ArchiCAD possibly changing BCF unique ID during import

[Lucien]

Hi everyone,

The other day I was trying out a file based BCF workflow with Trimble Connect and ArchiCAD. I realized that when I use the following workflow, that Trimble Connect is creating new issues instead of updating the existing ones.

1. Create issues in Trimble Connect
2. Export the issues as BCF
3. Import the issues in ArchiCAD
4. Edit the status of the issues in ArchiCAD
5. Export the issues as BCF
6. Import the issues in Trimble Connect

I ask the Trimble Connect support and they think that ArchiCAD might be changing the unique ID of an BCF while importing the BCF files.

This might be the case because when I use another workflow, Trimble Connect is updating the issues correctly.

1. Create issues in ArchiCAD
2. Export the issues as BCF
3. Import issues in Trimble Connect
4. Update the status of the issues in ArchiCAD
5. Export issues as BCF again with the updated status
6. Import issues in Trimble Connect

I was wondering if anyone experienced a similar situation or has an I idea why this might happen.

Cheers,

Lucien

[Zoltan Vale]

Hi @Lucien 

I have a good guess that Archicad preserves unique IDs during import because otherwise no workflows would work properly in Archicad.

If I am not wrong Trimble uses lots of custom data attached to the BCF and maybe they handle IDs in a custom way as well.

The key difference between the two workflows you described in my understanding is : Fist issue was created in Trimble and second one in Archicad (and the second one work ok).

If you are willing to attach these two example BCFs I am more than happy to have a quick look at them.

[Lucien]

Hi @Zoltan Vale 

Thank you for your answer. I have attached the BCF files for you as a zip folder because the forum does not support BCF files as uploads.

Flow 01 refers to the files for which I proceeded as described in workflow 1. Therfore the issues that I created in Trimble Connect.

Flow 02 refers to the files for which I proceeded as described in workflow 2. Therfore the issues that I created in ArchiCAD.

Cheers,

Lucien

[Zoltan Vale]

Hi @Lucien ,

What popped out from your examples is that the Project Name is different in the first scenario (possibly causing the problem) and remains the same in the second scenario (working fine). Maybe Trimble is using this Project Name/ID data to somehow identify the issues - this is not a good solution, because according to the BCF standard this is an optional data, and issue identification should be based on the Topic's globally unique ID.

Try to make sure that project names are the same in both cases, just for a quick try/workaround or try to further describe the problem for Trimble maybe they can assist you.

Archicad issue identification is based on the Topic GUID and that alone, as the standard requires and we do not change that in any workflows.

Hope I could help,
Best,
Zoltán V.

[Lucien]

Hi @Zoltan Vale 

Thank you very much for your effort. May I ask how you analysed the BCF files? Then maybe I take a look myself.

It seems a bit too simple that Trimble Connect does not use the globally unique ID. Nevertheless, I turn to the Trimble Connect Community Forum again with this insight.

Cheers,

Lucien

[Zoltan Vale]

BCF file are basically compressed folders, you can extract them using any regular tool like 7zip.
After that all content can be opened in a text editor to see the raw data. 

For scenario 1:
In the project information section I saw one has "01_uebung_26" as a name and the other has "W+P 000 Schulungsprojekt" as a name. 
The globally unique IDs are the same in both Trimble and Archicad BCFs so this should work if Trimble also used only this data as identification.

[Lucien]

Hi @Zoltan Vale 

That's realy cool thank you I did not know that.

What I realized is that de GUID is just kind of the same. ArchiCAD is changing the GUID to all Uper-case letters while Trimble Connect is using all lower-case letters.

ArchiCAD: Guid="0395A159-77C0-4E79-9F91-6AB933C01F90"

Trimble Connect: Guid="0395a159-77c0-4e79-9f91-6ab933c01f90"

I just unziped the BCF created in ArchiCAD and changed the GUID to all lower-case letters. As you can see in the attached picture, Trimble Connect is afterwards not recognizing the issue as the same one. So I think the problem can be solved eather by Trimble Connect converting the GUID in all upper or all lower-case letters befor reading the GUID or ArchiCAD not converting the GUID in all upper-case letters when importing.

Cheers,

Lucien

 

[Zoltan Vale · Accepted solution]

Hi @Lucien,

This format of GUIDs (uuid v4 more specifically) is NOT case-sensitive. So it should not matter if it is upper or lower or mixed case. 

This is definitely something that Trimble needs to fix, they should not consider casing when comparing ids.
I am glad that we got to the bottom of this issue. Thank you for reaching out to us.