I am also aware of an Australian NSW initiative to scan every single heritage sandstone building here (though I heard they had funding heavily cut) but perhaps I can help reach out to some Australian contacts here and make a connection if you'd like to take the lead?
@Hagaeus here in Denmark we have Molio which might be well suited to taking the lead on an initiative like this. Is there anything similar in Sweden?
@duncan I think that would be the equivalent of Boverket. I actually talked to a guy there this week who was interested in a co-operation regarding other stuff. That is a great idea as they are under the finance department and therefore have money, unlike the Heritage board that is under the Culture department.
@Moult I could do that next year if I get some support from others. I am a one man company with the workload for two, plus admin, right now. Getting support from Australia would show that it is of international interest as well. I guess you are the one for lobbying towards BuildingSmart? Or does anyone else have good connections there?
Hey @Hagaeus
it would be interesting if you could try out using .bim file format for that (https://dotbim.net/), and let me know the results.
For tests I created a mesh with 12 500 000 triangles in Grasshopper. I attached some custom data to it and exported it as .bim. It took as you can see below 52 seconds to save that file, and it is 1.13 GB big. After simple ZIP it reduced the size to 140 MB. There is still room for improvement there (removing white spaces, removing unnecessary decimal numbers, quality of mesh).
Then I imported it to Blender and it works fine:
Regarding having a giant meshes in a model and LOD, one of the ideas was to actually store different LODs in separate models and link them together, rather than having it all in one giantic model / file. Not sure if such concept would be interesting for scans, but you can also check it out there and let me know what you think: https://github.com/paireks/dotbim/blob/master/LinkingData.md
I completely understand your frustration! Losing precious detail from high-precision scans due to limitations in BIM software is definitely painful. Here are some thoughts and potential approaches.
Understanding the Challenge:
IFC limitations While IFC supports meshes, large and complex ones can indeed cause issues. Some software might have better handling than others, so investigating alternatives could be worthwhile.
Software optimization Check if your BIM software offers any settings or plugins specifically designed for handling large meshes efficiently. Sometimes tweaking mesh decimation algorithms or using lower-precision representations for less critical details can help.
Data reduction strategies Explore options like simplifying specific areas while preserving high detail in crucial parts. Consider using LOD (Level of Detail) techniques to manage complexity depending on the viewing distance and purpose of the model.
This looks like something spat out of chatGPT, did you mean to add something specific to the conversation ? :)