2018 07 10 Task 2.2 Coordination Meeting

WP 2.2 IFC Geometry, July 10, 2018

When

July 10, 5:00pm CET/MEZ (= 17:00 German time = 8:00am Pacific time)

Participants

• Christoph van Treeck
• Jérôme Frisch
• Eric Fichter
• Avichal Mahotra
• Cathal Hoare
• Georgios Giannakis
• James O'Donnell
• Jiarui Lin
• Joachim Benner
• Karl-Heinz Häfele
• Mohammad Haris Shamsi
• Moritz Lauster
• Usman Ali
• Vlado Bazjanac

Agenda and Minutes

• Introduction by Christoph van Treeck
• Eric Fichter (RWTH)
  • New researcher at E3D, RTWH Aachen
  • IFCOpenShell library could be very feasible in the project
  • IFC OpenShell uses OpenCascade as geometric kernel
  • Interface to Python OCC existing
  • Parse all geometry and data using those two libraries
• Karl-Heinz Häfele
  • Usage of different ways
  • Parse as commercial product for STEP schema
  • STEP Scanner and Parser
  • Geometric operation is done by own software
  • If this software is not bringing back valid models, then they use a different geometric system if this is failing
  • Polygonal mesh if possible
• Christoph van Treeck
  • This cannot be used as collaborative environment due to licensing issues
• Karl-Heinz Häfele
  • Backup kernel is open-source using a triangular mesh
  • Thinking about running own software for collecting coplanar triangles and group these together
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Separate geometry and topology as long as possible
  • Example curves and surfaces
  • We need to read and parse IFC and deal with this information
  • We need full access to geometry and topology
• Karl-Heinz Häfele
  • Used OpenCascade previously but had problems with performance
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Other experiences some other people want to share
• Jiarui Lin
  • Xbim based on C#
• James O'Donnell
  • No other suggestions at the moment
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Establish a small working team to decide and test setups
  • Simplistic sample files to process?
• Karl-Heinz Häfele
  • Quite a lot of IFC Files available (ca. 6500)
  • Database for organizing specific IFC Entities
  • Test cases for 80% of the complete IFC specification
  • e.g. windows as spheres as the test cases are artificial in order to test the Boolean operations
  • Constructing an example with all the entities available in IFC
• Jérôme Frisch
  • Different setup cases, from easy to complex
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Set up Excel Sheet for classifying different examples
  • Test cases: simple room geometry, rooms connected, …
• James O'Donnell
  • 35 different Unit tests for testing different features
  • Checks with Vlado if it is sharable
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Organize ourselves in the git repository
  • Put the sharable examples in git
• Georgios Giannakis:
  • which BIM authoring tool are we considering for exporting IFC files? There are not few differences between ifc files exported from RVT and Archicad
• Christoph van Treeck
  • for testing the libraries we use IFC files. Authoring tools don't matter at this point
  • Set up of the working environment
  • Review and test by a small team
  • Opensource Sharable Environment Team
    • Eric Fichter (RWTH Aachen)
    • Christian Waluga (LiNear) (Proposed by Christoph)
    • James O'Donnell (UCD by student contribution starting from September)
    • Jiarui Lin (Tsinghua University)
    • G. Giannakis (Technical University of Crete and UCL)
  • Test team (2nd stage)
    • Karl-Heinz Häfele (KIT)
  • Other issues?
• Karl-Heinz Häfele
  • What are they doing on the geometry
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Goal:
    • reduction of level of detail and complexity
    • Finding relation between room and spaces on topology only
    • Test algorithms and process geometry with this method
    • In the end discussing about space boundaries
• Jiarui Lin:
  • Are connections in between devices and equipment also relevant
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Create a reasonable connection graph between different objects
• Moritz Lauster:
  • Start with a simple task and make it more complex later on
  • Best approach: start with simple use cases and then get more complex
  • Start investigating state of the art and start (Eneff-BIM and so on)
• Christoph van Treeck
  • for the next meeting, define the goals of this WP
• James O'Donnell
  • Input for KUL yet?
• Christoph van Treeck
  • Unfortunately not, but we are hoping to get some contribution in the WP
  • Contact them directly and see if they want to collaborate to WP 2.2
• Jérôme Frisch
  • at least one additional meeting before the Paris-Meeting in October is reasonable
  • Coordinate a meeting for mid of September

Next Steps

• Working into the libraries OpenCascade and IFCOpenshell
• Contact between all developers working on this topic

Resources

none