The IFC 4.3 entity that describes a road, rail or other alignment with its horizontal, vertical and cant parts, so elements can be placed along it.
IfcAlignment is the IFC 4.3 entity for an alignment: the reference line of a road, railway, canal or other linear work. It holds the horizontal layout, the vertical profile and, for railways, the cant, so that elements such as bridges, signals and drainage can be positioned by their distance along it and exchanged in open BIM with that reference intact.
Road and rail design tools export alignments to IFC 4.3, and coordination and checking tools read them, so structures and systems modelled by different teams can be placed against the same reference. Because elements can be located by linear placement, a model can answer "what is at chainage 2+340?" as well as "what is at these coordinates?". Georeferencing (IfcMapConversion and IfcProjectedCRS) ties the alignment to the real world.
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