IFC - Industry Foundation Classes/IFC alignment

In road and railway design, the alignment model provides a geometric description of a long linear infrastructure work, e.g a road or railway. In IFC4X1 IfcAlignment was first introduced, but significantly reworked in the context of the IFC4.3 IfcRail project.

In IfcOpenShell support for alignment geometry is still in progress and scheduled for v0.8

• https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/issues/842
• https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/pull/1470
• https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/pull/3148

IFC distinguishes the semantic (or business logic) of the alignment and the geometric representation, overlapping significantly in content. Relevant concepts from the specification:

• https://ifc43-docs.standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/IFC4x3/HTML/concepts/Object_Composition/Nesting/Alignment_Layout/content.html
• https://ifc43-docs.standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/IFC4x3/HTML/concepts/Product_Shape/Product_Geometric_Representation/Alignment_Geometry/Alignment_Geometry_Cant/content.html