Note: Bonsai was previously known as the BlenderBIM Add-on.
Prefer watching videos? See a 20 minute demonstration of Bonsai here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooh05WF__80
Building Information Modeling, or BIM, is a way of digitally describing our built environment to computers. Aspects of our built environment that can be described are:
These objects may have lots of data and relationships. Examples of data might be classification systems, physical materials, associated documents, simulation results, and construction types. The data may be relevant to multiple disciplines, such as architecture, engineering, and construction.
BIM data is very different from a regular 3D model. In fact, geometry is optional, and most data is non-geometric. This means that it is not simply a 3D format that you can import or export from and expect meaningful results.
Industry Foundation Classes, or IFC, is an international standard for BIM. IFC is the most well-established open digital language for our built environment. Most software will be able to describe their BIM data using IFC. Most commonly, IFC models will be shared as a .ifc file.
For example, IFC will define a wall as an object that can have a name, construction type, and quantities. IFC will also describe that a wall that be associated with a location, like a building storey, or have an associated cost item in a schedule.
When you use Bonsai, you will be able to view and create BIM objects and relationships using the IFC standard.
Bonsai is designed to be a comprehensive and truly native BIM authoring platform. Its capabilities include a wide range of tasks and workflows typically found across various BIM and CAD software, costing programs, scheduling tools, and simulation applications. While not an exhaustive list, some of the key things you can do with Bonsai include:
See https://community.osarch.org/discussion/26/bonsai-new-release/p13 for release notes.
This extension requests the following permissions:
Load and save IFCs, IDS, BCF, etc from disk
Augin / Cove.Tool integration for VR and environmental analysis
Copy and paste error logs
For the original review thread see: https://extensions.blender.org/approval-queue/blenderbim/
For me I think the biggest issue is still that disabling / updating add-ons doesn't work, and that we need to do a workaround for lxml et friends right now.
I managed to uninstall it without problems (I tested it on Mac arm64 so far). So I think there is no need for the instructions on how to remove it. Are you still running into this?
I also managed to update. This is how I tested:
blender -c extension server-generate --repo-dir . --html
(I ignored the warning of having conflicting vertsions).Maybe the issue you have is related to that bug about removing wheels on windows? It would be a big downside if the update functionality wouldn't be working.
Let me know if you can find any other big issues
"Help Donate to Fund Development"
Linking to external funding platforms in the description is allowed. However, it is not allowed to have it inside the add-on itself. (for the version hosted on extensions.blender.org anyways).
Uploaded new version with instructions removed and donate button removed.
Note that technically the bug still exists for Windows in 4.2.0 (other add-ons may be affected) but we've implemented a workaround (similar to the one upstream that will come up in the next Blender release). @Andrej730 has been testing upgrades using our unstable repo for a few days and it seems to work fine for the current build.
re:
For me I think the biggest issue is still that disabling / updating add-ons doesn't work).
This is only an issue on Windows and will be fixed in 4.2.1, see: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/125049
@dfelinto thanks so much! I think the tags are relevant - the add-on actually primarily isn't an import/export tool although that is one of the possible features. It offers quite a few animation tools (for construction sequencing), a completely new materials system including physical properties, rendering (using the Radiance rendering engine for light engineering simulations)...
Thanks once again! We'll be updating it in preparation of our release in 2 weeks!
Sign in to comment.
Ready for review