Blender BIM IFC

Under heavy development!

Let's use Blender to create BIM models, because why not?

Features

• IFC4 is a first-class citizen. IFC4 has been an ISO standard since 2013, with the latest published in 2018. In contrast, other programs are dragging their feet with IFC2X3, published back in 2005.
• Use Blender to do digital modeling! Blender is an amazing open-source software that supports the full 3D content creation pipeline that the CG industry uses. Don't let your designs fall short just because your modeling tool isn't good enough!
• Create complex spatial structures with multiple sites, buildings, facilities, bridges, and building parts. In contrast, some BIM tools (uh, Revit?) don't even allow you to specify buildings.
• Classify any geometry as any IFC type. Just because it is a wall doesn't mean you should be limited to modeling it in a certain way. Easily change from one type to another without damaging your geometry.
• Allow BIM objects to instance a shared geometric representations. This allows you to place the same shape in multiple objects without drastically increasing your filesize.
• Provide a custom value to any simple IFC attribute of an IFC product.
• Create product types that regular IFC products can inherit attributes from.
• Define your own property sets with control over exactly how the data in the property sets are stored.
• Applies array modifiers to create instances.

Demo

It's only just started, so everything can and will change. But if you want to check it out:

1. Install Blender.
2. Install IfcOpenShell, ensuring that is is compiled to the same Python version and architecture of your Blender installation.
3. Launch Blender. Open untitled.blend. You should see the export.py script already loaded. Change the hardcoded paths from /home/dion/Projects/blender-bim-ifc/ to wherever you've cloned this repository.
4. Ensure ifcopenshell is in your Blender Python's path, so that it can import ifcopenshell. You can run sys.path.append('/path/to/your/ifcopenshell/module') in the Blender Python console to do this.
5. Select all objects that you want to export. Press Run Script, and you will get the results in output.ifc.

A naming convention of IfcClass/IfcName is enforced. If you name your object IfcWall/Foo, it will turn into an IfcWall with the name attribute set to Foo. You can override object attributes using Blender's Custom Properties. Your objects must live in a top level Collection defined as a context class, usually something like IfcProject/Foo. You can then nest spatial structures underneath to create a hierarchy.

... this Blender files creates this IFC file ...