@Moult said: @Eliel ! Welcome to OSArch! I think you may be our first electrical engineer! It would be great to build FOSS software that contains all the features required for electrical :)
Hi everyone here
I have already posted something here; and now I realize that I have not introduced myself. My name is Sabu Francis. I am from India. I am 59 years old. I am an architect at heart, and also a software developer, researcher and a teacher. The internal image I carry about myself is that of an architect -- I got into software developer as I didnt seem to have a choice. Though I do extensive coding in several different languages; and several domains, I am totally engaged with the issues of the process of architectural design -- rather than the product of architectural design (There are already lots of people in the latter area)
The central question that I have been working on for last 30+ years is that of representation of architecture or to put in another way; the linguistic aspects of architecture. It took the writing of a design software to put my small insights about lingustics in architecture to give some teeth to abstract theories.
As Steven Covey said; we all solve problems twice: Once in our mind and once in the real world out there. In architecture specfically, we now need multiple minds to get problems in our field solved. But then one could ask what are the symbolic equivalents of "alphabets" that other domains have sorted out, in our field. For e.g. the mathematicians have symbols such as +, -, / and * (and so on). No mathematicians would ever contradict those. But for some reason; our field is bereft of discussions on what constitutes our "alphabets" I discovered one set, which I use in the software that I developed for designing (and one of the reason I am here, is because i am about to open source my work) It is called TAD (The Architect's Desktop)
It uses a fractal kind of "alphabets" which can be used to describe a building right from very early stages of design all the way to how much detail you want to get into. My office has done lots of project; both large and small. Two research projects were also done using TAD as the modeling framework, along with IIT Bombay.
But TAD did not come from any academic environment -- It came from the practice of a small office in what was then the largest city being constructed in the world; Navi Mumbai (Satellite city of Mumbai ... but now maybe some Chinese city has overtaken it) ... and TAD seems to have stayed the distance -- right from DOS days to now on Windows (and other system which has WINE)
I am the architect of the non-railway projects of Konkan Railway Corporation -- a quite a demanding client, with quite complex requirements. I feel like "Rip-van-winkle" here as people are doing lots of fascinating intricate work. Though my sprint cycles are quite short, in some areas I go quite irritatingly slow --as I have many questions and I believe in minimalistic designs (something like "minimallly invasive surgery") . I hope that the association with learned members here would be a win-win one
Hi everyone here
I have already posted something here; and now I realize that I have not introduced myself. My name is Sabu Francis. I am from India. I am 59 years old. I am an architect at heart, and also a software developer, researcher and a teacher. The internal image I carry about myself is that of an architect -- I got into software developer as I didnt seem to have a choice. Though I do extensive coding in several different languages; and several domains, I am totally engaged with the issues of the process of architectural design -- rather than the product of architectural design (There are already lots of people in the latter area)
The central question that I have been working on for last 30+ years is that of representation of architecture or to put in another way; the linguistic aspects of architecture. It took the writing of a design software to put my small insights about lingustics in architecture to give some teeth to abstract theories.
As Steven Covey said; we all solve problems twice: Once in our mind and once in the real world out there. In architecture specfically, we now need multiple minds to get problems in our field solved. But then one could ask what are the symbolic equivalents of "alphabets" that other domains have sorted out, in our field. For e.g. the mathematicians have symbols such as +, -, / and * (and so on). No mathematicians would ever contradict those. But for some reason; our field is bereft of discussions on what constitutes our "alphabets" I discovered one set, which I use in the software that I developed for designing (and one of the reason I am here, is because i am about to open source my work) It is called TAD (The Architect's Desktop)
It uses a fractal kind of "alphabets" which can be used to describe a building right from very early stages of design all the way to how much detail you want to get into. My office has done lots of project; both large and small. Two research projects were also done using TAD as the modeling framework, along with IIT Bombay.
But TAD did not come from any academic environment -- It came from the practice of a small office in what was then the largest city being constructed in the world; Navi Mumbai (Satellite city of Mumbai ... but now maybe some Chinese city has overtaken it) ... and TAD seems to have stayed the distance -- right from DOS days to now on Windows (and other system which has WINE)
I am the architect of the non-railway projects of Konkan Railway Corporation -- a quite a demanding client, with quite complex requirements. I feel like "Rip-van-winkle" here as people are doing lots of fascinating intricate work. Though my sprint cycles are quite short, in some areas I go quite irritatingly slow --as I have many questions and I believe in minimalistic designs (something like "minimallly invasive surgery") . I hope that the association with learned members here would be a win-win one
Hi Everyone I am looking for possible work flows with Freecad, Belnder, Librecad, Qcad.
