IFC-SDK : Open Source IFC 2x3 Library

IFC-SDK
Formerly: http://www.osor.eu/projects/ifc-sdk
Moved in Dec 2011 to https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/software/ifc-sdk/home

This is an Open Source C++ library for reading and writing IFC files. It does not depend on any external libraries and can be compiled on most modern compilers. It was tested on Windows (g++ and VC++ 2003+2005) and on Linux (g++ 3 and 4).
I had no problem compiling it on OSX Snow Leopard, using XCode 3.2.5.

It contains a STEP library and an IFC library, alongside a quite large list of example programs, including tests, to explain the features of the library.

Using CMake it could compile the full library without problems and the example programs seem to work fine. They are all command-line, so no GUI problems, but nothing fancy to see either.

However, there are some caveats...

• I see very little actual information (project homepage, author and licensing details).
• however, inside the source code, it is "copyrighted 2009 CSTB" and released under the LGPL 2.1 license, which is Open Source, but with the possibility to link it in a commercial software.
• Last update was in October 2009, which is a bad sign... as it seems to not be (publicly) maintained. It is numbered 1.0-beta.
• The library is made for IFC 2x3 which is not the current version of the IFC standard.
• Most of the included examples focus on the geometric aspects and not the building information
• ifcRevolvedAreaSolid_app (see above)
• ifcVector_app
• ifcShellBasedSurfaceModel_app etc...

So if anybody has more details about it and if a more recent version is available, then please comment.