Maybe i said it already but i will say it again. I you are serious about modelling and drawings you should understand that they are different media with different purposes. They need each other and can work together but a model is not a replacement for drawings. Read what Rob Snyder says about it!
I think you misinterpreted my point. :) i'm actually saying both drawings and models have a meaning and are are valid technique doing designs. This game is not gonna change. No PMI does with witout either.
Static documents provide a legal base. Can't do design without that. Signed and approved documents etc. This environment needs to be able to store and mage that layer of documents too.
May I ask how to draw a circle in Blender that is truly a circle (it means blender stores its data as a point and a radius line, or circle by three points)? I mean if we used Blender for BIM, we have to get rid of polygon modelling method.
@htlcnn it is not possible in Blender to draw a true circle, as Blender works through Polygons, Beziers, and NURBs. Even a Bezier circle, which looks like a circle is merely an approximation, as is a NURBs circle. However, polygonal representation is a separate topic from the ability to store meaningful data in BIM. None of this stops Blender from storing the data in BIM as a true circle.
For instance, a circular hole may be represented graphically coarsely as a hexagon, but maintain the full metadata required to tag it for manufacturing purposes. Alternatively, two vertices, one at the center, and one at the outer radius, may have a spin modifier applied to it to resemble a circle with an arbitrary number of facets - but as you can see, the center and radius is stored without any information loss.
Arc intersections can also be computed without needing to fully represent a true circle.
There are pros and cons to every system. I have also used a technique where the majority of a design was done in Blender, but specific portions to be manufactured were then modeled in FreeCAD - so a combination was of Blender polygons and FreeCAD solids were used.
The same kind of technique is used for ex in inkscape. the svg format that inkscape uses has no entity to represent a regular polygon. Yet, if you use the polygon tool, it will still be editable as a polygon. Inkscape does that by creating a standard polyline object, but giving it hidden properties such as the number of sides and an exterior radius. Other svg apps see a simple polyline but inkscape knows it is a regular polygon, and treats it as such.
Then maybe you'll have to add that functionality to Blender's basic modelling tools for modelers to use it seamlessly, or using Blender for BIM would only be for seasoned Blender users. That's why I would lean on FreeCAD when comparing modeling capabilities for BIM. But like I said above, FreeCAD has a huge UI and UX gap to fill.
@htlcnn I am in a telegram group of FreeCAD spanish users with almost 300 members. Some of them are architects joined because they said they wanted to learn and use FreeCAD in their jobs. But while the rest of users are following tutorials, interacting to each other, doing a lot of questions and sharing pictures of their works for 3D printing, furniture, mechanical design, etc., the architects members just don´t do anything. Sometimes I think is not the kind of software, it is the kind of user. :)
Static documents provide a legal base. Can't do design without that. Signed and approved documents etc. This environment needs to be able to store and mage that layer of documents too.
I am wondering if technologies like Blockchain can provide the support to give BIM models the status of legal document.
Blender has its own pros and cons, FreeCAD as well
However, the industry is changing very fast, soon the way Revit goes, the way Blender and BlenderBIM and also FreeCAD suggest won't be "efficient"
Today even some have started argue B-Rep and are looking for something more advanced than B-Rep (NURBS or ...)
You guys mainly have focused on BIM, mainly traditional BIM (for me even ISO 19650 is traditional), so some methods like Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) are changing everything
@bitacovir Currently, as a new user to Blender and FreeCAD, I can only contribute by pointing out what the software lack to be good for BIM usage. My arguments here, for the purpose of the thread, are to find an alternative software for end users like me to use for BIM modelling.
Unfortunately I use telegram for chattering, not for contributing (if I was able to). If I knew something, I would contribute on github. Also, I'm not an architect (or the kind of user that only talks and do not contribute). Take it easy.
Cheers.
And please, don't talk about Blockchain when you can effectively use digital signing at the moment. It's mid-term.
