IFCtoLBD

Version 1.80

Contributors: Jyrki Oraskari, Mathias Bonduel, Kris McGlinn, Anna Wagner, and Pieter Pauwels.

This repository presents the results of our ongoing work to create a usable converter to convert
Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) STEP formatted files into Resource Description Framework (RDF) triples that follow the small ontologies devised in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Linked Building Data Community Group (W3C LBD-CG) (https://github.com/w3c-lbd-cg/).

Proceedings of the 6th Linked Data in Architecture and Construction Workshop: The IFC to Linked Building Data Converter - Current Status.

It is recommended to use Java 8. It can be downloaded from: https://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk8-downloads-2133151.html

The precompiled desktop application, IFCtoLBD_Desktop_Java8-1.80.jar, is available at this page at IFCtoLBD-Desktop Java 8.

The special Java 11 versio is available at: IFCtoLBD-Desktop Java 10.

It is a runnable JAR-file. If the Java installation is fine, the file can be run by clicking it. If converting large files, run.bat can be used. It is also faster since it allow the program to use more memory for the calculation.

If the program does not start, try the following command at the command line: "java -jar IFCtoLBD_Desktop_Java8-1.77.jar".

Source Code Documentation

Javadoc

Compiling the code

The converter can be compiled using maven and Java JDK (the above link). Maven can be downloaded from the site here: https://maven.apache.org/download.cgi.

The following steps are needed:

Make sure that the JAVA_HOME environment variable point to the JAVA JDK directory. JRE is not enough.
cd ifc2rdf_library
mvn clean
mvn install
cd ..
cd converter
mvn clean
mvn install
cd desktop
mvn clean
mvn install

The created package will be at the target subdirectory. You can rename the ifc2lbd-1.08-jar-with-dependencies.jar file into name IFCtoRDF.jar

An example command line usage of the program is: java -jar IFCtoLBD_Desktop_Java8-1.77.jar Duplex_A.ifc http://uribase out.ttl

License

This project is released under the open source GNU Affero General Public License v3

Cite this

@misc{jyrki_oraskari_2019_2645528,
  author       = {Jyrki Oraskari and
                  Mathias Bonduel and
                  Kris McGlinn and
                  Pieter Pauwels and
                  Anna Wagner},
  title        = {jyrkioraskari/IFCtoLBD 1.77},
  month        = apr,
  year         = 2019,
  doi          = {10.5281/zenodo.2645528},
  url          = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.2645528}
}

Frequently asked questions

What does it mean when IFCtoLBD says Java heap space?

The most probable situation for this is when a large file is converted. Try to start the program using run.bat.

Why does the program say: "Error: Cannot determine which IFC version the model it is: [IFC2X2_FINAL]"

IFC 2x2 Final was published as early as 2003, 14 years ago. There are still some test files that are generated using this version. Support for this may be added. Currently the supported IFC versions are: IFC2x3TC1, FC2x3FINAL, IFC4, IFC4 ADD1 and IFC4 ADD2.

Nothing happens when I start the program.

Check that Java 8 is installed, open a command prompth at the directory where IFCtoLBD-Desktop_Java_8.jar is located. Run the following command: java -jar IFCtoLBD-Desktop_Java_8.jar

In Windows, I cannot open the program by double clicking the file

Open a command prompt as admin
Run the following commands:

assoc .jar=jarfile

type jarfile="your java installation directory\bin\javaw.exe" -jar "%1" %*

where "your java installation directory" is the base directory where your runtime Java is installed.