BIM

Open BIM is built around the IFC standard, and that is the fundamental difference from commercial tools: the file is not a vendor’s proprietary format but an open standard every tool can read. For a project owner that means your model survives even if you change software.

Coverage here is thinner than in other areas of this guide — there is one serious option for full BIM work, and it requires a working environment different from what you know from Revit or Archicad. If you are willing to accept that, you get IFC editing, clash detection and drawing production with no licence.

Alongside it sit the modelling and design tools that feed a BIM process: parametric modelling, point cloud work on existing buildings, and energy simulation on the model.