But Rapid Prototyping combines those phases to two-three phases and let all work on a project "real-time"
BIM claims let experts work on a project but in reality everyone works on a subset of the project and finally put them all together to have a whole project, so this is silly today
Imagine you have just one project on one Revit/Blender/FreeCAD/... that all work on one desktop or cloud version of the tool
This is Rapid Prototyping, this is Collaborative Information System, all work on a real project "REAL-TIME"
In summary, parameters drive how geometries are created. Parameters are linked among objects. IMHO that's a reasonable approach when we want to create an Information Model. That may be considered when finding alternatives.
hi everyone, I just found out about this forum via a Webex few days ago where Dion talked about Blender BIM/ Free Cad. I am not a coder/ programmer but rather power user of applications such as cad, revit, navisworks..(sadly a lot of autodesk tools ;) From what I heard and followed the last few days ( and correct me if I am wrong), Dion and a few folks here have been developing tools / workflows with open sources tools like Blender / FreeCad to offer AEC firms an alternative ways to "BIM" their projects rather than these commercial tools such as revit, archicad, allplanes...? And more importantly, you want to promote these tools/workflow because you liked these tools yes ? I have a few comments here:
Some one mentioned Blender/FreeCad is way better than Revit when it come to modeling. I believe you. And I also believe that Rhino can do much better job too. Clearly everyone know Rhino is quite cheap and solid 3D modeling software for architectural firms worldwide. So the question of the thread is really about Blender/FreeCad vs Revit or Rhino ?
Someone mentioned documentation and models are not needed to be in the same software, which is fine as long as the export / import is seamless...etc one can model in xxx software then import to Blender BIM to get IFC registered then somehow extract there IFC models for documentation ? That sounds a bit like an old day when we used to extract Rhino models to get plans/sections and import them in autocad for documentation. Sadly they are not bidirectional linking to the 3D model. Am I missing something here ? There are design firms are modelling in Rhino and bringing the geometry into Revit for documentation, collaboration and coordination successfully (However, the larger details (1:20 or 1:10 scale) is often the disconnection between 3D and 2D detailing). Perhaps I would like to see if there is an open source tool that can be a data collector (more like Naviswork) that can be collaborate, coordinate and produce drawings from.
Would love to hear your opinions on the above comments. thanks guys.
Hi guys, I introduce myself: i'm Edwin Cámara, architect by profession, I'm a user of Archicad (advanced), autocad (intermediate) and 3dsMax (intermediate) with 20 years of experience in each of them.
I read all the comments and I think they are all correct. Obviously if we see them focused on the perspective and needs of the person who published it.
Being that out of necessity I have used payment software all my life, since the companies in the area focus on such programs (in a pirate way by the way). Since last year I lost my job so I decided not to incur piracy, learning to use only open source programs for my personal projects. With what I have been a big surprise, good surprise indeed. There are alternatives for practically everything and with excellent results.
Obviously if we compare Freecad with archicad, librecad with autocad and 3dsmax with blender. Coming from the commercial side I will say: "The opensource is still lacking things to get to the commercial level".
But for example: If I compare 3dsmax with Blender, speaking only and specifically about the interface and user experience part; Using blender feels like using 3ds max 10 years behind. But the results obtained with no, these are as good as those obtained with 3dsmax.
And it is that, really between payment software there are also differences and depending on the area that we compare these will be bad or very bad. Example: Archicad vs Revit
Archicad is super easy for the architectural design process, you work as well as if you were doing it with a paper, Revit on the other hand is bad to design directly on it. Instead, revit for Mep design work is excellent and archicad is not bad, it is lousy !!! for these tasks. Archicad regenerates its views faster, but consumes more memory than Revit ... and so we could continue with different examples.
I think the biggest problem in general is the lack of commitment or time to dedicate ourselves to learning new things. And definitely staying with what we know and handle best is always the easiest. And that is why we are looking for alternatives that resemble the software we use, and we think that this new program does not reach or reach the level of what we already have.
I think that everything is simply about knowing how to do it in the program that we define as a tool. After all, between software there are always pros and cons.
@NgocNguyen my response to (1) is I don't see it necessarily as versus, but an addition. Tools have strengths and weaknesses. Tool lock-in is bad, tool diversity is good. In response to (2), the BlenderBIM Add-on is getting some powerful annotation features extracted from IFC and has increasingly powerful partial exchange. There are more coordination features being built too including BCF management and clash detection to replace Navisworks.
Welcome to OSArch, @Darth_Blender ! Good to see more architects here! There is a huge issue with the lack of commitment and time to learn new things. We often just learn whatever we're told to in the office and stick with it. However, I see Blender increasingly making its way into the education space, so that could change.
Comments
Maybe i said it already but i will say it again. I you are serious about modelling and drawings you should understand that they are different media with different purposes. They need each other and can work together but a model is not a replacement for drawings. Read what Rob Snyder says about it!
