Does anyone knows if it’s possible to classify a group of pipes as IFCSystem? I tried but when exporting them, pipes are exported as IFCBuildingElementProxy not as IFCPipeSegment as I classified them.
Maybe @MikeWayzovski @brewsky @nnijmeijer ?
You would have to have a distribution model in your SketchUp model, the only thing that SketchUp can handle is the object level.(ie. Tekla has ‘Assemblies’ as a higher hierarchy, Revit uses Systems)
As far as I know, it is currently not possible to export an IFCSystem with the native SketchUp IFC export.
Although you can classify objects with this classification but this classification will not be correctly exported by SketchUp.
How can I do it? I have spaces in each room but I don’t Know how to attach anything to them.
the software my engineers use for MEP works better if the system is specified (less work)
What software do they use? Aren’t they suppose to specify the system?
IFC manager should be able to export basic systems when nesting the components classified as pipes into a component classified as If system. But this way a system cannot cross the spatial hierarchy (like building stories) which is often what you would want.
If it doesn’t export then it’s a bug.
It’s a Spanish software called Tekton 3D iMventa Ingenieros - Software Técnico para Ingeniería y Arquitectura - TeKton3D
They can specify the system but then it has less sense to have an IFC file because they have to link every item and they only use the axes of pipes. It’s better to draw in that software.
I have not been able to, when I nest elements into IFCSystem each item inside it is exported as an IfcBuildingElementProxy although I delete IFCBuilding, etc…
Finally I could export with basic systems. I sent the Ifc in order to test if the engineers could extract the neccesary info and they asked me for this (traslated from Spanish):
1.- Linear flow elements (IfcPipeSegments).
Geometric objects representing the pipe are based on IfcMappedItem grouping objects of type IfcFacetedBrep in its RepresentationMap (Representation based on “block references” and “block definitions” constituted by “3D faces”).
IfcPipeSegment objects have no port information (IfcDistributionPort).
These two points prevent to extract from the link the axes of the pipelines to create the calculation objects in TeKton3D. To do this, we rely either on the ports, since the two ports of the pipe define its axis, or, in the case of being represented by a geometry of type IfcExtrudedAreaSolid, allows us to take directly the axis of that extrusion as the axis of the pipe in TeKton3D.
2.- Singular elements (IfcSanitaryTerminal)
The objects do not have port information (IfcDistributionPort).
Several instances of the same symbol sometimes have as representation different definitions, for example, two of the three toilets are represented by the same RepresentationMap, while the third, being equal, is represented by another RepresentationMap (this is not a problem in principle, but in case of conversion of objects brought from the IFC can increase the work by having to convert more types).
Now, these devices, initially, have only one insertion point, but no connector defined. The cold water, hot water (depending on the type) and evacuation connectors will have to be added to the definition.
If the IFC had the ports defined, the extraction of the calculation model would be much faster and would require fewer additional conversion steps. In IFC4, the ports are related as follows:
Does anyone know if it’s possible to do that in SketchUp?
These are the ifc files I sent…