CAD, BIM & 3D

Introduction When Manufacturers create custom objects for use in BIM software, they often want to embed as much relevant information as possible into the objects. In BIM-software such as ARCHICAD or Revit, you can do this fairly easy: ARCHICAD supports Custom Properties and Revit has Project or Shared Parameters. The basic concept is more or less the same: you define a property set and individual properties inside the set, with a data type and possibly default value. To make these properties available for the user to enter, you can attach them to an element category (like wall, slab, beam, window). So far so good... The problem However... a category applies to ALL instances of elements of that category. Every single element will gain the properties assigned to the element category. So if you start loading manufacturer objects for e.g. doors, every single door will gain these new properties... even those for which this is not relevant. Managing Properties inside Autodesk Revit ...

This is part 5 of a series of posts about getting BIM data into Unity. In our previous posts we looked at how to get information from our BIM Model into a Schedule: a text file with data about the elements. This post will do something with this schedule. Parsing a Schedule in Unity Regardless if you start from an ArchiCAD or Revit model, you should end with the geometry inside Unity from the FBX conversion (see previous posts) and a text-file containing a subset of information you want to transfer to the model, so it can be accessed from within the realtime model. Ensure you save (or copy) the schedules somewhere in the Unity Assets folder. The name does not really matter, as we’ll ensure that we can set it in our script as a variable. Reading the text from a Schedule file (“parsing”) requires creating a new C# script. While this is not a Unity scripting tutorial, we’ll show you what we did. Maybe you can improve on it or spot some errors. We need three script...

This is part 4 of a series of posts about getting BIM data into Unity. We discussed ArchiCAD in a previous article, but this time, we look at Revit. Getting our information into a schedule is not difficult, but getting the identifier of the elements is actually not trivial at all. We need to do some mean tweaking and we need a Revit Add-on too… Preparing Revit Schedules for use with Unity Basic concept: We will collect information from our BIM model into a table (schedule) for export. If we add the ID of the element in the first column, we can use that information to map the data from the table to the entity. Creating an instance-parameter for the Entity ID In Revit, every entity has a unique number, the EntityID. While it looks very simple, there is a catch. It can be used directly from the Application’s Programming Interface (API) and you can also query objects for it in the Revit GUI, but there is no way to collect them in a schedule (in contrast to ArchiCAD, I must say)! There is...

This is part 3 of a series of posts about getting BIM data into Unity. In the first two posts, we introduced the basic of getting an ArchiCAD and Revit model into Unity. We hinted on the option of actually parsing more data from Schedules. This is what we’ll discuss in the next few articles. However, beware that this requires some scripting afterwards. Not too complex, but required anyway. We start with ArchiCAD (but Revit will be discussed in a follow-up article, promised). Preparing an ArchiCAD Schedule for use with Unity Basic Objective: We will collect information from our BIM model into a table (schedule) for export. If we add the ID of the element in the first column, we can use that information to map the data from the table to the entity. In ArchiCAD, there are three types of ID to identify individual objects in a project: the ID, the guid and the IFC guid. There are two IDs that are set automatically and over which you don’t get any control. They are g...

Each day, Packt Publishing is releasing a free eBook from their back catalogue. These are usually slightly older books, but mostly usable and valid still. They give a good opportunity to dive into a topic and they will suggest possible alternatives, which are sometimes more up to date. Today (May 11th) my own book “ Unity for Architectural Visualization ” is free book of the day, but act fast, as it’ll not last long. https://www.packtpub.com/packt/offers/free-learning The book was written for Unity 4.x and uses mostly the features from the free version. Since Unity 5.x, most former Pro-features are also accessible in the free version. The biggest value (from my point of view) are the chapters on workflow with CAD or BIM software. You can get better lighting and materials more easily in Unity 5, but the rest of the book (including the scripting section) is mostly valid. I would advice though, to forget about the older Packages from Unity 4. Some of them are replace...

I’ve recently launched my new course on Grasshopper for Rhinoceros. Maybe you are familiar with this parametric design software. It is widely used in innovative architectural design offices and in architectural schools and research. It allows complete control over geometry generation, using the Rhinoceros modelling system, but controlled from a Visual Programming workflow. Grasshopper is a free add-in for Rhinoceros and currently requires the Windows version of Rhinoceros (commercial, educational or trial). What can you expect to learn? In this course, you apply a basic knowledge of 3D modelling into a Parametric Approach. Instead of creating one or two design models for a project, you learn how to develop an interactive, adapting model , controlled by a few chosen design parameters and capable of generating a wide range of design variants. Use the clever components to define an efficient and powerful system of interconnected components, creating geometry and applying geometric and mat...

For my introductory classes on 3D Freeform modelling, I re-recorded my Rhino video tutorials. This time, they are in English, so should appeal to more people. What can you expect to learn? This is a basic introduction and overview of modelling complex 3D Freeform shapes in the context of architectural design. Have you ever wondered how certain architectural designs are actually created? You might assume that it is helped by software, but which system is suited for this? In regular CAD software that architects often use, such as AutoCAD or SketchUp, the creation of organic models and surfaces is hard to impossible. We use Rhinoceros , a quite popular NURBS modelling software for McNeel. This is very popular within several innovative architectural offices where it is used for complex forms, organic architecture and extensive tweaking of 3D models. The software can also be used complementary to other architectural design software, although it is quite complete in itself. The course ...