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Release Notes for Simplebim 8

Simplebim 8.2 SR1 (15.5.2020)

Enhancements

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  • Template – Include/Exclude Property: Property now matches all properties with the given name, which is useful when models have multiple property sets with properties that have the same name. Previously only the first property was matched.
  • Template – Include/Exclude Property: Option for matching with wildcards (like -logic) was added. This makes it possible to for example exclude all properties from a property set. For further details see the Template Guide
  • Table Palette: Tab name is now suggested as file name in Excel export.
  • Table Palette: Option to open just exported Excel file added to Excel export.

Bug Fixes

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  • Containment Palette: Bug fixed in filtering empty containers when Hide Empty Containers option was on.
  • 3D Palette: Measurement objects are now assigned to the containment hierarchy. This was causing problems when merging models.
  • Basic Quantities Tool: Bug fixed in categorizing surfaces based on their orientation. This could lead to negative quantities in special cases where the representation of the geometry was not consistent.

Simplebim 8.2 (14.4.2020)

New Features

  • 3D Palette: New option for optionally creating linear measurement objects instead of measure lines. Measure objects are permanent 3D objects holding the necessary identification and quantity information for quantity take-off purposes. Measurement objects can be exported to IFC and merged back to a new version of the original model.

  • License Monitor: New standalone application for monitoring the Simplebim license that is installed/activated on a computer. It helps you manage and release the license to avoid situations, where the license gets stuck on a computer. This application is most useful with a Simplebim Network license.

Enhancements

  • Model Merge: New options added for merging sites and buildings by name, and for deleting empty containers after merge.
  • IFC Import: Support added for invalid color definitions in IFC models (negative color component values)
  • Property Editor: Allowed value lists are now shown also for Common Properties.
  • IFC Import: Improved geometry handling for complex cases.
  • Model Filter: Improved performance when turning models on/off in the Model FIlter dialog. Working with very large models is now also smoother because the model filter preview can be turned off.
  • Find Overlapping Objects Tool: Clash objects are now assigned to building storeys based on their elevation.

Bug Fixes

  • Property Editor Palette: Bug fixed in visualizing Yes/No values by selecting values in the Included or Excluded properties lists.
  • 3D Palette: Stability improvements
  • Objects Palette: bugs fixed in updating the objects palette after some model changes.
  • Properties Palette: bugs fixed in updating the objects palette after some model changes.
  • Basic Quantities Tool: bug fixed in calculating quantities for pile objects
  • IFC Export: bug fixed in exporting colors of HVAC objects with repeating geometry.

Simplebim 8.1 (21.2.2020)

New Features

  • 3D Palette: New navigation mode combining the old orbit and fly navigation modes. With the new navigation mode it is easier to go inside a building and to ‘walk’ inside buildings. Please note that the old navigation modes are no longer available. More information about the new navigation mode can be found here.
  • Table Palette: Functionality added for copying table tabs. Can be accessed though the context menu of an existing table tab.
  • Objects Palette: Functionality added for saving groups as a template to be re-used with other models
  • IFC Import/Export: Support added for IFC4 Addendum2 TC1. The pervious supported version was IFC4 Addendum1. For more information about the differences between these versions, please consult the BuildingSmart web site.

Enhancements

  • 3D Palette: New options added for adjusting move speed, zoom speed, camera angle and optimization level. Possibility to animate transitions between views added.
  • 3D Palette: Quick Navigation Help updated
  • Table Palette: Improved persisting table layouts when used with models that do not have all the properties used in the layout. Previously such properties (columns) were lost, now they are maintained. For example if a layout was created with a model that has property A, then used with another model that does not have property A, the layout will show an empty column for property A. When the same layout is later used again with a model that has property A, then the column for property A will be there and work properly.
  • Table Palette: Improved Column Chooser Dialog
  • Basic Quantities: Improved shadow area calculations
  • Basic Quantities: Quantity calculation added for Pile Objects
  • Properties Palette: The Properties palette now remembers the column widths within one session after you adjust the width once yourself
  • IFC Import: Support added for incorrect color definitions in IFC models, i.e. using color component values between 0 and 255 instead of the required 0.0 to 1.0. When the model is exported back to IFC, the color definitions have the correct format.

Bug Fixes

  • Template: Bug fixed in setting date values using the Set Property Values Based on Text Property Value -section
  • Template: Bug fixed in trying to load Excel files from the User Templates folder that are not Simplebim templates. Now such Excel files are ignored and logged in the Startup Log.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in exporting monetary units to IFC
  • Excel Export: Bug fixed in exporting Excel file with no data. Now an empty worksheet with the name “Empty” is added and a warning is written into the log.
  • Groups: Bug fixed in rule based groups that use object classes that are not present in the model. If the model did not contain any objects of any of  the object classes used in the rule, then the group contained all matching objects from all object classes in the model.

