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FreeCAD BIM update 24

by Yorik on 13.09.2024 in freecad , opensource , nativeifc

Hi all!

Still working on the 1.0 release of FreeCAD, and we're very close now! But I have more news on the BIM/IFC side too. Read on!

Release 1.0

We are almost there. I talked quite a lot here already about FreeCAD 1.0 and what you can expect to find in it. Well, the community has been incredibly busy, and last tasks have now been done, last bugs have been squashed, latest translations are in, and release candidates are ready. Release candidates are 1.0 installers, but not the "official ones". They are there for you to test, and help us find last-minute bugs that have manage to pass under the radar.

Many people already started downloading and trying the RC builds, and we already received a fair amount of bug reports, and developers are fixing as fast as hell. Depending on how that process goes, we expect to have the final, official builds out in a couple of weeks.

People are also starting to use NativeIFC seriously, and I'm quite relieved pleased to say it seems to hold quite well so far.

I will of course also write something more official when the time has come, but in the meantime, if you have a moment to spare, please give the RC build a test spin!

Specific icons for NativeIFC objects

This is a trivial thing but also I think a welcome change from the old Arch/BIM objects: Up to now, all NativeIFC objects had the same icon. With this change, they will get a specific icon based on their IFC class. So if you change the class of an object from wall to beam, the icon will change too.

This wasn't something I wanted to do with the old Arch/BIM objects, because these objects all used a different "engine". So if you changed the IFC type of a wall to beam, it would export to IFC as a beam, but would still use the wall engine. So it made sense to keep the wall icon because it is an important information.

Now with NativeIFC, all objects use the same engine (IfcOpenShell, in fact). So the above is no longer valid, and it makes more sense for the icon to reflect the class.

This will be merged right after the 1.0 release, but in the meantime you can already test this pull request.

the different icons to be used for IFC types

New example models

As I wrote earlier, the default, built-in Arch/BIM example that you get on the FreeCAD start page has already been changed to a more proper, standard BIM model (which is the one used in this course (in portuguese). However, it's a pity the old Arch detail example vanished, as I believe it's a really nice feature of FreeCAD over other BIM solutions, that by happily permitting mixing of 3D and 2D elements, it's a very good platform for detailing. So I rescued one of the old models we did at OpeningDetail and formatted as a new detail example. This will be added to FreeCAD right after the 1.0 release. As all OpeningDetail models, it relies a lot on parametricity, and all the descriptions are automatically generated from the materials. There is much more improvement to be done on that kind of workflow, though, hopefully this example will help sparking some new ideas.

An architectural detail in FreeCAD

Apart from that, the collection of BIM example models that is available via the Help menu in the BIM workbench got one addition, a project I've just been working on that was graciously donated by Luc Nelles Architectes, that contains the model plus a whole set of 2D drawings generated from it.

A BIM project in FreeCAD

IfcOpenShell 0.8 support

IfcOpenShell, the IFC engine that supports IFC functionality in FreeCAD, is in constant evolution, and its next version, v0.8, is around the corner and already available on some platforms. I'm happy to report that FreeCAD will support it right from day one. This is now ready to merge, hopefully in time for the 1.0 release.

That's all there is for this edition I'm afraid, but as soon as version 1.0 is out we'll be able to resume working fully on BIM! As always, a huge thank you to everybody who sponsors my FreeCAD BIM work on Patreon, LiberaPay or GitHub!

Cheers

Yorik

by Yorik on 13.09.2024 in freecad , opensource , nativeifc

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