Hello, as others have suggested before it would be good to be able to import geometry from an IFC file:
Here I found an IFC - OBJ converter: http://ifcopenshell.org/ifcconvert.html
That’s interesting!! I will try it… have to tried using a plugin called Bim-dex? I have used a trial version and it worked pretty good for exporting my rhino model geometry to Revit (although not an IFC). Hope this helps!
Thanks for bringing this back after two years. I still think that Rhino needs a native IFC importer. It will turn the software into a decent tool for construction management which architects and builders might find useful.
Installing a third-party plugin for this is just too stretched. Since Rhino has now that attribute tab I imagine having there all the keys and values assigned to geometry imported from IFC. It requires some knowledge of IFC phrasing.
@Bogdan_Chipara. @balajicivil6.1994 just in case you want to try it, you can import IFC files into Rhino and export them back to IFC with VisualARQ. It also has options to tag objects with specific ifc categories and create custom parameters that are exported to IFC as ifcProperties. You can find more information here: https://www.visualarq.com/features/collaboration/ifc/
Hi @fsalla,
Yes I know about VisualARQ. But I think this is a basic feature that Rhino should have, without any additional plugin.
Because most architecture offices already have BIM software.What we need is IFC import.
Totally acknowledging that Bogdan doesn’t want plugins, but if you want cross platform Rhino Ifc Import/Export, the Geometry Gym plugin supports Windows and Mac.
The thing with Geometry Gym is that it’s too complicated for no reason.
There’s no need to use grasshopper to extract this data.
More efficient and user friendly is to have it coming in the attributes panel here:
It’s true that the major emphasis on Geometry Gym has been on generating IFC from grasshopper, but it also features a standalone rhino utility.
You can import into Rhino, and it offers a property browser of it’s own.
You can also nominate in the import options to generate user text from the IfcProperties to use with dialogs such as you suggest.
It’s on the todo list to provide a filter of properties to save (and could be prioritized), it’s not great to save all properties from an IFC file on every object for file size implications. You can subsequently load the ifc document into memory without embedding all the data (only geometry) into the 3dm .
Geometry Gym offers features such as extrusion reverse engineering and coplanar face merging to also optimize the rhino model generated from poor quality IFC shape descriptions.
I still believe that a simple import script with the possibility to filter the keys would be the most efficient workflow for me. That’s why I was lookging into the IFCOpenShell in the first place.
IFC information is not simply geometry with “key-value” pairs. It is much more involved than that. If you try to use this simplification, you are hardly able to properly integrate in BIM-based workflows. Sure, you can view the geometry from an IFC file and you may be able to export a Rhino model into IFC, but it’ll not adhere to project information requirements.
What I am interested in is importing IFC into Rhino, not exporting.
I need a simple solution for this that can work for only a few values such as Type, Material, Level.
(I don’'t need to integrate a BIM workflow, I only need to quickly check the geometry coming from BIM software and render it with materials)
Issue you described was one of the motivations to introduce dotbim format
Generally having render meshes + materials + key-value pairs is I’d say < 1% of IFC capabilities. At the same time supporting only this tiny fragment satisfies huge number of workflows.
For me, it would be more than enough to have geometry and metadata.
McNeel should really wake-up to the BIM reality and add .ifc import and .export .
That would be consistent with the recent efforts to bring blocks and property management into Grasshopper.
Could you be more specific ? Once a data-enriched model is loaded into Rhino, the recent “Rhino” tab in GH seems to have all the required components to make it dance and sing.
With “just” geometry and key-value pairs you have something like the .bim format. A simplified snapshot of IFC data, which can be used in downstream processes. Good for automation and integration, but it would not be acceptable as a model delivery in a project where there are precise requirements.
E.g., you may not have the required Spatial Structure, the necessary property sets, the link between element and material metadata, the required naming convention of property sets, the required classification references etc…
That is why full IFC support is much, much more than just “geometry” + some key-value pairs. Otherwise, vanilla AutoCAD and plain Rhino or Vectorworks is all that is needed.
SketchUp is also very limited in this scope.
But… when you apply IfcOpenShell not just as import/export, but also as a layer/toolkit to mange the full IFC dataset, where you can bring in Rhino geometry but also retain the full IFC structure (more graph-like than tabular), it seems possible, probably with a lot of help from an arsenal of Grasshopper nodes or Rhino scripts.
This is EXACTLY why I hate IFC and also why it’s taking so long to be adopted by the industry.
It has been created by nerdy programmers who have never had their feet in the mud of a construction site or even sat in an engineering office. They can’t even agree amongst themselves on a single version , which is ironic for a file format which is supposed to be some kind of universal hub, and this has been dragging on for over a decade now.
This thing is “so much more than geometry” as you say, that even the mundane chore of sharing that geometry has become a huge hurdle.
Instead of being an “open” format, it just pushes companies towards the greedy mouthes of AutoDesk and others, more than happy to cash-in on that mess.
So, yes, before doing “so much more”, I’d like to just be able to import IFC geometry and data in Rhino, thank you very much.
I will try it… have to tried using a plugin called Bim-dex? I have used a trial version and it worked pretty good for exporting my rhino model geometry to Revit (although not an IFC). Hope this helps!
