IFC History
The Autodesk company started the IFC initiative in 1994 as a way to support integrated application development. Some of the 12 initial companies that joined included Honeywell, Butler Manufacturing, and AT&T.
Industry Alliance for Interoperability opened membership to anyone in 1995 and then changed its name to the International Alliance for Interoperability. The non-profit’s intent was to publish the Industry Foundation Class (IFC) as an AEC product model.
The name was changed again in 2005 and is now maintained by buildingSMART.
IFC File,Still Can’t Open the File?
The file extension is the first thing you should check if you can’t open the file using the programs mentioned above. Some file formats use a file extension that looks a lot like another kind of file, but that doesn’t mean that the formats are related or can be used by the same software.
ICF is one example. The file extension letters resemble IFC but they’re actually Zoom Router Configuration files used as a backup text file for the settings of a Zoom router. In other words, they have nothing at all to do with Industry Foundation Classes files and so can’t be used normally with IFC file openers.
Another example is the FIC file extension used for WinDev Hyper File Database files. FIC files might look like IFC files when you just look at the file extension, but the format is actually only usable with PC SOFT’s WinDev.