Federation
Joined through the IFC GlobalID.
The technical moat, in plain English: how SiteMind joins BCF, COBie, your ERP, Procore, and project documents through the one identifier every IFC element already carries.
> Which Level 3 ducts clash with structural steel?
RESULT — 3 CLASHES
DUCT-L3-014 clashes with BEAM-S2-118
DUCT-L3-021 clashes with BEAM-S2-126
The problem.
Every BIM element exists in many systems at once. The wall in the model is a row in BCF, a row in COBie, a cost line in Maconomy, an RFI in Procore, and a spec page in the PDF library. Without a join key, those views never reconnect.
The key.
Every IFC element carries a GlobalID, a 22-character identifier that survives roundtrips between authoring tools, coordination platforms, and downstream systems. SiteMind indexes every connected source by it.
The heuristic.
Across sources the identifier shows up under different names. SiteMind's resolver tries each. The mapping is configurable per source so customers can correct edge cases, and those configurations improve the system across all customers.
| System | What it is called there |
|---|---|
| BCF | element GUID |
| Autodesk Platform Services | external ID |
| COBie | external identifier |
| SiteMind (IFC and Speckle) | application ID |
The Element Inspector.
Click a wall. The inspector opens with five linked panes: open coordination issues from BCF, warranty data from COBie, cost line items from the ERP, RFIs from Procore, and specification excerpts from the document library with file and page citations.
The engine.
Federation runs on a fast in-process query engine. Each conversation keeps a warm session, so follow-up questions stay quick. Sources that cannot be queried in place are pulled in on demand, with safeguards so a large source cannot overwhelm memory.
The 3D viewer, driven by chat.
The viewer shares one click handler across IFC, Speckle, and APS. Chat commands drive it directly: highlight, isolate, hide, color, and clear. Selecting an element in the viewer and asking a question in chat are the same action.