buildingSMART International Software Certification Program

The buildingSMART Software Certification Program aims to promote consistent and reliable implementations of buildingSMART standards across multiple software vendors and applications throughout the global marketplace. Such consistency helps drive more rapid evaluation, deployment, and acceptance of the such standard for the exchange and sharing of building information models.

Currently, the focus is on the implementation of the IFC schema for data exchange with the following certifications are currently open to software vendors/developers:

• IFC2x3 Coordination View V2.0 [CV2.0]
• IFC4 Reference View [RV1.2]

In the future, we anticipate Software Certification programs for:

• IFC 4.3.x
• IFC5
• BIM Collaboration Format [BCF]
• Information Delivery Specification [IDS]

In 2010 buildingSMART developed the IFC2x3 Certification 2.0 procedure to significantly improve quality assurance and service to participating software companies. It replaced the old IFC2x Certification 1.0 process that had been used 2001-2010, as well as withdrawing certifications based on the 1.0 process.

In 2016, the IFC4 Certification program was developed, based on the previous effort, but employing a new testing platform and technologies to improve speed and quality through increased automation, as well as the ability to set up and test more MVDs. The IFC4 and IFC2x3 2.0 certifications run concurrently, as support for IFC2x3 in the marketplace continues to grow while IFC4 adoption and implementations mature at the same time.

The certification processes are guided by the development and implementation of a particular IFC implementation, or Model View Definition. The current IFC2x3 CV2.0 and IFC4 RV1.2 MVDs are official buildingSMART standards and copyrighted accordingly. The MVDs are primarily meant to demonstrate the technical capability of a software to support IFC data exchange, while secondarily addressing an immediately usable workflow. The specific exchange requirements and acceptable uses of the MVDs an be found on their descriptive pages.

With the upcoming IFC 4.3.x releases and new accompanying MVDs, it is expected that the current b-cert platform will be used.