BIMCraft v0.9.0

BIMCraft 0.9.0

Detailing in views (sketches, detail lines, filled regions, fill patterns, groups), point clouds that live in the project, Revit samples that come in whole, and a dark interface around a white drawing.

Project files

• Project files are format 6. A file from 0.8.x (format 4) opens and saves as format 6. Every save is format 6, even a plain project that uses none of the new features, and 0.8.x cannot open format 5 or 6 files (it reads up to 4), so keep a copy if you still use 0.8.x.
• A floor, ceiling, roof or shaft whose outline crosses itself, or has a spike or a keyhole, is now refused when it is made or changed, with a message that says what to give instead. A floor {} taken from two wall boxes that touch at a corner used to make a floor; it now explains why it can't. Projects that already hold such an outline still open, and you can move, copy, turn and mirror it.

Sketches and detailing

• Sketch mode, one solver for every outline: floors, ceilings, roofs, shafts and filled regions are drawn as a sketch of lines and arcs in any order, closed into outlines and holes, with a message for each thing wrong with it (sketch, edit_boundary, and a sketch parameter on floor, ceiling, roof, shaft).
• Detail lines (DL) in a level's plan, a section, an elevation or a sheet, of every kind of curve: line, arc, polyline, circle, ellipse and spline. Line styles (a pen, a colour and a pattern; the project starts with Thin, Medium, Wide, Hairline, Hidden, Centre and Overhead Lines) and line patterns (dashes, dots and spaces, in millimetres on paper), both under Manage.
• Draw tools for detail lines, sketches and walls: rectangle, inscribed and circumscribed polygon, circle, start-end-radius, centre-ends, tangent end and fillet arcs, spline by control points or through points, ellipse and partial ellipse, polyline, Pick Lines, Sides, Radius and Offset, with numbers typed for a shape with Tab. Each boundary line of a region can have a line style of its own, or be invisible.
• Revision clouds, Join into Polyline (PJ), Explode (EX), Vertex (add or take away one in a polyline or a spline), Convert Spline, Fillet (FL), Offset (OF), Trim/Extend, and Corner (TR) and Split (SL) now work on detail lines as well as walls.
• Linework (LW): one edge of an element drawn in another line style, or not at all, in one view only.
• Filled regions (FR) and masking regions: Annotate > Filled Region or Masking Region starts a boundary sketch. A filled region keeps the ink of the model under it; a masking region hides it.
• Insulation along any curve.
• Fill patterns, drafting (millimetres on paper) or model (millimetres in the building), families of lines as a PAT file has them: import and export PAT files (import_fill_patterns, export_fill_patterns), and edit them in Manage > Fill Patterns (one pattern can hold many families of lines), and align or turn a model pattern on a region or a floor (Align, Pattern Angle).
• Filled region types and Edit Type: a foreground and a background pattern with their colours, masking or not, a combined preview; create, duplicate and rename types.
• Detail groups (GP makes one from lines, regions and notes, UG takes it apart) and repeating details placed along a line.
• The dialogs scroll inside the window, so OK, Cancel and Apply stay in reach even at the least window size.

Point clouds

• A project holds scans and places them (point_cloud): Insert > Point Cloud, the scan's properties, and a Visibility/Graphics category. They draw in the 3D view, in plans and in sections, and a plan snaps to a scan where its cut plane cuts it.
• E57 files are read, each scan placed by its pose, and a survey's stations come in as one scan. A scan file is held to caps before anything in it is unpacked.
• High Contrast Point Clouds on the view control bar: one click fills the scans with a colour that reads on paper and on the dark canvas (File > Settings > Graphics picks it), and one click more gives them their own colours back.

Revit files

• The Revit samples come in whole: nothing is left out (Snowdon Towers used to lose 263 elements). Curtain walls, sloped and stepped slabs, openings, and sketches with ends that miss by a millimetre come in, and an element's data is read deeper.
• The faces of a level are made once for all its rooms: a big sample imports in seconds, not minutes.
• Revit's shortcuts, a toggle for the 3D view, and Match Properties (MA).

The desktop

• Dark UI, Light Canvas: a dark interface around a white drawing. Hover and selection are told apart on it, and the selection fills and the crop outline follow the canvas, not the interface.
• A leaner look: floating cards, the app bar as the title bar, IBM Plex, and a ribbon that fits the window. Text holds 4.5 : 1 and focus rings 3 : 1 in both themes.
• The Type Selector's list scrolls within the window.
• On Windows the 3D card now tries DirectX 12 before Vulkan.

Agents and development

• Scripts and agents get the new commands (bimcraft-cli commands lists them, most with a Revit-style shortcut); every render reply carries notes that say when a cap dropped something from the picture.
• The core's tests take about a minute, not twelve.

Not yet: Edit Group in place, model groups, groups outside plans, patterns aligned on a wall's face in a section or an elevation, Pick Faces, drafting views, detail components and legends. See the roadmap.

Thanks

dansity (the annotation work, and the earlier pens, Object Styles, Visibility/Graphics and tabs), f43792 (point clouds, High Contrast, the leaner look), tdslot (Revit import), alteralto (the Windows start ladder, the Type Selector) and calieno (Revit shortcuts).

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.