BlenderBIM updates and new features: Version v0.0.201207

A significant amount of people think about Blender as a 3D modeler and platform to render realistic images to visualize your designs. It can help a lot in this regard, but that is only part of the role it can assume in architecture. With the help of Add-pons like BlenderBIM, you can expand Blender and include authoring and document BIM data. That opens a world of possibilities for Blender to have a full open-source workflow.

When using the BlenderBIM Add-on, you can create IFC files in compliance with ISO standards. A new version released recently has about 50 new features and fixes!

Opening Design Aalseth Residence team – CC BY-SA 4.0

Here is a list of the new features and bug fixes from version v0.0.201207:

• Add support for IFC2X3 material data imports
• Vendor workaround for “treat styled item as material” now deprecated, as new material and style system is much better
• Add support for importing IFC material description and category attributes
• Native element roundtripping now supports layer assignments
• Native representation roundtripping now auto-fixes representations that aren’t using contexts properly
• Improved packaging and refactoring for BIMTester makes it easier for other devs, including FreeCAD integration
• Native geometry roundtripping now decouples surface styles
• Native geometry roundtripping now lets you change styles independently from geometry
• New experimental utility to upgrade IFC2X3 to IFC4 and downgrade IFC4 to IFC2X3 automatically
• Native geometry roundtripping now works across different IFC versions, so you can roundtrip and change the schema at the same time
• Exporting classifications to different IFC schemas (including graceful downgrading) is now supported
• Support graceful downgrading of material definitions from IFC4 to IFC2X3
• Support built-in vendor workaround for importing invalid IFC properties coming from ArchiCAD
• Roundtripping geometry now works for geometry, which has one too many relationships between geometry and styles
• Handle and gracefully accept invalid IfcGrid elements coming from Revit. Sigh.
• New experimental support for Non-IFC, Blender object clash detection
• IfcOpeningElements now only show as wireframes by default for convenience
• Roundtripping now enables openings by default, which works much better with the latest Blender boolean modifier
• The object property sets panel now also shows inherited psets from the construction type
• Improved UI for psets and qtos with collapsible panels and improved readability
• New UI that shows inherited materials from the construction type if available
• Add support for exporting material sets for construction types
• All representation contexts are now round-tripped in native roundtrip mode, not just the body context.
• New powerful and intuitive smart clash grouping feature
• The Optimise IFC patch recipe is now packaged with the BlenderBIM Add-on
• The ExtractElements IFC patch recipe is now packaged with the BlenderBIM Add-on, letting you extract a subset of elements from a larger IFC file
• Dumb grids are now auto placed in an IfcSite if it can detect one
• Drawings now have classes for material layer set names
• Improved usage descriptions for IFCCSV to help new users
• You can now smart tag material attributes in drawings
• New utility function to check is_a() in the schema without needing a file first
• Auto-add the currently loaded IFC when creating a drawing for the first time
• You can now apply drawing styles to elements with material set usages
• New vendor workaround for exporting to the DESITE BIM application
• The Migrate IFC patch recipe is now packaged with the BlenderBIM Add-on, letting you upgrade or downgrade IFC versions
• IFCs with invalid attributes are now gracefully exported with warnings when exporting to a schema which doesn’t allow it to let the user fix it easily
• You can now bake parametric geometry into meshes

And the bug fixes:

• Fix bug where no color is set if only a styled item has a style, but the material has no representation
• Fix default category to none, not load-bearing, in case we import IFC2X3 where this property doesn’t exist
• Fix bug where the material wouldn’t get assigned for multiple mapped representations
• Fix warnings in copy attribute to the selection tool
• Fix import bug where some IfcOpeningElements aren’t placed in the correct openings collection
• Fix regression where the section cutting plane doesn’t work unless you’ve selected an object
• Fix bug where a drawing can’t be created with a file that uses material set usages
• Fix issue where invalidly declared representation contexts from other vendors can confuse drawing creation
• Fix bug where sometimes the IFC class and product dropdowns get out of sync
• Fix import bug where duplicate material names with accents fail to import
• Fix bug where some aggregates can cause drawing generation to fail
• Fixed example script in the IfcOpenShell Qt GUI viewer
• Fix bug where spatial elements didn’t get styles exported correctly