240402 documentation

I was able to use the IFC coordinate reference system very successfully in a project. It was also very easy to transfer to a GIS.

BTW I find the documentation there very good because it is told from the IFC perspective and not so much on the possibilities that various modelling software has/can do.

1 Like
3

Hello Kurt,

thank you very much for taking the time to reply and for the links.
Your answer was very helpful.
Indeed, it depends on the possibilities of the team and the project goals — and of the goals should be to coordinate in an efficient manner.—
Thank you again.