BC slow in working with IFC files

davide445

Testing BC for my project, I noticed it's pretty good in dealing with DWG format, but BIM IFC files create hanging during the selection phase, and also trying other operations.
Testing the same ifc files on other products I didn't find this behavior (even if I discovered the market leader is much worse in managing IFC, his followers can be really good).
My machine need to be up to the job (Ryzen 5 2600X 6 core 4Ghz CPU, 32GB RAM, SSD, GTX 1070 8GB GPU), so there is any setting I can use to avoid this problems.

Michael Mayer

You can try to activate the corresponding Multi-threaded flags
options in Settings.
(Most are off by default as there could be problems with stability,
but I have them all on)

But I think it is mainly about what comes in by IFC.
Solids are good but often I see kind of pseudo solids which are no
volume as they are missing one face, surfaces, meshes or even
lose 3D Polygons.
Bricscad, and CADs in general don't like meshes and 3D polygons,
which slows them down.

davide445

Thanks @Michael Mayer , I have in fact already activated all the thread in the preferences

With other tool didn't find this freezing with the same model, so was wondering if there is any other preference I need to tweak to improve the situation with the IFC files.
Btw I changed the max num of threads to 12, having a 6 core CPU.

Michael Mayer

I left MTF cores at default for automatic handling.

I have a similar machine and with larger files I notice
lags in Structure Panel, Selections, Backup and saving,
file loading, block/refediting, ....

Tiemen

Hi Davide,

There could be several reasons why the IFC import is slow, and it is hard to tell without having a look into the specific IFC file. Could you please file a support request, and attach the file, so we can have a look on how we can improve the performance?

In the meantime, here are some suggestions:

• If the IFC is considerably large, maybe you can try to import the IFC file as separate XREF files using the setting 'Import IFC project structure as xrefs'. If this setting is enabled, drawing files are created as XRefs. These files correspond to each building and each story of the IFC project structure.
• If the IFC contains a lot of triangulated geometry, can you try the setting 'Import BREP geometry as meshes'? With this setting enabled, the BREP geometry wil be converted to meshes instead of solids.
• Is there a significant performance improvement if the setting 'Import BIM data' is disabled?

See also: https://help.bricsys.com/hc/en-us/articles/360007746634-IFC-Import-and-Export-in-BricsCAD-

Kind regards,
Tiemen

davide445

Hi @Tiemen , the import it's not slow (comparable with others), what is slow, is mostrly the usage of the Structure navigator, and also the the selection tool for hiding, editing groups of elements.
The model is not mine so will verify if I can share it, does have more than 5000 components.
Using the structure navigator to select and hide whole floors, and next the standard selector to select single or multiple components created application freezes and in two cases a crash with sudden application closing, always selecting two components of a wall. The Structure windows appear to detach from the other parts of the application UI during the freezes.
Changing the three options didn't change anything in the behavior.

davide445

Hi @Tiemen I opened a support request with IFC file

Michael Mayer

@davide445 said:
Hi @Tiemen I opened a support request with IFC file

Thanks for filing the SR.
Would be cool if there could be possible improvements
in Structure Panel data handling for larger files.

Although the Structure Tree works much smoother on Windows
than on Mac or Linux, even there, at a certain complexity it gets
laggy and tedious to work.

tslewis71

Adding to this thread again.

I followed all the suggestions for ifc, no import of bim data, no spaces, brep to beach, mesh facet low, xref and no xref.

There was some improvement but the structure browser although speed is better than previous versions of bricsys, it is unusable.

I have to make sure that for structure browser the settings are set to not select objects in module when selected in tree and not select objects in tree when selected in model.

This improves things a lot but you obviously lose the benefit and functionality of the structure browser.

Also how do you bimify all the xrefs when you use the ifc import as a xref option?

How do you auto create sections using bimify if all the parts of the model are separate xrefs?