How Nvidia's Omniverse Could Unlock Build Innovation With IFC

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Years ago the construction industry started working on the Industry Core Classes (IFC), a data model for describing architectural, engineering, construction data and operating (AECO). The specification has helped make it easier to export data between tools. A significant bottleneck, however, is that IFC tells build software vendors only what kind of data to include, not how to represent it in a particular file format, which can lead to ambiguity and manual effort. important for sharing data between tools.

Now, however, Nvidia implements IFC in addition to the Universal Scene Description (USD) file format that underpins Nvidia Omniverse. This complements Nvidia's broader efforts to develop connectors for various 3D authoring tools for the AEC industry, including Autodesk Alias, Autodesk Civil, Siemens JT, SimScale, and Open Geospatial Consortium formats.

The implementation of USD for IFC is still in its early stages, but once the effort begins, it promises to streamline build workflows involving multiple tools from different vendors. This will make it easier for engineers to take advantage of Nvidia's rich AI tools to analyze 3D data, simulate the impact of various design decisions, and automatically generate 3D inventory to improve maintenance and operations.

“Ensuring consistency across platforms has been a difficult task for various software vendors,” George Matos, senior product manager of Omniverse AECO at Nvidia, told VentureBeat. “Previous development of standardized and open file formats has enabled bridges between various AECO authoring applications. As technology and its functions advance in AECO, we are looking for more extensible formats to enable full cross-platform collaboration, as well as expanded functionality on the open file format. This means allowing an open dialogue, so to speak, between design applications and USD. While the technology is in constant development, we aim for full fidelity and consistency between authoring applications and formats and Nvidia Omniverse, as well as enabling proprietary and compute functions at the authoring source or within Omniverse. »

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Matos believes these efforts pave the way for building data to be used in more processes. For example, an automaker can create a physically accurate digital twin of its factories and cars, and then use those same ground truth assets in its sales, marketing, and customer configurators. This requires that all AECO data from the company's factories, CAD data from its assembly lines, design data from its manufacturing models, and even the autonomous robots that operate these facilities fully contribute to a virtual model. These workflows require a standardized data format and...