Customers fooling me - IFC or Revit imports

Michael Mayer
Michael Mayer
edited May 2021 in Importing and exporting files

I get mostly IFC and Revit exports from engineers.
Mostly created in Revit, Navisworks or Microstation.
They are not shy to either spread uncleaned Library Elements,
downloaded from manufacturers websites, all over their files

E.g. :

  • simple lighting devices that contain a complex IES Distribution Mesh in geometry
    and/or Mesh Geometries for a simple LED Lamp with about 80,000 3D Faces each,
    duplicated as a new Block for each Wattage option.

  • Door Blocks with totally unnecessary tessellation in IFC, mostly better by RVT import
    but are so crap that they do not optimize much by DMSIMPLIFY.

If I test wise just delete all these secondary, semi important (often solidified) Mesh Bombs,
the File size may easily get down from 1000 MB down to a reasonably quarter of file size
for the more interesting architectural geometries.

  • Or I got HVAC IFCs, where there is only IFC files, for Sprinklers support, likely from Microstation.
    Each same Sprinkler device comes in as a separate Block. Used only in a single instance in drawing.
    (Vectorworks does not import Symbols(Blocks) fro IFC, just IFC Entities)
    So I assume those where either Grouped Geometry or "Pseudo Cells" in Microstation, which came
    into Bricscad as separate Blocks instead of "Anonymous Blocks".

I personally think it is pretty impolite to just throw such unedited Library Elements into your file,
because it works for you and just spread it into the collaboration.
I don't know what Hardware the BIM coordinator uses and can handle the overall BIM Model
that way. There are weekly file updates but no complaints or improvements in file clean ups.

How do you deal with such hurdles ?

Comments

  • RSW
    RSW

    Return the "favour" if you do not have to edit those objects, i.e. if you have to send back the file leave all that messy stuff in as it is and when they do complain it then explain to them that it is what you received from them.

    Unless they pay you for the extra time needed for cleaning up their mess every time it should not be your responsibility to clean it up. It is their responsibility to provide (relatively) clean files.

  • Michael Mayer
    Michael Mayer

    The only reason to edit these would be e.g. to assign materials.

    (Unfortunately no materials by Revit import, only by IFC.
    Again opposite to Vectorworks, which is vice versa,
    just like the resulting file sizes after import)

    They should deliver clean files but in reality ...

    In the past I got a huge project from Revit, with similar file size.
    Also hard to handle but that was just because of the number of objects.
    Looked like they could handle it fine in Revit

    This one would be pretty ok. Here it is about the complexity in some
    objects. Mostly in the most irrelevant ones :smile:
    If I would combine all the import files into a single file, it would be
    several GB heavy DWG.

    I think this one handles fine in Revit for them too.
    And it looks they combine the complete BIM Model in Navisworks.
    Maybe that doesn't care about amount of Polygons/3D Faces too.

    Interesting are the different partly quality of my imports.
    Vectorworks and Bricscad, RVT and IFC.
    Each of these 4 imports has its own strengths and even more weaknesses.