OSArch Community

Beginners' IFC Course - Free, available

  1. J by John on 18 Nov 2020, edited 20 Nov 2020 #

    Hi, and overdue thanks for the amazing ecosystem you're creating.

    I've just created a wiki page with the following info:

    "BIM Supporters provide free - you'll need to register for a free account - courses covering:

    IFC - Learn about the open BIM data standard Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) MVD - Model View Definitions define a filter on top of Industry Foundation Classes

    Most of the material is video, with some quizzes/tests at the end of modules. The material is concise yet suitably in-depth for beginners to the topic."

    https://app.bimsupporters.com/secrets/course-list/_

    It's been helpful as I descend into the depths of all things IFC. Hopefully it's of help to others.

  2. B by bernd on 18 Nov 2020 #

    It needs a login to continue ... ?

  3. I by infeeeee on 18 Nov 2020 #

    @bernd said:

    It needs a login to continue ... ?

    Yes, it's free as in free beer, not free as in freedom. Than it's actually not free, you pay with your email address.

    This is the wiki page this user created: https://wiki.osarch.org/index.php?title=BIM_Supporters_IFC_Course

    This really sounds like an ad, and I don't think this should be on the wiki, if it's not available without registration. It sounds like self promotion to me. All the tools you find in the wiki are added by other people not their creators, or open source or related. I guess this is the only link in the whole wiki which needs a registration to watch its content[citation needed].

    I have no problem linking this course to the forum or anything, and thank you for creating a tutorial to this technologies, I just think the wiki is not a place for things like this.

    These are just my personal views on this topic.

    If you just create a page on the wiki, and nothing links to that page, what is the point? You didn't even linked it here.

    Should I ping @Moult or does he check every thread on the forum?

  4. M by Moult on 18 Nov 2020 # +3 votes

    @infeeeee thanks for the ping. There is an IRC bot which lets us know real time when these pages get created. I saw it as it was created but was a little tired last night :)

    I'm hesitant about this one. I know there are resources like creative commons model sharing repositories that require an account for you to download models. The models are CC, but to access, you need to create an account. Is that an ad?

    Personally, given that this type of video content is usually available without registration, this does seem unnecessarily locked away. In addition, after providing my email and signing in, I found it very difficult to navigate to the right material, which then I only found a single YouTube video which then required me to re-sign in on YouTube, after which I gave up trying to access it. In addition, I found some written material about IFC which was misleading (not all, most content seemed OK, but it was sparse). This makes me hesitant about including it on the wiki, when there are clearly better sources available.

    Once @condur starts releasing his learning videos, those freely avaliable ones will trump this.

    I've deleted the page.

    @John let us know if the videos are ever released publicly, and we can consider relinking to it, so long as the content is valid. There has been a number of highly misleading content about OpenBIM.

  5. J by John on 19 Nov 2020 #

    Thanks for the responses, which raised a number of issues:

    1. I'm in the process of getting an applied, as opposed to theoretical, knowledge of IFC. Coming from a non-IT background, I'm finding a shortage of good quality IFC tutorials. The content I linked/created a wiki page to is not mine, and the providers are not known to me, but I did find it helpful, despite the undesirable account creation sacrifice.

    2. currently the wiki homepage induces any user to create pages. Possibly an informal quality gate should be introduced by requiring prospective wiki page creators to post their intentions on the forum first. Once affirmative consensus has been reached, only then should the wiki page be created.

    3. concluding, @condur or whomever, I can contribute an hour or so per day to efforts to produce IFC learning materials, please let me know how i can assist.

  6. M by Moult on 19 Nov 2020 #

    We'd love your contributions, @John! I think almost everyone here on the forum has an applied knowledge of IFC as opposed to a theoretical one, as we are all practitioners. You are absolutely right that there is a shortage of good quality tutorials, which we'd love to solve, time permitting. Your intentions are really good, and I think we all appreciate the intention - it just so happens that perhaps just due to luck your first contribution was difficult for us to verify / recommend.

    I think a better approach, rather than linking to a 3rd party source, is to write new content on the wiki where needed, just like how Wikipedia operates. Don't worry about asking for permission, just go ahead and do it :) There are quite a few forum members who keep watch on new edits to help fact-check.

  7. D by duncan on 19 Nov 2020 #

    @John said:

    Thanks for the responses, which raised a number of issues:

    1. I'm in the process of getting an applied, as opposed to theoretical, knowledge of IFC. Coming from a non-IT background, I'm finding a shortage of good quality IFC tutorials. The content I linked/created a wiki page to is not mine, and the providers are not known to me, but I did find it helpful, despite the undesirable account creation sacrifice.

    I think it's okay in a section of resources on a page of otherwise free resources to reference high quality non-free learning material. Do you disagree @Moult ? For example coursework on edX (when it exists) or Blender coursework on LinkedIn learning seems fine to me. I would be more interested in quality than the existence of a paywall or registration.

    1. currently the wiki homepage induces any user to create pages. Possibly an informal quality gate should be introduced by requiring prospective wiki page creators to post their intentions on the forum first. Once affirmative consensus has been reached, only then should the wiki page be created.

    Most pages come out of a discussion on this forum on the chat. Eventually I agree that more might be needed, but a bit of anarchy for now seem fine to me. @Moult and I keep a pretty close eye on new pages to make sure they belong to relevant categories and are not a total mess. At some stage I imagine we'll do a planned tidy up. One reason I've chosen to focus on Categories rather than a tight structure is to make that cleanup easy and allow maximum flexibility while we are in a period of exponential growth. I mean honestly, I don't really have a clear idea of what we'll end up with on our wiki.

    1. concluding, @condur or whomever, I can contribute an hour or so per day to efforts to produce IFC learning materials, please let me know how i can assist.

    That would be freacking fantastic!

  8. M by Moult on 19 Nov 2020 # +1 votes

    Yes, I think it is OK to list it as a learning resources, so long as we make a small note that registration is required. However, I do not think it deserves a page by itself. It can be added to an existing learning page.

    Has someone else been able to access the learning videos? When I tried I failed, so I don't know how good the quality is.

  9. I by infeeeee on 19 Nov 2020 #

    Registered with a disposable e-mail address, they are just regular youtube videos. They are not even unlisted, and doesn't require a youtube account, you just have to select no thanks on the youtube login message. They are not really new, they were uploaded in 2018.

    The videos are uploaded to youtube under the BIM secrets username: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZsh4P2iOQVOgHPyegctYFQ They are nicely collected in playlists, as the courses on the website. I couldn't find any videos on the site which are not visible on youtube.

    For those who don't want to watch them on youtube, they are all available freely on invidious instances as well, this is the channel's page on yewtu.be: https://yewtu.be/channel/UCZsh4P2iOQVOgHPyegctYFQ

    Invidious is an alternative frontend for youtube, with some public instances available on the internet: https://github.com/iv-org/invidious There are some browser plugins which can redirect youtube links to a selected instance automatically or manually

    @John : sorry for assuming this is an ad. Your account was empty before this post, spam accounts look like this...

  10. D by duncan on 19 Nov 2020 #
  11. J by John on 20 Nov 2020 # +3 votes

    Apologies for causing disruption, it was the last thing intended.

    As I go through the varied IFC learning material that's out there, I'll collate it with comments - taking onboard FOSS standards wherever possible. This can then be a contribution to a latterly validated and verified set. My output for this current tranche will follow @duncan 's precedent of being a bit anarchic; some or none of it may be useful for future use. All things remaining equal, I'll have something to post in a week or so, following which an appropriate slot may emerge on the wiki.

    All the best,

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