Dear all,
Can anyone please help me export from Rhino Files to IFC? Is there any method to understand whether some elements will be problematic while importing to either Revit or ArchiCAD?
Thanks in Advance
Hi Sujan,
It’s an aspect of using IFC that is frustrating for many users. It’s a comprehensive data model, and it’s hard for a user to troubleshoot and diagnoze. If you post the file (or send it to me privately), I can test and diagnoze it, I’ve been using IFC in detail for years and have the tools/experience to typically pinpoint an issue quickly. We’ve also developed a 3rd party IFC file for Revit which addresses some aspects of the out of box experience that aren’t ideal (Revit out of the box has some strict constraints that are not always adhered to, such as a project base point in a particular way).
Given it didn’t work in either, I’d suggest the ifc file needs some sort of improvement.
Cheers,
Jon
1 Like
Here’s a new offering into that space. Still very raw but lots of potential.
5 Likes
If anyone is interested in my humble opinions on .bim :
.bim has a take up because it’s primitive (and then simple to implement). For coordination/reference it might be adequate, but won’t cover many requirements of what many need for BIM. I’m not sure how well scope creep is managed, it risks gaining (problematic) complexity as more demands are made of it.
If users complain of file size in IFC, .bim is going to hurt more. It doesn’t have instancing, common references and json is always a larger storage. No hierachy (ie give me all the windows on Level 3).
My further humble opinion, if all you need geometry and attributes as simple key/value pairs, .3dm is a superior bim file format than .bim I’m not fully up to speed with it’s spec, so perhaps some comments above are wrong, but these are my impressions.
2 Likes
Thanks for your experienced perspective. I believe that’s the first time anyone has mentioned .3dm as a superior BIM format 
. There are a lot of schemas getting into the arena. Who ends up on top will need to be user friendly, flexible across platforms, while handling the various complexities.
Thanks Jon for your opinion! Just to answer few things pointed out there:
- Yes, it won’t cover many other requirements, and in fact it’s purpose never was to satisfy everyone. In my opinion trying to satisfy everyone leads to the schema being more and more complex. We have the schemas that are overcomplex already, so anyone can use them if they need to, but we didn’t have one being super simple which allows to just send this freaking geometry and data attached in a simple way, that’s why decision was made to introduce one
- The risk of gaining complexity is small considering the fact that I don’t plan to change or update anything in the core schema in the future. Concept was taken from Markdown (which was in fact huge inspiration, even though it’s a markup language) that hasn’t changed from 2004.
- Regarding file size: I disagree a little bit on that, as in fact .bim allows to reference same geometry multiple times. So if you save a mesh that represent rebar, then you can use it thousand of times in different places. I would agree with the fact that IFC allows much more mechanisms that can make files more lightweight, but 1. these mechanisms often increase the complexity of the schema, 2. I can’t really say when it really does matter. After many experiments I would say it is really project specific, as I’ve seen in fact many cases when using some of these mechanism was just a microoptimization. A little bit more on that is here: dotbim/DeveloperTips.md at master · paireks/dotbim · GitHub
Is .bim better/worse than A and B - that’s up to anyone to decide
2 Likes
Fantastic work @w.radaczynski !
Is there a viewer which would enable selecting objects within a single .bim file and “showing” their parameters?
1 Like
Online 3D Viewer does that: https://3dviewer.net/
You can drag and drop the .bim file here and once you select an object you will find properties on the right.
Here is a sample model of a house: Online 3D Viewer
1 Like
Great! Thank you once again Wojciech!
1 Like
Thanks for the reply. I want to be clear, I’m not critical of .bim, it’s a response to complexity and reliability (in terms of implementation) of IFC. To focus on the positives, .bim will be more reliable and will be fit for purpose for many scenarios (particularly reference or coordination). But my focus is more on exchanges where the requirements are more demanding.
I actually assumed .bim must have some form of instancing, but I hadn’t reviewed it in enough detail. Thanks for clarifying, the developer notes you reference are helpful.
Part of the challenge then is managing expectations. To take this thread into consideration, I’m not sure if the original comment about .bim being raw but having potential is relating to implementation, or in terms of the functionality of .bim. I was referring to the latter. My next humble opinion, .bim will be more successful if it does focus on reliability and simplicity, rather than evolution to something more complex.
And I agree, it’s not really if .bim is better/worse, it’s actually is .bim sufficient for the desired requirements.
1 Like
Here is an example implementation of .3dm and its attributes,
but I am also a fan of .bim!
1 Like