Materials and Compositions
A BIM database consists of Building Materials and Compositions. A Building Material contains information about one specific material: its appearance, cost, manufacturer, etc. A Composition contains information about the structure of a building element, by defining Composition layers. Each Composition layer refers to a Building Material, and has a certain thickness.
Project database and Library database
A BIM Project consists of dwg entities, classified as Building Elements, to which Compositions can be attached. All Compositions being used in a project, are stored in the Project database. The Project database can be stored inside a dwg file, or in a separate file with extension .bimlib. When the Project database is embedded in a dwg file, that dwg file contains the complete BIM Project. When the Project database is stored as an external bimlib file, the BIM Project can consist of multiple dwg files, all using the same Project database.
To reuse compositions and building materials across multiple BIM Projects, a Library database can be specified, in addition to the Project database. The Library database is a bimlib file, usually stored in a location which is common to several projects. When Compositions and Building Materials from the Library database are used in a BIM Project, they are automatically imported in the Project database. To maintain and extend BIM databases, users can drag Building Materials and Compositions from one database to the other, provided that they have write access to the destination database.
Flexibility
The same flexibility as we offer in modelling, we offer in attaching building information. Although Compositions are grouped into Wall, Slab, Roof and Generic Compositions, any type of Composition can be attached to any dwg entity. When that dwg entity is a 3D Solid, with certain geometrical properties, then we will use the information from the Composition to control the thickness, and the cross section will show the structure by applying the hatch patterns from the different layers on the section geometry. When a 3D Solid is assigned a Composition which enforces a thickness or a minimal thickness, and this thickness can not be applied on the geometry, the section will appear in red to indicate the problem, that the dwg entity does not match with the chosen Composition.
Composition layers
A Composition describes the structure of a Building Element by an ordered set of Composition layers. Each Composition layer has following fields:
Material. The Building Material for this layer.
Function. One of (None, Structure, Substrate, Insulation, Finish1, Finish2, Membrane). In this version this field serves for information only.
Thickness. Defines the thickness of the layer.
Locked thickness. Specifies whether this layer should always have the same, fixed thickness, or that it has a variable thickness. Only one layer in a Composition can have a variable thickness. As such, a Composition can have a fixed total thickness (all its layers have a locked thickness), a minimal total thickness (there are two or more layers of which one has a varying thickness) or a free thickness (there is only one layer and it has a varying thickness). A Building Material can optionally have a locked thickness on its own, layers using such material can not have a variable thickness.
At the time of attaching a Composition to a 3D Solid, the thickness, if applicable, is applied by finding the side faces, using the same logic as BIMDRAG and BIMCONNECT. One of these side faces, the one located most to the outside of the building, is marked as reference face. The opposite face is moved until the distance between the two side faces is equal to the desired thickness. Users can flip the choice of reference face with the command BIMFLIP. BIMUPDATETHICKNESS can be used at any time to reapply the Composition thickness on the 3D solid.
Sections created with VIEWSECTION or SECTIONPLANETOBLOCK will show the layers from the Composition. The reference face is used to indicate the top layer for Slab Compositions, and the exterior layer for other Compositions. Starting from the reference face, the 3D Solid is sliced by planes parallel to the reference face, at an offset equal to the layer thickness. Again, BIMFLIP can be used to flip the starting face from which the layers are set out. In the result 2D drawing, sections using the same building material are joined.
BIM Compositions panel
All BIM database features are accessible from the dockable panel named "BIM Compositions" :
drag and drop Compositions on the model
drag and drop Compositions from one database to the other
open the Compositions editor
open the Building Materials editor
open the BIM Project Info dialog. In this dialog you can specify the location of Project and Library database, find some statistics about the databases, and manage the project filter. The project filter is explained in the next section about tags.
Tags
To each Building Material or Composition, any number of tags can be attached. Any string can be entered as tag, and a list of existing tags in the library is available to choose from. On the project info dialog, each of the tags can be used as a filter on the database: when a tag is checked, only those Building Materials or Compositions which have that tag, will be listed. There is a button at the top of each list, to switch the filter on or off.
DMGROUP: allows user to group a set of 3d solid edges and faces into a special feature that has a name and a description. The group is shown in the Mechanical Browser, its elements can be selected using the 'Select' context menu item, and dissolved when it is not needed
DMSIMPLIFY: simplifies geometry and topology of 3d solid entities. It removes unnecessary edges and vertices, merges seam edges, and replaces the geometry of faces and edges by analytic surfaces and curves, if possible within the user-specified tolerance. It is recommended to always run this command on imported 3d solid geometry.
DRAGMODEINTERRUPT: system variable which specifies whether the recalculation/redrawing of the model can be interrupted when mouse cursor is being moved (responsive, but may cause blinking, incomplete or disappearing graphics) or every drag iteration must be completed (slow, but graphics is always valid).
MECHANICAL BROWSER:
3D CONSTRAINTS: option was added to enable/disable the 3D Constraint.
SELECT: the Select option allows to select edges, faces and/or 3D Solids related to Features, 3D Constraints or Body nodes.
VIEWEDIT: command allows changing the scale and the hidden line visibility of drawing views.
SR51627 - VIEWDETAILSTYLE: allows to specify the visual format of detail views and detail symbols.
SR51627 - VIEWSECTIONSTYLE: allows to specify the visual format of section views and section lines.
Fixed
CROSSHAIR DURING DIMENSIONING: During a dimensioning command the crosshair was not visible, except for the occasional flash.
MODIFIED: modified drawings were not marked by an asterix in the document title.
SR37352 - GRIP POINTS: selecting grip points did not work.
SR43605 - MTEXT: In the MTEXT editor, it was not possible to select text using Shift+arrow keys.
SR47226, SR61574, SR64449 - COLOR DLG: Color dialog did not show the colours on colour buttons in Gnome 3 environment.
SR49519 - SHX BIGFONT: Support for BigFont .shx fonts was not working.
SR61229 - BIM: When opening 5step10.dwg from our online BIM tutorial BricsCAD crashed.
SR61730 - CRASH ON CLOSE: BricsCAD could crash when the current document tab was closed
while it was still waiting for input by mouse (for instance, when a select rectangle was still open).
SR62060 - WBLOCK: calling WBLOCK command twice in the same session was causing BricsCAD to hang.
SR64631 - HELP: the link to the online help (accessible from the help menu) did not always point to the most recent translated help page.
SR64746 - FIELDS: FIELDS with prefix, suffix or converted were non-editable. This error message appeared: "The selected field is not (yet) supported by BricsCAD".
SR64869 - TOOLPALETTES: BricsCAD crashed on startup if toolpalettes were enabled.
