Front page > What's New > Release Notes > Release Notes for Simplebim 9

Release Notes for Simplebim 9

Simplebim 9.1 SR6 (15.7.2022)

Bug Fixes

  • Bug fixed in saving named Bimsheets, Tables and groups. This bug was introduced in 9.1 SR5.

Simplebim 9.1 SR5 (8.7.2022)

New Features

  • BETA Feature / Export Data Table -tool: a new very efficient way to export data in a consistent tabular format for further use and analysis in other applications, such as PowerBI.

Enhancements

  • Improved French and German localizations
  • Templates: commenting rows in Enrichment sections enabled
  • Flatten Contained Geometries -tool: significant performance improvements, running from user interface enabled and renamed to ‘Assemblies: Simplify’. The old name is supported in templates and scripts for backward compatibility.
  • Remove Assemblies tool renamed to ‘Assemblies: Remove’ for consistency with ‘Assemblies: Simplify’. The old name is supported in templates and scripts for backward compatibility.
  • Delete Selected Objects -tool: significant performance improvements
  • Location tools: enabled separate handling of splitting space objects and of objects contained by the space objects.

Bug Fixes

  • Table palette: bug fixed in saved layouts when matching by name is turned on
  • Canvas: bug fixed in changing canvas from the ribbon toolbar
  • Table, Objects and Bimsheet -palettes: prevented setting invalid folder and file names when saving items.IFC Export: the 3D geometry of objects was dropped in the IFC export in rare cases where the object used shared geometry (mapped items) and in addition had both 2D and 3D geometry.

Simplebim 9.1 SR4 (25.4.2022)

Enhancements

  • Table Palette: new configuration for matching columns by name added.
  • Templates: reporting improved when adding invalid classification systems

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Export: the 3D geometry of objects was dropped in the IFC export in rare cases where the object used shared geometry (mapped items) and in addition had both 2D and 3D geometry.
  • Helmert Transformation -tool: picking points from the model was broken in version 9.1 SR3
  • Objects Palette: Bug fixed in assigning existing groups under another existing group
  • Templates: adding classification systems protected against classification items with the same name in the same branch

Simplebim 9.1 SR3 (21.3.2022)

New Features

  • New Export to Excel -tool: Enables more straight forward Simplebim 8 legacy Excel export.

Enhancements

  • Column Chooser: significant performance improvement in the filter functionality
  • Properties Palette: shortcut keys added to all Copy Special commands
  • Table Palette: new option added for speaking all rows after tab change
  • Table palette: functionality from menu added to the toolbar: Speak All Rows, Export Current Tab to Excel and Export all Tabs to Excel
  • Basic Quantities: shadow area calculation disabled for very complex geometries
  • Location Tools: direction locking option added to location prism modeling. You can now lock the direction of a modeling line by holding down the Shift key. Templates: copy options added for stairs and roofs

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Import: Duplicate Assembly Level property bug fixed
  • Groups: Bug fixed in saving/adding groups that use a Yes/No criteria
  • Basic Quantities: Missing quantity calculation fail reason added to slabs
  • Add Min and Max Elevation and Center Point – tool: Bug fixed in handling models with 2D geometry

Simplebim 9.1 SR2 (2.2.2022)

Enhancements

  • Helmert Transformation tool: Enabled picking points from the 3D model
  • Helmert Transformation tool: Enabled pasting points from the clipboard (tab delimited x, y and z)
  • Localization improvements for Finnish, French, German and Spanish

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Export: bug fixed in exporting IFC4 models that use IfcIndexedPolygonalFaceWithVoids
  • IFC Import: bug fixed in importing Group objects (IfcGroup, IfcZone…) without a defined type
  • IFC Merge: bug fixed in merging ifczip models
  • Editing Groups: bug fixed in opening the Edit Groups dialog in the German language version
  • Templates: bug fixed in trimming character sequences from the end of a text (postfix) when the same character sequence appeared also elsewhere in the text.
  • Templates: bug fixed in trimming text values with regular expressions when the same character sequence found by the regular expression appeared also elsewhere in the text.

