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BCF stands for BIM Collaboration Format, it is a file that stores annotations used in BIM projects. The BCF was created in response to a real need, a few years ago, project issues were shared by emails, PDF files, via phone calls and other archaic methods. Then came BCF, a format supported in all major BIM software, allowing collaborators to create issues, report conflicts, assign tasks, and more. All this directly in their viewers, allowing them to be exported to a file, and sent to their collaborators with the 3D model(s). This has saved contractors millions of dollars through better project management.

The BCF makes it possible to carry out large projects with better communication between the different teams, for example the architect could create an annotation and send it via a BCF to the modeling team who could see the data in a software completely different from the one architect used.

BCF files can be used during many phases of a project, from design to operation, including supply or construction. When the project is just beginning, it will mainly be used for quality control or design coordination purposes. When the project is 100% complete, it can be used by owners to notify the construction company of any post-delivery issues or upgrades that may be made. During procurement and construction, BCFs are used to coordinate different teams as well as to transfer information and much more…

BCF allows you to add comments to track and discuss the status of the issue.

The BCF has now become a true BIM standard, in the same way as the IFC. Implement BCF in your projects now and improve your management!

To sum up with what BCFs are, we can say that it is a collaboration tool for sharing annotations between BIM software, allowing you to work faster on your projects by limiting and anticipating risks.

BCF files contain a lot of information, let's list all the ones we actually use:

1. Title
2. Description
3. Position (X, Y, Z), also with camera rotation in all directions, including roll.
4. Type (Problem, Task, Improvement), we also support custom types retrieved from the BCF you import. Soon you will be able to create your own types.
5. Priority (low, medium, high)
6. Labels
7. Due date
8. Status (to do, in progress, done)
9. Creator
10. Creation date
11. Last editor
12. Date of last edition
13. An image (snapshot), if you have several, we store the others and render them for export
14. Related Files

Our platform is compatible with BCF 2.1 and earlier, this is the version we use to export our annotations as well as the version used for the BCF to annotation transformation.

Note that these are the ones used by the platform, if your BCF has more information, they will always be kept by our system and will be returned to you on export.

In case of problem or difficulty, do not hesitate to contact the platform team.