Sandbox:TutorialArchBIM

Goal of this document
Update original Arch Tutorial by Yorik van Havre.

The purpose was to seriously try to learn some Freecad Work flows, after playing with it at various points in time for at least the last 5 years.

Reflect version 0.17 / 0.18 of Freecad Use a BIM workflow

Images
All Images not already on wiki are named and uploaded to File:at2_*

Introduction
Freecad Arch Tutorial update

Typical workflows
In this tutorial we focus on a BIM oriented approach of using FreeCad. We will use mostly three workbenches: Arch Workbench and BIM, of course, but also Draft, whose tools are all included in Arch, so there is no need to switch workbenches, and Sketcher. Conveniently, can create a custom toolbar in your Arch workbench, with Tools → Customize, and add the tools from the sketcher that you use often.

Preparation
Instead of creating a project from scratch, let's take an example project to model, it will save us time. This wonderful house by the famous architect Vilanova Artigas (see a series of pictures by Pedro Kok), because it is close to where Yorik lives. It is simple, it's a wonderful example of the amazing modernist architecture of São Paulo. Drawings in dwg format are easily available. We will use the 2D DWG drawings obtained from the link above (you need to register on the above site to download, but it's free, or grab directly a dxf version here) as a base to build our model. So the first thing you'll want to do is to download the file, unzip it, and open the DWG file inside with a dwg application such as DraftSight. Alternatively, you can convert it to DXF with a free utility such as the Teigha File Converter. If you have the Teigha converter installed (and its path set in the Arch preferences settings), FreeCAD is also able to import DWG files directly. But since these files can sometimes be of bad quality and very heavy, it's usually better to open it first with a 2D CAD application and do some cleaning. Here, all the detail drawings are removed, all the title-blocks and page layouts. A "clean" ("purge" in AutoCAD slang) to remove all unused entities, reorganized the sections at a logical location in relation to the plan view, and moved everything to the (0,0) point. After that, our file can be opened quite efficiently in FreeCAD. Check the different options available in Edit → Preferences →



This is how the file looks after being opened in FreeCAD. Changed the thickness of the walls (the contents of the "muros" group), and flipped a couple of doors that were imported with wrong X scale, with the Draft Scale tool:

Preparing dwg / dxf Alternative text
For editing and exporting to dxf there are various free tools available. Found that of the free tools out there, [DraftSight by Dassault] worked fine. Most files when importing are in Meters. Scale by 1000 (same scale on all axis), either in FC or other system. To Isolate the various views, I found most effective was deleting all but the one I was seeking, and doing a SaveAs, with dxf as extension. This was repeated for all views.

Next, import the various views to Freecad.

Tip It is a good idea to import or save the various views into separate FCStd files. This keeps the files smaller and quicker to work with. Naming of files is Your choice, but it is a good idea to use a naming convention.

FIXME Need place to upload attached files

''For dxf files, they are placed in a directory named ./ref/dxf below the project directory. If You want to skip this step, the imported dxf files can be found here.''

Plan View
Start with importing and placing the Plan View.



Your imported geometry will now turn up as a bunch of edges. It is a good idea to organize these into a Group. The Group can be created before importing, or You can select all the imported edges and ‘drag/drop’ them into the Group.



Now, do the same for all the other views. Next In this document, we will place the various view at their location, elevation and rotation, according to our ArchAxisSystem. Before Rotating and placing the various views, we need to do some planning.

Tip

FIXME needs Checking

FreeCad dxf import treats everything as Edges or Shapes, This is generally ok for lines. Bad for circles. No easy way to find Center.

Planning
As a minimum

A defined project zero / origin – with local x,y,z coordinates 0,0,0 shall be defined and used throughout the project.

Tip

For further planning of File structure jump to the IFC section of this document

In this project we will follow Axis system of downloaded original Drawings.



Defining the project origin at intersection of Axis 01 & D. By our convention this equals SouthWest corner of model. Observe that the axis pass through the center of walls.

When modeling any Architectural model, You will most certainly want to split into separate files. By the way, partial IFC files seem to be the trend at the moment. Mainly split by discipline. The split can be by discipline or other. It is good practice to have a common origin and orientation across these models (files). This makes it easy to copy paste groups between files as needed. It also provides a good basis for several people to work on the project as needed.

Tip

For reference we have made the assumption that global Y-axis equals North.

Customizing Arch WorkBench
This is an example "customized" Arch workbench:



In this tutorial, we will model the house in 3D, based on the 2D drawings we will download from the net, and extract from it 2D documents, such as plans, elevations and sections.