1. I'd personally start with Arch WB and switch to BIM only if it has a feature that I need. Arch WB is a part of FreeCAD, BIM is a separate add-on and some of its features are experimental and don't work. I'd also guess that you don't really need many of its features.luwol03 wrote: ↑Thu Jul 07, 2022 2:13 pm I now played a bit more with the Arch/BIM WB, but I have a few questions:
1. Should I use the BIM or Arch WB?
2. How can I place doors/windows very precisly at a specific relative position to room edges and also directly on the wall instead of before the wall?
3. How do I structure walls buildings, garden, inventory, ... in the tree on the left?
2. I don't understand what you mean by "directly on the wall instead of before the wall". Anyway, from your later message we already know that you desire a "parametric approach" for positioning. Nothing wrong with that, but especially since you are modeling an existing building, it might be worthwhile to consider what you want to gain from the parametric approach and even what parametric means to you in this case. Do you want to just "input" the position of object A (window/door) relative to (a part of, such an edge of) another object B (wall), because that's how you measured object A's current position? Do you also want to make the relation permanent (use a property of B (or a part of it) as a parameter for the position of A) and why?
Let's say the wall the position of the window is relative to (in a parametric sense) is an internal non load-bearing wall (perpendicular to the external wall where the window is). Later you renovate the house and you move the internal wall to make one room larger. You update the model and move the wall in the model as well. The window moves automatically alongside the external wall when you move the internal wall in the model, but are you going to move the window in the real world too? Probably not? And even if you are, is the new position the same distance from the internal wall as before or is it perhaps in the center of the room? If the original distance is no longer meaningful, the chosen parametric approach wasn't really useful in this case. You can of course dismantle the connection and then move the window freely or specify a new distance from the moved wall.
Note that you can measure distances in the model by using part WB tools and by adding dimension objects so you don't need to create a dependency between the window and the wall just to "record" the distance.
I'm not saying "don't do it" but think about it.
All that said, a basic method to make a position of object A to depend on the position of object B is to use expression(s) (see https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Expressions) in the Placement property of A. You should name your objects meaningfully (set Label property) and use those names in expressions. It's generally not a good idea to refer to geometry (faces, edges, vertices) of complex objects, because names of faces etc. can change and also otherwise makes changes harder. When I talked about creating a 2D "skeleton" and then building walls from that, you could refer to that skeleton (or parts of it) and not actual walls.
In case of windows and doors of an existing building, I wouldn't create such dependencies.
To simply place the window using your relative measurement, you can perhaps use temporary "helper geometry" as Thomas did in his first video to position the first of the four small windows. An alternative would be to position the working plane to the corner of the wall (see "Working plane setup" -> "Move working plane") and then input local coordinates. There are probably other ways.
When you get to adding furniture and things like that to the model, you could consider adding an Std Part (effectively a local coordinate system) for each room and put your furniture etc. inside of that.
3. I'm not that far yet but if I end up modeling other buildings (garage, shed) next to the house and/or garden, I'd have each building in its own file and then have a "site" file with links (see https://wiki.freecadweb.org/Std_LinkMake) to buildings.
As for walls and other stuff within one building, there are special group objects for some things (Arch Floor for example) but you can use "ordinary" groups (Std Group) as well to organize things in ways that are useful to you.
