Automated Weekly BIMx Model Export

[Anonymous]

Hello,

Have been researching but cannot find any answers on this.

We really want to move our entire Build Team to using BIMx in the field. The problem we're having is keeping the BIMx files up-to-date. We have some 20-30 active projects that need updated weekly (it would take wwaayyy too much time for someone in the office to babysit this process all week and we would lose a workstation). Is there a plugin for ArchiCAD or script someone has written to do this? (export 30 BIMx models over the weekend) All it would do is look at a list/array and export those BIMx models.

If no one here has seen something like this, it would be a great feature. I was accepted to the Python API Developer Forum, I have poked around in there but haven't seen much useful content. We really need this so If no one has any information, I will begin developing a small script to do this hopefully utilizing the Python API since that's what I'm familiar with.

PS Saw someone on another post point out REVIZTO but it's too expensive, we don't need all their fluff, just a weekly exporter.

Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

[Anonymous]

We have been talking about this at our office as well.

[Erwin Edel]

Assuming you are publishing your PDF sheets and such, it's just one more push of the publish button to publish the set of the BIMx.

Does mean you have to upload it and share the link, unless you directly publish to the BIMx Model Transfer I suppose.

If I look at our typical workflow for sending out changed sets we are already saving out several files with each set:
1. PDF
2. DWG
3. IFC
4. a .PLA archive

Adding a 5th action doesn't seem unreasonable.

Maybe I'm too much of a control freak, but I can't see you 'randomly' having updated layouts for those projects. Project changes need to be documented and such, an index of drawings with change dates kept up to date, etc etc

[Anonymous]

The company I work for is primarily a Builder, so we as an Architecture Team make changes to plans almost on a weekly basis throughout the entire contruction process. We are already using the publishing feature yes but like I mentioned, we currently have 20-30 active project. If we were to publish a BIMx model by going into each file individually and then publishing a BIMx model it would take almost 40 hours and we'd lose an entire work station during that time.

What my office is looking for is a way to schedule the BIMx publishing. Lets say Firday at 5:00pm, one of the computers begins opening projects and publishing BIMx models. It would automatically move from project to project exporting. For our company this is the only feasible way we can use BIMx and we want to use BIMx. We have a few threadrippers (16core/32thread AMD processor) in the office so we can export 3-4 at a time no problem on one machine.

[Erwin Edel]

If you don't use the Global Illumination for the models, the publishing is a lot faster, might save you some time.

What I was suggesting was to allways publish the BIMx when you are publishing the PDFs and such for a finished set (of changes), thus you don't need to go back to those projects once a week. There should be an up to date BIMx already there from the last round of changes.

But again, maybe we are just more structured with keeping track of changes to not want 'random' versions floating about.

Our projects are also very 'fluid' with changes in progress, there might even be things in the current PLN we DON'T want to leave the office. I would not be happy if someone would just save out a BIMx at a random moment and sent it off to building site

[Anonymous]

I don't know working solution for this.
But it is an interesting idea. We are usually exporting lots of IFCs on a regular base and it takes ages so we do it overnight on several computers :

It seems that API allows developing plugin doing some batch export for prepared publisher sets.
I think python beta is already close I'm not sure what was an outcome of it.

[Chuso]

What is your workflow?

I mean, if you are updating drawings, 3D model or whatever opening the Archicad Files during the week, why don't you publish the hyper model then?

[agroni]

We have also tried to solve this issue and make our workflows more efficient, but sadly not an easy solution. As stated by other, we also export lots of IFC files at certain times of the week. In addition we need to publish the last updated model to BIMx. So these are routine procedures that need still to be executed by the user.
Therefore I also believe that an automated way would be very helpful here.

[Anonymous]

Chuso wrote:
I mean, if you are updating drawings, 3D model or whatever opening the Archicad Files during the week, why don't you publish the hyper model then?

It sounds easier than it really is. If you are working on bigger projects then it becomes quite an issue. For example, we have file structures based on 2-5 separate files. With documentation separated form models. And for example, saving one model to IFC takes around 2-3hours and takes quite a lot of resources. So just for publishing, it might take separate station working all day just for publishing stuff

agroni wrote:
Therefore I also believe that an automated way would be very helpful here.

I'm having a look at it. It should be doable.

[Podolsky]

I think that BIM server could have such a feature - scheduled publishing of BIMx files.