# IFC Tutorial Examples

**URL:** <https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-tutorial-examples/3200>\
**Category:** Developers\
**Tags:** ifc4\
**Created:** [December 14, 2020, 9:21am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-tutorial-examples/3200 "2020-12-14T09:21:32Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joseph21](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@joseph21](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/joseph21)\
**Post date:** [December 14, 2020, 9:21am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-tutorial-examples/3200/1 "2020-12-14T09:21:32Z")

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Hi everyone!

I am exporting the IFC4 file from Revit but sometimes I get the columns defined differently. The columns are mapped differently and there isn’t a unified representation of the columns.

I was wondering if anybody could help me understand how element representation from Revit works and lead me to a good example in C# on how to extract the start and end coordinates of the columns in an IFC4 file.

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**Author:** ![Moult](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.buildingsmart.org/moult/32/196_2.png) [@Moult](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/Moult)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2020, 11:01pm UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-tutorial-examples/3200/2 "2020-12-16T23:01:04Z")

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IFC can store geometry in many ways. It may store it as a mesh, or as a parametric extrusion, or as a primitive solid, or something else entirely.

If you can speak Python instead, this is a good crash course to get you started: [https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=IfcOpenShell\_code\_examples](https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=IfcOpenShell_code_examples) - there is a guide on how to get a dev environment set up within minutes. It’s all free software and works cross-platform, and an extremely powerful and capable toolkit.

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**Author:** ![mickey58](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e19adc/32.png) [@mickey58](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/mickey58)\
**Post date:** [February 22, 2021, 1:12pm UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-tutorial-examples/3200/3 "2021-02-22T13:12:19Z")

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The strange thing about this tutorial you linked to is that it uses an ifc file (file.ifc) that it parses throughout the whole tutorial. But I can’t find any link to that file. What am I missing?

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**Author:** ![Moult](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex016/user_avatar/forums.buildingsmart.org/moult/32/196_2.png) [@Moult](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/u/Moult)\
**Post date:** [February 24, 2021, 5:11am UTC](https://forums.buildingsmart.org/t/ifc-tutorial-examples/3200/4 "2021-02-24T05:11:17Z")

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@mickey58 any IFC file will work. You can find some sample IFC files at [AEC Open Data directory - Wiki.OSArch](https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=AEC_Open_Data_directory)