Hi I have looked into this, as a building designer for over 22 years.
I am proficient in the following programs.
Archicad, Visual, Building, Draftsight 2d, NanoCad, (Autocad alternative), Revit Architecture, Chief Architect, Turbocad, & Revit.
My 3D workflow consists Chief Architect, Visual Building Aus, Sketchup , or Blender .
My 2D I use NanoCad v5 ( Like Autocad LT) its based on Intellicad programming ( Autocad owned it at one stage but was forced NOT to close it down by the US Government, so Programming was released as paid OS etc...) DWG Native FREE for commercial use. It does have some limitations but so far so good.
Blender, is really impressing & lots of people using it .
I am looking at using OS programs but struggle to find like minded people to use the OS programs in any collaboration Field.
I will hopefully find people similar to myself On this Community.
@JenuJacob said:
Hi everyone!
I am here precisely because of this!
I am an architect and I (like many, I assume) have invested a lot of time in my professional career learning software which I could never afford to pay individually (luckily my workplaces could!). Sketchup going the subscription route has done it for me. It is time I took FOSS seriously and currently, it seems Blender and BlenderBIM is what I should be concentrating on!
However, there is this problem of learning Blender. Working with SketchUp has let's say, made me lazy and spoilt, and I am at a loss for where to start! I am pretty sure a lot of people would be feeling the same way. So can someone point out some good courses online where I could start with Blender (geared towards architecture)? Sketchup and Layout have pretty much been useful for my needs (as in I never needed advanced BIM capability, just basic annotations and dimensioning with dynamic sections and plans etc).
@bruno_perdigao said:
Hello everyone!
My name is Bruno and I am an architect from Brazil. I work at my own small studio since 2011 and have been working with several different kind of projects (residential and institucional, public and private). My design tools used to be the combo AutoCAD and Sketchup, because it was the most popular workflow with architects in my region and also what it was taught in college, but I have been using Archicad for the past couple of years. I have always been a free software enthusiastic and is great to see this growing in the AEC industry. Recently I started teaching at the Architecture School and I realized even more the importance of free software for students and sigle practioners who cannot afford the standard market softwares. I am willing to make the free software workflow for architecture design as one of my research subjects and hope to contributte with some feedbacks.
Hi Bruno , great to see this. Some programs to consider for your students will be, Librecad (OS) (Cross platform), Qcad (OS) (Cross platform) paid and free, DoubleCAD XT FREE version ( Similar to Turbocad) , naoCADv5 is free, and in my view is closest to Autocad, Blender , and Freecad.
There are many more to choose from.
Hi all!
My name is Laurens, I am from the Netherlands. I just graduated from my master's studies Geomatics for the Built Environment at the TU Delft and am now working at a research institute in Slovenia. In my studies we basically used all sorts of geographical data, to do something useful with it. I now will be working on BIM and therefore am exploring what is 'out' there. Areas of expertise up til now revolve around GIS, point clouds, 3D city models (CityGML) and 3D analysis in general. I learned to use Blender as a hobby this summer, but hopefully something even more fruitful will come out :)
Welcome @JosephLom ! It's still very early days and we're still building the software, so we're really happy for you to join us on this journey!
Welcome @LaurensJN ! If you're with TU Delft, maybe say hello to @aothms ! You will be happy to hear that the BlenderBIM Add-on supports georeferencing in IFC! @aothms has also done great work around point clouds and HDF5 storage of IFC data, so perhaps there may be some synergies there.
howdy, just became aware because of the bSI Summit talk today. freeware scares the hell out of some people... shame i couldnt see them live. with the ldac (http://linkedbuildingdata.net/ldac2020/#programme) we discussed the idea of a l-cde (a linked common data environment) using solid (https://inrupt.com/solid)... that could frighten some people too :-)
Hi All
Very pleased to have found this group which I've been following with a lot of interest since probably February this year with h/t I'd say to @Jesusbill I think it was - I probably should have introduced myself earlier..
Long story short I'm a Structural Engineer based in Ireland who discovered a long time ago that I had a passion for structural analysis of bridge decks. There wasn't too much demand for anything other than 2 span motorway bridges here at the time, so I was moved into the mad world of building structures of all kinds where I've been basically ever since. Traveled a fair bit and worked in different places/ different sized engineering consultancies, notably north America and Australia in the mid 1990s and New Zealand in the early 2000s. Have experience with building envelopes and other construction specialisms. Probably biggest lesson learnt was that no matter where you are people are the key.
