IFC Issues with ArchiCAD

[cedwards.55828]

Hello.

The Designers here in our office are using Archicad for their design models. Once we have an approved model we then will have to recreate it in ADT or Revit. We have tried to export the Archicad model using the built in IFC module. No luck Here is the issue: ADT does not support IFC out of the box (that I know of). Revit does, but it it is having no luck opening the IFC model. It keeps telling me that it is unable to join objects and gets over 2,000 errors. To get to this point it take about 3 hours on my machine. We are running 2G machines with 2 GB RAM.

Has anybody ever dealt with this situation before? I apologize for my ignorance in IFC speak, but I am trying to learn as much about this as possible.

I appreciate any help.

Chris Edwards
CDS Associates, Inc.
11120 Kenwood Road
Cincinnati, Ohio 45242-1818
513.791.1700 x184
513.791-1936 (Fax)
CEdwards@CDS-ASSOC.com
www.cds-assoc.com

[Chris DiSunno]

Why not design with a pencil, scan it, rasterize it, color it with photoshop, import it to archicad and model it, export it to 3dViz and render it, import it to microstation for the plans, revit for the sections, autocad for teh details, vectorworks for the electrical plans, softplan for the framing diagrams, then PDF all the drawings to bring it back together again? Did I leave anyone out? Oh yeah, design revisions in form Z.

Sorry to be so sarcastic, but if you are using ArchiCAD for design, I suggest using ArchiCAD for CD's. Try it you might like it.

Personally I sketch design on paper and go straight to Revit to prepare the presentation drawings and finish with revit.

[David Haynes]

There is an IFC translator for ADT, but it is not free.
http://www.team-solutions.de/

Here is a free viewer:
http://www.ifcbrowser.com/ifcengineviewer.html

Hope this helps. Problems in the translation may be due to modeling inaccuracies in the Archicad model.

[truevis]

Why not design with a pencil, scan it, rasterize it, color it with photoshop, import it to archicad and model it, export it to 3dViz and render it, import it to microstation for the plans, revit for the sections, autocad for the details, vectorworks for the electrical plans, softplan for the framing diagrams, then PDF all the drawings to bring it back together again? Did I leave anyone out? Oh yeah, design revisions in form Z...Looking forward to reading your white paper.:beer: Don't forget Excel --- gotta have that.

PS: Any good Architect / CAD user has also already memorized http://www.iai-international.org/Model/IFC(ifcXML)Specs.html

[joshua]

Hello.

The Designers here in our office are using Archicad for their design models. Once we have an approved model we then will have to recreate it in ADT or Revit. We have tried to export the Archicad model using the built in IFC module. No luck Here is the issue: ADT does not support IFC out of the box (that I know of). Revit does, but it it is having no luck opening the IFC model. It keeps telling me that it is unable to join objects and gets over 2,000 errors. To get to this point it take about 3 hours on my machine. We are running 2G machines with 2 GB RAM.

Has anybody ever dealt with this situation before? I apologize for my ignorance in IFC speak, but I am trying to learn as much about this as possible.



Wow, if there were ever two kids that don't play well together, it's Revit and AC. From our experience not all IFC is created equal. They approach modeling from different ends of the spectrum and evidently that creates problems down the line when you want to exchange. We have had similar experience the 3 hour wait and then nothing happens, this is using AC 10 and Revit 9.1. Our work around killed all of the information out of the model, but gave us a 3d dumb model to use as a background. In the end we just exported 2d dwg's and "traced" them in Revit. Luckily we have just been converting all our AC files to Revit and aren't planning on ever using AC again.
To transfer 3d we used this flow- AC-3ds-AutoCAD-Revit. Like I said you get 3d solids to work from, for what it is worth.
j

[hand471037]

The problem is that IFC is just a standard for communication, it's not a standard for modeling.

So ArchiCAD might think of walls and doors in a totally different way then Revit or ADT. And then there are elements that simply aren't covered in one that are in the other, like the fact that Revit knows the difference between Systems Furniture (office cubes) and plain old furniture while I don't believe ArchiCAD makes such a distinction.

So while systems can all export an IFC file, different systems are going to interpret that IFC file in different ways. It's a big mess.

