IFC - Import and Export
Hi,
in our engineering office we use various programs - including Blender. A uniform and well-functioning exchange format is absolutely necessary for the in-house workflow as well as for cooperation with external partners.
The IFC exchange format has been internationally established in the construction industry (ISO certified) and increasingly defined as a common exchange standard.
Until now, you could only import IFC-files into Blender – which unfortunately doesn't work anymore with Blender 2.80. For the better integration of Blender into the work process it would be a great help if the import AND export of IFC-files were possible.
11 Comments
I am an architect using Revit LT. The IFC export does not seem to carry Revit Materials over to Blender when I use BlenderBim to import. For eample; external finish (Brick) and internal finish (Plaster) are not applied to a wall. The wall is a single default material. Has anyone else had this issue?
* @jaydenfkenny * Can you try with the latest version? Two versions ago, the material system was revamped with some regressions. It should now be fixed, if not, please file a bug here: github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell - Note that in IFC there are two separate concepts: materials and styles. You may need to check the object properties for material assignments, whereas the material properties actually stores "styles".
I hope blenderbim.org/ is what you're looking for :)
Hi I just discovered a way to import IFC into Blender, there are two tools one is a command line conversion tools: ifcConverter but work well with drag and drop and convert the IFC file into obj, and the other one is CAD ASSITANT an awesome viewer that is able to save the file into various file format but the best for Blender is the new .glb .
It'll be very usseful. I'm architect and this feature may be a great change in my wotrkflow.
Unless I'm mistaken, the IFC format is specific to parametric models. Blender doesn't support parametric modeling at all, so an importer add-on would have to convert all of the data in the IFC file from its parametric format to mesh or NURBS data. That could be a slow and potentially inaccurate approach.
If you want that data in Blender, your best option would be to use the originating software to do the mesh conversion for you and save that to a format Blender can understand and import more directly.
.Ifc format in its current state is not parametric (only a small subset of parameters are shared, if any) and mostly work using breps.
The goal of ifc is to disallow changes without communication, and so only geometry is shared.
Ifc openshell importer does use open cascade under the hood to convert breps to blender mesh.
Archipack 2.0.8+ implements an experimental .ifc exporter, but is currently broken until next release.
* @stephen * That sounds interesting. If there was an .ifc exporter under Archipack, that would be great :)
* @Jason van Gumster *It is not a matter of parametric geometry, but only to extract the data from the elements, an addon would be enough, with its own interface, where to insert the data and the characteristics of the elements created.
there is a new add-on from blenderBIM.org (which may be down right now?) based on ifcopenshell from thinkmoult@mastodon (dion moult). excellent import, but i hve troubles exporting. Lukas
* @lukas_alberts * just bumping for those reading this thread, the BlenderBIM Add-on now has experimental support for parametric geometry round-tripping. Not only does this fix a lot of import<->export roundtrip issues, it also allows Blender to understand non-mesh, implicit, or parametric geometry. It's still a work in progress though.