Features Before Standards [Controversial]

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Fantoche
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Features Before Standards [Controversial]

Post by Fantoche »

Hi
I have been watching the Osarch community from afar for sometime now but after alot of scepticism, I decided to give Freecad a go and try to grasp it a bit, The goal was to get familiar with the tools but also the underlying code behind In hope of one day starting to contribute one day to the project, I am rooting so hard for an open source revit alternative to succeed.
This post is not to dunk on the efforts of developpers as I am very aware of the gigantic task that is writing a BIM software, but it seems to be that this project cares too much about meeting the IFC open standard more than to become a viable feature rich alternative to the subscribtion based solutions, Why should we give IFC the priority when we are still drawining with half finished buggy software, let the big cash companies deal with IFC, and let's focus on building a solution that will attract a solid userbase and hopefully sustainable funding.
I know this is an open source project and every one is free to contribute their time however they like, I hope you don't find my post to be salty, I wanted to have your feedback and to know what are the aspirations of the devs and the community, so I can curb my enthusiasm accordingly.
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yorik
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Re: Features Before Standards [Controversial]

Post by yorik »

By all means do not curb your enthusiasm!

I understand why one would want to call FreeCAD a buggy half finished thing, but you might not get very happy answers from its developers that way ;) FreeCAD is made by volunteers, we are all working hard on it, things go as they go, are done when they are done. and are already very usable to most of us. Of course it has bugs and is not finished, everybody knows that, but all that requires time and dedication. Funding can help, but in no way is it a magical solution that will make FreeCAD instantly bugfree. FreeCAD is a community-developed project, it's not a "product". It goes where the community chooses to bring it. Another point probably is that nobody here is very interested in making it look like Revit...

The IFC question is important and dear to us, not only at FreeCAD but the whole OSArch. Because that's the whole point. Producing not only building projects (in fact you don't even need BIM for that) but building projects in a way that is understandable, parsable, editable, sharable, and integratable. And that is exactly the purpose of IFC. IFC is what can free us of "the way of doing things" enforced by big BIM vendors. It's open, it's flexible, it's readable even without a BIM app. I honestly see no reason not to adopt it. Of course it has some requirements and standards and technicalities, but the more I get to know it, the more I see that these requirements are mostly never mandatory, and that it's surprisingly more flexible and tolerant than big BIM vendors like to cry about :)
Fantoche
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Re: Features Before Standards [Controversial]

Post by Fantoche »

Hi thanks for your response

My experience (I confess very short one) is that one can't use this format to modify and build on top of it, it holds dumb geometry with attached information that does't allow the editing of that geomtry in the same smartway it was generated by the original software, say a client comes to me with an IFC file generated from archicad or revit by a previous studio who built his project, and want a new overhaul of the façades and the roof of the building. When I import the IFC into Freecad, I can't modify the geometry in a smart parametric way as if it was opened in the original software, eg, when deleting the windows the wall doesn't update, can't thinken the walls to account for added insulation, can't update the wall or thickness height by accesing its parameters, how about updating the quantities of bricks in the outer wall layer once modified, layered walls are not even exported properly, all layers are esported as one bloc, all in all I don't see a difference between an IFC file and a 3d Cad file with tagged geometry and extra information.

I understand how dear openstandards are to the open source community, and where IFC could be useful in the AEC industry, my point was that as we stand we don't have any FOSS software to facilitate and ease up the design process for achitects as the Big players do. and maybe we should put more effort into that to get even small architecture firms to use the product and grow the userbase, funding is crutial to speedup the process.
Another aspect of the open source community is to be blindsided by our hate of big corporations to the point of wanting to do everything differently, Big commercial software is usualy ahead not only because of big funds but also because of the huge amount and many years of feedback from its users, they provide a more polished and intuitive user expérience and dedicate alot of attention and effort to that. I don't see a problem with trying to copy and learn from their approach, it might save us a lot of time and effort and narrow the gap with their products. blender has exploded in popularity and funding once they listened to the community made an overhaul ui change.

Freecad as it is isn't suited for architectural design, and is very very very confusing and unintuitive, Maybe what we need is a fork, that keeps up freedcad core engine developements [APP, opencasdae, coin3d, UI tools ... ] but builds a complete user interface with a solid paradigm from the ground up.
  • the model tree isn't as useful as a project browser (Plan views, sections , elevation), it sure is very hard to navigate big projects, and it isn't useful for an architect to browse throught thousand of nested elements.
  • It would be nice for the archviews to be smart and have smart representation that links back to the original geomtry istead of a serialized svg representation of the section operation, so by moving a window in a plan view it updates its coordinates in the model.
I believe we all hope to see a FOSS contender to Archicad and revit, but we diverge on the approach and the endgoal, I know that If I want change, I should make it myself, I have been obcessing over 3 days on how to generate smart architectural views that autoupdate and keep geometry linked, but I am afraid it is beyond my knowledge of programming, it needs to be coded at a very low level using c++ libraries and complicated visualisation pipelines. I don't think I am up to the task as of now.

Anyways, I hope big success to the community, meanwhile I need to wind down this unhealthy obcession I have with building a FOSS Alternative to Revit, If I start coding with freecad I hope I can find some help from the devs. It would be nice to have an xmpp or matrix room dedicated to Freecad Arch and BIM for faster discussions.
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thomas-neemann
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Re: Features Before Standards [Controversial]

Post by thomas-neemann »

Fantoche wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:27 pm ....When I import the IFC into Freecad, I can't modify the geometry in a smart parametric way ...

ifc is not intended to be modified. in the bim process it is e.g. used for referencing and checking all individual drawings of a project. breakthroughs, collision checking, etc. if files are to be exported for further processing, step is very well suited

Fantoche wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 4:27 pm ...
Freecad as it is isn't suited for architectural design, ....


in my opinion it is very well suited for architecture. I'm currently working in a bim process with freecad, I even get step files from other cad systems to convert them as ifc. it is extremely fast with drafts and changes. between web meetings there are sometimes only a few minutes for changes. no problem with freecad. I recommend thorough training, without it it will probably be difficult.
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

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thomas-neemann
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Re: Features Before Standards [Controversial]

Post by thomas-neemann »

yorik wrote: Tue Mar 28, 2023 9:00 am ....IFC is what can free us of "the way of doing things" enforced by big BIM vendors. It's open, it's flexible, it's readable even without a BIM app. I honestly see no reason not to adopt it....
+1
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

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