Blender and BIM in architectural workflow

Hi all,

I’m involved in architectural design. BIM (Building Information Modeling) is becoming more or less industry standard, at least in bigger projects. There are some big firms’ programs monopolizing the market. I use Blender for archviz for 3 years and it works great for me in this field. However, I wonder if there are any plans or possibilities to implement into Blender some BIM features? What I mean by that is for example:

  1. IFC format import/export (for example, Sketchup has recently introduced IFC classifier)
  2. walls, floors, roofs etc. created more automatically
  3. parametric architectural elements (e.g. doors containing information about width and height, walls with construction layers - brick, insulation - that can be changed from the panel instead of modeling)
  4. section cutting similar to that in Sketchup, alowing to make a plan view, section etc.
  5. exporting vector drawing from model
  6. exporting data from model (rooms’ area, amount of windows, doors, bricks, volume of elements) into Excel or OpenCalc
  7. some kind of a fixed “paper space” (like in AutoCad or Sketchup Layout), linked constantly with the model, representing plans, sections, elevations etc.
  8. and so on.

One would ask, why expecting Blender to have this, if the other software already has it? Well, what I personally need - at least I think it would be great - is to join Blender cool features (interface, cycles, modeling tools, freedom of workflow) together with some helpful BIM features, leaving behind immense amount of BIM features which are not used in most of the projects. And, finally, have the possibility to produce construction drawings directly from Blender or at least have the possibility to export vector drawing advanced enough to finish them with a small amount of time in other software.

Anyone knows anything about such BIM features coming to Blender in future, sooner or later? Anyone shares those expectations with me?

There’s been some work to bring cad-like features to blender, but BIM is a pretty tall order. There is a fairly robust python API, so it could be possible to script an addon to add a lot of those features. But it is still a pretty tall order.

Fluid Designer may go in that direction since they’re focusing on architectural stuff.

@Sterling Roth: you are probably right, There are many useful cad-like addons (tinyCAD tools, window generator, floor generator etc.), however BIM features would need a lot of work. Still, I think it is possible, isn’t it? I would personally be happy to donate project of this kind. I think it would be worth the money spend instead on other, very expensive, software.

@J_abellana: I checked their work. They make very interesting things, but limited - at least so far - only to interior design. Still their projects proves the flexibility of Blender for design-like projects.

There are some tricks for using Blender as CAD. For example, some initial design sections (and plans) can be made using camera clipping. Still it won’t be precise enough to produce construction drawings.

Architecture in general tends to be “expensive”, why would it be any different for BIM? If developing software was cheaper than licensing it, people would do that instead. In reality, software development is extremely expensive, especially for something so specialized.

You may have noticed that there is no decent FOSS package for CAD, either. I’m not sure why you need these features you listed, is it because you do architectural visualization and you cannot work with the BIM-related files provided by clients, or do you expect other people to adapt Blender for BIM?

Still, I think it is possible, isn’t it?

It’s not technically impossible, but realistically it is not going to happen.

Hi there,

I teach in Industrial and Interior Design and see your point. It would be nice to have those features but I hardly think that there are enough designers who would use Blender for this type of work ti justify the recourse spend on the development. Packages like Autocad Revit etc are just too saturated in the market. Take a look at MS Word - the worst word processor and yet everybody uses it.

Colored wireframes get a no and you are asking for BIM?

You may have noticed that there is no decent FOSS package for CAD, either.

Yup but there are much cheaper alternatives than Autodesk products (I use in my job one of them). I would be happy also to see a comercial BIM addon for Blender.

I’m not sure why you need these features you listed

I would like to have the possibility to make construction drawings and necessary data from Blender model. Simply because right now I do every construction drawing independently and that takes time. And I am just wondering, if there is a possibility to have the alternative from the well-known BIM programs that would be more flexible and mayby cheaper.

It would be nice to have those features but I hardly think that there are enough designers who would use Blender for this type of work ti justify the recourse spend on the development.

Maybe the market will demand programs that are less feature-saturated but still intelligent enough to make construction data?

In general, I am just wondering. For me it is incredible how far has Blender gone without comercial support. Maybe BIM is just another step?

hi,i think BIM will need generic(inbuilt) building elements -column,wall etc. with associated info of material spec. cost,so if the dimension is altered all the associated info is modified,and you can output the info in some format(cost calculation etc)?maybe if you write down how you visualise it to be implemented in blender someone might get interested.