What’s new in Simplebim 9.0?

06.07.2021

Simplebim 9 with Bimsheet™ and location modelling is here! These and other new functionalities take your open BIM workflow to a whole new level. Import any IFC model, edit, enrich, define locations and more. Finally export a new IFC model or exchange model data with Excel using our ground breaking Bimsheet.

Bimsheet™

Bimsheet brings Excel and BIM together. Simply drag and drop data to link it with your existing Excel calculations. You can then visualize your calculations in 3D by selecting for example a cell with a sum in your Excel spreadsheet. You can switch any time from Simplebim to Excel and back, and even save your Bimsheet logic to be used with new versions of your model or in new projects. Enriching your models with new data has also never been this easy! Simply save a Bimsheet from your model, open it in Excel, fill in new data, and open the edited Bimsheet in Simplebim. Simplebim will merge your changes to the model and you are ready to save your enriched IFC file!

To get you started with Bimsheet you can find tutorials on our Bimsheet YouTube playlist

Location Editing

In constructions everything happens in a location. However, everybody has their own take on locations, be it sections, building storeys, apartments, concrete pours or anything else you can imagine. Communicating these ever evolving and often overlapping locations is a hassle, but with Simplebim you can easily model your own locations and be sure that you always have exactly the location information you need. In Simplebim you can use 3D location prisms of any shape and form to add location information to objects inside these prisms. You can even have Simplebim cut objects, like walls and slabs, at prism boundaries to create separate objects for each prism. With Simplebim 9 you can now model, modify, move and copy these location prisms right inside Simplebim.

To get started with location editing you can find tutorials on our Location Editor YouTube playlist

Stored groups

Object groups are an essential part of using Simplebim. You can export groups, systems, zones, classifications, type objects etc. to IFC, but you also use groups within Simplebim in various operations, such as quantity calculations, Bimsheet and colorizing objects. With Simplebim 9 you can now save your groups to be easily re-used with new versions of your models or even in other projects.

Stored tables and other Table -palette improvements

The Table -palette is a powerful way of viewing, organizing, visualizing and calculating the data in your models. With Simplebim 9 you can now save your tables to be reused with new versions of your model and even in other projects. You can now also create a Bimsheet from your table or export all table tabs at once to Excel (in previous versions you had to do this one tab at a time).

Properties -palette improvements

The Properties -palette, an essential an innovative part of Simplebim, has been improved again for Simplebim 9. You can now show not only the properties of one object, of all objects in an object class or of any group of objects, but even of all objects in the whole model! You can also pop-out a floating Properties palette from any 3D tooltip or isolate a value from the Properties palette to dig deeper into your data. We also added the much requested option to show measure values with full accuracy and case insensitive grouping of text values, not to forget the option to show sums for measure values. All this is combined with vastly improved performance especially with large models.

Tool configuration dialogs

Tools are powerful concept in Simplebim, but previously configuring tools was only possible when running them from a template or script. With Simplebim 9 tools can have a configuration dialog that allows the configuration also from the user interface. You even have the option to save your favorite tool configurations for future use. Configurations are already available for several tools and we plan to expand this functionality to all tools in upcoming Simplebim 9 service releases.

Drag and drop menus

Previously there were a lot of hidden drag and drop features using Ctrl, Shift and Alt modifier keys. These have all been replaced with a menu that appears when you drop objects. At the same time many more drop options were added to the Objects- and Properties palettes.

Helmert transformation -tool

New tool for transforming models to on-site coordinate systems to support site surveying. Transformed and trimmed models can be easily used in total stations which can import IFC models.

Create Space Covering Objects -tool

New tool for generating covering objects (IfcCovering) for spaces. These coverings are great for example for accurate quantity calculations and 4D simulations. One covering object is created for each side of a space and connected to the building element that bounds the space on that side. The generated coverings have 3D geometry with openings, a relationship to the space and building element as well as calculated quantities. Any information can be copied from the space and bounding element to the covering via templates, coverings can be colorized and even exported to IFC.

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Other improvements

• New shortcut buttons for common tasks in the 3D window
  
• Improved handling at IFC export of multi-colored objects that share geometries with other similar objects.
• Possibility to disable automatic updates
• Support for objects larger than 10km
• Template system optimizations
• Adding empty groups via templates
• Applying templates via 3D drag and drop. Simply drag and drop a template file on the 3D window to apply that template.
• New options for merging sites and buildings by name at IFC merge.
• IFC merge protected against merging IFC models with different IFC versions
• Option added for making classification systems unique, i.e. that one object can have only one classification in each classification system.
• Improved reliability and reporting when activating and releasing licenses
• Trial and actual license activation moved into same dialog for avoiding confusion
• Updated version of the BCF Manager supports clipping planes
• New function for swapping existing clipping planes in the 3D window

Bug fixes

• Very annoying workspace corruption bug fixed
• Minor bug fixes in the template system
• Bug fixed in the local placement of distribution ports at IFC export
• Bug fixed in updating the Model Filter dialog when opened the first time
• Bug fixes in Property Value Editor
• Big fixed in copying measure values to string values (used to write unrounded value with ??? unit)

Other changes

• Running scripts on the Simplebim desktop version is limited to one script at a time per license.
• Off-line activation and releasing licenses off-line moved to License Monitor
• Excel export replaced with exporting with BIM Sheet (Create Legacy Excel Export)

Known limitations

• Not all new functionality has been fully localized to all supported languages. Our plan is to improve the localization in upcoming Simplebim 9 service releases.