Shape to Fabrication 2016

Shape to Fabrication 2016 is on next week, and I'm really excited about returning to London to attend and present at this event.  There's an amazing line up of speakers and the opportunity to speak with the McNeel staff attending makes this an event not to be missed.  Thanks to Simply Rhino for all the effort to organize this.

It's 7 years ago that I last attended Shape To Fabrication, number 3 at Metropolitan Works in 2009.  I'd been promoting and publicly releasing the Rhino plugin online that I'd been working on in house at Expedition,  known as  SSI (Smart Structural Interpreter Connector to GSA).  Bob McNeel suggested pretty close to the event that I should present them at Shape to Fabrication.

Fred Labbe (my colleague at Expedition) was already a confirmed speaker on the Santa Maria del Pianto Metro canopy, and at late notice he was generous enough to let me share the speaking slot to present the rhino plugins.

This event quickly increased awareness, triggered a launching pad for Geometry Gym as a business.    A meeting for clients with McNeel staff (including Carlos Perez and David Rutten) was arranged soon after by RhinoForYou and soon afterwards I had my first paying client and left Expedition to start full time on the development and support of the plugins.

If you'd like to see what I presented, it was posted to youTube (but with no commentary).  The tools have come a long way and it's great to have the chance to get back to this fantastic event.

Melbourne OpenBIM Event

SIAL (Spatial information Architecture Laboratory) at RMIT University in Melbourne have been very generous to host an OpenBIM event on the evening of Monday the 18th February.  

It's a great privilege to announce that Dr Thomas Liebich is also in Melbourne at this time.  Thomas is the leader of the IFC Development team for Building Smart International based in Germany, and also a director of AEC3.

Thomas will present on the IFC standard (past, current and future) including the imminent release of IFC4 as an ISO standard.

I will also present on OpenBIM workflows and the research/development I've done in the past 3 years.  This will include insights into project application of generative BIM workflows from Grasshopper to Revit and Tekla.  I will also be discussing why current IFC implementations by BIM software vendors have only utilized IFC to a fraction of it's capability and potential.   I will also demonstrate benefits design teams can realize from collaboration of model sharing using IFC including Fabrication, Analysis and Design ( Structural, Energy, Egress, Building Regulation compliance), Facility Management etc.

Please rsvp if you'd like to attend to jonm@geometrygym.com or contact me for more details.  We plan to start presentations at 6pm, but will be there from 5:30pm at the multi-purpose room of the Design Hub (Level 1).
Design Hub
RMIT University
150 Victoria Street (Corner of Swanston & Victoria Street)
Melbourne VIC 3001

Note there will be a second event hosted at Arup on the Wednesday evening.  More details to be posted shortly.

Revit IFC Plugin by Geometry Gym

I've recently been advancing development on a tool/workflow that's really needed to use Grasshopper to somewhere near it's full potential for Architecture/Engineering.  And that's to export the model into other BIM software with strengths and functionality that are not always evident or easily accessible in Rhino.

I started developing my IFC (neutral BIM format Industry Foundation Class) plugin (within Rhino/Grasshopper software) with the intent of enabling generation of BIM attributes and relationships to the already powerful geometric tool that is Rhino/Grasshopper, and then utilizing this in other BIM software without having to model everything again from scratch, and then maintaining/coordinating multiple models.

I touched a little about the current use of IFC as a model exchange in my technical paper last year.  Presently to be IFC certified (and there is a current drive to improve on this) you effectively need to import/export IFC models for coordination.  This can be done (with accuracy but certainly not efficiency) utilizing only two shape representations, linear extrusions and meshed/faceted breps.

This has led to a chicken/egg scenario, where BIM software vendors haven't imported advanced (and more efficient) shape representations (IFC is based on STEP model specification) because other vendors haven't exported them, and vice versa.

So whilst there is a long list of Software that interacts with IFC, it's really difficult (and I've discussed this with a number of big and small design firms in the past year or two) to use this "bridge" as it's intended.

Autodesk Revit is a very popular tool for Architects/Engineers to document and detail their projects.  However testing of means to import models using neutral BIM formats (primarily IFC and SDNF) hasn't resulted in much to boast about and utilize.  SDNF can generate native beam elements but can take hours (without succeeding) to import a pratical size roof model.  The Autodesk IFC plugin import generates reference objects, useful for coordination, drawing and even schedules, but as soon as you wish to edit or manipulate the objects, you nearly need to model it again (as families aren't utilized and aspects such as analytical representations not created).

So, with a few Geometry Gym users looking for a work flow to get Grasshopper models into Revit, I've been looking for improved ways to do this using the Revit SDK.  I started looking at direct model interaction, but for technical and practical reasons have decided a neutral bridge is the best way to do this.  Most of my c# IFC code is reusable (with some interaction changes) as a Revit plugin (this is my first plugin outside of the Rhino/Grasshopper environment), and I've today posted an example import of a steel frame roof (British Museum Great Court Roof) using my own IFC engine.

There's lots of improvements and work to do, but I'm confident with time I can create a powerful IFC engine within Revit (as I've already achieved within Rhino/Grasshopper).  The priorities for improvements are being driven by real project use of this tool (let me know if you have your own use for it) and will include curved members, orientations and synchronization options.  If you look closely at the image you'll see Revit has still tried to be clever with the bevel/miter at element connections, hopefully I can find a way to disable this (as an option) as I believe its significantly part of a slow import process.  Other objects including slabs, walls, MEP, etc etc will also be quickly added to the toolset.

It will be interesting to encounter the other hurdles and pitfalls in front of this development, but stay tuned to the blog for public release of this tool and examples of it's use.  Feel free to get in touch to learn more (and influence it's development) in the interim.

SAP2000 Point Local Axis

For the Geometry Gym plugin users, remember that I encourage and look forward to receiving suggestions and ideas for improvements and new features to the tools.

Here's a fairly simple one that where identification of node local axis can be straight forward in Grasshopper, but not so easy to do within the Structural Analysis software.  This user wants to be able to apply a local coordinate system to the points (nodes) generated to SAP2000.

You can try for yourself here Download

BIM Enhancements for Rhino/Grasshopper

RhinoForYou presented Geometry Gym BIM enhancements for Rhino3d / Grasshopper3d at the BIM Day event in Paris earlier this week.

It was a good opportunity to enhance and improve the IFC plugin testing IFC files generated with other software.  Improvements have been made for file processing times (with more to come, but better for all IFC authoring software to produce higher quality files).

This clip shows importing of the Tekla House model authored in Archicad, and an associated MEP file.  It demonstrates the new IFC tree data viewer in Rhino.

The second clip is a model prepared by VisualARQ, the IFC data was optimized using Geometry Gym tools to reduce the file size by a factor of 10 (permitting more acceptable access time for Rhino/Grasshopper).  The file is then imported and edited in Grasshopper, first deleting some members and then generating a new parametric set.

This plugin is undergoing continual improvement, if you have requests or requirements that you would like included, please get in touch to discuss them with me.

Autodesk Robot Geometry from Grasshopper

More explanations and descriptions coming soon.  I'm in the process of developing creation of Robot Geometrical objects within the parametric Grasshopper environment.  Presently this includes polyline base revolutions panels and cladding panels.  I expect further development of aspects such as poly curves (with arcs) and extrusions to be added.  Please report any suggestions, observations and ideas and they will implemented with priority.

Polyline Revolution

Rhino model
Grasshopper Definition

Cladding Panels

Rhino model

Grasshopper Definition