Is Blender BIM a real BIM

R by ReD_CoDE on 13 Jun 2020, edited 13 Jun 2020 #

Anyone who knows me knows that I was in Autodesk community for years (6-7 years) and wasn't a normal member, my friends and I were active people who day by day came with new ideas and solutions

I know Autodesk even better than those who work for Autodesk. Autodesk is a software vendor and always develops MVP, nothing more, because their main customers are average customers with average needs

And they don't spend time on things that they know don't have future or they want don't have future, like IFC

Why? If today Autodesk strengthen IFC and causes IFC to be the first choice for many, not the second or third choice, then many people who advertise Autodesk and many companies who develop software and plugins for Autodesk will fail

If you look at Autodesk R&D projects you see that they mainly have focused on automation and control, AI, cloud (AWS cloud), ... these kinds of technologies, methodologies, and for them some movements are no threat when the majority of movements are based on "THREDITIONAL MINDSETS/METHODS/TECHNOLOGIES"

This is why bSI mutes me when see I talk about things that threaten their partners, but let's some like Dion and others continue

M by magicalcloud_75 on 13 Jun 2020 #

I hear you. Tired of Autodesk and discussing them. History in the making

R by ReD_CoDE on 13 Jun 2020, edited 13 Jun 2020 #

Dion when came with this plugin on Blender which those days didn't have a name I supported (and still support) because it had potential (and still has)

This is my personal view, I just want to work on "emerging" things, because it's like exercise for me, causes always be creative, so anytime I see opportunities in Blender, BlenderBIM, FreeCAD, or even other movements that inspire me and others for sure will help

I like BlenderBIM and see future for it "IF" Dion and other friends "realize" opportunities too

D by duncan on 14 Jun 2020 #

@ReD_CoDE said:

I know Autodesk even better than those who work for Autodesk.

Humility is a beautiful things. Please stop telling active contributors to real projects that they're doing it wrong. It's starting to sound arrogant and ungrateful. Send a patch or make an RFI.

R by ReD_CoDE on 14 Jun 2020, edited 14 Jun 2020 # +1 votes

@duncan OK, will try to be humble, and I think all of us have to or should to experience things in our own way, wrong or right. And for sure those who choose better choices gain better results too

J by Jesusbill on 14 Jun 2020 #

"Do, or do not. There is no try"

Master Yoda

R by ReD_CoDE on 15 Jun 2020 #

Sometimes it's good to be 0 or 1, but not always :)

Also, I'm not responsible for what you do, if I think you go a wrong way, it's not my duty to say, but unfortunately I "try" to say

I think I should let you all experience yourselves, wrong or right

J by Jesusbill on 15 Jun 2020 # +3 votes

I believe we all agree that everybody should be motivated to say his opinion @ReD_CoDE, after all that is one of the scopes of this group, to transfer knowledge, vision and perspective for anything that has to do with the built environment.

I find much less constructive, though, personal critiques on choices people make regarding what and how they want to go in the development of the projects they work in. In my view, the only way to show another road is to walk through it and show the way with another paradigm that will illuminate other members to follow it and believe it. To do that it is probably needed some sort of PoC, an example that can explain this different perspective, especially if just narrating it does not make people "click".

R by ReD_CoDE on 15 Jun 2020 # +1 votes

I totally agree with you @Jesusbill, however, sometimes introducing some ideas and solutions as small steps like PoC can kill that idea/solution

However, personally try help as much as I can

I'm not a programmer, and I think a good community doesn't need just programmers, there should be people who can give vision and show some new perspectives to achieve

We are all here to don't do what some other solutions do, as business as usual

Do you remember this table/matrice about Project Management?

J by Jesusbill on 15 Jun 2020 #

No I haven't seen this table before to be honest.

We are all here to don't do what some other solutions do, as business as usual

It is fine to do what other solutions already do, but with open-source tools, and it is fine to try and do new things as well.

At this early point I feel it is important to develop practical tools that can attract more people in the open-source world, we need some traction and active users that start to use the tools in their every day world solving their problems.

For example the title of this thread asks about a "real BIM" and not about a "Next-Gen BIM".

It can be important, given that the case of developing practical tools is somehow covered, to work on R&D/visionary/more abstract projects (for example on what the Next Generation of BIM could look like) but it may be difficult to do so here with the limited resources everyone has available and with a diverse set of experiences, way of thinking and doing, etc.

Of course, everybody in his own developments and in the collaboration with the other members is bringing his own innovation either small or big in the world of open-source software.

R by ReD_CoDE on 15 Jun 2020 # +1 votes

The mistake is here I think, you all think I talk about "Next-Gen BIM" but in reality, those are "Real BIM" that are happening in the industry but few experience them and if we can't match ourselves with these movements during the time all will call us and our solutions "traditional"

Do you know why the majority of FOSS projects fail after 4-5 years? Because they less think and more code

My advice to Dion from the first day was: "Don't think like a programmer, programmers have a small view angel, and most of the times can't see the whole picture, because always focus on a small piece the picture"

You saw that table, because I shared this table with you before

S by stephen_l on 19 Jun 2020 # +4 votes

@ReD_CoDE

Do you know why the majority of FOSS projects fail after 4-5 years? Because they less think and more code

Most open source project fails because of the lack of proper incomes, in facts there are less than 20 foss projects where devs can make a decent living.

It's not only about code, but documentation, support and ability to provide polished solutions, and if we fails to provide such basic things to users, traction will be low.

So let's face it, without a way to generate incomes to make it possible to professionalize dev and support, the whole initiative will never reach professional audience at large scale.

R by ReD_CoDE on 19 Jun 2020 #

@stephen_l happy see you here and I couldn't agree more

H by htlcnn on 21 Jun 2020 #

Back to the topic on BlenderBIM addon. I think @Moult has concrete reasons to implement it. He's made a quite clear roadmap that shows his view and also plan to realize it. It's obvious that he concentrates on the data aspect of BIM, when most of the questions in this thread is concerning geometry. Blender is free and opensource. It could be customized however you want, even change the modelling technique to NURBS or CSG or anything (if you were able to).

@Moult chose Blender because of its opensource nature and existing features. He's constantly finding solutions to deal with documentation and QTo (which might be difficult because of the meshes, but not impossible). I think until the addon come to the first official release, we all would wait and do nothing, or test it, or make a pull request, rather than add up questions about its feasibility. I can see many of its uses in the roadmap. I'm sure it's possible to make it. I haven't been able to contribute to it, but I support its development.

H by htlcnn on 21 Jun 2020, edited 21 Jun 2020 # +3 votes

One example of the QTo problem:

This is a half-circular beam with 10-meter radius (to the beam centerline) and 1mx1m cross section, modeled in Revit. Revit volume is 31.416 m3.

I exported to ifc and used BlenderBIM addon to import it. Blender volume is 31.304 m3.

The difference alone is quite small (0.35%) but it adds up if we take a project under consideration.

This is also due to exporting to IFC 2x3 that makes curvature elementss geometry approximate.

I tested it again with IFC 4 export and re-import into Blender. This is the result:

As you can see, Blender volume is now 31.413 m3. That's an acceptable approximation in my opinion, despite the fact that Revit has not been certified for IFC4.