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Automating the boring stuff - geometric modelling

  1. D by Dennisovic90 on 29 Aug 2022, edited 30 Aug 2022 #

    Hey guys,

    I want to automate and .ifc -file, where i want to extract the geometry to make a structural analysis.

    Anybody who is familiar with this would certainly know that a perfect geometry is needed to make a proper structural analysis, which means the nodes of lines and surfaces should be connected to each other to transfer loads in between structural elements.

    I have been discovering ifcopenshell, but need some support to reach my goals.

    1. Step

    Catch every loadbearing elements and make vertex, egdes and faces

    And delete unnessary elements such as finnish, outerwalls (which arent loadbearing), insulation etc.

    1. Step

    center the analytical walls, slab (surfaces) and beams, columns (lines) to creation of aligning grids along the structural elements

    1. Step

    check whether the nodes are connected to each other

    1. Step

    Delete the ifc model without deleting the newly created analytical model

    1. Step

    export to a .csv or .xml file which i can transfer to a third party structural analysis software.

  2. M by Moult on 29 Aug 2022 #

    What you're describing is not a trivial task. There have already been attempts to try and resolve this for energy modeling which deals with similar issues. What have you tried already, and what approach are you taking, and perhaps we can help guide you along the way? Are you already familiar with how to check psets, load IFCs, filter by beams/columns/walls, find the object matrixes, or find individual vertices?

  3. J by jchkoch on 30 Aug 2022 # +1 votes

    @Moult said:

    What you're describing is not a trivial task.

    100% agree that this is a complex task. I am myself a structural engineer so I know the "pain" of taking geometry into a analysis model for structural calculations. I have found that the BlenderBIMSpreadsheet add-on has been useful to extract structural elements from a IFC model (https://github.com/C-Claus/BlenderScripts/tree/master/BlenderBIMSpreadsheet and https://community.osarch.org/discussion/849/blenderbim-spreadsheet-writer-for-xlsx-and-ods/p4). I think it's probably necessary to split this up into smaller tasks (i.e. extracting only slabs as 2D shell elements for import into a FE solver).

    As Moult already asked, what are you already familiar within IFC, @Dennisovic90? And what would you want to try to automate first?

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