These two (and more)
Maybe we are getting of topic.
If so, please give your thoughts and comment in an other post.
https://tangerinefocus.com/2019/06/17/drawing-and-models-are-interdependent/
@magicalcloud_75 PMI approach in the BIM world would be gamechanger
Product and Manufacturing Information (PMI) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_and_manufacturing_information)
Also (https://www.capvidia.com/blog/what-is-pmi-product-manufacturing-information)
However, Autodesk has started cooperation with Aras which is not PMI but looks like
I think you misinterpreted my point. :) i'm actually saying both drawings and models have a meaning and are are valid technique doing designs. This game is not gonna change. No PMI does with witout either.
I couldn't agree more
However, I think what I purpose is a "dynamic" documentation/presentation, instead of traditional approach, a static documentation the industry uses
Also, the main gamechanger is "Collaborative Information System" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_product_development) which I work on
Static documents provide a legal base. Can't do design without that. Signed and approved documents etc. This environment needs to be able to store and mage that layer of documents too.
May I ask how to draw a circle in Blender that is truly a circle (it means blender stores its data as a point and a radius line, or circle by three points)? I mean if we used Blender for BIM, we have to get rid of polygon modelling method.
@htlcnn it is not possible in Blender to draw a true circle, as Blender works through Polygons, Beziers, and NURBs. Even a Bezier circle, which looks like a circle is merely an approximation, as is a NURBs circle. However, polygonal representation is a separate topic from the ability to store meaningful data in BIM. None of this stops Blender from storing the data in BIM as a true circle.
For instance, a circular hole may be represented graphically coarsely as a hexagon, but maintain the full metadata required to tag it for manufacturing purposes. Alternatively, two vertices, one at the center, and one at the outer radius, may have a spin modifier applied to it to resemble a circle with an arbitrary number of facets - but as you can see, the center and radius is stored without any information loss.
Arc intersections can also be computed without needing to fully represent a true circle.
There are pros and cons to every system. I have also used a technique where the majority of a design was done in Blender, but specific portions to be manufactured were then modeled in FreeCAD - so a combination was of Blender polygons and FreeCAD solids were used.
The same kind of technique is used for ex in inkscape. the svg format that inkscape uses has no entity to represent a regular polygon. Yet, if you use the polygon tool, it will still be editable as a polygon. Inkscape does that by creating a standard polyline object, but giving it hidden properties such as the number of sides and an exterior radius. Other svg apps see a simple polyline but inkscape knows it is a regular polygon, and treats it as such.
Then maybe you'll have to add that functionality to Blender's basic modelling tools for modelers to use it seamlessly, or using Blender for BIM would only be for seasoned Blender users. That's why I would lean on FreeCAD when comparing modeling capabilities for BIM. But like I said above, FreeCAD has a huge UI and UX gap to fill.
@htlcnn you are absolutely correct.
FreeCAD has a huge UI and UX gap to fill.
@htlcnn I am in a telegram group of FreeCAD spanish users with almost 300 members. Some of them are architects joined because they said they wanted to learn and use FreeCAD in their jobs. But while the rest of users are following tutorials, interacting to each other, doing a lot of questions and sharing pictures of their works for 3D printing, furniture, mechanical design, etc., the architects members just don´t do anything. Sometimes I think is not the kind of software, it is the kind of user. :)
Static documents provide a legal base. Can't do design without that. Signed and approved documents etc. This environment needs to be able to store and mage that layer of documents too.
I am wondering if technologies like Blockchain can provide the support to give BIM models the status of legal document.
Blender has its own pros and cons, FreeCAD as well
However, the industry is changing very fast, soon the way Revit goes, the way Blender and BlenderBIM and also FreeCAD suggest won't be "efficient"
Today even some have started argue B-Rep and are looking for something more advanced than B-Rep (NURBS or ...)
You guys mainly have focused on BIM, mainly traditional BIM (for me even ISO 19650 is traditional), so some methods like Design for Manufacturing and Assembly (DfMA) are changing everything
New era has started based on Rapid Prototyping
New era has started based on Rapid Prototyping
Elaborate, please...
@bitacovir Currently, as a new user to Blender and FreeCAD, I can only contribute by pointing out what the software lack to be good for BIM usage. My arguments here, for the purpose of the thread, are to find an alternative software for end users like me to use for BIM modelling.
Unfortunately I use telegram for chattering, not for contributing (if I was able to). If I knew something, I would contribute on github. Also, I'm not an architect (or the kind of user that only talks and do not contribute). Take it easy.
