Finally I have Bricscad

Steven_g

It took a bit of organising apparently, but I finally have a trial edition of Bricscad 2018 on my computer at work, so this will be the first of many questions untill I get used to finding and filtering search results.
In preparation I had taken existing dwg files in Autocad and produced some simple extruded solids for various elements, floors, walls, panels, etc no doubt it will be more sensible in the future to do this from within Bricscad, but thats the next step, I opened the model and used the bimify command, and lots of the "wall elements" have been classified as type 'roof' so that's my first noob question how can I re-classify them as walls, because in the browser type roof is greyed out.

Jacob

Hi Steven,

Classifying elements manually can be done using the BIMCLASSIFY command. You can either enter this command in the command bar, or find the icons under the Data tab in the Ribbon, or under the BIM tab in the Quad.

Michael Mayer

I was also a little surprised by the quality of BIM Auto Qualify.
It seems to have a large affinity to roofs and don't like columns.
For me it seemed to be 70% off.
Although adding basic Building/Story seems to work well.

I prefer to do it manually.
That worked pretty fast with V17 and the expanded Bimify options
in the Ribbon. Unfortunately that is gone by V18 and doubles the
need of concentration and clicking.
For now I use standard bimify and choose the type from the floating
option bar. (I think it has to be activated manually in UI settings ?)

Steven_g

Thanks Jacob and Michael, definately the keyboard option I'm a keyboard jockey, looking further BIMIFY is seeing all 90 degree solids as (vertical) roofs unless they are taller than the width then they are classified as columns, but doing it manually is not a problem, the next thing is to figure out how to select everything of the type roof. Or get the structure browser to show the different types of element, everything now is just an element on floor 0

Michael Mayer

I have to play a bit with it.
I can't remeber if my attempt had imported or converted Solids
or if I modeled with the more comfortable Cube Tool instead of
Multisolid and such things.
But the Story separation worked for me.
Maybe it is X times Slabs on different heights minus 1,
for the Roof (?)

Michael Mayer

It doesn't work that bad.
I think Polysolid with "separate Solids" Off cause problems
and get Roofs.

Steven_g

This is going to be slow and painfull, I will put the blame fully on the Revit model, but I exported a Revit model as IFC and opened it in Bricsys.
First problem it eventually opened in a layout ??? why
Second problem it contains thousands of blocks, as I said the Revit model is not good
For some reason the "structure browser" wasn't showing, what do you call it oh yes a "structure browser" how do you find it, that only took me an hour (right click on an empty area of the ribbon and just keep trying different toggles now I've found it there is still no easy way in the help files to explain where and how.
Then another half hour to figure out how to add properties to the structure browser (why are there about dozen entries for story under the BIM select properties tree)
In Revit I can goto a floor view easily, in Bricscad there is just a model made of blocks no story information (that I could find)
So I tried the BIMIFY command that gave me up to 4 stories it also gave me 8 buildings split from 2 to 4 stories the building is one building with 6 floors. I still can't turn on a view just for single floors.

As I said I put the full blame on the Revit model, but are there any easy tutorials or videos for numpties on how to get started with Bricscad that show how to deal with cases of "garbage in garbage out" that you get from Architects, because this is 95% of the information we receive that takes years of creative genius to put together, and I get 2 weeks to turn that information into a multi million building tender. I just wish I could attach the file but unfortunately that isn't an option.

Michael Mayer

I also get a lot of Walls in as Blocks.
I was told these are "aggregated" Walls.
So not a single Wall with a Composition applied as it was in other CAD
but Each Ply as a separate Wall grouped into a Block.

The Blocks itself aren't the problem. I can explode them.
The problem are the duplicate $Layers + $Materials + $Compositions.
I have to manually merge each Layer with its duplicates.

I think that has to do in which way other Apps export to IFC and don't
know if Bricscad IFC import could be optimized, or not.

So in general it works kind of how IFC exchange is meant to be for
collaboration.
Import other's IFC like a reference but never touch it, export your own
work to the global IFC model and the BIM manager will bring all together
and have control.
So not like every user expects and wants, a lossless import to work with
and manipulate the data.

Setting the rules for Structure Panel for me is also not very intuitive with
many duplicate entries that may or not have different behavior.

Visibility control over Stories/Floors for me was also something fast and
simple that I took for granted.
Done by Classes+Layers in Vectorworks or similar in Allplan (and Archicad ?)
Currently in Bricscad I experiment with Sections (with depth) or common
Structure Panel Selection and Isolation.
While Structure Panel Navigation always needs a lot of tedious expanding
and collapsing of branches in general and I always switch between 3 custom
orders configs to optimize the tree depth for different needs.

BIMIFY for me works in alternating quality.
Sometimes it worked nearly perfect with geometry created in Bricscad
and very strange results from imported Solids. Sometimes the Stories are
reversed and Floor 0 is the most upper level.

Steven_g

Thanks Michael
Not what I had hoped to hear but at least I'm not going mad, I still really think Bricscad is going to make a world of difference to my work, I am just starting to doubt how quick it will be to get up to speed.

Michael Mayer

Every time I switch my main Apps it made a world of difference to my work

The focus is on "different", not necessarily better.

There are always a lot of tools and workflows that were really much easier and
better in your previous Apps than in your current App.
BIM is relatively new to Bricscad and so also the BIM Users and the input they
provide is relatively new.
Bricscad is in development, they develop interesting and modern features,
I think it happens fast and I think it happens in the right direction.
Also I think Support is good and they will listen to your wishes.

But the most important thing may be that after switching to a new App you
tend to try to translate your workflows over to the new App, while it may need
a totally different approach in a large way that may even be better at the end.
And it may take some or a lot of time to finally get used to and understand the
philosophy behind your new App.
And once used to, even many things seen as tedious at the beginning may
get self understanding and fun.

I'm in the same situation to learn how to use Bricscad.

Steven_g

I totally agree, thats one of the problems for me, I have used autocad (LT) for many years and Bricscad at least appears to push tutorials on how to use it from an Autocad perspective, I want to use Bricscad as Bricscad and not an Autocad alternative. But I'm finding just the simple things are not explained very clearly. I don't want to bring my Autocad bad habits into Bricscad BIM.

Michael Mayer

I also leave with a lot of questions after searching documentation or
settings descriptions. And i would love to see more tutorial videos
or webinars.
Explaining what can be done, how it can be done and why done in
this way and not another way.