Simplebim 9.1 SR1 (13.1.2022)

Enhancements

  • Templates: Improved the reporting when creating groups from templates in order to make it easier to find the issue if a group rule does not work like expected.
  • Move and Rotate -tool: Pivot point is made optional. Previously a 0,0,0 point had to be given even if it was not needed.

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Import: Fixed bug in importing distribution systems with no predefined or user defined type. If there were multiple distribution systems like this in the model, only the first one was exported.
  • Containment -palette: Object Class value was not set when creating a new Building Storey from the Containment palette.
  • Properties Palette: Fixed bug in filters containing the ‘[‘ or ‘#’ characters.
  • Objects Palette: Fixed bug editing rule based groups that use different units in the rules than the corresponding model units.
  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in using groups with more than 31 characters in the name in Bimsheets. Previously the sheet name was set to ‘Sheet1’, ‘Sheet2’ etc. Now the name of the group is used, but truncated to max 31 characters.
  • News: Bug fixed that caused the content of some news to be empty.

Simplebim 9.1 (2.12.2021)

New Features

  • Groups: Option added for using parent groups to limit the objects that can be assigned to manual child groups. First you add objects to the parent group and after its child groups will only accept objects that belong to the parent group.

Enhancements

  • Bimsheet: Support for column references added to SUMIF, SUMIFS, COUNTIF and COUNTIFS. Column references are used in Excel formulas to reference all cells in a column, for example the formula ‘=SUMIF(B:B;F4;C:C)’ matches all cells in column B and calculates the sum from cells in column C. This is handy when you don’t know the number of rows in advance, which is most often the case when you extract data from a model.
  • Validation: Significant performance improvements
  • Table Palette: Better support for Yes/No (boolean) values. Values are now shown using a checkbox in the table.
  • 3D Window: Usability and stability improvements.
  • IFC Export: improved support for exporting shared geometries.
  • Location Tools: improved assembly splitting logic.
  • Location Tools: improved process for defining multiple overlapping location systems in one model. Location Tools: added tolerance for geometry related issue in location prisms.

Bug Fixes

  • Template: Bug fixed in setting the status of objects to not-decided-yet when applying the template from a script
  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in using more than two filter criteria for text properties
  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in persisting filters for non-text properties
  • Template: Bug fixed in adding empty groups multiple times. A new empty group was created each time even if a group with the same name already existed in the same group category.
  • IFC Export: Bug fixed in exporting properties with invalid metadata. Instead of the whole export failing, information about the problematic properties is written into the log.
  • 3D Window: Bug fixed in the visibility of newly modeled objects. Templates: Bug fixed in restoring the name of ‘Ungrouped Groups’ when creating groups with a template.

Simplebim 9.0 SR4 (20.10.2021)

New Features

  • Set Default Property -tool. New tool that allows setting the default property used for object classes in the Simplebim user interface. Previously it was only possible to set the default property manually in the Properties palette.

Enhancements

  • Delete Selected Objects -tool: Improved deleting of containers and spaces
  • Appearance Editor: It is now possible to set colours for assemblies.

Bug Fixes

  • IFC Import: Bug fixed in reading object appearances, which could lead to some geometries being skipped at import.
  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in reading in Bimsheets that have objects from multiple object classes in one table. Previously only the common properties were always shown, now the ‘Show Only Common Properties’ setting is respected.
  • Table -palette: Bug fixed in using characters in tab names that are not allowed in Excel worksheet names. These characters are now automatically removed when adding tabs from groups and when opening stored tables or workspaces.
  • IFC Export: bug fixed in exporting text values that contain both Unicode characters and the backslash (\) character. In this case the backslash characters were quadrupled in the IFC file when they should only be doubled.

