Say Hi to IfcOpenHouse!

Up until now, most people have been using IfcOpenShell to read and import IFC files, but today we bring you a three-dimensional IFC building model that is entirely generated from lines of code, using IfcOpenShell. With the use of some of the helper classes that IfcOpenShell provides, some might even say that creating IFC files this way is easier than operating a full-fledged BIM authoring tool, but that would we somewhat of an overstatement.

IfcOpenHouse rests on a Nurbs-surface hilltop constructed in Open Cascade. The tight relation between IfcOpenShell and Open Cascade will in the future provide everything you need to write complex parametric shapes right to an IFC file. However, for now the surface had to be tessellated, as Ifc2x3 does not support Nurbs and IfcOpenShell is not yet smart enough to pick the correct way of representing arbitrary shapes from Open Cascade, therefore it resorts to a triangular surface model.

For the other building elements IfcExtrudedAreaSolids are used, IfcBooleanClippingResults with IfcHalfSpaceSolids are used for the walls under the slanted roof and IfcOpeningElements are used for the boolean subtractions for windows and door. The hierarchical structure of an IfcProject, IfcSite, IfcBuilding and IfcBuildingStorey is created as well. This way a model is obtained that can be directly imported into your favourite three-dimensional modelling package.

IfcOpenHouse rendered in Blender using IfcBlender, imported into Revit and opened in Solibri Model Viewer and Tekla BIMsight. 

If you know of an application that is unable to represent the generated model correctly, or have any other questions or remarks, drop us a line in the comments! You can download the generated IFC here (updated June, 2014), and take a look at the source code for generating the file over here.

Update November 10, 2012 IfcOpenHouse has been updated to import correctly into Autodesk AutoCAD Architecture 2013.