Blocks are exported rotated to IFC

I’m experiencing this as well but than when reimporting the ifc into VA itself. Meaning:

  1. I created a model with several vaFurniture and vaDoor elements (both created from grasshopper files).
  2. Export the model to IFC.
  3. Import the IFC into Rhino with VA.
  4. Some of the vaFurniture and vaDoor appear either mirrored or rotated in Rhino.

So to me it appears as this is not only a Solibri problem but that in the import or exporting with VA also a bug can be found.

(I’m exporting and importing the IFC to check the IFC file before sending it to my engineers who use Revit.)

@fsalla could you please verify the procedure above?

Hi @david25,

I think these are two different issues. The Solibri bug happens with blocks that use a non-uniform transformation (scaling components X, Y, and Z are not equal), and, apparently, it doesn’t happen in VisualARQ.

The bug you describe is related to VisualARQ elements, which normally don’t use non-uniform transformation.

Can you send me the 3DM model to visualarq@asuni.com so the IFC developer can take a look?

Thanks,

Enric

Hi @enric, I have send an example to your email as requested.

Hi @David,

I tried to export the 3DM to IFC, and imported it back again, and it seems there is a problem with alignments. Door rotation seems correct:

Original 3DM:
image

Reimported IFC:
image

I’ll report this bug to the IFC developer.

Thanks,

Enric

@david25

Sorry @David, the message was for @david25.

Enric

The mirrored bug I wasn’t able to reperform in a new file jet. Thanks for looking at the alignment bug!

Hi @david25, we have fixed this issue in VisualARQ 2.9 version. VisualARQ 2 - Version 2.9 released (for Rhino 5, 6 and 7)

Thanks @fsalla!

I’m having similar problems here.

If I export my model to .ifc with VA and open it with Rhino everything is fine.
But I did a double check with Revit and there is half of my blocks mirrored.


Blocks in Rhino


Blocks in Revit - half of it mirrored

If I explode the blocks before export they are all fine.

I must admit, that to create all of the blocks, I only generated a quater and mirrored them to fill the whole roof.

Hi @interkinactive,

Please, could you send us some more information about the problem you are having? Which Rhino and VisualARQ versions are you using?

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was just optimizing my files :slight_smile:

my Rhino version: Version 7 SR13
(7.13.21348.13001, 2021-12-14)

my VA version: 2.12.0 (updated today)

block2ifc_small.3dm (128.5 KB)

Block2ifc.zip (9.5 KB)

I reduced the blocks for easy checking - still looks in revit like this:

instead of this:

Best course of action is to replace your symmetrical Rhino Blocks with non-mirrored blocks, particularly when going into Revit.

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Thanks for your advice. Makes totally sense for the production process. Not affecting out poduction but anyway - Will go with un-mirrored blocks. :slight_smile:

Here’s a grasshopper script that uses the Elefront plugin to find and replace mirrored blocks. It leaves the original but changed its existing UserText attribute ‘mirrored’ to true.


re_mirrored Rhino Blocks.gh (16.6 KB)

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Another way to tackle it would be to test all blocks for the flipped z, set their ‘mirrored’ attribute to true, gather all true blocks and replace with rotated all at once.

That’s exactly my taste how to do things with grasshopper :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

But used my already existing process to do the same magic I used for the quater to produce half of the roof and rotated + copied everything instead of mirroring.

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Hello @interkinactive,
I have been checking your file. I opened the IFC file with Solibri and blocks are correctly imported, did you report this issue to the Revit technical support?

Is there a way to get the transformation matrix of a block? To identify and/or adjust it?

On the revit side it doesn’t use a matrix per say, it uses a flip flag.