Speckle and IFC.js Team Up

teocomi · 16 July 2021 13:49

We’re happy to announce that we have teamed up with the IFC.js project to offer our users the possibility to import IFC files into Speckle. IFC files are widely used across the industry, and we’ve been receiving a lot of questions on the lines of “Does Speckle support IFC?” - by the end of summer (our planned release date) - the answer will be yes

Read the full press release on our blog:

daviddekoning · 16 July 2021 17:54

This is great news! Is the plan to fully convert the IFC data into the current Speckle Objects types, or will there also be changes to the kit to align the Speckle object schema most closely with IFC?

teocomi · 19 July 2021 06:57

Hey David, as first step Speckle will allow the ingestion of IFC files as they are, without conversions!
As you know Speckle is quite schema agnostic, so this seems to work quite well.
Dim or Alan might be able to elaborate more, but converting to Speckle Objects could result in data loss or incompatibilities at the moment.

daviddekoning · 19 July 2021 12:12

ah, ok - very interesting. What is the functionality you are aiming for in the first iteration? Just storing IFC data, or also showing it in the online viewer and/or updating the connectors so that you can upload IFC on the server, then receive the data into Revit or Rhino via a connector?

dimitrie · 19 July 2021 12:32

We’re parsing the IFC file and storing it in a speckle native way, with associated metadata; you’ll be able to view it as well as receive it with the standard connectors. There’s still a way to go for this feature branch to reach prime time though.

An early test from @AlanRynne:

Raouf_Djema · 14 July 2022 10:45

Hi,

this is great !
But is it possible to write IFC files ?
Or is it just able to read ?

Cheers

gokermu · 14 July 2022 10:48

Hi @Raouf_Djema,

We’re only parsing the IFC file. But you can receive your data in any platform and simply export an IFC file.

Writing an IFC file is not in our plans atm.

Raouf_Djema · 16 July 2022 20:51

Ohhh too bad, would have been huge.

Still great work !
cheers

leceta · 19 July 2022 07:25

Hi, is the current speckle´s JSON “serialization” of IFC-STEPs the same to Building Smart´s schema for IFC-JSON?

dimitrie · 19 July 2022 11:06

Probably not, as we’re using web ifc to do our own “common sense” parsing into speckle objects. See here:

github.com

specklesystems/speckle-server/blob/main/packages/fileimport-service/ifc/parser.js

/* eslint-disable no-console */
/* eslint-disable camelcase */
const WebIFC = require('web-ifc/web-ifc-api-node')
const ServerAPI = require('./api.js')

module.exports = class IFCParser {
  constructor({ serverApi }) {
    this.api = new WebIFC.IfcAPI()
    this.serverApi = serverApi || new ServerAPI()
  }

  async parse(data) {
    if (this.api.wasmModule === undefined) await this.api.Init()

    this.modelId = this.api.OpenModel(data, {
      COORDINATE_TO_ORIGIN: true,
      USE_FAST_BOOLS: true
    })

    this.projectId = this.api.GetLineIDsWithType(this.modelId, WebIFC.IFCPROJECT).get(0)

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Would be happy to try and help align if you’d tell us what you’re after!

leceta · 25 July 2022 11:16

Thanks @dimitrie ,

It seams that ifc.js are themselves splitting an step ifc files into a bunch of gltf files for geometry, and other bunch of json files for “properties”.

Is, by any chance, the current speckle serialization of ifc files aligned with the ifc.js serialization?

I see here an oportunity to align speckle with ifc.js… they are already capable of creating ifc files, so speckle could be used in a ifc.js including pipeline to store ifc models with all the speckle goodnes i.e. versioning control

thanks