Hey Yorik!

Commenting post 325: Hey Yorik! Thanks for that valueable blog post! I'm coming from the CAD side (worked with PTC Creo 2.0 in Engineering) and now touching the BIM-topic. As a product manufacturer our aim is to offer our products in BIM-formats, so that planners can use and integrate them in their planner-BIM-workflows. Therefore we want to use our engineering models (the geometry, CAD) and bring them together with technical data stored in IFC properties. Everyone in the market wants to have Revit models, even if they don't really know much about BIM and IFC, which uses the open standard of buildingSMART. In my opinion the right way is to provide the models in IFC-files. The content of the files should be usecase driven and depends also on the progress of the planned project. Therefore IFC is able to provide different views (MDV). For examples there will be a view for the start planning phase of a project where the planner needs rather raw geometry and information of the product, whereas he will need a nearly "asBuilt" model when project comes to an end and gets handed over to the facility management of the building owner. FreeCAD should be able to cover standardized ModelDataViews (MDVs) as they are published by different norm institutions like ISO, CEN, DIN etc. With such standard IFC-content you would be able to provide your product data to what the customer (planner) needs and he could import that into his own software (like Revit, ArchiCAD, etc.)

As a medicore python programmer I'm planning to use FreeCAD as a STEP-to-IFC converter by scripting. Therefore I want to use the STEP geometry and put Information from my database to the different IFC-properties according to a the standard "Reference View" from IFC for testing purposes.

Maybe you could support me if I get into trouble?

Greetings Phil