BIMvoice

IFC 4.4 has taken another step towards ISO submission.

buildingSMART International has approved the integration project plan, with 93% voting in favour. The work will bring together the proposed IFC for Tunnel additions, comments carried over from the previous ISO process, and issues reported while people implemented and used IFC 4.3.

The starting point is IFC 4.3 ADD2, which became ISO 16739-1:2024. The plan is to prepare an updated version for the ISO process, where it will go through further review before publication.

For me, the tunnel work is especially interesting after many years on Norwegian infrastructure projects. The proposed input includes tunnel-specific concepts and improvements around geology and geotechnical information.

There is also work planned to support adoption, including more example models, help for software implementers and updates to validation services. That is a second phase, dependent on resources.

I am glad to see a published plan covering both the technical integration and the work needed to get it into use. I will be following the tunnel additions in particular.

35 minutes ago | [YT] | 0

BIMvoice

If your BIM process is broken, AI will help you repeat the same mistakes faster.

Think about a team working from different revisions, naming the same information differently and checking deliveries just before the deadline.

Add automation to that and you could move the wrong information between systems faster, or produce reports that look convincing but are based on incomplete data. Someone still has to find the mistakes and fix them, now with more output to check.

Start by looking at how the work happens and where things go wrong.

What information do people need, who is responsible for it, and how do you know it's ready to use?

That's where openBIM helps. You agree how information is structured, shared and checked across the tools your team uses, giving your automations something reliable to work with.

Take one repeated task and follow the information from its source to the person who uses the result. Check where revisions get mixed up or someone has to guess what a value means.

Agree which source to use and what must be checked before the information moves on. Then test the automation on that task, including what happens when information is missing or wrong.

Measure the time it takes to get a checked, usable result, including corrections. Producing more output only helps if your team can trust it.

1 day ago | [YT] | 0

BIMvoice

How many software licences in your company are paid for every month and barely opened?

Someone needs to look at a model occasionally, but they have access to a tool built for much more than that. Multiply that across your team and you could be paying for a lot of capability that nobody uses.

And every renewal keeps that expense going, even when the work those people do hasn't changed.

This is what I specialise in, together with the partners I work with: finding and improving free alternatives to paid tools, including open source ones, and building efficient workflows with automation and AI. I've been working on this for years, and it starts with understanding what your team actually needs to do.

There may be licences you can cancel once you've checked that an alternative covers the work. You start with what each person actually needs to do, then test the tools against that.

If you're wondering whether this could work in your company, book a free call with me. I'll assess your situation and give you a plan, also for free.

Yes, you read that right. I'm offering this for free for now, so send me a message and pick my brain while you can.

2 days ago | [YT] | 1

BIMvoice

Do you need to take time off work for certification training? Is there a fixed schedule, and what happens when a busy project gets in the way?

Ask these questions before you enrol. You need to know how the training will work alongside your job, as well as what it costs.

Here is what I would ask any provider, and how it works at BIMvoice.

1. How is the training delivered?
The training is online, in English and on demand. You choose when to study and can revisit lessons during your access period.

2. Do I need to take time off work?
You can study before work, in the evening or at weekends. There is no block of scheduled classes you need to take leave for. You still need to set aside study time and attend the exam at an agreed time.

3. Do I have to follow a fixed timetable?
There is no fixed weekly study timetable. You organise your learning around your work, within the access period of your chosen option.

4. What if I need help?
You have my support and live meetings every week. You have repeated opportunities to bring questions as you progress, rather than having to understand everything in one session.

5. How do I check my understanding?
Quizzes help you see what you understand and what needs another look. We can discuss the questions you are unsure about in our meetings.

6. Who is supporting me?
I am an openBIM Practitioner Trainer, with eleven years of experience on Norwegian projects and working with openBIM for over 6 years now. You speak directly with me when you need help.

7. Can I ask about my own work?
Yes. Bring your project questions to BIMvoice Office Hours meeting, and we can discuss how the concepts apply to your situation.

8. Will someone help me check exam readiness?
I help you prepare and check your readiness before the exam is booked.

9. Who organises the exam?
For Foundation, I organise monthly exams, with a private sitting when needed. Some months there are two exams. Ask about the arrangements for the certification you are taking.

10. What is included in the fee?
Check training, support, exam fees and any software costs. Ask about instalments and what another exam attempt would cost too.

11. What if I need more time, or want access after passing?
Access depends on the option you choose. Clarify the terms before joining, including what happens if you need longer.

12. What results have your students achieved?
Thirteen BIMvoice students have taken the Foundation exam. All thirteen passed on their first attempt, and their recorded feedback is publicly available.

For me, flexibility means you can study when it works for you and still get support when you need it. That is why I combine on-demand training and quizzes with live meetings every week.

3 days ago | [YT] | 3

BIMvoice

Three sentences and one screenshot. That was enough to get a bug fixed in IFClite the same day it was reported.