Decided in late 2000s that the construction industry is broken and that there really had to be a better way to practice; especially since the dotcom wired the world to create a #GlobalVillage and software clearly was eating everything. I like books, old and new and thought a lot about value creation. Still do. One conclusion is that designer value can be such an intangible thing that its hard for people to appreciate it before its created. But it takes lots of time and effort to create good work. Think this is true for any designer including Architect's, other design professionals, s/w programmers etc. Artists still make more money when they're dead.
Suffice to say its been quite a journey where I've learned lots of things, re-acquainted myself with computer h/w and s/w technologies at least sufficiently for my purposes. And needless to say I've gone down lots and lots of rabbit holes which I reckon could have been avoided had I encountered this group 10 years ago. But then again I've no regrets as no pain no gain as we say here. (I'm old enough to have run structural analyses via a DOS terminal and written stuff in Turbo Pascal but that's so long ago a lot of whats posted on this site and others goes right over my head - but I'm a work in progress and hoping to catch-up some day ;-))
In practice I use a lot of different s/w everyday and am pretty agnostic about whether its paid or open source. My only proviso is that whatever tools that you choose to use must provide transparency to what you do. This is the most important attribute for me. I could add that obviously any tools that you use should make things better but in the 'BIM' space clearly that hasn't worked out so well. Its mostly about people farming I reckon, selling boxes of s/w dreams - at least from what I've seen. But I suppose Marketers are designers too..
Particular open source areas of interest for me are the #freecad project which I've been following for quite a few years and huge credit to @yorik and everyone else involved there. Really tremendous progress in a relatively short space of time. I use #onshape for my very limited MCAD needs so it has been interesting to see the development side by side.
Am also very interested in #code_aster and thanks again to @Jesusbill's and others for their efforts there as this s/w has been a slow work in progress for me over the years to use directly. @Moult what can I say except think your #blenderbim addon is really excellent. Besides from re-acquainting me with blender which I did look at years ago although back then it was completely beyond me learn or find a place for. Now, while not a production tool for me yet, I think its opening up a whole new world of possibilities. I've actually had quite a bit of fun with it. You're made a clearly very powerful s/w much more accessible and so I think it holds great promise for a better future working together in construction. Well done.
Better stop there as I could go on. Not sure how much help I can be to this group except to encourage you all with your great efforts. You are on the right path doing worthwhile work! And contributions, no matter how small, do definitely compound over time. Rgds Paul
(PS if this still is Post 101, as it was when I started writing it, the coincidence certainly resonates with me - while not 1984, it is a brave new world for sure. But whatever dystopian future arrives I've certainly decided that I'm most definitely on #TeamHuman - after all being human means that the future is as you choose it to be. So choose well ;-))
Howdy @philoktet ! About linked CDEs, maybe we should chat with the guys behind OpenProject and see what can happen there? That might be cool... maybe if OpenProject implements something we can then implement a lightweight alternative / addition to OpenProject to help demonstrate CDE data federation...
Welcome @scegos ! Very happy to have you on board! Anytime you come across something you think could be improved or a feature that would really impact you as a user on any of the projects, please post about it and we'll try to build it! Let's get this snowball growing in the industry!
Hi Paul @scegos, very nice to hear your background and story, I am sure your mentality and your experience can help in various ways, thanks for the encouraging words. I agree that people are the key so I am very positive about where we're heading :)
@Moult OpenProject has a BIM version from 10.4. But they (OpenProject company - not the community) might want to make the most money out of it. I couldn't find any guide to install BIM version on a standalone server. I tried to edit some environment variables and was able to make it OpenProject BIM on my server. From what I've seen, they're using IfcOpenShell at backend to convert ifc models so that they can be viewed in browser. I didn't know Ruby or Rails, so I couldn't dig deeper into the code base to see how they called IfcOpenShell, but my OpenProject BIM install has been converting my models forever.
Would it be possible to find an opensource alternative to OpenProject for a CDE at the moment?
@htlcnn said: @Moult OpenProject has a BIM version from 10.4. But they (OpenProject company - not the community) might want to make the most money out of it. I couldn't find any guide to install BIM version on a standalone server. I tried to edit some environment variables and was able to make it OpenProject BIM on my server. From what I've seen, they're using IfcOpenShell at backend to convert ifc models so that they can be viewed in browser. I didn't know Ruby or Rails, so I couldn't dig deeper into the code base to see how they called IfcOpenShell, but my OpenProject BIM install has been converting my models forever.
Would it be possible to find an opensource alternative to OpenProject for a CDE at the moment?
