BIMDayOut IFC4: The Shape of Things to Come

The BIM Day Out in Perth last year was a fantastic event, attracting presenters and attendees of a wide spectrum within the AEC industry.

Having been caught in the rain and cold (not really expected in Perth) earlier that week, my voice nearly disappeared (apologies, but the audio captured isn't too bad).



The presentation above primarily demonstrates the utilization of OpenBIM IFC to turn Grasshopper into BIM authoring software (and then receiving and utilizing the models in other software such as Revit or Tekla).

It aims to motivate software users (of all BIM enabled software) to demand more of the IFC implementation of their software, and hopefully shows a capability of IFC to convey intelligent models capable to use downstream in other software.



Congratulations and thanks to BIM Day Out committee for their work in arranging BIM Day Out, looking forward to many more of these events in the near future.

Navisworks 4D IFC

At the BIMDayOut event earlier this year (great event, hope it runs again next year) I presented some 4D IFC workflows from Grasshopper to Constructivity (still the only other software I know of reading and writing IFC4).  It was really encouraging to be able to show a virtual construction sequence in Constructivity but I found the software had issues with large scale geometry and strict requirements for the way data is defined.

What I've been working on now is an IFC import enhancement for Navisworks Manage 2014.

At this point in time, you can't create products in Navisworks from the API, but if you import the IFC using the native importer (IFC2x3 only), then you can run my IFC enhancer (plugin can be downloaded from http://www.geometrygym.com/downloads ) which can generate the timeliner tasks and identify the ifc products by their unique identifiers.

Grasshopper Definition  IFC file

I hope to improve further the sequencing calculations and add cost data.  If you have requests or suggestions, let me know.  I will also consider developing a similar utility for VICO or other software if the demand is there.