Freecad to Blender best practice?

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dimitar
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by dimitar »

yorik wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:35 am Honestly I haven't used links much yet in arch/BIM workflow so have not much idea yet on how to handle them at IFC export...
I'll add that on my todo list :) Can you guys give me some interesting ideas where you use app links mostly?
How do you do door and window types? Clones? Furniture?
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by F_Rosa »

paullee wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 12:14 pm
yorik wrote: Tue Feb 01, 2022 11:35 am Can you guys give me some interesting ideas where you use app links mostly?
It comes to my mind at least 2 persons use it extensively :-

@F_Rosa - Vila Maltide (Villa?)
@ABeton - House

Probably @Bitacovir
Thanks Paullee for mentioning. Exactly, on the page https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 0&start=20, I expose my adjustments in the ifc export from FC to Blender. It worked very well. There really is a certain delay in exporting and for large files, I suggest exporting them in parts, in the case of Vila Matilde, I exported it by different disciplines: architecture, structure, landscaping, etc. I opened Blender and imported one by one without errors.

As the disciplines were in independent files, I did not use the links but the originals objects for export. But it is also possible to export them by enabling "Export full FreeCAD parametric model" in the preferences, in this case it must be taken into account that it will export and import all the child elements of all the elements, therefore, once again it is better to export in parts, and leave this option enable only in case of linked objects.

On this same page, I report the work with the BIMServer, installation and use.

I hope it's helpful.
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dimitar
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by dimitar »

So I've been thinking about this a lot, especially since Blender is way faster, for transforming elements.

I am thinking of having a bidirectional link between Freecad and Blender, such that all walls are part of a sketch in freecad and a curve object in Blender. In Blender with the screw and solidify modifiers, it's possible to "natively" rebuild the walls from curves. The idea is that if I am in blender, modifiy a curve, or add another one, have the information synced back to freecad, not as wall elements but as the underlying sketch element.

Walls and furniture can exist separately between both software, the importance being location and rotation of each element.

Not sure how to do this except maybe import/export dxf for walls. As for the other elements, it could be as simple as some kind of list exported from python noting the object's name, bound box dims, location, and rotation
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yorik
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by yorik »

I have thought about that for a long time too (at some point in the past you had several autodesk softwares that worked that way, ie. 3d studio viz and autocad), but the more the time passed the more I became fan of file-based solutions, specially with the move of the whole "industry" to cloud solutions where they try to dissolve the notion of file..

Something that's on my list for a while, is to extend the arch reference object to support other file types (namely step, ifc and blend too once I manage to import bpy into FreeCAD without crashing). That means you could hook up an ifc or blend file into FreeCAD, and have it updated automatically when the file changes. That's not totally bidirectional yet, but I like that there is a file in the middle, that you can inspect, version control, etc
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by thomas-neemann »

yorik wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 10:58 am ... but the more the time passed the more I became fan of file-based solutions, specially with the move of the whole "industry" to cloud solutions where they try to dissolve the notion of file..
+1
Gruß Dipl.-Ing. (FH) Thomas Neemann

https://www.youtube.com/@thomasneemann5 ... ry=freecad
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by F_Rosa »

Yes, the BIM concept with IFC is the way to go, no doubt! The integration work between the FC and Blender files has been fantastic, too.

However, I believe that the open source platform offers an as yet untapped potential, the idea of meta-application (https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 16#p175516). Maybe it's just a dream, but an inter-application team (FC/Blender) could help get there. Yorik himself demonstrated, some time ago, that it is possible to open FC within Blender! Wow!
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Re: Freecad to Blender best practice?

Post by yorik »

F_Rosa wrote: Mon Feb 21, 2022 1:00 pm Yorik himself demonstrated, some time ago, that it is possible to open FC within Blender! Wow!
And vice-versa ;) You need to compile the bpy module separately, and then you can use it inside FreeCAD. Unfortunately, it still crashes almost immediately... Need to investigate further there.
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