Where can I read about the process for community feedback to be incorporated in the spec?

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There have been a number of questions and proposals originating on this forum. Some have easy resolutions, some need further discussion with subject matter experts. However, I am unclear as to how the process is for a forum discussion to migrate into a documentation or schema change.

At one point, I thought discussions should translate into issues in GitHub - buildingSMART/NextGen-IFC - I see “decisions made” but no link to the actual actions / implementations.

At another point, I thought it would be GitHub - buildingSMART/IFC: IFC schema management and versioning repository - of which there are a number of branches, which I’m not sure what to follow.

Now, I’ve recently been aware of GitHub - buildingSMART/IFC4.3.x-development

For topics that require feedback from subject matter experts (e.g. geolocation guys, or implementers for material / mapped item proposals), it is not clear who is responsible to find these experts and moderate the discussion, and what is the process to make the final decision?

Also, it is not clear what the timelines are. What changes can be made for IFC4.3? What need to be delayed for IFC5? Is there an IFC4.4? When are the dates?

Can someone clarify this?

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9 day bump :slight_smile: Ping @jwouellette

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Sorry i’m not always active on the forum. Thanks for the ping over email.

  • The NextGen repo is preparing for the IFC 5 work.
  • The ‘IFC’ repo is archive.
  • the IFC 4.3.x is the repo where community input for the upcoming IFC 4.3 version is very welcome!

IFC 4.3 has a strong focus on the infra use-cases. It adds new infra entities and properties. Big change is the alignement geometry/placement. The IfcTunnel project will be the first update of IFC 4.3; probably 4.3.1, possibly 4.4.
IFC 4.3 is not backward compatible with 4.2 and 4.1 because the alignement has changes. It is backward compatible with IFC4 (since that did not have alignment).

IFC 5 is taking IFC 4.3 and normalizes the structure and makes some big decisions to remove the STEP heritage. Because it “takes the 4.3 content and shakes it up to restructure”, it is depending on the delivery of IFC 4.3.0.

Does this help? Happy to answer additional questions.