Exporting IFC BIM to Archicad, Revit, Microstation, Digital Project, Tekla ......

Anyone generating and exploring architectural projects in Grasshopper might be very interested in the latest development project of Geometry Gym.

I've been enabling BIM extraction from Grasshopper using the neutral BIM format IFC (Industry Foundation Class).

It's still very much work in progress, but already it demonstrates the power of this functionality, and it can enable parametric or generative Architectural design without having to remodel everything from scratch in an alternate CAD program for detailed design.

I'm still rapidly developing and releasing new builds with new features and capabilities, but if you wish to give it a try and it's not yet capable of representing the project you wish, email me or post here and I'll make it priority on my to do list.

There's still work in identifying what exactly each other program will identify and accept, for example many nurbs surfaces will have to me "meshed" to faceted polysurface (even simple booleans it seems). When IFC2x4 is released next year, it will include NURBs which will be fantastic (but interesting to see the response of programs that aren't capable of nurbs). When I enable IFC2x4 (hopefully soon) it will ease the grasshopper generation process, at the moment you have to use specific IFC components to do operations like boolean, extrude etc in a way consistent with IFC specification.

There are some free viewers like Nemetschek, Solibri and Constructivity that can visualize IFC models.

You can watch a youTube instruction video for the above image and download the files at my blog, http://geometrygym.blogspot.com and download the plugin from http://www.geometrygym.com

Installation instructions for getting started are here: http://www.grasshopper3d.com/group/geometrygym/forum/topics/install...

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Philipp on November 9, 2010 at 1:48am

Hi!
I Want a try!

Permalink Reply by michaeldrobnik on November 9, 2010 at 1:58am

Hi,
that's extremly useful! Looking forward to test it

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on November 9, 2010 at 5:41am

Great, I look forward to helping you both with getting started.

Permalink Reply by Chris Hanley on November 9, 2010 at 7:49am

This is really great work! Have you heard of any IFC specifications for "site" elements being developed?

As a side note, we just got a beta release of ACAD 2012, (codename IronMan), and were surprised to find NURBS surfaces! We'll see what happens.....Presumably that will extend to other autodesk products in the near future.

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on November 9, 2010 at 7:54am

When you say site elements, do you mean "buildings" as in overall mass shapes so you can define a city block or greater? I'll take a look in IFC2x4 as it has expanded the element types a lot.

If IronMan or any other program can already read IFC2x4, I'm keen to start testing Nurbs exporting. The constructivity viewer states it is IFC2x4 enabled, I haven't had a chance to test it yet.

Permalink Reply by Chris Hanley on November 9, 2010 at 8:03am

sorry for the ambiguity regarding "site" elements. As landscape architects, we are eager to see classifications to hold information regarding soil profiles, paving systems, landscape elements over structure, etc...

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on November 9, 2010 at 1:09pm

Sounds reasonable, but I just had a look at IFC2x4 and sorry to say doesn't seem to add new types to cover those sorts of aspects....

Permalink Reply by Chris Hanley on November 9, 2010 at 1:11pm

as of now, we are looking at using IfcRelContainedInSpatialStructure or ifc slab as a workaround.
Thanks for looking though!

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on November 15, 2010 at 7:19am

Hi All,

Some new examples of shape representations from Grasshopper to IFC.
http://geometrygym.blogspot.com Download the models and try for yourself.

Download the latest version from http://www.geometrygym.com/downloads

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on December 15, 2010 at 6:33am

New features added to Geometry Gym IFC plugin for Grasshopper and Rhino. You can now import existing IFC data files into Grasshopper (more improvements on visualization coming soon). There's also specific components for tagging objects as slabs, walls, stairs, beams etc. Download from http://www.geometrygym.com/downloads and sample models at http://geometrygym.blogspot.com

Priority will be given to new features requested by users, please keep sending them through.

Permalink Reply by Jon Mirtschin on December 31, 2010 at 12:21am

A further plugin update with some new IFC shape representations including sweep, revolutions and sectioned spines (similar to loft) Sample models can be found at http://geoemtrgym.blogspot.com

I'll soon post some new examples for planning including measuring floor areas and similar property sets.