Hi, was wondering if this kind of format will be supported in the future.
I'm often working with BIM software and they are quite strict (and slow) when it comes to free modeling.
The IFC format allows a BIM to import a model without triangulation and therefore useful for making 2D documentation inside the BIM workspace.
Currently Rhino has a plugin named VisualARQ which allows to export in IFC format. Tried the trial version, works quite well. The imported model in ArchiCAD is clean.
I guess it would be a good addiction to the MoI export formats, but I understand if it's not a top priority feature.

Hi Max, I don't really know anything about IFC format myself so that makes it hard to even get started on a feature like that, it would probably involve a lot of time spent researching convoluted technical documents before I'd even know where to start.

So it's not likely to be something that I'd be able to develop totally from scratch anytime soon.

Do you know if there are any libraries that help to work with IFC format? If there are that may help to get things going for implementing it without as much time spent needing to understand every little detail of it myself directly.

It may also be that IFC format being very focused on architecture expects particular model elements to be identified as windows and doors and things like that - currently MoI just does not organize models in that particular way so it could be possible that a lot of rework of MoI's own model structure and even working program flow would need to be modified a lot in order to produce data that was suitable for that format.

So it would not be surprising to me that something like this would amount to some multi-year long project...

- Michael

I know very little about IFC.

Geometry Gym sells a plugin for IFC for Rhino, for $. http://www.rhinojungle.com/video/geometry-gym-plugin

"Envisioneer (version 9) now exports its basic model structure to an IFC file for use with other applications..."


http://www.slideshare.net/metalalp/building-information-modeling-bim-industry-foundation-classes-ifc-presentation

- Brian

There is ruby code for sketchup and BIM/IFC which may have some clues?
http://code.google.com/p/bim-tools/

Bem was quicker than me :)
Regarding the doors, windows, etc.. No, such thing is useless (plus it would be a hell to develop it), it's possible to assign those types directly from the BIM environment once you have imported the IFC, if you need. For instance, after importing the IFC, you can save something as "door" and then place it parametrically inside a wall. But that's not the main purpose for me. The purpose is a clean 3D model inside BIM software for producing documentation (especially sections with vectorial shadows), and listing of the elements for calculating surfaces and volumes.

http://www.visualarq.com/info/ifc/

Hi Max,

> Regarding the doors, windows, etc.. No, such thing is useless <....>

Ok, but then what is it that you would be trying to gain by using IFC format rather than one of the other standard CAD formats like 3DM, STEP, IGES and SAT which already transfer surface data without doing any triangulation?

Are none of those formats supported by your BIM software?

- Michael

Only .STL. Tried it, and it works quite well, also .SKP is even better.
Thank you for the advice, didn't think about it, sorry!