Speckle and Open BIM

[Ahmed_K]

Hi there ! 

Archicad has been introduced as a locomotive for Open BIM and IFC workflow, i can see now a very fast raise of Speckle, for data and geometry exchange between softwares, without loss, it try to converts elements to native geometries for each software, this platform integrates almost all the popular softwares in the market, 

Revit, Sketchup and Rhino have the most focus on development, it's strange to not to see ArchiCAD in the front of the development,

Speckle may be the future for collaboration and exchange, regarding the progress they did in theese few years, who knows, 

This thread is for you to exchange, discuss about this platform and the experience of anyone used it as experimental or in a real work ! 

[Iyur]

Imo, Speckle is better beacuse of it's flexibility.
I'm using it to transfer structural core from Archicad to Revit in native elements.

[Tuan Tai Truong]

In terms of information transformation, IFC is the best option for now. A wall will mostly stay a wall, a slab will mostly stay a slab if the geometries are not too complicated. With the other two options, all will become objects.

With Speckle there is the advantage that we will work "live", send and receive between software within seconds, and we can choose what to send, and what not.
But it quickly becomes chaos,  you don't know what and where something came from, and "delete" is not synchronizable.

With the Graphisoft add-on, it is actually cool if you put the Revit file in the cloud and update it as a hotlink whenever you want.

So Speckle: Quick and dirty

Graphisoft Add-On: Controllable

IFC: best for translating and continue working after getting the result

[Iyur]

They won't be native.

For a lot of cases the direct shapes of elements (even if it says wall, slab, column etc) is not enough.

[Iyur]

Don't agree.

I'm exporting my model exatly into the existing family & types in Revit, so I can't name it "dirty".

[Tuan Tai Truong]

Speckle is making great strides and developing the tool at an impressive pace. The team is also very supportive, which I truly appreciate.

When I referred to "quick and dirty," I was talking about how we are currently using Speckle to collaborate as a team, as I mentioned before—not about how the elements are translated between programs. However, I do think that the Archicad add-on is lagging behind compared to other tools in this regard.
Our office is using Archicad.

[Botonis]

Is this the most recent element support status? 

[Iyur]

Yeah, I partly agree.

Speckle connector's development is mostly focused around Autodesk Products (especially Revit) and Rhino. However, these tables are slightly outdated, the last releases have added a lot of new features (except GDL that is still not available). The most useful addition was exporting properties and tool's parameters for each element. The output schema is pretty rich.

But for me is more valuable mapping possibilities. It was firstly introduced for Revit/Rhino connection, but it could be applied for other software as well (well, with some coding workflow though). I'm working with python to override the speckle scheme coming from Archicad in more suitable way to be undestandable by Revit. So I could transform, say, Windows to exact Revit window families and types from my template.

If you interested, I could show the process.

[Tuan Tai Truong]

That's screenshot from speckle docs. @lyur said it's outdated. May be it is.
Supported Elements | Speckle Docs

@lyur: We are still talking about two different things. Thanks for the info. I will not be working in Revit and will just focus on communicating with extern using speckle without translating exactly element to element. Good to know it will map that way. Speckle is working on it so I guess I can wait.

[jsdbroughton]

@Iyur wrote:

Speckle connector's development is mostly focused around Autodesk Products (especially Revit) and Rhino. 

That is partly true (McNeel make Rhino, Esri ArcGIS, Opensource for QGI and Blender, Trimble make Tekla and Sketchup … we’re not biased). We have focussed efforts over the last 3 years since the release of V2 around the workflows we hear about. Connectors are an outcome of that research into the workflows people tell us they struggle with. Conversion of files is one for sure, but we've increasingly found that what users are asking us for is, first and foremost, access to the data within applications in a consistent manner. Increasingly we discover that conversion is 3rd priority after that and side-by-side working through data exchange.

Why is different from conversion, well its about the authority and ownership of data. Between two parties working together the responsibility of particular design components as is the duty to coordinate. So increasingly our attention has centred on making that a first class experience too. 

2-way sync and roundtripping data sounded like a utopian mission and Speckle offers a form of that, but it turns out that’s not the most important. 

[jsdbroughton]

Today, we announced the Next generation of Speckle connectors. Early beta for now; this is a from-the-ground-up reworking of each connector, which will allow for more agile and rapid development of conversions and options. We've prioritised five connectors based on what our users are now prioritising, and this time around, the ArchiCAD connector and the one I own, Navisworks, missed the cut.  https://speckle.systems/blog/introducing-next-gen-connectors/

This does not mean that we are forgetting ArchiCAD (or Navis). Instead, we recently had two amazing engineers who are staunch Graphisoft experts (and G community members) join the team. So we are investing in this connection and hope to share more very soon.