topic Re: Importing .rfa files in Collaboration with other software

Importing .rfa files

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 00:39:01 GMT

I am trying to decide whether to buy Archicad or Revit. As a diehard Mac user I would love to choose Archicad, however I see that most manufacturers provide BIM data for their products as .rfa files. If there is no .rfa import into Archicad, that seems like a real problem to me.

How can I go with Archicad if I cannot get manufacturer's product data in BIM format? How do you folks handle this?

Re: Importing .rfa files

Eduardo Rolon — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 02:35:55 GMT

3DS->Archicad GSM
or
3DS->SketchUp 2014-> IFC -> AC
or
STL->AC or STL->C4D->AC
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Just because it says that it is a .RFA does not mean that it is different or better than the original 3DS or DWG were it came from
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For a specific well made RFA you can download a Revit trial, open the file export to IFC and get the IFC into AC.

Re: Importing .rfa files

Eduardo Rolon — Sat, 01 Mar 2014 02:38:57 GMT

I could get the 3DS or STL straight into AC but since I use C4D I like to see how clean the file is before exporting to AC.

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Also you can read this:

http://www.shoegnome.com/2014/02/20/bim-content-much-detail-fault/

http://www.shoegnome.com/2014/02/18/modlar-looking-bim-users-san-francisco-ca/

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or go here:

http://bimobject.com/Product

http://www.worldofbim.com

https://bimcomponents.com/?_ga=1.219887129.1077613504.1349715461

Re: Importing .rfa files

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Mar 2014 12:13:19 GMT

As referenced in the article much available BIM content (especially many if the recur families and 3ds files that have been imported from the manufacturer's solid models for prototyping and production) are not good BIM models although excellent 3d models.
A number of years ago I remember killing a project where I imported a manufacturers model of a seat I was using in a project, I did not look at the model before importing and then just used a project2 command in the 2D script and saved over the library part. After closing the project for the day I tried to open the file the next morning but the computer just sat there fans full blast for ages with nothing appearing to be happening till the computer used all ram and filled the hard drive with massive swap file and then crashed. Thought file was corrupted and recovered from backup but problem occurred again, only when examining library to see if that was problem did I find that the library part for the seat was over 40Mb and I had more than 900 of them in the project. The seat was a full model right down to ball bearings in races. To model the chair sufficient for BIM model and to include relevant info for 3d representation and scheduling took less than a hour but probably saved much more time due to decreased processing times

Re: Importing .rfa files

Anonymous — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 07:13:49 GMT

I'm trying to create library parts from revit files (.rfa)
Is there any chance to import .ifc and then create .gsm from it?
I tried to, but I only get a useless .gsm that I can't import in another AC project...

Re: Importing .rfa files

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 21:41:27 GMT

You can import an IFC, which then you can convert to Morph.
You can then change the Morph to your needs, including settings the Surfaces of its various faces and making edges visible/hidden, then you can save that as a GDL Object.

Re: Importing .rfa files

Anonymous — Mon, 13 Oct 2014 22:16:20 GMT

Thank You very much!!
Its working now.
I tested also exporting to dwg from Revit and I get a better result this way, and then converting to Morph....This Morph thing is just great.
Thank You again