BIM Module

[kemeniru]

Hello:

I am planning to start a building information modeling module for FreeCAD. I have gone through some of the previous postings and it seems yorikvanhavre has been championing anything architecture related. I started implementing support for modeling building information using POVRay before I got to know about FreeCAD. FreeCAD has done most of the work for me including exporting to STEP and hopefully IFC in the future, not to mention a graphical interface with a connected python engine.

I have programmed in python before and the examples provided (at first glance) seem more understanding than anything I have seen for Blender so I am jumping in with my two feet. The type of work I am trying to bring to FreeCAD is described in an article I wrote at illom.org title "Why Kobldes? Why POV-Ray?" which describes my effort with POVRay called Kobldes. Yori, please let me know of anything I should before starting this effort in FreeCAD.

Thanks
Kene

[jriegel]

Be welcome!

Indeed looks very promising your article! I think your at the right place here.

But your right, Yorik is our architekt and he is on the way to put features in
FreeCAD for that field of expertise.

[Guest]

Thanks jriegel:
Hoping I can hear from Yorik soon. Seems like a good place to start and preferably through direct email... I hope that makes sense. I can bury myself in the process to understand and begin to work with FreeCAD but I think an overview of what has been done and perhaps what direction Yorik is heading would make a lot of sense for me. If this is the wrong approach, I humbly ask for directions.

[jriegel]

Direction is right, but we prefer the forum to keep track whats going on - even if we not get involved that much at the beginning.
FreeCAD is already a big tanker and its good to now whats going on inside to steer the right direction. And for others, see the
discussion, its easier to jump in and help.

[yorik]

Hi Kene,
Great to hear about that! Your help will be most than welcome. What brought me to FreeCAD is more or less the same as you (frustration from commercial solutions) and I'm now completely convinced by freecad: Everything is interconnected, everything is accessible to python, everything is parametric...

I wrote a page to gather ideas about a BIM module for freecad here: http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/f ... ding_ideas
Feel free to add or update to that page (just gave you edit rights). Another user, Studioa, is also interested in collaborating on that module.

I already started an embryo of the Arch module (which you have in src/Mod/Arch in the FreeCAD source code), which just has an empty workbench and a Wall tool. The wall tool currently takes a wire, a face or a solid as input and produces a wall by adding a width, an extrusion height or nothing. Next thing will be to have that wall tool start in interactive mode (allowing you to draw) if no object is passed to it. I'm planning to reuse/extend the Draft wire tool for drawing the wall, just extend it so it displays a full-width wall when drawing.

The big problem will be to make the display of those walls adaptable when you "connect" one wall to another (it must look like their shapes got fused, even if they are still separate objects). I'll need to experiment with that, probably create the coin representation manually, selecting which edges to show.

The idea is to have first a working "bim" object, in order to start implementing IFC import/export (no sense of importing/exporting IFC objects if we don't have any bim object in freecad). But a guy already made a very good start with IFC in freecad: http://konstruct.nl/parsing-ifc-stepexp ... thon-and-s

So, if you know a bit of python already, digging in freecad won't be hard. Have a look at all this , if you want to work on something I'll be more than happy!

Cheers
yorik

[studioa]

Yes I spoke with Yorik on collaborating on this.
I started to organize some ideas and I'll be uploading them under the BIM page - actually IFC is something that we should really consider in the BIM module, as it becomes a standard for construction management.
Once the BIM model is exported as IFC it can be "explored" by building professionals (construction and management).

Also I want to share two new developments in the field:
1. BIMsight by Tekla:
http://www.teklabimsight.com/
2. and Generative Components by Bentley (not so new):
http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Promo/Gene ... efault.htm

I'll be following up with what material I have prepared so far on BIM so we can move on.

Adrian

[yorik]

that tekla bimsight looks cool but still nothing to download, and they dont even tell if it'll work on linux...
the bimserver looks more interesting to me ( http://www.bimserver.org/ )

but as I said earlier, before being able to work with IFC we need something to be able to import IFC data to, so there is still a bit of work needed...

[studioa]

probably they (Tekla) will not support Linux - or at least that is my feeling, I wish they will - BIMserver is developing pretty fast and they just had 1.0 out few days ago - once we have a framework in place for our BIMFC module, we can contact them to see if/how we can create a workflow between packages -

[kemeniru]

OK. Thanks for the feedback. Now let me spend some time to orient myself.

Thanks for the access to the BIM module page. I believe I should start there. Like you guys I feel very strongly about an open source tool for modeling building information and one that works with Debian no less! BIM has changed our practice but I think integration (the ability to capture building knowledge and retain it throughout AEC/FM using software) will blow it away. I just have to be a part of that.

Talk to you guys as time goes on. Now to dust off my python skills

[Filippo]

Hi, I'm a young engineer with some experience with python. I'd like to contribute at the arch module with some code but now I'm very busy with work and postgraduate study...
Reading your discussion, I have remembered about an implementation guide of ifc file format:

http://www.iai-tech.org/developers/ifc- ... impl-guide

Here you can find any characteristic of any instance and building element of a BIM model.
It isn't so much but I hope you'll find it useful and in future I'll try to contribute in a better manner.
Best wishes for your work on the ArchModule.