Hi everyone,
My name is Kai Zhu, I am a Graduate architect living and working in Melbourne, Australia. I have a keen interest in computational design for the built environment and am very keen to contribute to the OS community. I am able to code in Python and C#.
Cheers!
From there, you can start contributing code / features / bugfixes to projects like the BlenderBIM Add-on, FreeCAD, or various IFC utilities like IfcDiff, IfcClash, IfcPatch, IfcCSV, etc. You can also talk live to any developers who can guide you on your first contribution!
Hello kids! What a long strange trip it's been. My journey here is a recent dive back down the rabbit hole. I spent many early years pursuing a fit for my construction nerd disposition, mostly residential construction. I always felt something would come of the BIM process. I used to get the Autodesk trial software every year and go like hell for the 30 days trying to make something of it. Never seem to put anything together but I liked the concept and it fit well into my dream eradicating the cookie cutter construction prevalent, especially in the entry level, in residential housing. The crash of 2008 sent me on my way to another career and all was forgotten until recently exploring the thought of building again. I always swore that I would never get back into construction after seeing the crap being constructed my last few years. All in the name of low costs with big square footage. But now I'm looking for another career change and little pieces of the puzzle are coming together in an interesting way. I suppose I would have never been aware of any of this, outside of Autodesk, if it wasn't for Microsoft taking my beloved Windows XP. I read the writing on the wall, and while I floated down the denial river on Windows 7 Pro I was looking for alternatives. In comes Linux and I installed Arch Linux on my laptop to explore, and this lead to being open to other open source software and methodologies. Most recently I was looking to replace Sketchup since they went to a subscription model as most others have. This lead to Blender, Blender lead to Archipack, Archipack lead to BlenderBIM, BlenderBIM lead to this introductory post. I'm afraid I don't really have much in skills to enhance this project however I do hope you will allow me to explore and tinker. I have a lot to learn just to get my head around the possibilities but if my intuition is correct it will be worth the trouble. They say there are no dumb questions but that doesn't rule out the occasional inquisitive idiot. I will try not to be a bother if you can allow me to follow along. I spent my last years of residential construction as purchasing/ estimating director for a very small builder so, if nothing else, I will have some insight on that process. It seems most of this is professional level/ commercial architecture but there is an enormous market for this in residential but it would be a paradigm shift of exponential proportion to pull it off. That is not my goal right out of the gate but does factor in to my interest in learning more about what is possible in today's technology. Also, the payoff would be enormous if this were to become a player in that sector. Anyway, I have a long way to go. You have a nice forum here and seems to be a productive bunch. Thanks for having me.
Welcome @Auraria ! It's a diverse industry, so every new usecase presented to us helps build stronger tools! Please let us know your thoughts when using the tools and we'll do the best we can to support / build / fix / things :)
Hi all!
I just started to look into open source projects I could contribute to, to hone my python skills and stay up to date with BIM. This seems to be a great place for both :)
Quick profile:
I worked as a joiner in Germany and graduated as an architectural technologist in Denmark, where I live now.
Good day to everybody. (By the way, could the forum be organized to have the newest posts appear first?)
I'm an architect in Boston, Massachusetts and am starting to teach myself some programming. I'm very interested in open BIM but also a long way from being able to contribute anything from a programming standpoint. So I'm mainly here to listen & learn. Perhaps I can chip in regarding architecture or building construction.
Hello.
I’m Xavier from Barcelona, Spain. I’m an architecture technologist with studies in building construction and electronics. Nowadays working at a building construction company, in the integrated services branch.
I have experienced in the past with 3D software in windows and Linux systems, a far as the 3DS4 in MS-DOS, I mean. Time flies. Two years ago I studied a BIM Manager course and discovered all the potential in the methodology.
At my free time I love to improve my domotic system with Home Assistant, testing VR, 3Dprinting...you know, the usual “Geek package”. When I discovered the OSArchwiki my mind blow. BIM with Blender and Freecad it’s just the next natural step for me.
Thanks to everyone for sharing, I’m ready to learn and share too with this great community.
Welcome to OSArch, @xavitron ! I'm glad you enjoyed the wiki! We're actually in the middle of a website redesign and cleanup - it'd be great if you could give your thoughts in this thread!
Hi everyone,
My name is Simon, and I'm an architect in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I'm a heavy Revit user at work, but I'm always looking for new FOSS workflows that can realistically be implemented in a commercial environment, but also for my personal work. Right now I'm exploring the BIM side of FreeCAD and just found Blender BIM, and will be looking at that more extensively going forward.
Comments
My Dream!!
Hi Duncan, I'm actually at DTU in Copenhagen.
