Posting on BlenderNation about the BlenderBIM Add-on
For the Blenderheads out there, one of the oldest running and most popular Blender news sites is BlenderNation.com. There was recently a short chat with Bart V who runs the show on Mastodon about posting about the BlenderBIM Add-on ... first more as a general "what is BBIM, what we've been working on lately", and then every 2 months when we do a release, share that on BlenderNation.com as well.
We've had mentions 3 times in the past: https://www.blendernation.com/search/blenderbim/ - when BBIM started in 2019, when we won the 2020 buildingSMART awards, and in 2022 when we advertised for sponsored development.
At first I thought of submitting myself - after all, I write the release notes so it would be merely a copy paste into BN. Then I thought about @Ace who does amazing update videos which may be more digestible / suitable for the BN news format which is typically shorter snippets (release notes are often >1k words!) Then I thought I'd just post about it here and if anybody is interested, let me know and you can be the one who does it!
Edit: might also be cool to post it regularly on osarch.org too - we really need more posts there.
Comments
I'll make an account and drop the video there on the next release!
I often have a little summarised version of your notes on the side to read as well that can be directly put in.
@Ace awesome! Would you also be interested in writing a general introduction now? See https://mastodon.social/@BartV/110807448254722969
I'd be keen, so just to be certain,
a general article on the blenderbim addon, covering:
mission,
features,
tools
& updates
And we post to Mastodon & BlenderNation?
Yep! I think Bart was just thinking about a submission to BlenderNation, perhaps as a general introduction to the project to those who might not be aware it exists. Up to you whether or not you also want to share on Mastodon :)
A blendernation introduction is likely to be "look at this cool BIM stuff happening with blender".
Other introductions that could be written for other audiences: "BlenderBIM: a power tool for fixing, enriching and extracting data from IFC files"; or "I'm a facilities manager, what can I do with this IFC file that came with my new building?" etc. etc..
This is the title, I'm taking this thanks Bruno!
@Ace I had a couple of thoughts about the article you volunteered to write :) The BlenderNation audience may have no idea what BIM is as they will probably think it is architectural visualization. Maybe start with an explanation of BIM that your grandparents would understand. As an example talk about why a simple two box toilet with loads of data attached is more important in BIM than what a high poly porcelain sculptor is, this type of description may help differentiate BIM from archvis in the minds of the reader. The other thing is that BIM is not the 'finished product' unlike a lot of the work done in Blender, e.g. making images, animations and assets. Whereas BIM is the blueprints for something that will be built, (shit gets real!) And make it funny, the rest of the world think us people who work in architecture are a bit boring, that is obviously not true :)
Bump :)
@Ace how are you going with this, if time is against you would collaboration be helpful?
Apologies, slowly but surely I am taking back control of my time,
If only I had more time I would have written a shorter article, this one will be for Blender Nation and then will make it more modular for mastodon
I've done a little bit and kept it relatively informal, @Nigel let me know if this seems alright to you or if I've missed the mark, I'd appreciate the comments
@Ace no worries, life is busy! I have a read and get some comments back asap
@Ace great! a couple of notes: The structural analysis feature is only half complete, you can define a structural model in IFC, but there isn't any way to do analysis of this model, yet, fixing this is a major project. It's nice to see my name in there, but there are many people who have committed much more code than me, we have Dion and Thomas to thank for BlenderBIM. And some words need capitalisation consistency ie. IFC, IfcOpenShell, BlenderBIM.
A couple of ideas for your consideration (note that Blender's main competitors are Maya and 3DSmax, owned by Autodesk)….
Ever wonder why most buildings look so blocky, inside and out? One of the reasons is that Revit, Autodesk's architectural design software that dominates the industry, has only five modeling tools. Yes, you read that correctly… five! Fortunately for architects who are fed up with Revit (over the past few years, hundreds have signed open complaint letters to the CEO of Autodesk), the BlenderBIM Add-on, which started four years ago by Dion Moult and Thomas Kreijin, is bringing open-source technology to the literal brick and mortar industry. Blender has been used for years to do architectural visualization. The BlenderBIM Add-on is far more than pretty pictures; it provides a comprehensive, open-source, suite of tools for building design, construction, and operations.
The BlenderBIM add-on is really picking up speed bringing tools to architects, structural engineers, mechanical engineers, electrical engineers and plumbing engineers (basically, everyone involved in designing buildings). The BlenderBIM add-on also brings costing and scheduling tools for the people who build the buildings and tools for the people who operate and maintain buildings. What makes all these tools special is that they are built on an open industry standard data schema, maintained by an association called BuildingSMART. The open industry standard data schema is very important because it means that users own and control their own data, not Autodesk.
Most of the tools are still alpha software (not for the faint of heart), but the BlenderBIM Add-on has already been used by architects to get government approvals on many small projects.
The BlenderBIM Add-on typically has nine small enhancements or bug fixes each day, with a stable release every two months. It is moving fast, but there is a long way to go.
One of the contributors to the BlenderBIM Add-on is Bruno Postle. Bruno designs metal sculptures using Blender and then uses the BlenderBIM Add-on to create the files that fabricators use to build them. Bruno recently built a collaboration tool for the BlenderBIM Add-on using Git, because many people in the industry are frustrated with Autodesk’s expensive, proprietary cloud solution.
Awesome! Just a minor note to consistently refer to it as the BlenderBIM Add-on (as per agreement with Ton) :)
When talking about the Proprietary BIM authoring programs I would avoid naming them, instead you could say something like this...
While Big BIM companies have been carefully armour plating their DRMs and marshalling their user base into a 'supermax-like' ecosystem a group of FOSS developers have been creating the BlenderBIM Add-on. Founded on the premise that software and data should be free and open...
I agree with Nigel's comment. “Attack dog” tone is not cool.
You might also want to say something like, “Thanks to the amazing flexibility of the Blender user interface, the BlenderBIM Add-on has recently completely revamped the menu bars to better suit the needs of users in the building industry, which is different from the needs of CG users.”
“In the BlenderBIM Add-on, every object has both geometry and lots of associated data. For example, a door will have materials, fire-rating, cost, and lots of other data. The BlenderBIM Add-on has a useful utility that allows the associated data to be viewed and manipulated in a spreadsheet.”
You might also want to include a GIF from Yasine showing a construction sequence animation. That’s cool!
Fact check: The BlenderBIM Add-on typically has seven small enhancements or bug fixes each day.
Whatever became of this? Was it sent to BlenderNation?
I'm not aware of anything that was submitted. It would be super cool if anybody wanted to take the lead on this and submit whenever (in the past Allan Brito submitted news to BN) :)
Apologies I've been dealing with some family matters, I've been prioritizing work since I've been back.
I still plan to post, most likely this week, If anyone wants to roll with it they are welcome to use the text