BIMCraft v0.11.0

BIMCraft 0.11.0

A new interface of BIMCraft's own beside a ribbon layout, drawing and dimensioning in the 3D view, a much faster core, shape editing, glTF export, IFC import that keeps everything it reads, and Italian and Vietnamese.

Project files

• Project files are format 17. A file from 0.10.x (format 12) opens and saves as format 17. Every save is format 17, even a plain project that uses none of the new features, and 0.10.x cannot open format 13 to 17 files (it reads up to 12), so keep a copy if you still use 0.10.x. An older build says the file is from a newer BIMCraft and asks you to update.

The interface

• Two interface profiles (File > Settings > User Interface > Profile). BIMCraft, the default, has no ribbon: its tools are a Tools palette that docks on any side or floats, with Find (Ctrl+K) for every tool and view, an Inspector with pictures (a type's layers, which way a door opens, a floor's slope, what an element is tied to) and the Navigator with a minimap. Rev keeps the ribbon, laid out as Revit users know it. The two differ in layout only: every tool, shortcut and setting works in both. If you want the ribbon back after updating, pick Rev.
• The project's scale (Sketch, Studio, Team) leaves out tools a project doesn't need yet; Team, the default, has them all. Edit Tools hides the ones you never use, and layouts are kept as named presets.
• Themes: Dracula, Midnight and AMOLED beside light and dark, an accent colour of your own, and your own panel, canvas and text colours.
• Drawing at the cursor: a point lined up with a wall says which, a line's or wall's angle is typed after its length with Tab, and a snap names the element it came from. Snapping also finds annotation anchors and a camera's eye and target, and Rotate shows its centre live.
• Keyboard shortcuts you make are kept between sessions. Palettes scroll, stack where they are dropped, and a Palettes button brings any back.
• The start page opens the sample house, plans show an origin marker and the view's name (each can be hidden in Settings), and the view bar switches a renovation filter and visibility sets.

3D

• Every drawing tool works in the 3D view: walls, components, beams, columns, footings, pipes, ducts, conduits, cable trays and wires draw on the face under the cursor, snapping as on the plan.
• Sketching in 3D: Edit Boundary in the 3D view, work planes at any angle, and box selection.
• A navigation triad, orbit and zoom about the point under the cursor, dimensions in 3D views, and Graphic Display Options (GD) with edges, silhouettes and ambient shadows.
• Locked and equal dimensions show their locks, and a permanent dimension's number takes a typed length that moves what it measures.
• On the graphics card, the wireframe shader DirectX 12 refused is fixed and a wireframe's edges are found faster.

Modelling

• Shape editing for floors and flat roofs (issue #183): points and split lines raised and lowered, the top triangulated exactly.
• A slope for each edge of a roof by footprint, Wall Top Offset, and walls that meet a column on its edge.
• Doors and windows may rise past their wall's top, as Revit lets them (issue #215). A sill at or above the top is still refused.
• Rooms take a colour on plans, picked from swatches, and IFC carries it.
• Families say which fixture or fitting they are (a kitchen sink, say), which IFC writes as the predefined type.

Speed

• The cached spatial core: what the model looks up, checks and redraws is indexed and kept, so plans, sections and the 3D view redraw a fraction of what they did. In dansity's measurements a model of 1.2 million elements drew in elevation in under 2 seconds.

Schedules and views

• Multi-category schedules, as Revit's.
• Visibility/Graphics and Object Styles by family category, with Electrical view templates.

Import and export

• IFC import keeps what it has no native element for, as generic components that remember their IFC class and go back out as it. Files up to 512 MiB open (issue #264).
• IFC geometry: revolved solids, solids swept along a curve, advanced B-reps on planes, cylinders, spheres and turned or extruded surfaces, B-spline curves and ellipses. A B-spline surface is still left out, and the import note says which element lost what.
• IFC colours (issue #264): a style with no name, a style on a type's mapped geometry (as Revit and IfcOpenShell write it) and IfcIndexedColourMap face colours now come in. Walls, floors and other layered elements still take colour from their materials by name only.
• IFC members that frame (braces, purlins, rafters, chords) come in as beams; mullions, posts and the rest stay generic components.
• Georeferencing: an IFC file's IfcMapConversion and projected CRS are kept on the project and written back on export, and the georeference command reads and sets them. No panel shows it in the window yet.
• IFC export writes type objects for doors, windows, roofs, ceilings, components and MEP runs, material profile sets for beams, columns and footings, and a beam's or column's outer surface as its sides only. A property named as a family's parameter no longer stops a file from opening.
• Revit files: Structural Framing comes in as beams where its box runs along an axis, Structural Foundations as footings, and stairs, railings, curtain panels and mullions, wall sweeps, slab edges, conduits, trusses and the other known categories as boxes of their category. The notes list what was left out and why.
• glTF export (.glb) of the 3D view, which Blender opens directly.

Electrical, plumbing and sizing

• New sizing commands: reservoir_size (a building's water reservation by NBR 5626:2020), dr_check (which circuits need a 30 mA residual-current device by NBR 5410), dps_check (surge protection of a power line by NBR 5410) and demand (demand and service category by the utility's own standard, CPFL GED 13 and Enel). The tables are as the contributor transcribed them: check a figure against your copy before relying on it. These are aids, not a design.

Languages

• Italian joins as an interface and project language, and Vietnamese as an interface language. The Italian interface is about four fifths translated; what is missing shows in English.
• Every other catalog was filled in for this release, short of the newest messages, which show in English. Those new entries have not been read by a native speaker yet, so please report what reads wrong.

Agents and development

• Agents can be held read-only, and the window shows when an agent is connected. Long error messages are cut short (issue #205), and a door or window refused on a wall its level doesn't cut says why (issue #201).

Not yet: B-spline surfaces and curtain walls as their own elements in IFC import, property sets read by their set's name, a panel for the georeference, plug-ins, and cast sun shadows. See the roadmap.

Thanks

dansity (the cached spatial core, sketching in 3D, the floating look in Rev, the DirectX 12 wireframe fix), emilianocapasso (shape editing), renanem (reservoir_size, dr_check, dps_check, demand, and three fixes), ffishman (fixture kinds, IFC surface areas), gregoriogondola-spec (multi-category schedules), dronov-dmitry (snapping), Galax65 (Italian), dinhkarate (Vietnamese), meococ (the point cloud tests' folders) and PolyglotOpenstreetmap (the tool palette the BIMCraft profile grew from).

Still true

• The Windows installer and the macOS app are not code-signed or notarized yet (Windows SmartScreen: More info, then Run anyway; macOS: System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway).
• Revit's .rvt is read, never written; IFC is the way out.

Every file has a checksum in SHA256SUMS.