Design transfer with Archicad 24's ODA exporter to Revit?

[Florian Lohberger]

hi all,

has anyone tried out or has done a model handover from AC24 to Revit 202x so the colleagues could continue their design in there?

BR, Florian

[Christophe Fortineau]

Hello Florian,

Revit is ifc4 certified since 4 days.
So sInce 4 days MVD design transfer is available about ifc collaboration (buildingsmart)
I've tried 4 times before but I think I had not found revit good designer enough
The results was not interresting.
I'm ready to try another time with you.

[Laszlo Nagy]

Florian wrote:
hi all,

has anyone tried out or has done a model handover from AC24 to Revit 202x so the colleagues could continue their design in there?

BR, Florian

You should not aim for that. It is not possible. This has been a myth that design applications will be able to exchange data so that you work in one application, save it as IFC, open it in another application and continue working in it with no data loss. It may work to some degree, but applications are just too different for that to be fully achievable. It is just a completely unrealistic expectation or demand from any consultant or anyone else.

The OpenBIM approach recommends the Reference Model method. You save your IFC, and then use that model in the other application ONLY AS A REFERENCE MODEL. The consultant will still have to model their own parts of the model.

[Christophe Fortineau]

LaszloNagy wrote:
The consultant will still have to model their own parts of the model.

Hello LaszloNagy,

With a IFC4 well exported I have already saved many hours of modeling by recovering the major part of small models started on Vectorworks. It is absolutly not perfect at all but I really saved many hours. I have not found a Revit modeler to do this on the other hand.

[Aaron Bourgoin]

If Revit has finally joined the IFC4 world, when might we expect the release of an updated IFC4-driven IFC Model Exchange with Archicad?

[Laszlo Nagy]

Christophe wrote:

LaszloNagy wrote:
The consultant will still have to model their own parts of the model.

Hello LaszloNagy,

With an IFC4 well exported I have already saved many hours of modeling by recovering the major part of small models started on Vectorworks. It is absolutely not perfect at all but I really saved many hours. I have not found a Revit modeler to do this on the other hand.

Yes, there are certain simpler geometries that can go/come through all right (like a simple rectangular column), but many do not. For example, a Door or Window with many parameters controlling its geometry. Or a multi-segment parametric Column or Beam will lose all its parametricity when transferred through IFC. There is little chance that the ability to keep all that parametricity will be achieved anytime in the near future.
O am not speaking against using IFC. I am speaking for not having unrealistic expectations.

[Christophe Fortineau]

Hello LaszloNagy,

You are completely right, and I add for example that my IFC4 viewer does not manage 100% of the geometries newly introduced in the IFC4.
There are therefore interoperability limits between design software but also limits on simple IFC readers.
For the IfcTesselatedItem, my IFC4 viewer know how to manage the IfcTriangulatedFaceSet but not the IfcPolygonalFaceSet.

[Laszlo Nagy]

One additional piece of information:
At the current moment, neither Archicad is Certified for IFC4 Design Transfer Export, not Revit is Certified for IFC4 Design Transfer Import (both conditions should be met before you should start trying to use this method/format).
On the below page, you can see that there are only a few applications still that are Certified for IFC4 Architectural Reference Exchange Export (which still does not worth much since there are NO applications that are Certified for IFC4 Architectural Reference Exchange Import, so even if you Export to IFC using IFC4 Architectural Reference Exchange, no application will be able to Import that IFC using IFC4 Architectural Reference Exchange), but none are Certified for IFC4 Design Transfer Export or Import. Additionally, no software has even started the Certification process for IFC4 Design Transfer Export or Import, which can take anywhere between 1-to-3 years, as the below web page indicates:

https://www.buildingsmart.org/compliance/software-certification/certified-software/

So, I think IFC4 is still a few years away from becoming a mainstream IFC exchange format.

[Christophe Fortineau]

LaszloNagy wrote:
So, I think IFC4 is still a few years away from becoming a mainstream IFC exchange format.

Do you think that it will one day be technically possible to easily collaborate with IFC4 Design View file exchanges ?

[Laszlo Nagy]

I think IFC file exchange is a bit like translation between languages. Many times, translation is very good, but it will never be 100% accurate because of the difference in languages.
Certain concepts and data structures exist in one application that do not exist in the other, so I think IFC file exchange will never be 100% accurate either. Also, as you can see, other solutions are starting to emerge as well, such as the SAF format for exchanging Structural Analytical data between applications. So, I don't know, we will see.
But for now, using IFC files as Reference Models is probably the best path.