HELP BUILDING OR PURCHASING OBJECT LIBRARY (Interior Furnishings and Fixtures)

[Jeff Galbraith]

We are trying our first project in Archicad, looking at transitioning our office of 20+ staff over from Vectorworks. Modeling the building and getting drawings related has gone pretty well. However we are struggling to find good GDL content to build a library of interior elements such as furniture, light fixtures, plumbing fixture etc. suitable for 3D renderings in addition to plans, elevations. Most of the files I download from websites either don't import correctly (there is no or only partial 3D geometry), are poorly modeled, or they have very little to no GDL functionality. Can anyone tell me what large commercial firms using ArchiCAD do for furniture for interior design plans and renderings? I've spent about a days worth of work searching for, downloading and importing content and have almost nothing to show for it.

Are other firms paying programmers to create their own private libraries of GDL objects, or are they just importing meshes and foregoing BIM functionality for furniture for renderings?

I appreciate the help.

Jeff
ArchiCAD 22, Mac OS X High Sierra

[Richard Morrison]

I agree that most GDL furniture libraries are fairly crude. You might look at the parts on www.ddgi.com website. They are somewhat dated, but still work okay. There are a number of contemporary furniture manufacturers that have decent libraries, and there are some lists of those somewhere on this forum. However, you should checkout http://aecobjects.com/ as I think this is likely the way to get the best stuff out there. You would need to check with Archvista to see if this is available for AC22 at this point.

[Anonymous]

Richard,

Have you explored convert all our existing libraries from You Know who?

[Richard Morrison]

No, I haven't. I've occasionally converted a shower plumbing fixture from Chief Architect's library, but these end up pretty much dumb objects with no GDL programming, with a bloated file size, not much different than importing an object from the Sketchup 3D warehouse. And since I'm only doing the ConDocs in AC, with the design done in Chief, really nice-looking furniture in AC isn't much of an issue for me.

[Jeff Galbraith]

Thanks Richard. I took a look at the ddgi library and it's pretty dated. I can't be putting CRT monitors on desks in my renderings!

Sounds like we may be stuck either paying to create our own GDL library (seems crazy given how many people we were told use this software, and we're not a large firm) or importing non-GDL models for renderings only, and keeping 2 separate layers for furniture, each with separate objects located in the same locations. One for the 3D renderings, and one for plan views and scheduling. I hate to do that as it is precisely contrary to the whole notion of BIM.

Jeff

[Nader Belal]

My 2 cents

I tried to open the ddgi link but to no use.

Modelport plugin is quiet good one, but it usually generate quiet heavy objects, since it doesn't optimized the generated models.

@Jeff Galbraith I used to work with a client that would usually send me a number of items that he would like have them as ArchiCAD's GDL objects, but with the twist that I had to adapt them to their way of work.

And from that experience I can tell you, that most of the furniture manifacturers are classified in these categories: [list=]

Those who have no problem to share their products as 3d Models (the nice guys).

[list=]

Those who would only share their products only if have opened an online account on them (still the nice guys)

[list=]

Those who would only give you incomplete models and data (quiet abundant).

[list=]

Those who would provide faulty models (quiet abundant but not as above).

[list=]

Those who would provide you with nothing (those are plenty).

[list=]

Those who would provide you with nothing, but if you want anything you send them your project and they will set up the work for you.

But above all this, the reason for such disparity has to do with products protection and copyright, as there are a lot of Chinese manufacturers that visit these same site and will download the models to make copycats with minor modifications and sell it as their own.

By the way, converting libraries from the dark side of BIM (you know who, that that must not be mentioned), usually is not a good idea unless you know specifically what you want, because:

• People who usually convert those libraries, do not take into consideration model optimisation for the program/platform that is going to be implemented (either they're lazy, or that they not proficient for this task)

• That plataform have a different IT design philosophy than that or ArchiCAD.

Anyway, if you need help, I´m available.

[Jeff Galbraith]

Thanks Moonlight. Sounds like I may need to look at options or having custom library components made by importing 3D geometry available from other sources. Also sounds like it's worthwhile to have that done by someone with the tools to optimize the geometry and attach GDL.

Evermotion has a ton of models that I would like top leverage, but I haven't yet found a way to import .max files. There is an add-on by Graphisoft and a plugin called model port but it seems that they both will import .3ds files but not .max files. Does anyone know of a workflow for importing .max files without owning a copy of max?

[Richard Morrison]

Can't help with .MAX files, but you can also look at the RFA & RVT Geometry Exchange here: https://bim6x.com/solutions

Does a pretty good job of converting Revit objects, and it's free.

[Nader Belal]

@Jeff

Well, Moonlight is my nickname, in reality my name is Nader Belal ....

I´m that guy that you're searching for ...

[Nader Belal]

@Richard Morrison

RFA & RVT Geometry Exchange ... well I was impressed by the plugin (even though I haven't tested it extensively), these people actually have done a good job, but we get the same issues that we I have been talking before

1. The object will not be optimised

2. And this case happened to me, you also have to take into consideration who made the objects in Revit, cause some are totally careless in modelling ... and it wasn't the programs fault