Can this really happen? The Intellicad Consortium did it with Autocad and .dwg, so much so that Autodesk countered with RealDWG. How about a generic IFC model that can be digested by all BIM packages, or imported directly for Energy Analysis. And before anyone states that all BIM packages can import IFC, you ever try to round trip an IFC model, that is export it to IFC, from say Revit, and then import that same IFC model, does it look the same, behave the same?
How about a system evaluated solely on its feature set, in fact, what it can do to the model becomes more important than the modeling itself. Now that would be a nice arms race, who could offer better compatibility between programs, offer programs and add-ons, come up with a real server centric model that wraps in all the subs in a coherent and logical way. No more design model, model for constructability, model for FM. One where any updates are integrated to the model and available.
Where is the Linux of the AEC world?
