Publish and Export Data – Introduction
The final step of data processing is to format the data in the right way for further use. Maybe your BIM data will go to a CDE (common data environment), BIM platform, or some kind of project bank. Or maybe it will be shared with many parties and systems. In practice, there usually isn’t just one data storage in use. Different parties in the construction project need to manage and archive their data in their own environments. It doesn’t really matter. Simplebim can serve them all. The whole process can be automated with dataflows.
Being able to export the processed data back to IFC is what makes Simplebim different from most of the open BIM solutions. Simplebim is a truly open solution. The data processed by Simplebim is not trapped inside Simplebim. It can be shared in an efficient and flexible way to any BIM solution ecosystem.
Simplebim can export BIM data to: IFC, CSV and Excel.
Note that we are talking here about how the processed data is formated, not where it is used. The whole point of open or commonly used formats is that the data can be used in many applications and platforms.
Export to IFC
Simplebim can export structured, cleaned, enriched, and validated data to IFC2x3, IFC4, and IFC4x3 formats.
You can create as many submodels from the original ones as you like. The building elements for the submodels can be selected manually from the UI or automatically with dataflows. Note that you can create submodels from merged models as well. The whole process can be automated with dataflows.
Simplebim is very smart at using IFC. It can automatically fix IFC schema-related issues, it knows how to optimize the formatting of the data to IFC without changing it, and it can even take into account some special structures needed by downstream applications.
Export to Data Tables (CSV)
Automated data processing aims for scalable data usage. This means that we are no longer targeting only a few use cases like design coordination. One of the big ideas with data processing is to connect BIM data to other data sources and analyse, report and visualize it as part of a bigger picture. Data modelling in platforms like PowerBI requires data is other format than IFC.
One of the common data format in data industry is CSV (Comma Separated Values). With Simplebim processed data can also be exported to CSV for further use for example in business intelligence solutions like PowerBI. Exporting CSV files can be automated with dataflows. You could create separate files for different purposes, or even both IFC files and CSV files within the same dataflow automatically.
Export to Excel
Excel and its open-source variants are still in wide use in construction. Why wouldn’t they be? Excel is a very powerful tool. With Simplebim, data can be exported to Excel in the exact format you like. Just like for IFC and CSV the whole process can be automated and you can create as many Excels as you need.
Export to Other Formats
Next Steps
If you read the data processing documentation in order, you know have a good idea of the amazing possibilities of structuring, cleaning, enriching, validating and publishing BIM data in an open, centralized and automated way. Congrats! This is only the beginning. Please check out the more detailed documentation of each topic and ever growing number of partical tutorials to help your learning and ultimately to become a BIM data processing wizard.