Associate documents with products

[PeterPetersen]

Is there any way to associate documents wth products using IfcRelAssociatesDocument (https://standards.buildingsmart.org/IFC/RELEASE/IFC4/ADD2_TC1/HTML/link/ifcrelassociatesdocument.htm) objectified relationship when exporting IFC from ArchiCAD? 

[Miha_M]

You can always create an Archicad Property and map this property to an IFC entity via an IFC property. If you specify this new Archicad Property to any element, like a "filename.pdf " or any other document description, this will be exported within .ifc data (with correct ifc export settings).

Is this what you ment by "...to associate documents with products"?

[PeterPetersen]

Hi Miha, 

Thanks for your feedback. That's not quite what I am looking for. The IFC 4 schema defines how documents can be attached to objects. For me it is important to attach one document to multiple elements, but to do this in one place. Also specifically for the project I am working on, the FM Database our client uses reads this specific relation directly from IFC structure. Simply creating a custom property does not do the trick. The closest I can get to what I need is to use the IFC Project Manager, group the objects to which the documents relate by using IfcRelAssignsToGroup and creating the property for that group. Unfortunately I don't seem to be change the relation type to the required one for FM ( IfcRelAssociatesDocument). 

I might  be forced to adjust these relationships in IfcOpenShell but I would much rather get this directly from ArchiCAD. 

[Miha_M]

I see, the IfcRelAssociatesDocument is not available in the pre-defined scheme. Maybe a local representative or somebody from GS can help you?

[PeterPetersen]

Feedback from discussion with GS Team: at the moment the IfcRelAssignsToGroup is the closest to the required result. I will go with that for the time being.