Getting started with IFC import
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Alternative methods to import BIM into IDA ICE
Pollination
Pollination is a cloud simulation service and plugins to simplify the creation of building energy models from BIM models, most importantly Revit. There are also plugins for Rhino and grasshopper primarily intended for editing existing models. Internally Pollination is using a BIM format called HBson, also used by Honeybee and Ladybug, two open source plugins for grasshopper. Pollination can create unpacked IDA ICE models directly from Revit including building bodies and non-rectangular windows.
More information can be found at https://www.pollination.solutions/
IDA ICE plugins for Revit, ArchiCAD, Rhino or Sketchup
No. There were ArchiCAD and Rhino plugins for ESBO 5.0 released as beta versions but due to limited customer interest these have been discontinued.
IDA ICE supports CAD import of OBJ, Rhino (3DM), 3DS and Sketchup (SKP up to version 2013) and if these are imported as separated CAD geometries these geometries can be treated as IFC geometries with the same functionality.
There are also highly experimental grasshopper and Blender scripts called ICE Bridge available at https://github.com/maxtillberg/ICEBridge
IFC converted to geometry
There are many tools that can convert BIM, most importantly IFC, to 3D geometries that IDA ICE can import and even convert into BIM object and other relevant objects. The most common tools to use are IfcOpensShell/IfcConvert and Bonsai, a plugin for Blender. Other options are DDS-CAD viewer and KITModelViewer (FZKViewer). In IDA ICE 5.2 Beta there is also a planned feature to import IFC as geometries using IfcOpenshell automatically. The possibilities and benefits importing BIM models using conventional IFC import in IDA ICE or as CAD geometries are described in the following table.
| Feature | BIM Import | BIM geometry import |
| Automatic building body creation | ✓ | |
| Automatic story creation | ✓ | |
| Wall material import | ✓ | |
| Wall construction import | ✓ | |
| Automatic IFC space import and simplification | ✓ | (✓) |
| Automatic IFC wall import and simplification | ✓ | (✓) |
| Automatic IFC window and door import | ✓ | (✓) |
| Non closed geometry import | ✓ | |
| Partial geometry import by element type | (✓) | ✓ |
| Iterative import | ✓ | |
| Fast import | (✓) | |
| Object material property import | (✓) | |
| Object ID import | (✓) | (✓) |
| Object element type import | (✓) | (✓) |
| Geometry division by story | ✓ | |
| Well defined closed geometries | ✓ | (✓) |
gbXML
gbXML is a BIM format with a limited scope focusing on building energy simulations. Due to lack of standardization and validation tools, gbXML usually varies between platforms and are often non reliable. IDA ICE cannot import gbXML direct but there are free tools like DDScad Viewer that can convert gbXML geometries to formats like OBJ. ArchiCAD can export gbXML in demo mode, but Revit requires a license, even without changes to the model. More information can be found at https://www.gbxml.org/
dotbim
Dotbim is an alternative and quite recent BIM format containing triangulated meshes with dictionary attached to it. There are quite a few plugins and viewers supporting dotbim. More information can be found at https://dotbim.net/
Speckle
Speckle is a collaborative data hub that connects CAD- and BIM tools using connectors. There are connectors for Revit, ArchiCAD, Sketchup, Rhino, grasshopper, AutoCAD and Blender that can be used for sending streams of data between each other
IDA ICE has no Speckle connector so the easiest way to get data from Speckle is to import data, most importantly geometry, into a CAD- or Bim tool that can export a supported 3D format like OBJ, 3DS or SKP.
One benefit of using Speckle is that it can export edited data from ArchiCAD and Rhino without a license. More information can be found at https://www.speckle.systems/.