Simplebim 9.0 SR3 (27.9.2021)

Enhancements

  • Bimsheet: Limited support added for visualizing SUMIF, COUNTIF, SUMIFS and COUNTIFS functions. The visualization works under the following conditions; the cell contains only one function and the match criteria in the function is either a text or a reference to a cell containing a text.
  • Move and Rotate -tool: Move Point and Pivot Point can now be defined without a length unit, in which case the length unit of the current model is automatically used.
  • Objects Palette: Option for making child groups non-overlapping added, i.e. that two child groups of the same parent group cannot have same objects. This is very useful when organizing objects into non-overlapping groups.
  • 3D Window: Orthogonal projection added to 3D Settings as Beta Feature.

Bug Fixes

  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in following cell references to worksheets with umlaut characters in the name of the worksheet
  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in adding objects to a Bimsheet where the object class of the object exists in IFC2x3 but has been deleted in IFC4, for example IfcElectricDistributionPoint
  • Move and Rotate -tool: Bug fixed in using other length unit than the length unit of the current model
  • Export Viewports to IFC: Bug fixed when giving the exported files a custom name
  • Properties Palette: Bug fixed that could cause property values to go into edit mode when performing multi-selections using Shift and Ctrl modifier keys
  • Properties Palette: Bug fixed in hiding all objects shown in the Properties palette
  • Script: Bug fixed in running the Split Geometries tool from a script
  • Groups: Bug fixed in non-overlapping groups when the overlap happened in a different branch of the group hierarchy under the parent group.
  • Covering Objects -tool: Bug fixed when applying to models with complex geometries
  • Location Tools: Bug fixed in exporting split objects in special cases
  • Model Placement Editor: Bug fixed that sometimes caused the model to disappear from view when the model was moved

Simplebim 9.0 SR2 (23.7.2021)

Enhancements

  • Bimsheet: Filtering and sorting enabled on worksheets that do not contain any widgets.
  • Bimsheet: Speak disabled when opening Bimsheet or switching to another worksheet
  • Save dialog for Bimsheets, tables and groups now offers the existing items in a dropdown to make it easier to keep naming consistent and to overwrite existing items.

Bug Fixes

  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in deleting rows above widgets
  • License: Bug fixed in using proxy server when activating license
  • Bimsheet: Bug fixed in opening Bimsheet with a model that has none of the properties used in the Bimsheet
  • General: Bug fixed in saving model when model is being closed and user selects Yes to save model

Simplebim 9.0 SR1 (9.7.2021)

Bug Fixes

  • Bug fixed that prevented saving Bimsheet files if the decimal separator in the Windows regional settings was not a comma.

Simplebim 9.0 (5.7.2021)

New Features

  • Bimsheet. 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!
  • 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.
  • New Helmert Transformation tool for transforming models to on-site coordinate systems to support site surveying
  • New Move and Rotate tool for automating move and rotate operations
  • New Create Space Coverings tool for generating covering objects (IfcCovering) for spaces

Enhancements

  • Stored Groups. Store groups in the Properties palette to use them with new versions of the same model or even in other projects.
  • Stored Tables. You can now save your tables to be reused with new versions of your model and even in other projects.
  • Export all tabs at once to Excel from the Table palette
  • Show all objects in the whole model in the Properties palette
  • Pop out a Properties palette from any 3D tooltip
  • Isolate values in the Properties palette to dig deeper into your data
  • Show measure values with full accuracy in the Properties palette
  • Show sums for measure values in the Properties palette
  • Configuration dialogs for tools enabling the configuration of tools when running them from the user interface. Support for stored profiles.
  • Drag and drop menus replacing Ctrl, Shift and Alt modifiers when dropping objects to the Objects and Properties palettes. New drag&drop functions, like remove and intersect.
  • New shortcut buttons for common tasks in the 3D window
  • Improved handling at IFC export of multi-coloured 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
  • Bug 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 for one 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 localizations in upcoming Simplebim 9 service releases

Related articles