Simplebim 8.0 SR8 (8.11.2019)

Bug Fixes

  • Open/Save: Bug fixed in saving models to the native format. In some cases saving to the native model, opening from the native model and then calculating quantities was producing incorrect volume calculation results. If you have native models created with previous Simplebim 8 versions and you want to use then for quantity calculations, we recommend that you re-import those models from IFC.
  • Basic Quantities: Bug fixed in calculating the depth and height for columns. In some cases the depth and height were flipped.
  • Model Splitter: Bug fixed in handling some complex geometry cases.

Simplebim 8.0 SR7 (5.11.2019)

Enhancements

  • Properties Palette: Date picker added for editing Date values. When editing a date value you now have the option to select the date from a date picker.

Bug Fixes

  • Properties Palette: Bug fixed that could cause Simplebim to crash when editing property values.
  • Script: Bug fixed in importing multiple models from within the same script.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in exporting the monetary unit definition to IFC. The monetary unit definition is now exported correctly as enumeration to IFC2x3 and text to IFC4.
  • Save/Open: Bug fixed in round-tripping monetary unit definitions in .cube file.
  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in importing models with a very large number of grid lines.
  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in importing certain geometries from IFC4.
  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in importing IFC4 geometry that uses IfcIndexedPolyCurve as part of the geometry definition.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in exporting IFC4 geometry that uses IfcIndexedPolyCurve as part of the geometry definition.
  • Basic Quantities: Bug fixed in considering hierarchical openings/fillers in calculations.
  • Template: Bug fixed in reading high precision numbers from the Excel template. Such values were unnecessarily rounded.

Simplebim 8.0 SR6 (11.10.2019)

Enhancements

  • Table Palette: The table palette can now be populated from a group category by dragging and dropping the group category from the Objects palette to the Table palette.
  • Model Placement Editor: Precision for rotation operations increased to 10 decimal places to allow for more precise rotation.
  • Script: When running scripts an additional ModelFile parameter can be given, enabling the integration of Simplebim scripts to the Windows Send To -functionality.    
  • Script: Improvements to GUID map system when splitting models from a script.
  • Script: Improved reporting to log
  • Properties Palette: Now supports the ‘file:///’ notation for linking any text property to a local file. Double clicking on such a property value opens the linked document. Previously this was working only for URLs, i.e. text values that start with http:, https: or www.
  • IFC Export: Improved auto-correction of invalid representation contexts and sub context during IFC export.
  • Basic Quantities: Improved quantities for covering objects.
  • 3D Window: Visualization of very large objects improved.
  • Table Palette: Significant performance improvement in Column Chooser dialog when working with tables that have a very large number of columns.

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Import: Bug fixed that caused the import of some IFC files with grids to fail.
  • Auto Assign Containment – Spaces: Bug fixed in assigning very small objects to spaces. Previously objects that are smaller than the tolerance were never assigned.
  • Template: Bug fixed in setting the description when creating new templates.
  • Groups: Bug fixed in rule based groups that used All -logic and one of the rule items didn’t select any objects. In this case the rule item was incorrectly ignored, when it should have caused the group to be empty.
  • Groups: Bug fixed in rule based groups that have a text property rule selecting empty values and no object class rule.
  • Table Palette: Bug fixed in exporting the table into an Excel file when the file is already open in Excel. In this case Simplebim crashed, now you get a message telling that exporting to Excel failed.
  • Table Palette: Bug fixed in updating the table after a template was applied when the table is populated with a group category.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in writing group properties to IFC. In some cases unnecessary duplicate references to property set properties were written to the IFC file. 
  • Basic Quantities: Bug fixed in calculating quantities for space objects that contain other objects such as furnishing elements.
  • Workspace: Bug fixed in persisting Table palette settings when docked inside the canvas area.
  • 3D Window: Fit view to visible objects -functionality improved for special cases. Previously some models were not visible in  the 3D Window after the model was imported/opened.
  • IFC Import: Tweaks to geometry optimization to reduce cases when the geometry displayed in Simplebim is broken.
  • IFC export: Bugs fixed in exporting colors and placement of objects in special cases.

Simplebim 8.0 SR5 (30.8.2019)

Enhancements

  • Properties Palette: Sort By -functionality now works with all numeric properties (previously only measure values) and with any object selection (previously only object class).

Bug Fixes

  • Table Palette: Bug fixed in selecting all rows with Ctrl+A. There was an exception if a summary row was selected when pressing Ctrl+A.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in exporting the colors of some clipped geometries
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in exporting the colors of objects that were opened from a .cube file created with previous versions of Simplebim and colorized in Simplebim 8.
  • Group Editor: Editing of group property values re-enabled.
  • Table Palette: Bug fixed in maintaining layout when applying templates. Previously the layout was lost if ‘Keep Layout’ was not turned on. Now the layout is always kept when applying templates.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in writing IfcDate values to IFC2x3. Because IFC2x3 does not have IfcDate, date values are now exported to IFC2x3 as IfcText.
  • 3D Window: Bug fixed in displaying objects that have a special kind of transformation in their geometry.  As a result some geometry was missing in the 3D window, but all geometry was still exported back to IFC. Now all geometry is shown also in the 3D window.

