Do you think is it possible to change IFC structure a little bit?
The main one is:
Occurrences and types are further subdivided into six fundamental concepts: actors (“who”), controls (“why”), groups (“what”), products (“where”), processes (“when”), and resources (“how”).
I think in this way:
Who = Actor Why = Control What = System, Element (Product is part of Element), Part Where = Project, Facility, FacilityPart, …, Building, BuildingPart, BuildingStory, Zone, Space When = Processes How = Resources
I think Product is not a good occurrence for where, where should refer to the project
I think IFC especially after expanding it and adding IfcFacility and IfcFacilityPart, and IfcBuildingPart, etc which are familiar entities (adding Infra and other parts), needs some improvements to simplify and also strengthen its structure (ontology)
Over 45% of IFC schema is related to “Presentation and Representation” like Geometry/Topology, etc (326 entities)
Over 40% is related to Product mainly Element (268 entities)
There’re other small but effective parts like:
Relationship (60 entities)
Property (30 entities)
Quantity (11 entities)
Environment [anything related to location] (27 entities)
Resource (16 entities)
Process (8 entities plus 7 entities ( IfcSchedulingTime ))
Control (11 entities)
People [Actor] (5 entities)
etc
So, big parts are Product/Element and what I call Model which can be divided into “Presentation & Representation” which I’ve started to borrow it from Product Manufacturing Information (PMI)