As a general guideline, .cmd files are non-standalone batch files that need to be run from command prompt or from another batch file, and/or while the Visual Studio environment variables set, and .bat files are standalone batch files that can be run also e.g. from the File Explorer.

Usage Instructions

Execute build-deps.cmd to fetch, build and install the dependencies. The batch file will print the requirements for a successful execution. The script allows a few user-configurable build options which are listed in the usage instructions. Either edit the script file or set these values before running the script.

build-deps.cmd expects a CMake generator as %1 and a build configuration type (RelWithDebInfo/Release/MinSizeRel/Debug, defaults to RelWithDebInfo) as %2. If the generator is not provided, the generator is deduced from the Visual Studio environment variables. A build type (Build/Rebuild/Clean, defaults to Build) can be provided as %3. See vs-cfg.cmd if you wish to change the defaults. The batch file will create deps\ and deps-vs<VERSION>-<ARCHITECTURE>-installed\ directories to the project root. Debug and release builds of the depedencies can co-exist by simply running build-deps.cmd <GENERATOR> Debug and build-deps.cmd <GENERATOR> <Release|RelWithDebInfo|MinSizeRel>.

After the dependencies are build, execute run-cmake.bat. The batch file expects always a CMake generator as %1 (if not provided, the same default value as above is used), and the rest of possible parameters are passed as is. If you wish to use any library from a custom location, modify the paths in run-cmake.bat accordingly. The batch script will create a folder of form build-vs<VERSION>-<ARCHITECTURE>\ which will contain the solution and project files for Visual Studio.

Note that building IfcOpenShell as 64-bit is recommended as many of real life IFC files has been observed to take easily more than 2 GBs of RAM while converting.

After this, one can build the project using the IfcOpenShell.sln file in the build folder. Build the INSTALL project if wanted. The project will be installed to installed-vs<VERSION>-<ARCHITECTURE>\ folder in the project's root folder and the required IfcOpenShell-Python parts are deployed to the <PYTHONPATH>\Lib\site-packages\ folder.

Note: All of the dependencies are build as static libraries against the static run-time allowing the developer to effortlessly deploy standalone IFCOS binaries.

Directory Structure

..
+---build-vs<VER>-<ARCH>            - Created by run-cmake.bat, for a certain VS version and target architecture
+---deps                            - Created by build-deps.cmd, common for all VS versions and target architectures
+---deps-installed-vs<VER>-<ARCH>   - Created by build-deps.cmd,  for a certain VS version and target architecture
+---installed-vs<VER>-<ARCH>        - Created by building the IFCOS's INSTALL project
\---win
|   build-deps.cmd                  - Fetches and builds all needed dependencies for IFCOS
|   BuildDepsCache-<ARCH>.txt       - Cache file created by build-deps.cmd
|   readme.md                       - This file
|   run-cmake.bat                   - Sets environment variables for the dependencies and runs CMake for IFCOS
|   vs-cfg.cmd                      - Utility file used by the build scripts
+---sln                             - Contains the old Visual Studio solution and project files
\---utils                           - Contains various utilities for the build scripts