Quick start

 

 

To get the most out of the IFC Engine Basic without reading the complete help documentation, just try the following steps and learn the functionality by using the tool.

 

-        Open an IFC file with this tool (all basic windows functionality to open a file is supported)

-        Optional: open a schema file for this IFC file (got the wrong schema file? No problem: you can apply an unlimited number of other schemas. Even depending entities can be loaded separately!)

-        Use CTRL-F to modify the selection of root elements to show in the left pane, try the following query to see most important functionality: “#7 cwal #2” (without brackets).

-        Browse through the tree in the left pane and look at the content in the right pane.

-        Use CTRL-F again and enable backwards browsing, look what happens to the tree structure in the left pane.

-        Use CTRL-T to filter the types displayed in the left pane.

-        Use CTRL-E, CTRL-A and CTRL-B to enable/disable the most important filters, other filters can be enabled/disabled using the menu.

 

Above short list showed you the most important functionality of this tool, for specific/extended functionality read the rest of this document or send a mail to P.Bonsma@bouw.tno.nl.

 

 

The main GUI

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


Short description:

 

1.                Left Pane, this tree, including the root, is completely configurable, when loading a model it will contain the non-referenced items in the loaded model.

2.                Right Pane, this information is the detailed information about the selected instance in the ‘Left Pane’. The view can be filtered in several ways to make it more readable

2.1.1         Argument number, unique for this specific instance, can prevent a lot of confusion when comparing instances, especially when some filters are active. References (folders) can be double-clicked to add it in the left pane, especially handy in backward view.

2.1.2         Argument types found in the IFC file, purely content based and used to enable filtering mechanisms.

2.1.3         Argument content found in the IFC file, this content is not strictly equal to the content file for numbers, maximum difference less than 0.1% due to rounding.

2.1.4         When a schema file is loaded, this column will show the entity inheritance tree and argument name for each (root) argument found.

2.1.5         When a schema file is loaded, this column will show the argument type for each (root) argument found.

2.2.1         Backlink number, unique for this specific instance, can prevent a lot of confusion when comparing instances and gives an indication of the total number of backlinks. (Backlink ≡ an instance that has an argument referring to the current instance). References (folders) can be double-clicked to add it in the left pane, especially handy in forward view.

2.2.2         Type of the backlink instance found in the IFC file.

2.2.3         Number of the backlink instance found in the IFC file.

Open a file

 

 

There are three ways to open a file:

1.      Execute IFC Engine Basic and choose open in the file menu. This will allow you to select a file in a directory somewhere on your computer using the standard windows lay-out.

2.      Execute IFC Engine Basic and use the windows drag and drop technology to drag your IFC file into the IFC Engine Basic program.

3.      Attach the program IFC Engine Basic to the extension .IFC, this will start a new instance of the program every time you double click a file with this extension, it also loads the IFC Engine Basic with this file.

 

The program distinguishes between two file types:

-        The data file, mostly IFC data but in general all STEP/EXPRESS based data files are accepted.

-        The schema file, again mostly IFC schema’s but in general all STEP/EXPRESS based schema files are accepted. In version 1.0 the program will interpret ‘*.exp’ files as schema files and all other files as data file.

 

A schema file can only be applied when a data file is loaded. The parser of these schema files is very flexible:

-        Several schema files can be loaded on top of each other, when an entity is defined more than once it will not

-        When an argument of an entity isn’t defined yet, we will create a new empty entity.

 

Above functionality enables you for example to split your schema files and load them separately.

 

It is possible to have more than one instances of IFC Engine Basic open at the same time. It is also possible to open several files within one instance of IFC Engine Basic, when a data file (IFC) is loaded the default option will remove all previous data (except some settings) and rebuild its object database for the latest selected IFC file (the user cannot override this default option in version 1.0).

Left Pane

 

 

This window will give you a filtered set of objects valid for a query that is user definable. The tree structure beneath this set of objects is also user definable, this can be:

-        The objects where the parent object is referring to (forward)

-        The objects referring to parent object (backward)

When the Type Filter is enabled only the non-filtered objects will be shown in the tree structure  (unless an object is uniquely specified in the query).

 

Standard the shown text will contain the express ID, the object type name and the arguments found, displaying the express ID (ALT-E) and arguments (ALT-A) can be disabled independently from each other.

 

Notes:

When an object is filtered, its children will be displayed, this can result in a very large set of children (larger than the total number of objects).

Filtering for backward view will be disabled in version 1.0

 

 

 

 

Right Pane

 

 

This window will give all present information about the selected object in the left pane. The user can filter this information for the way he likes own interest, filter options:

-        Disable the arguments type, this will also hide all arguments within this type, even if their type is not filtered

-        Disable the complex type, this will also hide all arguments within this type, even if their type is not filtered

-        Disable the defined type, all defined names found as arguments of this object will not be displayed

-        Disable the dollar type, all dollars found as arguments of this object will not be displayed

-        Disable the number type, all numbers found as arguments of this object will not be displayed

-        Disable the reference type, all references found as arguments of this object will not be displayed

-        Disable the star type, all stars found as arguments of this object will not be displayed

-        Disable the string type, all strings found as arguments of this object will not be displayed

-        Disable the view of all objects referring to the selected object (ALT-B)

 

 

Search Query

 

 

The Search Query is the preliminary version of the semantic API + some extra functionality to make it useful for advanced find functionality.

 

 

1.      The user definable query, in version 1.0 (r1) this query can contain an unlimited set of two ways of searching for elements:

-      Words, these word are the entity names as found in the (IFC) model, when the names are incomplete all entities with this specific text part somewhere in their entity name will be selected.

-      Numbers, they have to start with a ‘#’.

2.      This field gives the user a good view of how the Query Generator interprets the typed string. It shows the unique name when the name part has only one possible solution (within the filtered elements when the forward browsing is enabled). When a specific number is typed and this number is in the database, its entity name is displayed, the arguments are not shown because they would make the overview for the user less clear. All this functionality is done real time.

3.      We distinguish between forward and backward browsing:

-      Forward browsing: when a tree element is expanded, all referenced entity instances within his arguments are displayed as its children. (Exception for Filtered elements)

-      Backward browsing: when a tree element is expanded, all entity instances that have a reference to the expanded entity instance will be displayed as its children. (In future version the Type Filter will also be enable for backwards browsing)

 

The order of your search Query elements is completely ignored, all selected elements will be displayed in order of ascending number. All previously selected instances will be disabled.

Type Filter

 

 

The type filter is used to get an easier view of your IFC file structure. The large amount of information will quickly lead to a less clear structure. This Type filter enables you to just view your entity instances of interest and still view the complete structure. It gives the user an idea of the structure and complexity of the file and schema.

 

 

The user can (multi) select the entity instances of interest by hand or (de) select all by using the button Clear All/Select All.

 

The numbers behind the entity names give the number of entity instances found in the file for this specific instance. Although there is a lot of meta information available about the (IFC) file, this basic version does not display it, it is only enabled to display the information from the internal database filed with the (IFC) file content, this is the only place where we can see a small part of the meta information.