topic Re: Archicad - Blender Connection in Collaboration with other software

Archicad - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 10:25:33 GMT

Good morning everyone.

I've been working with Blender and Cycle to render, sending my Archicad file to Blender by exporting it as FBX, but sometimes due to changes or updates, I was wondering if there are a tool capable of establishing this connection between these two programs, like D5 or Twinmotion, for example. I searched the internet and didn't find anything except someone's project on Github, but so far it seems like just an idea, not something exact or functional.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

Laszlo Nagy — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 09:26:20 GMT

There is an open-source Blender Add-On called Bonsai (previously called BlenderBIM):

https://bonsaibim.org/

It is using IFC as its file format, so if you have this Add-On, and you export an IFC from Archicad, you will be able to open it in Bonsai. I suppose that you will still have all the rendering capabilities available as well.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:10:50 GMT

Right. Thank you very much for the tip, I will look for and try this solution.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

leandro_cavalheiro — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:36:10 GMT

Hi,

I've been using Archicad > Blender for many years, I would recommend using FBX or OBJ, both formats are natively supported by Blender.

There is a plugin to import SKP that also works well. (https://github.com/RedHaloStudio/Sketchup_Importer/releases)

It is using IFC as its file format, so if you have this Add-On, and you export an IFC from Archicad, you will be able to open it in Bonsai. I suppose that you will still have all the rendering capabilities available as well.

For rendering purposes, I don't recommend using IFC. It has some issues with objects with multiple materials (different override on each side not being preserved), and also it doesn't export textures.

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

CosminF — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:55:45 GMT

Hi,

I usually export as .dae (Collada) file and I always get my textures from Archicad into Blender.

First thing into Blender is to apply a decimate modifier on one objects with all the other ones selected, and then copy the modifiers to all objects and apply visual geometry to mesh. In that way you reduce the polygon count tremendously.

If any updates are made into the Archicad model, I try to save only those and import the file/ replace in Blender. Because once you re-define textures and properties on materials, it would be easier to reassign them onto the newly imported objects.

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

Antonio_ClavelArqu — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 11:57:36 GMT

Hello,

I use Blender to render Archicad models with Cycles.

With Gemini Pro, I have created a script to relink the applied materials once the model is updated from Archicad.

Due to work issues, I cannot share it, but I am in the process of learning to program to create something based on that in my spare time to refine it and upload it to the Blender extensions website.

Even so, if you ask Gemini, it can make it work without any problems. I'm sure you can use any other AI to create it.

The basic operation is to assign the source material to each element when importing it, then when you import something new, you tell it to read those values from the previous model and reassign materials to the new model based on that data.

As I said, I can't share much more for work reasons, but I want to do so on a personal level and put it on the extensions website openly.

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

leandro_cavalheiro — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:49:08 GMT

@CosminF escreveu:
I usually export as .dae (Collada) file and I always get my textures from Archicad into Blender.

Blender 5.0 dropped official support for DAE format, so maybe it's not the best future proof format.

https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/4.5/#compatibility

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

Antonio_ClavelArqu — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 12:43:55 GMT

I forgot to mention, I always export using FBX files.

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:43:45 GMT

That's great, this tool seems incredible; it would be very useful to have a dedicated tool for this, exporting textures, lights, updating the model, and so on. Congratulations on the initiative.

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:44:25 GMT

I will try this.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:54:37 GMT

Thank you all for the clarifications. I already had experience with .fbx, but I compared it to exporting with .dae and in terms of results they are very similar. I just found .fbx much more practical, as it allowed me to adjust some geometry behaviors during export, but .dae also worked very well, although Archicad took much longer to export, The IFC worked, but I had some problems with the same textures.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 18:59:06 GMT

Good, thanks for the clarifications. It would be great if ArchiCAD invested in a tool similar to Enscape's Live Link or Twinmotion's Datasmith. It would help a lot, especially now that Blender has gained so much notoriety in ArchiVIZ and ArchiCAD values Open BIM.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

Laszlo Nagy — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 22:57:40 GMT

Interestingly, these connections are being developed not by Graphisoft, but by the visualization companies, Enscape and Epic Games, respectively.

So, it may be better to ask such a connection from the Blender Community.

Re: ArchiCAD - Blender Connection

Alison_007 — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:30:22 GMT

Yes, unfortunately. Maybe it's better to ask there (Blender dev). Speaking of efforts, testing the ArchiCAD-Claude, ManusAi, etc. integration, I came across an article that presented a graph showing the manufacturers' efforts in relation to the community, and curiously, regarding ArchiCAD, the community is the one that is most actively trying to expand the connection between ArchiCAD and other software. Initiatives like Tapir (JSON), Enzyme, Bimdots (USDZ,Fragments Exporter) etc.

Betreff: Archicad - Blender Connection

torben_wadlinger — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 15:48:52 GMT

Speckle

https://speckle.systems/

https://speckle.systems/integrations/archicad

Betreff: Archicad - Blender Connection

Aaron Bourgoin — Wed, 17 Dec 2025 16:36:34 GMT

Torben and Everyone in the Community:

I love Speckle - But if you're like me, working in AC29 on the MacOS platform - you're currently out of luck.

Speckle has not updated its Connectors for this platform combination - and even if they worked, the old Connectors will be deprecated at the end of the year,

If you haven't looked at Speckle - you should. If you're a Mac shop using 29, please go to their forum and drop a request for an updated MAC Connector.

The link is here: https://speckle.community/t/mac-support-for-next-gen-connectors-demand/17271/29

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

rudl — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 23:30:46 GMT

I tried something like that (without AI) but there were some pitfalls
..I tried to make it "smart" as described, but struggled and could not get it running reliable..

1) Because the object names or exported objectnames are/were not consistant in Archicad. A change or added wall etc in archicad may end up in messing with the exported object names and an object that is completely different from an old one could have the same name after a while. and therefore it could not record the applied material from the old model at some point.
2) Object material slots count and material slot order were not consistant. Imagine the wall or whatever intersects something else with a different material etc ....jumbles everything around.

After that i gave up and made a "dumb" version with a hand written translation dictionary. ^^ works but not using it that often since I only occasionally render nowadays.

Makes me think the addon would need to record every material change in blender when it happens "as event". then it could work.

Re: Archicad - Blender Connection

fabioverissimoTUU — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 10:27:13 GMT

A long time me and a friend of mine used the Wafefront file, .Obj, to import files to Blender from other software.

To solve the duplicated materials problems (the.001 name), he made a custom Import Obj file.

I don't know if it still works, so.. use it as is..!

https://pedroazambujavarela.net/obj-to-blender/