bSDD support in FreeCAD / Blender

Moult

It turns out there is a new version of the bSDD API being developed (v5). @yorik - do you know if any work has been done on bSDD integration in FreeCAD?

If not, perhaps it is worthwhile starting a new shared library (similar to the bcfplugin library) that is agnostic of FreeCAD / Blender, which will handle the API calls, which we can then use for both projects.

@Lars - this is your area :) Any thoughts? Any guidance on the usecases / workflows this may be used in?

yorik

There is no integration of bSDD in FreeCAD ATM, but I heard too BS people are working on it.
It interests me a lot, there would be potentially a lot of good there. I'd be totally willing to make something agnostic we can share between projects!
I'm a little waiting to see how this will come out, though, because ATM it's a kind of guarded space with login, I don't really understand how and where this will evolve into something really easily usable...

Lars

bSDD could be very useful both for identifying objects and for providing definitions and identification of properties. In real life a BIM object will be referred to by multiple names depending on whom you talk to. The same door might be named a fire door, left hinged door, aluminum door, inner-door and possible more. In IFC, you specify this by a combination of naming, enumerations and values on properties. But there will be times when you know a door will be a firedoor but you have yet to decide the FireRating. How do you tell that in and ifc exchange? Or when the list of available enumerations offered by IFC doesn't contain the value you are looking for. How can you make sure the recieving party understand your "USERDEFINED" enum value? How do a familiar term for a building product translate into IFC and vise versa. How can we prevent confusions like when IfcDoorStyleOperationEnum.SINGLE_SWING_LEFT translates to the term "Right hinged door" in a given language? How can a software or user properly identify the value found in PSetDoorCommon.FireRating when the same property might be used to exchange values from a range of different standards? Personally I believe the biggest design mistake in making IFC was done when they left out the possibility to uniquely define individual properties and offered the PSET instead. As a result you see self defined PSETs in most projects. And with good reason. IFC4 have fixed some of this by offering GUIDs on properties but as far as I understand you are still stuck with the complete property sets even when you only need two of the properties within them.
As for bSDD support in BlenderBIM or Freecad, I would love to be able to use normal building terms to identify/classify objects and have the software use bSDD to translate those terms into whatever that means in the language of IFC for exchange with other software. And vise versa; import and IFC file and be able to browse the content of that file using construction terms in my own language in addition to the random names people have used in the exchange. For those of you familiar with the Norwegian RLOM (real life object mapping) project this was exactly what they tried to achieve. Only they had to do it manually.

ReD_CoDE

The big mistake Dion does is that wants to be under the umbrella of IFC (bSI) (and bSDD (IFD)) and IfcOpenShell, and some related projects like FreeCAD, this causes he and the whole community think "limited"
For me, IFC is just a "small" schema/spec that can be base but won't cover many needs/requirements
However, personally, would be happy to see bSDD in Blender/BlenderBIM and FreeCAD

Lars

@ReD_CoDE said:
The big mistake Dion does is that wants to be under the umbrella of IFC (bSI) (and bSDD (IFD)) and IfcOpenShell, and some related projects like FreeCAD, this causes he and the whole community think "limited"
For me, IFC is just a "small" schema/spec that can be base but won't cover many needs/requirements
However, personally, would be happy to see bSDD in Blender/BlenderBIM and FreeCAD

These schemas might be limiting in their scope but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Also in my experience limitation in IFC has never really been the real issue. The issue has rather been shitty and/or limited Ifc/bSDD support in software. That problem will not go away by offering another schema or technology. I think what Dion is doing is wonderful and really inspiring. My two cents :-)

Moult

Just resurrecting this thread, since buildingSMART is holding workshops for other devs to implement them. We want FOSS tools to be at the bleeding edge, so ... here's what we need to build it:

https://github.com/buildingSMART/bSDD/tree/master/2020 prototype
https://bs-dd-api-prototype.azurewebsites.net/swagger

Oh, and now we need a bit of time and effort too :)