IFC - Questions from a beginner

Welcome to the buildingSMART community.

Some good places to get familiar with IFC and tools:
https://standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/DEV/IFC4_2/FINAL/HTML/

https://technical.buildingsmart.org/community/software-implementations/

http://ifcopenshell.org/

Will the same object always have the same id in subsequent exports?
To some extent yes:
Building elements usually have same “Globally Unique Id” (GUID) in subsequent exports from the same authoring-software.
GUIDs of element types, property sets, relations, etc. are different in subsequent exports in some authoring-software, for whatever reason.

If you try to import an IFC file to another authoring-software and immediately re-export to IFC without any manual changes (round-trip) you will get a nasty surprise:

IFC is far from perfect but it is the best what we have for software-independent model exchange of building information and civil engineering project information.

Best way to read IFC:
Take a look at IfcOpenShell, xBIM, blenderBIM,…
https://technical.buildingsmart.org/community/software-implementations/

Best regards,
Herbert

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