Hi everyone here
I have already posted something here; and now I realize that I have not introduced myself. My name is Sabu Francis. I am from India. I am 59 years old. I am an architect at heart, and also a software developer, researcher and a teacher. The internal image I carry about myself is that of an architect -- I got into software developer as I didnt seem to have a choice. Though I do extensive coding in several different languages; and several domains, I am totally engaged with the issues of the process of architectural design -- rather than the product of architectural design (There are already lots of people in the latter area)
The central question that I have been working on for last 30+ years is that of representation of architecture or to put in another way; the linguistic aspects of architecture. It took the writing of a design software to put my small insights about lingustics in architecture to give some teeth to abstract theories.
As Steven Covey said; we all solve problems twice: Once in our mind and once in the real world out there. In architecture specfically, we now need multiple minds to get problems in our field solved. But then one could ask what are the symbolic equivalents of "alphabets" that other domains have sorted out, in our field. For e.g. the mathematicians have symbols such as +, -, / and * (and so on). No mathematicians would ever contradict those. But for some reason; our field is bereft of discussions on what constitutes our "alphabets" I discovered one set, which I use in the software that I developed for designing (and one of the reason I am here, is because i am about to open source my work) It is called TAD (The Architect's Desktop)
It uses a fractal kind of "alphabets" which can be used to describe a building right from very early stages of design all the way to how much detail you want to get into. My office has done lots of project; both large and small. Two research projects were also done using TAD as the modeling framework, along with IIT Bombay.
But TAD did not come from any academic environment -- It came from the practice of a small office in what was then the largest city being constructed in the world; Navi Mumbai (Satellite city of Mumbai ... but now maybe some Chinese city has overtaken it) ... and TAD seems to have stayed the distance -- right from DOS days to now on Windows (and other system which has WINE)
I am the architect of the non-railway projects of Konkan Railway Corporation -- a quite a demanding client, with quite complex requirements. I feel like "Rip-van-winkle" here as people are doing lots of fascinating intricate work. Though my sprint cycles are quite short, in some areas I go quite irritatingly slow --as I have many questions and I believe in minimalistic designs (something like "minimallly invasive surgery") . I hope that the association with learned members here would be a win-win one
Hi everyone here
I have already posted something here; and now I realize that I have not introduced myself. My name is Sabu Francis. I am from India. I am 59 years old. I am an architect at heart, and also a software developer, researcher and a teacher. The internal image I carry about myself is that of an architect -- I got into software developer as I didnt seem to have a choice. Though I do extensive coding in several different languages; and several domains, I am totally engaged with the issues of the process of architectural design -- rather than the product of architectural design (There are already lots of people in the latter area)
The central question that I have been working on for last 30+ years is that of representation of architecture or to put in another way; the linguistic aspects of architecture. It took the writing of a design software to put my small insights about lingustics in architecture to give some teeth to abstract theories.
As Steven Covey said; we all solve problems twice: Once in our mind and once in the real world out there. In architecture specfically, we now need multiple minds to get problems in our field solved. But then one could ask what are the symbolic equivalents of "alphabets" that other domains have sorted out, in our field. For e.g. the mathematicians have symbols such as +, -, / and * (and so on). No mathematicians would ever contradict those. But for some reason; our field is bereft of discussions on what constitutes our "alphabets" I discovered one set, which I use in the software that I developed for designing (and one of the reason I am here, is because i am about to open source my work) It is called TAD (The Architect's Desktop)
It uses a fractal kind of "alphabets" which can be used to describe a building right from very early stages of design all the way to how much detail you want to get into. My office has done lots of project; both large and small. Two research projects were also done using TAD as the modeling framework, along with IIT Bombay.
But TAD did not come from any academic environment -- It came from the practice of a small office in what was then the largest city being constructed in the world; Navi Mumbai (Satellite city of Mumbai ... but now maybe some Chinese city has overtaken it) ... and TAD seems to have stayed the distance -- right from DOS days to now on Windows (and other system which has WINE)
I am the architect of the non-railway projects of Konkan Railway Corporation -- a quite a demanding client, with quite complex requirements. I feel like "Rip-van-winkle" here as people are doing lots of fascinating intricate work. Though my sprint cycles are quite short, in some areas I go quite irritatingly slow --as I have many questions and I believe in minimalistic designs (something like "minimallly invasive surgery") . I hope that the association with learned members here would be a win-win one
Hi Everyone I am looking for possible work flows with Freecad, Belnder, Librecad, Qcad.
Hi I have looked into this, as a building designer for over 22 years.
