IFC Mesh reduction

Geometry
,
1

Working with some big converted IFC file - is it possible to reduce the geometry level of the ifc or ifc.rvt file with any dynamo scripts?

Thanks for any ideas

2

Try Blender and a plugin.
Open the IFC in Notepad+ or similar and use CTRL+F
To name some ideas

3

I would just do a save as in the ifc.rvt and delete large sections so you can work with one subset of elements at a time in your link (i.e. remove everything in the north, east, and south wing. Then save it as ‘west wing.ifc.rvt’, and repeat for the other wings).

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4

Geometry Gym + Rhino are my weapons of choice here. Grasshopper offers a lot of mesh optimization routines in its Weaverbird add-in. Dynamo has MeshToolkit, but getting the IFC into Revit means it is not kept as IFC and you still need to wait for it to load in the first place.

5

Load it once and save it out. This is the best path I have found for IFC workflows.

6

You lose pretty much all the data it contains, and some of the geometry likely wont round trip if the IFC didn’t come from Revit originally. OpenBIM community will crucify us for it.

7

Not that I have seen - it might not be where you expect it but the data is there.

In dozens of attempts I’ve been associated with I have yet to find IFC geometry that interop a correctly between two platforms. IFC works as long as you stay in one authoring tool in my experience. Person A using tool 1 and person B using tool 2 results in person A not being able to edit their original stuff the me next time out. This doesn’t mean such workflows aren’t possible, just that everyone of the authoring tools out there has it’s own method for authoring and serializing the data - although this is an issue with the tools not the standard.

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8

I’m talking generally pset data here, sometimes it doesn’t make the import for me, particularly if it’custom psets not generally system mapped by Revit without customization. Might be an IFC4/2x3 thing in older Revit builds. I agree RE one authoring tool, but generally if we’re importing IFC’s it is literally because we’re not in one tool (e.g. ArchiCAD).

End of the day, tool issue, agree. Most Revit users I know are still blissfully steering clear of IFC (even the users heralded as the ‘leaders’ in the Revit space). I’m lucky to come across techs these days with even an inkling of what to do beyond hit export IFC.

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