Sandbox:TutorialArchBIM


 * Vilanova Artigas
 * pictures by Pedro Kok
 * Barão de Jaceguaí, 1151 - Campo Belo, São Paulo-SP (Google) With 30 images

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
This tutorial aims at giving you the basics to work with the Arch Workbench. I will try to make it simple enough so you don't need any previous experience with FreeCAD, but having some experience with 3D or BIM applications will be useful. In any case, you should be prepared to look for yourself for further information about how FreeCAD works on the FreeCAD documentation wiki. The Getting started page is a must read, if you have no previous experience with FreeCAD. Also check our tutorials section, and on youtube you will also find a lot more of FreeCAD tutorials.

The purpose of the Arch Workbench is to offer a complete BIM workflow inside FreeCAD. As it is still under development, don't expect to find here the same tools and level of completion as grown-up commercial alternatives such as Revit or ArchiCAD, but on the other hand, FreeCAD being used in a much bigger scope than these applications, the Arch Workbench greatly benefits from the other disciplines FreeCAD caters to, and offers some features rarely seen in traditional BIM applications.

Here are, for example, a couple of interesting features of FreeCAD's Arch Workbench that you'll hardly find in other BIM apps:


 * Architectural objects are always solids. From FreeCAD's strong mechanical background, we learned the importance of always working with solid objects. This ensures a much more error-free workflow, and very reliable boolean operations. Since cutting through 3D objects with a 2D plane, in order to extract sections, is also a boolean operation, you can immediately see the importance of this point.


 * Architectural objects can always have any shape. No restrictions. Walls don't need to be vertical, slabs don't need to look like slabs. Any solid object can always become any architectural object. Very complex things, usually hard to define in other BIM applications, like a floor slab curving up and becoming a wall (yes Zaha Hadid, it's you we're talking about), present no particular problem at all in FreeCAD.


 * The whole power of FreeCAD is at your fingertips. You can design architectural objects with any other tool of FreeCAD, such as the PartDesign Workbench, and when they are ready, convert them to architectural objects. They will still retain their full modeling history, and continue being totally editable. The Arch Workbench also inherits much of the Draft Workbench functionality, such as snapping and working planes.


 * The Arch Workbench is very mesh-friendly. You can easily design an architectural model in a mesh-based application such as Blender or SketchUp and import it in FreeCAD. If you took care of the quality of your model and its objects are manifold solid shapes, turning them into architectural objects only requires the press of a button.

At the time of writing, the Arch Workbench, as the rest of FreeCAD, suffers some limitations. Most are being worked on, and will disappear in the future.


 * FreeCAD is no 2D application. It is made for 3D. There is a reasonable set of tools for drawing and editing 2D objects with the Draft Workbench and Sketcher Workbench, but it is not made for handling very large (and sometimes badly drawn) 2D CAD files. You can usually successfully import 2D files, but don't expect very high performance if you want to keep working on them in 2D. You have been warned.


 * No materials support. FreeCAD will have a complete Material system, able to define very complex materials, with all the goodies you can expect (custom properties, material families, rendering and visual aspect properties, etc), and the Arch Workbench will of course use it when it is ready.


 * Very preliminary IFC support. You can already import IFC files, quite reliably, provided IfcOpenShell is installed on your system, but exporting is still not officially supported. This is worked on both by the FreeCAD and IfcOpenShell developers, and in the future we can expect full-powered IFC support.


 * Most Arch tools are still in development. That means that automatic "wizard" tools that create complex geometry automatically, such as Arch Roof or Arch Stairs can only produce certain types of objects, and other tools that have presets, such as Arch Structure or Arch Window only have a couple of basic presets. This will of course grow over time.


 * Relations between objects in FreeCAD are still not officially available. These, for example the relation between a window and its host wall, are currently implemented in the Arch Workbench with temporary (and therefore somewhat limited) methods. Many new possibilities will arise when this feature will be fully available.


 * Units are being implemented in FreeCAD, which will allow you to work with any unit you wish (even imperial units, you guys from the USA can be eternally grateful for this to Jürgen, FreeCAD's godfather and dictator). But at the moment the implementation is not complete, and the Arch workbench still doesn't support them. You must consider it "unit-less". This tutorial uses millimeters as units.

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.

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

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.

Defining the Arch Axis System
We now want to make an ArchAxisSystem for reference when modeling our building. The result will look something like this:



To find the data for making the ArchAxisSystem study the Plan View of the imported dwg. This will show You Axis and Dimensions.



Alternatively measure between the various axis in Freecad. This can be done in several ways, using the part workbench Measure linear, Tape Measure works fine for this.



By Studying original dxf files.

When measuring distance between axis 10 and 11, we find Delta X = 3.6246 Index 11 above, has been adjusted since if possible, we like to work with ‘round’ figures.

Arch axis X Now, let’s make the Axis along global X: The Freecad Command is Arch Axis

Image shows Data and labels Used.

Arch Y-Axis

Image shows Data and labels Used.

Tip Observe the 270deg rotation and offset of placement to get labels to get desired layout.

Combining to Axis System Arch AxisSystem is used to combine the x and y Arch Axis into an Arch Axis system.

Tip If You save Your AxisSystem to a file, without any other geometry, it does not seem to open as the first file. FreeCad simply Crashes However, not such a big deal, because if You open another file containing geometry first, then You are able to open the file containing only the AxisSystem without any problem. Strange??

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.