Advance Steel | ggAdvanceSteelIFC
Technical information relating to the Geometry Gym plug-in for AdvanceSteel
Advance Steel has native support for exporting IFC from their model.
However, many users have desired for improvements to make the export including more features of the model, and to make the generated IFC work more reliabily in viewers and other software consuing the model data.
Geometry Gym has been developing an addin for Advance Steel to support some of these requested improvements. It first and foremost runs the out of the box export, and then enhances the generated IFC file using the Advance Steel API to write an improved, optimized and enhanced IFC file.
Enhanced IFC Export Features
Configurable Options
Configuration of the export to include Welds and Bolts (significant file size reduction when omitted)
Nominate IFC placement point for Advance Steel origin
Common Property Sets (File size reduction when permitted)
Common Property Values (Significant file size reduction when permitted)
Ability to create Ifc Groups from Lot/Phase
Other enhancements / corrections
Common profiles for extrusions (Significant file size reduction)
Arbitrary closed profile polylines made compliant
C Shape Profiles correctly defining girth
Plate contours simplified and made compliant
Color styling from layers enabled in export
Material Association enabled in export
Additional attributes and properties enabled in export
Common opening shapes reused (Significant file size reduction)
Creation of IFC Element Assemblies
Getting Started
Run the enhanced export command "ggIFCExportEnhanced"
When a license is activated, the enhanced export command will run the out of the box export. You will be prompted with the out of the box ifc export summary. Close this dialog and the enhanced ifc export will proceed.
Configuration
When you run the enhanced export command, a configuration file will be generated adjacent to the dwg file path. It is a text file called "ggAdvanceSteelIfcExportConfig.json"
Presently it's contents will look like this. You can edit this JSON text file to configure future exports.
Feedback
If you have any suggestions or requests to further improve this enhanced IFC export, please reach out to us so we can review. Any sample project data will be helpful (the simpler the better).
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