I am proficient in the following programs.
Archicad, Visual, Building, Draftsight 2d, NanoCad, (Autocad alternative), Revit Architecture, Chief Architect, Turbocad, & Revit.
My 3D workflow consists Chief Architect, Visual Building Aus, Sketchup , or Blender .
My 2D I use NanoCad v5 ( Like Autocad LT) its based on Intellicad programming ( Autocad owned it at one stage but was forced NOT to close it down by the US Government, so Programming was released as paid OS etc...) DWG Native FREE for commercial use. It does have some limitations but so far so good.
Blender, is really impressing & lots of people using it .
I am looking at using OS programs but struggle to find like minded people to use the OS programs in any collaboration Field.
I will hopefully find people similar to myself On this Community.
Yes I agree.
Hi Bruno , great to see this. Some programs to consider for your students will be, Librecad (OS) (Cross platform), Qcad (OS) (Cross platform) paid and free, DoubleCAD XT FREE version ( Similar to Turbocad) , naoCADv5 is free, and in my view is closest to Autocad, Blender , and Freecad.
There are many more to choose from.
Hi all!
My name is Laurens, I am from the Netherlands. I just graduated from my master's studies Geomatics for the Built Environment at the TU Delft and am now working at a research institute in Slovenia. In my studies we basically used all sorts of geographical data, to do something useful with it. I now will be working on BIM and therefore am exploring what is 'out' there. Areas of expertise up til now revolve around GIS, point clouds, 3D city models (CityGML) and 3D analysis in general. I learned to use Blender as a hobby this summer, but hopefully something even more fruitful will come out :)
Welcome @JosephLom ! It's still very early days and we're still building the software, so we're really happy for you to join us on this journey!
Welcome @LaurensJN ! If you're with TU Delft, maybe say hello to @aothms ! You will be happy to hear that the BlenderBIM Add-on supports georeferencing in IFC! @aothms has also done great work around point clouds and HDF5 storage of IFC data, so perhaps there may be some synergies there.
howdy, just became aware because of the bSI Summit talk today. freeware scares the hell out of some people... shame i couldnt see them live. with the ldac (http://linkedbuildingdata.net/ldac2020/#programme) we discussed the idea of a l-cde (a linked common data environment) using solid (https://inrupt.com/solid)... that could frighten some people too :-)
Hi All
Very pleased to have found this group which I've been following with a lot of interest since probably February this year with h/t I'd say to @Jesusbill I think it was - I probably should have introduced myself earlier..
Long story short I'm a Structural Engineer based in Ireland who discovered a long time ago that I had a passion for structural analysis of bridge decks. There wasn't too much demand for anything other than 2 span motorway bridges here at the time, so I was moved into the mad world of building structures of all kinds where I've been basically ever since. Traveled a fair bit and worked in different places/ different sized engineering consultancies, notably north America and Australia in the mid 1990s and New Zealand in the early 2000s. Have experience with building envelopes and other construction specialisms. Probably biggest lesson learnt was that no matter where you are people are the key.
Decided in late 2000s that the construction industry is broken and that there really had to be a better way to practice; especially since the dotcom wired the world to create a #GlobalVillage and software clearly was eating everything. I like books, old and new and thought a lot about value creation. Still do. One conclusion is that designer value can be such an intangible thing that its hard for people to appreciate it before its created. But it takes lots of time and effort to create good work. Think this is true for any designer including Architect's, other design professionals, s/w programmers etc. Artists still make more money when they're dead.
Suffice to say its been quite a journey where I've learned lots of things, re-acquainted myself with computer h/w and s/w technologies at least sufficiently for my purposes. And needless to say I've gone down lots and lots of rabbit holes which I reckon could have been avoided had I encountered this group 10 years ago. But then again I've no regrets as no pain no gain as we say here. (I'm old enough to have run structural analyses via a DOS terminal and written stuff in Turbo Pascal but that's so long ago a lot of whats posted on this site and others goes right over my head - but I'm a work in progress and hoping to catch-up some day ;-))
In practice I use a lot of different s/w everyday and am pretty agnostic about whether its paid or open source. My only proviso is that whatever tools that you choose to use must provide transparency to what you do. This is the most important attribute for me. I could add that obviously any tools that you use should make things better but in the 'BIM' space clearly that hasn't worked out so well. Its mostly about people farming I reckon, selling boxes of s/w dreams - at least from what I've seen. But I suppose Marketers are designers too..
Particular open source areas of interest for me are the #freecad project which I've been following for quite a few years and huge credit to @yorik and everyone else involved there. Really tremendous progress in a relatively short space of time. I use #onshape for my very limited MCAD needs so it has been interesting to see the development side by side.
