The most open-BIM CDE

DavidEDavidE
in General

Dear community,
at our office we try to work as close to the standard as possible and while Bonsai and IfcOpenShell are great at creating and editing we are still looking for a CDE that is capable of analysing and using the IFC-Standard for all (or most) the functions it provides.

Especially the document referencing seems to be an issue that we would really like to be solved with the IFC-Entites (IfcDocumentReference etc.) - alternatively an approach that uses BCF for that would also be acceptable.

It should also use BCF for internal tasks and ideally be able to use IfcWorkPlan, IfcTask for operation tasks.

What CDEs do you use that really work well with an open-BIM-approach?
Thanks and I hope this discussion is not too far off topic!

Tagged:
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Comments

  • falken10vdlfalken10vdl

    @DavidE I suggest you to take a look to https://github.com/falken10vdl/bonsaiPR This is described in comment bonsaiPR: your weekly build with PRs merged (as much as possible).
    I say so because there you have there the folowing PR merged: https://github.com/IfcOpenShell/IfcOpenShell/pull/6825
    That provides a workflow to maintain IFCDocumentInfo and IFCDocumetnReferences easily accessible in your IFC files:

    1. Right click on selected object shows the documents assigned to that object, Two icons allow you to open URI (in web browser) or open IFC (in Bonsai if the document is an IFC file)
    2. In Project Overview under "Documents" you have a tree view of the documents in the IFC and the corresponding objects assigned
    3. In the Object Information under "Documents" you have the documents assigned for a given selected object

    I hope it helps!
    Cheers!

    walpasteverugi
  • DavidEDavidE

    @falken10vdl Thanks its great that Bonsai extends it´s UI in that regard but the main topic for me is that I want a CDE that is able to read this information from the IFC and allows third parties to link documents this way in the CDE itself. If I find one that can only read document references that would maybe be ok too.
    Everything I look at has some internal and non-standardised way to link docs to objects and the link will only exist in the plattform itself.

  • sjb007sjb007

    On the Wiki there is mention of OpenProject, an open-source CDE. They have a specific BIM "solution". Not entirely clear if this would meet your "most open" needs. They have a self-hosted community edition you can download, but that might exclude the BIM stuff. That looks like a paid extra.
    https://www.openproject.org/bim-project-management/

    zoomerDavidE
  • brunopostlebrunopostle
    edited November 2025

    If I had any spare time I'd experiment with building a CDE on top of Bonsai and forgejo (an open source git forge). This would among other things do:

    1. Continuous integration, IFC validation and checking against IDS rules, raising issues with BCF integration.
    2. Server-side clash detection.
    3. Server side ifcmerge functionality for merging branches.
    4. A web IFC viewer that allowed browsing git revisions and viewing differences between revisions. Also integrating with BCF.
    5. Automation of project staging and approvals via signed git tags.
    6. Server side generation of schedules, Gantt, BoQ, and drawings (would require decoupling drawing generation from blender).
    7. Eventually server-side evaluation of energy models using openstudio (and structural analysis!).

    Much of this is already working in some form or other, it just needs (lots of) integration.

    theoryshawfalken10vdlNigelMassimoDavidEDimitrissemhustejJohntlang
  • theoryshawtheoryshaw

    An open source CDE, was discussed here as well. https://community.osarch.org/discussion/comment/23064/#Comment_23064

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