The dropdown for choosing a chart had disappeared from the documentation tab. The screenshot showed the word “Chart”, followed immediately by the next checkbox. The control that should have been between them was nowhere to be seen.

It was still there in the code. Two controls added to the same row the day before had squeezed the dropdown down to 14 pixels. The screenshot showed a panel width of 401 pixels, which helped trace the problem. The fix was one line, and it was merged that day.

I like this example because the person reporting it gave the developer something they could act on immediately. A few sentences explaining the problem and a picture showing exactly where to look.

If you work with IFC models, you can contribute like this. Show what you were doing, what you expected and what happened instead. You don't need to know which line of code caused it.

3 days ago | [YT] | 2

BIMvoice

You can open an IFC model in your browser, inspect its information, edit properties and validate it. IFClite is free and open source, and the toolkit also lets developers build their own applications around IFC.

I checked how its downloads have grown this year, and one number stood out.

In January, its core WebAssembly package recorded 1,380 downloads. By our 30 September snapshot, September had reached 31,518. That is about 23 times the January figure.

These are package downloads from npm. Updates and automated builds count too, so this does not mean 31,518 people or companies are using it.

What interests me is having more ways to work directly with IFC information. A coordinator can inspect a model in the browser, and a developer can use the same open toolkit to build something specific for a project.

If you have only seen IFClite as a model viewer, it is worth another look.

What would you like me to demonstrate with it on a real IFC model?

5 days ago | [YT] | 16

BIMvoice

Bonsai v0.9.0 is out with 2,070 new features and fixes, and this release means something special to me.

Dion Moult wrote this in the release notes:

"A big thank you to Petru Conduraru, who joined us this cycle and went on an archaeological dig through the issue tracker, fixing reports going back as far as issue #438."

I'm really happy about this. My name is fifth on the contributor list for this release, alongside people whose work I've followed and learned from.

I'm not a programmer, and I worked with AI agents to investigate old bug reports and develop fixes. I tested the results, and the maintainers reviewed the changes before merging them. A big part of the credit goes to them for taking the time to work through those contributions.

There is a lot to try in this release. The new standalone Bonsai Viewer lets you open and combine IFC models, inspect properties, measure and cut sections without opening Blender. It caches the geometry after the first opening, so you don't have to process it again every time.

The rebuilt IfcOpenShell core also opens models around three times faster in the team's benchmarks, using less than half the additional RAM. Bonsai gets IFC autosave, crash recovery and improvements to drawings, quantities and wall editing.

All free and open source, and you can help improve it too. A clear bug report with a small test model gives the developers something they can investigate. Testing a fix or helping someone on the OSArch forum also makes a difference.

Thank you Dion, Andrej, Thomas, Gorgious, Rick, Stephen and everyone involved. I'm proud to have contributed to this release.

Image credits: Dion Moult, from his original release post.

5 days ago | [YT] | 18

BIMvoice

You can work with IFC for years and still feel that nobody ever put the whole thing together for you.

An engineer told me this on a call recently. He uses IFC a lot, but he learned through experience, solving whatever the project needed at the time. Now he wants to understand it in a more structured way.

I understand that very well. When a delivery is due, you find a setting that works and get on with the project. You might use that setting for years without having time to understand why it solved the problem.

Then another project comes, someone uses a different tool, and the same approach gives a different result. You have to investigate again, sometimes without knowing where to start.

A useful exercise is to take one piece of information the client needs and follow it from the requirement into the authoring tool, through the IFC model and into the receiving application. Check where it ends up and whether it can actually be used there.

That is something I want people to understand in my training. When an exchange fails, they should be able to investigate what happened and explain it to the people involved.

What did you work with for years before someone finally explained how it works?

1 week ago | [YT] | 1

BIMvoice

I want to work on drawings in IFClite today and pick up where I left off tomorrow on another computer.

I like that it runs in the browser, but I haven't found a way to take my drawing work with me. I can move the IFC model, but the sections and drawing setup stay in that browser.

@Louis Trümpler, could we save that work with the model, either inside the IFC or in a separate file we can open again? Would that be possible in IFClite itself, or would it need a separate application with shared storage?

Lloyd Bussio showed how Bonsai handles this on our stream. I'd love to have a similar way to continue my work in IFClite.

1 week ago | [YT] | 0

BIMvoice

There's a short list in openBIM that almost nobody looks at.

The registry of certified Practitioners. Public, official, searchable by anyone. And in most countries, nearly empty.

I find that genuinely exciting, and I'll tell you why. In every other corner of this industry, the good positions are taken. The known experts are known, the go-to companies are established, and catching up takes years.

This list is different. It's the one place where the position of "the person who can prove it" is still open, in your country, today. Not for lack of skilled people. For lack of people who bothered.

Somebody in your market is going to be first, or one of the first. When clients start asking for proof, and the asking has already started in tenders, that name gets found.

No reason it can't be yours. The seat is empty either way.

1 week ago | [YT] | 1