Am also very interested in #code_aster and thanks again to @Jesusbill's and others for their efforts there as this s/w has been a slow work in progress for me over the years to use directly.
@Moult what can I say except think your #blenderbim addon is really excellent. Besides from re-acquainting me with blender which I did look at years ago although back then it was completely beyond me learn or find a place for. Now, while not a production tool for me yet, I think its opening up a whole new world of possibilities. I've actually had quite a bit of fun with it. You're made a clearly very powerful s/w much more accessible and so I think it holds great promise for a better future working together in construction. Well done.
Better stop there as I could go on. Not sure how much help I can be to this group except to encourage you all with your great efforts. You are on the right path doing worthwhile work! And contributions, no matter how small, do definitely compound over time. Rgds Paul
(PS if this still is Post 101, as it was when I started writing it, the coincidence certainly resonates with me - while not 1984, it is a brave new world for sure. But whatever dystopian future arrives I've certainly decided that I'm most definitely on #TeamHuman - after all being human means that the future is as you choose it to be. So choose well ;-))
Howdy @philoktet ! About linked CDEs, maybe we should chat with the guys behind OpenProject and see what can happen there? That might be cool... maybe if OpenProject implements something we can then implement a lightweight alternative / addition to OpenProject to help demonstrate CDE data federation...
Welcome @scegos ! Very happy to have you on board! Anytime you come across something you think could be improved or a feature that would really impact you as a user on any of the projects, please post about it and we'll try to build it! Let's get this snowball growing in the industry!
Hi Paul @scegos, very nice to hear your background and story, I am sure your mentality and your experience can help in various ways, thanks for the encouraging words. I agree that people are the key so I am very positive about where we're heading :)
@Moult OpenProject has a BIM version from 10.4. But they (OpenProject company - not the community) might want to make the most money out of it. I couldn't find any guide to install BIM version on a standalone server. I tried to edit some environment variables and was able to make it OpenProject BIM on my server. From what I've seen, they're using IfcOpenShell at backend to convert ifc models so that they can be viewed in browser. I didn't know Ruby or Rails, so I couldn't dig deeper into the code base to see how they called IfcOpenShell, but my OpenProject BIM install has been converting my models forever.
Would it be possible to find an opensource alternative to OpenProject for a CDE at the moment?
@Moult, @htlcnn there is solid from inrupt, the small Version withbthe Data pods won’t do. But there is solid server as opensource which can connect to other servers and build a peer2peer network which can be used as a CDE for the parties involved. A no-cloud solution :-) thing is you actually run graph data base behind that and you will have to use ifc2rdf or similar (ifcOWL) to make use of it.... but the performance is not of this world. We have a Modellviewer working with it, so we have each Modell in a crazy data base and in a viewer, no DMS (documents yet) but we can link to any source. Have a look here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335947234_Towards_a_Decentralised_Common_Data_Environment_using_Linked_Building_Data_and_the_Solid_Ecosystem?enrichId=rgreq-0c5cbd84660a43d0040bcc0995b19dbd-XXX&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzMzNTk0NzIzNDtBUzo4MDUyMjUyNzUzNDI4NDhAMTU2ODk5MjA3NDExMA==&el=1_x_2&_esc=publicationCoverPdf
Hi everyone,
My name is Kai Zhu, I am a Graduate architect living and working in Melbourne, Australia. I have a keen interest in computational design for the built environment and am very keen to contribute to the OS community. I am able to code in Python and C#.
Cheers!
Welcome @kaiaurelienzh go ahead and ask some questions, take a look around the wiki (maybe help out a bit there) and let's see what happens. I'd love to standardize the software pages so they list the programming languages ... so much to do. Maybe this section will have some interest for you: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=AEC_Free_Software_directory#CAD_.2F_BIM_Design_Development
Just heard a great podcast on this subject from BILT https://biltacademypodcast.buzzsprout.com/1104947/6097810-episode-five-decentralization-part-1
Welcome @kaiaurelienzh ! Great to hear you can code! Since you know Python, I highly recommend this resources - 15 minutes through it, you should be able to slice and dice OpenBIM data quite well: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=IfcOpenShell_code_examples
From there, you can start contributing code / features / bugfixes to projects like the BlenderBIM Add-on, FreeCAD, or various IFC utilities like IfcDiff, IfcClash, IfcPatch, IfcCSV, etc. You can also talk live to any developers who can guide you on your first contribution!
