Dandelion 🚀 A revolutionized point-cloud-based modeler for Archicad 🚀

[jozseflkiss]

Dear All,

Let me introduce Dandelion to you, a revolutionized point-cloud-based modeler for Archicad!

Dandelion is a powerful yet lightweight point-cloud-processing application designed specifically for Building Information Modeling (BIM) software. With Dandelion, you can efficiently work with point cloud data, streamline your BIM workflows, and enhance your project accuracy.

Key features

1. Space Boundary-based Modeling
   • Single-click generation of faces forming the boundaries of open or closed spaces
   • Walls are automatically generated around room/space boundaries
2. Recognition of Doors, Windows and Openings
   • Click-based measurement of openings: measure doors, windows and general openings, automatically sending them to your BIM app
3. Level/Story Generation
   • Automatic elevation histogram: quickly analyze point density and visualize elevation variations
   • Filter and send selected peak elevations as story levels directly to your project
4. Lightweight Viewer App
   • Modeling in 3D: thanks to the performance of a lightweight external viewer, all input are done in a fully detailed 3D environment with real-time connection to the host BIM app
   • Hierarchical cloud segmentation: create cross sections, isolate stories within your point cloud and transfer them to the host app for further analysis
   • Click-based recognition of planar subsets: generate surface geometries for meshes, polylines, walls and zones and seamlessly transfer them to your BIM app
   • Real-time synchronization with Archicad
5. And much more...

Please feel free to download and try it, it has a free version: https://bimwings.com/product/dandelion-free/ 

You can check the teaser video on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ysL14fhadE&t=2s , and all the related videos here: https://www.youtube.com/@BIMwings .

Currently we are working on the one click native Archicad stair creation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jYY0t1IIkk 

Any feedbacks and idea are very welcome: info@bimwings.com

Best,

József L. Kiss

BIMwings

Operating system used: Windows

[scottjm]

🤯 OMG!  That looks incredible. 
Very keen to try this out!

[torben_wadlinger]

No macOS-Version?

[jozseflkiss]

@torben_wadlinger Thanks for the reply! No macOS version at the moment, however we will release it as soon as we see the demand.

[_nique_]

looks very promising! thank you!!
I tried to import large point clouds and smaller point clouds - is there some documentation about the tool or the maximum cloud size?

[jozseflkiss]

Dear @_nique_ !

Thanks for the feedback!

For geometric transformations, visibility options, and the current three main user modes (planar subset detection and geometry creation, segmentation box, and measurement of rectangular openings), Dandelion has a built-in help, available in the Help/Show detailed help with shortcuts menu or by pressing ?.

We have also provided a number of tutorial YouTube videos including:

• point cloud-loading, hierarchical segmentation, filtering/exporting elevations as story levels to Archicad https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ysL14fhadE  (we recommend to start the workflow with these basic steps, otherwise some geometry types (e.g., meshes/morphs) may appear in seemingly unexpected places in 3D, as Archicad's default story levels do not correspond to the real ones detected by Dandelion);
• synchronized (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkIsEpOV9-w) or non-synchronized (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UyBKT-AxsI0) geometry creation, covering topics like setting the planar subset detection flexibility level; selecting successive support planes of planar subsets in order to create the boundary surface of open or closed geometries; exporting either individual geometries or geometry groups to Archicad;
• creating guide elements by exporting polylines or meshes (morphs): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd9b49Gk-_I .

Maximum cloud size:

Aside from the number of CPU threads and the size of RAM, the size of the point cloud that can be loaded, rendered and interactively processed in a meaningful amount of time, depends primarily on the video card's memory (VRAM) size and other capabilities of the GPU (since RAM size usually is much bigger than VRAM size, usually this represents the bottleneck).

It is recommended that users avoid trying to load a point cloud with a byte size larger than that of VRAM. Due to some technical reasons, currently Dandelion assumes that the available VRAM in GB must be approximately greater than the number of points multiplied by 28 / 1024^3, e.g., if someone is trying to load 100 million (i.e. 10^8) points, then at least 10^8 × 28 / 1024^3 ≈ 2.61 GB of free VRAM is needed by Dandelion.

Anyway, the huge file size handling is on our roadmap, we are working on two scenarios parallel:

1. Ability to cut the cloud into segments without loading the whole into memory
2. Improved point cloud visualization on CUDA cores (NVIDIA only), which can handle 500m points on medium size video cards.

If you need any more help, please let us know!

Thanks!

[torben_wadlinger]

I see. Would not be a unified ram system better, like Apples and Qualcoms ARM-Architecture? As far as I understand you let the graphics card do the heavy lifting (which is smart).

[StefanV_BCP]

Hi. 

 I encountered two problems.

1. When installing It didn't automatically recognise the location of the Archciad. so I did it manually

2. When starting the addon it gives me an error cant start Dandellion viewer.

Can you point me out how to fix the issue?

Cheers,

Stefan

[jozseflkiss]

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for the fantastic discussion today! This issue was related to the installer, and has already been fixed.

If anybody faced this issue, please delete the manually copied APX files if there are any, and use the updated installer (you should purchase Dandelion again for free from the store).

Best regards,

József 

[Jaime-airc_digital]

Congratulations, looks like a great plugin, and much needed. Please consider the release of the Mac version, a lot of us are on Mac, and it is one of the important reasons why we choose to work with Archicad. Keep up the great work!