FreeCAD BIM weekly update 4

Hi all!

Here goes our fourth weekly update, showing what I have been doing this week with FreeCAD, specifically on the BIM and NativeIFC fronts. Here is what we have this week:

  • NativeIFC: Ability to create an IFC doc from scratch: For now, it's available from Python only. The idea I have with the NativeIFC addon is not to have any UI tools on its own, but rather modify progressively all tools of the BIM workbench to work with NativeIFC. So the idea here is to have the Project tool handle this. But I'm still not 100% sure how to integrate that seamlessly and meaningfully, so for now this is not available via the UI. To test from Python, just run import ifc_tools; ifc_tools.create_document(FreeCAD.ActiveDocument). commit

  • NativeIFC: Tested workflow to create 2D views: I tested a bit how easy it is to generate 2D views from a NativeIFC file. Basically it works out of the box, as long as the objects have their shapes loaded. More work is needed, though, to handle cases such as container objects (need to include subobjects), autoload shapes when needed, or handle materials for the "Arch Fuse" property.

screenshot of FreeCAD showing 2D views of a model

  • FreeCAD: Fixed DWG export output message: There is now a more meaningful message when a valid DWG exporter is not found PR

  • NativeIFC: Documentation: I started writing documentaiton for the NativeIFC addon. So far it's found on the NativeIFC README page but the idea is of course to elaborate and detail it further and move it to a more appropriate place later on.

  • NativeIFC: Handle change of properties: Each IFC type has a different set of attributes. Up to now, when you changed the IFC class of an object, the attributes were not rebuilt. This is now solved. commit

That's it for this week! As always, thanks to everybody who sponsors me on Patreon, LiberaPay or GitHub!