Now, one thing: are you using the same IFC standard for all of this? Does ArchiCAD export to the *exact* same IFC standard that Revit loads in? IFC has got serious version problems, one IFC version or standard isn't compatible with another, so unless ALL of the IFC files you're trying to deal with are the same exact version it simply won't work at all...

This is why I think the huge stink that ArchiCAD makes in it's marketing about IFC is bunk. It simply doesn't work the way they promise it does. But then that applies to more than just the IFC within ArchiCAD in my experience, so...

[jspartz]

Sounds like it's how ArchiCAD saves the IFC, because we've saved IFC files from Revit and gave them to a contractor with ArchiCAD and they got it to import, a little screwed up though. They had to manipulate the IFC language (what Revit object equals what ArchiCAD object), but I think they might have done that with IFC Constructor.

[cedwards.55828]

Thanks to all of you for the help. I am new to the 3D world and want to get as much knowledge as possible.

[PaperStreet SoapCO]

I actually just yesterday gave a semi-presentation to my firm about what happens when importing/exporting IFCs from/to Revit to/from Archicad. There are all sorts of quirks and problems but the real deficiency I found was the inconsistency. If the problems were at least consistent then you would know what to fix each time. The idea of transferring a building through IFC and then not know exactly went right or wrong each time is scary.

Archicad has very limited options when exporting to IFCs (it cant even choose to export its units as feet instead of inches). Also, Archicad is a real hog when it comes to exporting IFCs from it. I exported an IFC of a 3 story office building ( around 100,000 sq ft.) and it took about 3 hours to generate. I did simple tests of sending a spiral staircase in a shaft back and forth and that seemed to work ok except that most of the objects, no matter which program they come from, lose most of their parametric ability when transferred. The staircase became an object (or component) in the other program. It didn't even recognize it as a stair.

After spending a while working with IFCs I've decided to stay away from them for now.

This doesn't help much, but I figure in the near future at least 75% of firms using BIM will be using Revit and the IFC really wont matter much anyway unless you are doing work for the government.

Just passing on information that I have gathered...

[michael.deorsey]

We have imported IFC models from ArchiCad with little problem. I did get 200 warnings or some obscene number, but most of that was pretty minor. And there was some geometry that was deleted, because "the line was too short". The biggest problem we had was scale. From what the contractor we were working with told be AC can not export to feet, and Revit cannot import from inches. So we had to do the transfer in meters, and that worked perfectly. We also noticed that any IFC import can not make parametric families, they are all static. So it seemed to be an okay way to transfer existing conditions, where you want to only keep or demolish model geometry. To use it for transferring design geometry, it seems pretty much useless.

Our experience so far.

[hand471037]

We also noticed that any IFC import can not make parametric families, they are all static. So it seemed to be an okay way to transfer existing conditions, where you want to only keep or demolish model geometry. To use it for transferring design geometry, it seems pretty much useless.

This matches out experiences to date. It's handy if you're just going to reference in their model. It's not useful if you want to use that model as the basis for future work (in other words, it doesn't become a Revit native model). You'd be better off exporting lots of views from ArchiCAD and recreating the Project in Revit. Not as daunting as it sounds, with the Pick tools it goes quick, but still...

[david.metcalf]

Why not design with a pencil, scan it, rasterize it, color it with photoshop, import it to archicad and model it, export it to 3dViz and render it, import it to microstation for the plans, revit for the sections, autocad for teh details, vectorworks for the electrical plans, softplan for the framing diagrams, then PDF all the drawings to bring it back together again? Did I leave anyone out? Oh yeah, design revisions in form Z.

Sorry to be so sarcastic, but if you are using ArchiCAD for design, I suggest using ArchiCAD for CD's. Try it you might like it.

Personally I sketch design on paper and go straight to Revit to prepare the presentation drawings and finish with revit.


Yeah you left out bringing it in Navisworks, Revit Structure, Revit MEP. :lol: I got a good laugh out of that.

[robert.lipman]

Another forum is available to discuss IFC file exchanges between any CAD applications.

IFC-BIM Exchange Support Forum (http://www.buildersnet.org/IFC-BIM/)

[Baldwin_4-6-0]

A wise man once said,
"IFC is a fairytale that doesn't come true in the end"

It might be usable someday, just not today.

IFC must stand for Irritating For CADDusers