Export to IFC

Question

Hi, 
 After exporting the 3D models from OpenRoads or OpenRail Designer, when I explore them in BimCollab or Navisworks, some of them doesnt't have right location. In BimVision and Trimble connect everything is okay. Do you know how can I deal with it? I used export all schemas what are available IFC4, 4x3 and 2x3 and have the same results. 
 Regards, 
 AM

Mark Shamoun · Answer

Hi Jasper, 
 We have had a lot of problems with Navisworks' IFC importer for many years. They look to fix one issue and introduce another every release (i believe they have moved to use the Revit IFC importer in recent versions). IFC 4.3 is not supported in Navisworks (or hardly any IFC readers yet). We'll probably need to wait a couple of years till it gets supported by most vendors. 
 
 Annoyingly, the ORD IFC exporter uses the actual element colours - so if you apply any overrides or level symbology changes using it as a reference the ORD exporter doesn't see it. Internally we have a custom IFC exporter that looks at view symbology to avoid that issue, but the "native" exporter may require you to adopt a Named Boundary clipped graphics workflow that merges your elements to master so you can edit symbology, etc. I have added Idea BCI-I-562 ( " IFC export using the current active View element symbology" ) for the IFC exporter to support this - ill post a link once its is approved. 
 
 Regarding Navisworks 2023, we have found that it ignores the IFCCARTESIANPOINT line (that provides a relative datum that all coordinates in the IFC file uses to reduce its file size) when the IFCMAPCONVERSION line is defined. A solution to this is to change the IFCMAPCONVERSION origin coordinates to use the same values as the IFCCARTESIANPOINT line above it and you'll see it should go to where you expect it to be.

Frustratingly since this is a Navisworks issue and not an ORD one, we'll have to wait for Autodesk to fix it as the ORD IFC schema is technically correct.

Export to IFC

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