Hello,
I am having trouble with the following, I would appreciate your thoughts:
I wish to export the IFC geometry as STEP in order to run simulations in COMSOL Multiphysics.
I thought, that using IfcConvert from the terminal (I'm currently on macOS, but I had no luck either on Windows or Ubuntu 24.04) with the following syntax: ifcconvert (--length-unit x)* <input.ifc> <output.stp>
No matter what I set for x (0.001, 1, 1000) in the --length-unit argument, the resulting model will be 1000x larger than it should be.
Example, I created a very simple scene with Bonsai 0.8.1 and Blender 4.2.5 (two walls with a wall type with vertical layers, a single layer is configured to be 30cm thick):
I saved this model (simple-wall.ifc) onto my Desktop. In the terminal I navigated to the folder, and used the following :
ifcconvert ./simple-wall.ifc simple-wall-test.stp
ifcconvert --length-unit 0.001 ./simple-wall.ifc simple-wall-test.stp
When I open the STEP file in Rhino, it is much larger – COMSOL won't even import:
What am I doing wrong, how can I make sure that the model size remains exactly as it should be?
Previously I tried the --scale argument, but then I realised that is for drawings:
--scale arg "Interprets SVG bounds in mm, centers layout and draw elements to scale. Only used when converting to SVG. Example 1:100."
(Ideally I would run the conversion within Blender, so I can create separate objects for each building material, but first I would like to have at least the geometry right.)
I've attached the file in question.
Thanks!