Simplebim 8.0 SR4 (15.8.2019)

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Import: Bug fixed handling IfcCompositeProfileDef. Some geometry was missing in the 3D window, but all geometry was still exported back to IFC. Now all geometry is shown also in the 3D window.
  • Model Open: Bug fixed in opening .cube files created in Simplebim 7, where resolving some geometry during IFC import into Simplebim 7 had previously failed.
  • Location Tools: Bug fixed in splitting models that are opened from a .cube file.
  • Placement Editor: Bug fixed in fitting models to viewports if objects are very far from each other.
  • Model Merge: Bug fixed in preserving color/transparency of objects from merged models when exporting to IFC.
  • Basic Quantities: Bug fixed that caused the calculation to fail for certain special geometries.

Simplebim 8.0 SR3 (6.8.2019)

Enhancements

  • Objects palette: Option added for generating rule based type objects.
  • Properties Palette: Functionality added (in context menu) for setting the default property for an object class. The default property provides the name of an object and is shown for example in the 3D tooltip and can be used for organizing the Containment palette.

Bug Fixes

  • Table Palette: Some localizations caused unnecessary texts to appear in the palette menu.
  • Properties Palette: The Quick Filter Help tooltip was sometimes partially outside the screen.
  • Template: Bug fixed in handling case insensitive option when generating groups.
  • 3D Window: previously the only way to remove measure lines after changing to a different workspace was to reload the 3D window. Now the measure lines are automatically removed when changing to a different workspace.
  • 3D Window: bug fixed in settings the transparency of objects using the Set Color tool.
  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in importing some IFC models with special geometry constructs.
  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in importing the geometry of some grids.

Simplebim 8.0 SR2 (19.7.2019)

Enhancements

  • Support for adding container groups through templates added. See the Template Guide for details.
  • IFC Import: Support added for (illegal) cases where an objects is defined by more than one type object. The first type object is used and the other definitions are ignored and logged.

Bug Fixes

  • Templates: Links to the Template documentation on the Simplebim support site fixed in the Excel template
  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in importing models that have geometry where one of the nodes in the geometry tree defines neither geometry nor transformation.
  • License: Bug fixed in defining proxy credentials and transferring proxy credentials from previous versions.
  • Containment Palette: Default configuration changed back to the same functionality we had in Simplebim 7. In Simplebim 8 the contaiment palette can also be configured to use the default property value (instead of the object class name) as the criteria for creating the hierarchy.
  • Startup Screen: News panel layout issues fixed.
  • Group Editor: Minor layout issues fixed in the rule editor section of the Group Editor.
  • Visualizer Palette: Bug fixed in resetting colors.

Simplebim 8.0 SR1 (11.7.2019)

Enhancements

  • Properties Palette: Keyboard shortcuts added for Clear (Ctrl+Del), Expand All (Ctrl+Down) and Collapse All (Ctrl+Up)
  • Translation: minor translation improvements

Bug Fixes

  • 3D Palette: bug fixed in displaying some models that contain grids. Under special circumstances some objects were missing from the 3D view, but this had no effect on the data exported from Simplebim.
  • Startup Screen: bug fixed in installing templates by dragging & dropping them on the + icon in the IFC Import toolbar.
  • License: bug fixed activating a rental license where the original expiry date had passed, but the rental had been renewed.
  • IFC Export: The ‘Optimized Shared Geometries’ IFC export option is temporarily disabled, because using this option could lead to the geometry of some objects missing from the exported IFC file. This option will be enabled again when the bug is fixed.

Simplebim 8.0 (4.7.2019)

New Features

  • New professional look and feel with re-designed icons and colors. The layout and logic of palettes has also been unified to make it easier to learn and use Simplebim.
  • Support for multi color objects. The full IFC color information is now displayed in Simplebim and maintained during IFC export.
  • Supports for 2D grids
  • Support for 2D annotations
  • New measure tool in the 3D window for measuring the distance between two points
  • Rule based groups can now be created from the user interface. These groups can now have complex AND/OR rules and use expressions (formulas)
  • News system for bringing you relevant notifications inside Simplebim in the startup screen

Enhancements

  • Drag and drop from the 3D window can now be started also in the Viewer navigation mode by holding down the left mouse button shortly while not moving the mouse and then moving the mouse.
  • The quantity calculation by the Calculate Basic Quantities tool has been improved
  • Creating groups for each unique value of a property from templates.
  • Improved startup view with template filtering
  • Faster model splitting
  • Faster model merge
  • More reliable release of network licenses
  • Improved table palette

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