Libraries & objects
About Archicad and BIMcloud libraries, their management and migration, objects and other library parts, etc.

Controling Curve Resolution in imported IFC objects

Matthew Johnson
Advocate
Working with objects created from Revit generated IFC files. When objects have filleted corners or cylinders the created geometry in GDL can be ridiculously heavy.

A supermarket I'm working on at the moment imported a very detailed model of the deli display cabinets and the resultant GDL was very small because the initial object was all square edges and no curves. On the other hand the handrail around the roof mounted plant platform was over 26Mb because it was built from circular rails and posts with spherical connections and these were imported with very high a RESOL equivalent.

Is there a way to limit the resolution of curves when creating GDL from imported data such as IFC?
Matthew Johnson - POWE Architects
AC4.5 --> AC27 & Revit 2019 --> 2023
Asus Zenbook Pro 16x i9-13900H w/ Nvidia RTX 4070 4K dual, Windows 11 64bit
I'd rather be sailing.
3 REPLIES 3
Anonymous
Not applicable
A little workaround, import IFC, transform to morph, edit morph, reduce surfaces and so on.... save as object.
Matthew Johnson
Advocate
Ilder,

If it was only one or two objects that were going to be used on 20-30 projects I'd probably build the GDL from scratch as I would be able to control the clarity of the coding. Morph editing takes a fair bit of time as well but occasionally has it's place.

With the current project there are over 750 independent GDL objects. The objects are only going to be used on a hand full of projects so rebuilding even a portion of them is out of the question.

What I'm looking for is some control over the import process to restrict RESOL of curves. Or failing that an ability to automatically reduce faces in a generated GDL.
Matthew Johnson - POWE Architects
AC4.5 --> AC27 & Revit 2019 --> 2023
Asus Zenbook Pro 16x i9-13900H w/ Nvidia RTX 4070 4K dual, Windows 11 64bit
I'd rather be sailing.
Katalin Borszeki
Graphisoft
Graphisoft
Hi Matthew,
Unfortunately there is no option to edit the resolution of the ifc imported GDL elements, since in most cases the purpose of ifc is to have exact identical geometries/data.
To improve the performance of the file it is recommended to use the ifc GDL objects as Linked Library (do not include them in the embedded library)

We also recommend to change the detailing/resolution of the model in the source program.
Katalin Borszeki
Implementation Specialist
GRAPHISOFT

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