Archicad - Blender Connection

[Alison_007]

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.

[Alison_007]

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.

[Alison_007]

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.

[Laszlo Nagy]

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.

[Alison_007]

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.

[torben_wadlinger]

Speckle

https://speckle.systems/

https://speckle.systems/integrations/archicad

[Aaron Bourgoin]

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

[rudl]

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.

[fabioverissimoTUU]

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/