BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) Reader/Writer

The BIM Collaboration Format (BCF) is an open XML-based format that supports communication of BIM issues.

FME acts as a bridge between BIM systems and the BCF format, enabling efficient and effective collaboration between stakeholders in construction and design projects. By handling data integration, transformation, issue management, data exchange, and validation, FME helps ensure that project teams can communicate seamlessly and make informed decisions based on up-to-date BIM model information.

Note This documentation assumes familiarity with the BIM format. Further information on BIM can be found at buildingSMART Standard International's Technical Resources Hub.

Versions

FME supports reading and writing BCF v2.0, v2.1, and v3.0 files.

Overview

A BCF dataset is a zip file containing folders with XML and PNG files. One BCF topic, which is an issue related to BIM design, is represented in a single folder within the zip archive. A topic folder contains:

One markup file: markup.bcf.
One or more viewpoint files: The first, default, viewpoint file is named viewpoint.bcfv.
One or more snapshot files: The first, default, snapshot file is named snapshot.png.

Subsequent viewpoints and related snapshots files are GUID-based. For example, CA112492-BB80-4FEC-BD78-FF36124CA979.bcfv and CA112492-BB80-4FEC-BD78-FF36124CA979.png.

Additionally, BCF v3.0 introduces supplemental documents which are to be stored in a folder named Documents. Folders inside the Documents folder are not supported.

Note Supplemental Documents are added through the Document feature type. The folder path must be defined in the SourceDocumentPath attribute and the source document file name must match the GUID attribute. (This is different from the Filename attribute, which is used to write the alias to the Documents.xml file.) See the BCF 3.0 documentation for more details.

Product and System Requirements

Format	FME Platform			Operating System
Reader/Writer	FME Form	FME Flow	FME Flow Hosted	Windows 64-bit	Linux	Mac
Reader	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Writer	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

Reader Overview

The BCF reader interprets contents of the BCF zip file into various feature types representing the issue/topic markup, viewpoints, and snapshots. See BCF Format Attributes (Feature Representation) for details.

Writer Overview

Note For details, see BCF Format Attributes (Feature Representation).

The BCF writer accepts a fixed number of BCF feature types. Except for the Version, ProjectExtension, Document, and Extension (TopicLabel, TopicStatus, TopicType, User, SnippetType, Stage, Priority), each feature type represents either a topic markup or a topic viewpoint.

The Markup and VisualizationInfo features represent the root elements of their corresponding XML files. If these are not supplied by the user, then they will be automatically created by the writer.

Note The xml_topic_guid and xml_viewpoint_id must be set up properly so that the writer may group the markup, viewpoint, and Snapshot features into XML and PNG files in their appropriate topic directory.