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Module 12 · Interoperability & Data Exchange

Interoperability & Data Exchange

openBIM vs. closed proprietary workflows, IFC as a neutral exchange format and its real limitations, COBie for facility handover, choosing among DWG, RVT, NWC/NWD, and IFC, common data-loss and translation issues, and setting exchange requirements in a project's BEP.

No real project runs on one BIM platform end to end, and this module covers how project data actually survives moving between them: what IFC preserves that a pure-geometry format like DWG does not, the specific things IFC cannot carry across a translation (parametric formulas, computational script logic, platform-specific object behavior), and how DWG, RVT, NWC/NWD, and IFC each fit a different kind of exchange rather than being interchangeable choices.

By the end of this module you should be able to explain why successful interoperability is fundamentally a mapping and verification discipline rather than a software capability, and why every format and mapping decision covered here belongs, explicitly and in writing, in the project's BIM execution plan rather than being improvised exchange by exchange.

Free related reading in this studio
→ Concept Explainer: COBie vs. IFC→ Concept Explainer: Native vs. IFC BIM Formats→ Concept Explainer: 2D CAD vs. BIM

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