IFC Merge Results in Gibberish Layer Names

[Anonymous]

This is my first use of IFC so I may be doing everything wrong ... I used the Merge command and brought the IFC file into a new blank AC12 document.

Most of the elements seem to have come through but I have some missing walls.

The biggest issue is that the layer names have come through in gibberish - and I really don't know what to do about that. I'm grateful for any ideas or suggestions.

[Erika Epstein]

ICS, the calendar file type?
Or did you mean IFC?

Are all the layer names odd? or if you scroll down do you find the ones you are looking for? Merging brings all the attributes of the merged file into the host file, and there may be layers attached to the merged one that you were not aware of.

Re the walls, when you merge files, the merged one takes on the story heights of the host file. If the story heights in the two files didn't match some walls, and other 3D elements, may now be on different stories than you expected. If you look at the file in the 3D window, are all the elements there? You will need to reassign the home stories of all these rogue elements.

You should also work with whomever gave you the file to get commonalities such as story heights worked out, especially if this is one of your consultants and this will continue throughout the project, and others that may follow.

If you are not overlaying the merged file model with an existing one, then instead of merging just open the IFC/ICS file as you would a pln file and then it will take on the file settings such as story heights.

HTH

[Anonymous]

Yes! It is IFC. My bad. Hopefully I can change the subject.

I'm going to try to open the file as you recommend.

What I did was to open a new file (so there were some pre-established layers) and then merged in the IFC file. All of the new layers from the IFC file are gibberish but not the layers in the new file template.

[Erika Epstein]

How do you know the layers from the IFC are "gibberish" and not what the originator of the file used?
Where did the file come from?

[Laszlo Nagy]

You can download a free IFC Viewer such as Solibri Model Viewer (http://www.solibri.com/solibri-model-viewer.html) or Tekla BIMsight (http://www.teklabimsight.com/downloads.jsp) and check your model there. This way you can find out if the layer names become incorrect during ArchiCAD Import or they are already exported incorrectly from the source application.

[Anonymous]

^^^^ Very cool. Thank you so much!