Cheers.
And please, don't talk about Blockchain when you can effectively use digital signing at the moment. It's mid-term.
What's current approach?
Going these phases
But Rapid Prototyping combines those phases to two-three phases and let all work on a project "real-time"
BIM claims let experts work on a project but in reality everyone works on a subset of the project and finally put them all together to have a whole project, so this is silly today
Imagine you have just one project on one Revit/Blender/FreeCAD/... that all work on one desktop or cloud version of the tool
This is Rapid Prototyping, this is Collaborative Information System, all work on a real project "REAL-TIME"
May I add references to thebuildingcoder's blog posts that describe how they make Revit's modelling the way it is:
In summary, parameters drive how geometries are created. Parameters are linked among objects. IMHO that's a reasonable approach when we want to create an Information Model. That may be considered when finding alternatives.
@yorik @Moult @magicalcloud_75 I think it'd be good have a look at this, 3D Associative Text, from STEP AP242: https://www.cax-if.org/documents/3D-assoc_textRPGv4_a4.pdf
That's a great document, @ReD_CoDE - I will be sure to reference it when I get some time to work a bit more on annotations.
It looks a bit boring academic :P the title suggested something more wild and pratical. Love to see ifc examples
Thanks for sharing
hi everyone, I just found out about this forum via a Webex few days ago where Dion talked about Blender BIM/ Free Cad. I am not a coder/ programmer but rather power user of applications such as cad, revit, navisworks..(sadly a lot of autodesk tools ;) From what I heard and followed the last few days ( and correct me if I am wrong), Dion and a few folks here have been developing tools / workflows with open sources tools like Blender / FreeCad to offer AEC firms an alternative ways to "BIM" their projects rather than these commercial tools such as revit, archicad, allplanes...? And more importantly, you want to promote these tools/workflow because you liked these tools yes ? I have a few comments here:
Would love to hear your opinions on the above comments. thanks guys.
Hi guys, I introduce myself: i'm Edwin Cámara, architect by profession, I'm a user of Archicad (advanced), autocad (intermediate) and 3dsMax (intermediate) with 20 years of experience in each of them.
I read all the comments and I think they are all correct. Obviously if we see them focused on the perspective and needs of the person who published it.
Being that out of necessity I have used payment software all my life, since the companies in the area focus on such programs (in a pirate way by the way). Since last year I lost my job so I decided not to incur piracy, learning to use only open source programs for my personal projects. With what I have been a big surprise, good surprise indeed. There are alternatives for practically everything and with excellent results.
Obviously if we compare Freecad with archicad, librecad with autocad and 3dsmax with blender. Coming from the commercial side I will say: "The opensource is still lacking things to get to the commercial level".
But for example: If I compare 3dsmax with Blender, speaking only and specifically about the interface and user experience part; Using blender feels like using 3ds max 10 years behind. But the results obtained with no, these are as good as those obtained with 3dsmax.
And it is that, really between payment software there are also differences and depending on the area that we compare these will be bad or very bad. Example: Archicad vs Revit
Archicad is super easy for the architectural design process, you work as well as if you were doing it with a paper, Revit on the other hand is bad to design directly on it. Instead, revit for Mep design work is excellent and archicad is not bad, it is lousy !!! for these tasks. Archicad regenerates its views faster, but consumes more memory than Revit ... and so we could continue with different examples.
I think the biggest problem in general is the lack of commitment or time to dedicate ourselves to learning new things. And definitely staying with what we know and handle best is always the easiest. And that is why we are looking for alternatives that resemble the software we use, and we think that this new program does not reach or reach the level of what we already have.
I think that everything is simply about knowing how to do it in the program that we define as a tool. After all, between software there are always pros and cons.
@NgocNguyen my response to (1) is I don't see it necessarily as versus, but an addition. Tools have strengths and weaknesses. Tool lock-in is bad, tool diversity is good. In response to (2), the BlenderBIM Add-on is getting some powerful annotation features extracted from IFC and has increasingly powerful partial exchange. There are more coordination features being built too including BCF management and clash detection to replace Navisworks.
Welcome to OSArch, @Darth_Blender ! Good to see more architects here! There is a huge issue with the lack of commitment and time to learn new things. We often just learn whatever we're told to in the office and stick with it. However, I see Blender increasingly making its way into the education space, so that could change.