BCF (BIM Collaboration Format) (BCF)
An open format for exchanging model issues between tools — the comment and the clash, not the whole model.
BCF — BIM Collaboration Format — is an open standard for exchanging model-based issues and topics between different BIM tools. It carries the context of an issue — a viewpoint, a screenshot, references to the specific objects, and comments — rather than the model geometry itself.
The problem it solves is communication across tools. Without it, raising a clash or a coordination comment in one application and resolving it in another means passing whole models around or losing the link between the note and the thing it refers to. BCF lets teams exchange just the issue — still tied to the relevant objects and view — which makes issue tracking and hand-off far faster in multi-tool, multi-party workflows.
BCF is designed to work alongside IFC: IFC carries the model data, BCF carries the conversation about it, and buildingSMART presents both as part of the openBIM ecosystem. Because it references the IFC object identifiers and views, it depends on a shared model context but not on any proprietary file exchange — which is what makes it useful for clash detection and federation review. It is a buildingSMART standard, used in two main forms: BCF-XML for file-based exchange and the BCF API for server-based collaboration.
Need this in practice?
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