Yesterday I worked hard on rebuilding my .NET Framework library to load IFC files. Since last rebuild done at the end of 2008 - when I handled EXPRESS file compatibility with 2X3 ALPHA version, I achieved the compatibility with the final release of IFC 4, delivered in March 12th 2013.

My project, the IFCEntityCodeGenerator written completely in Visual Basic .NET for .NET Framework 4.0 (but it also builds with .NET Framework 1.0/1.1/2.0/3.0/3.5 and maybe 4.5), is able to produce an unique Visual Basic module source code ready to include in any project you need to load IFC files with.

The IFCEntityCodeGenerator is being able to load completely the EXPRESS IFC schema and outputs a file (its size is 1,7 MB with the IFC4 EXPRESS schema) which includes all the enumerations, the enumeration conversions from strings, and more than a thousand classes being able to parse an IFC STEP file from file.

At now the project cannot read from an XML file stream (.ifcxml file format), nor it cannot save to file the same IFC STEP file, but I hope to do it soon, in order to support more packaging formats and delivering the ability to export some IFC datas from application software of my customers.

For more information about IFC and BIM technology, please check here.