The waiting time is over! Let us introduce RailCOMPLETE Property Sets!
IFC and Property Sets
BIM users tend to work in collaboration projects where the common presentation format is IFC – Industry Foundation Classes, a rich text format devised by the Building Smart organisation and being read by a multitude of free or commercially available IFC viewers. The latest IFC version 4.3 supports not only graphics and how objects are connected, but also the mathematical definition of alignments such as tracks, roads and wires.
IFC comes with a range of standardised Property Sets, usually identified with a prefix ‘Pset_’, defining standardised information items for traditional entities such as walls, windows, doors etc for buildings. Users are invited to fill in values for these properties, which will be universally understood since their documentation and allowed values are part of the IFC standard. With IFC 4.3 the list of standardised entities has been extended to tunnel, bridge, road and rail.
Custom Property Sets are needed
It turns out that most organisations need more specific information items than those found in the IFC standard Psets. Luckily, the IFC standard allows users to define their own property sets.
A Property Set has a recognizable Property Set Name and an associated collection of Properties. Each property has a Property Name and a Property Value field that will hold a value consistent with a specified Data Type. Here is an example from the railway realm:
RailCOMPLETE version 2024.1 offers a Property Set Definition Manager, making it easy to enter a property set’s definition and its default values.
Please consult the In-Depth article on RC Property Sets to learn more.