Hello kids! What a long strange trip it's been. My journey here is a recent dive back down the rabbit hole. I spent many early years pursuing a fit for my construction nerd disposition, mostly residential construction. I always felt something would come of the BIM process. I used to get the Autodesk trial software every year and go like hell for the 30 days trying to make something of it. Never seem to put anything together but I liked the concept and it fit well into my dream eradicating the cookie cutter construction prevalent, especially in the entry level, in residential housing. The crash of 2008 sent me on my way to another career and all was forgotten until recently exploring the thought of building again. I always swore that I would never get back into construction after seeing the crap being constructed my last few years. All in the name of low costs with big square footage. But now I'm looking for another career change and little pieces of the puzzle are coming together in an interesting way. I suppose I would have never been aware of any of this, outside of Autodesk, if it wasn't for Microsoft taking my beloved Windows XP. I read the writing on the wall, and while I floated down the denial river on Windows 7 Pro I was looking for alternatives. In comes Linux and I installed Arch Linux on my laptop to explore, and this lead to being open to other open source software and methodologies. Most recently I was looking to replace Sketchup since they went to a subscription model as most others have. This lead to Blender, Blender lead to Archipack, Archipack lead to BlenderBIM, BlenderBIM lead to this introductory post. I'm afraid I don't really have much in skills to enhance this project however I do hope you will allow me to explore and tinker. I have a lot to learn just to get my head around the possibilities but if my intuition is correct it will be worth the trouble. They say there are no dumb questions but that doesn't rule out the occasional inquisitive idiot. I will try not to be a bother if you can allow me to follow along. I spent my last years of residential construction as purchasing/ estimating director for a very small builder so, if nothing else, I will have some insight on that process. It seems most of this is professional level/ commercial architecture but there is an enormous market for this in residential but it would be a paradigm shift of exponential proportion to pull it off. That is not my goal right out of the gate but does factor in to my interest in learning more about what is possible in today's technology. Also, the payoff would be enormous if this were to become a player in that sector. Anyway, I have a long way to go. You have a nice forum here and seems to be a productive bunch. Thanks for having me.
Welcome @Auraria ! It's a diverse industry, so every new usecase presented to us helps build stronger tools! Please let us know your thoughts when using the tools and we'll do the best we can to support / build / fix / things :)
Hi all!
I just started to look into open source projects I could contribute to, to hone my python skills and stay up to date with BIM. This seems to be a great place for both :)
Quick profile:
I worked as a joiner in Germany and graduated as an architectural technologist in Denmark, where I live now.
Welcome @Kibar! As a joiner, you might be interested in the work by @Andyrexic in his Home Builder project here: https://community.osarch.org/discussion/221/home-builder-for-blender/p1
Good day to everybody. (By the way, could the forum be organized to have the newest posts appear first?)
I'm an architect in Boston, Massachusetts and am starting to teach myself some programming. I'm very interested in open BIM but also a long way from being able to contribute anything from a programming standpoint. So I'm mainly here to listen & learn. Perhaps I can chip in regarding architecture or building construction.
Welcome Vince - I'm a landscape designer in Western Mass.
Welcome to OSArch, @vincecb ! I think the forum is already organised such that newer threads appear first. Or did you mean something else?
@Moult @vincecb the best thread for discussions about the forum is this one: https://community.osarch.org/discussion/156/forum-questions#latest then the relevant people are more likely to join in. Just a service message from your friendly moderator.
Hello.
I’m Xavier from Barcelona, Spain. I’m an architecture technologist with studies in building construction and electronics. Nowadays working at a building construction company, in the integrated services branch.
I have experienced in the past with 3D software in windows and Linux systems, a far as the 3DS4 in MS-DOS, I mean. Time flies. Two years ago I studied a BIM Manager course and discovered all the potential in the methodology.
At my free time I love to improve my domotic system with Home Assistant, testing VR, 3Dprinting...you know, the usual “Geek package”. When I discovered the OSArchwiki my mind blow. BIM with Blender and Freecad it’s just the next natural step for me.
Thanks to everyone for sharing, I’m ready to learn and share too with this great community.
Welcome to OSArch, @xavitron ! I'm glad you enjoyed the wiki! We're actually in the middle of a website redesign and cleanup - it'd be great if you could give your thoughts in this thread!
Hi everyone,
My name is Simon, and I'm an architect in Chicago, Illinois, USA. I'm a heavy Revit user at work, but I'm always looking for new FOSS workflows that can realistically be implemented in a commercial environment, but also for my personal work. Right now I'm exploring the BIM side of FreeCAD and just found Blender BIM, and will be looking at that more extensively going forward.