IFC

The IFC template, available to all Vcad users, is  great starting point for creating Power BI reports based on IFC models.

Report pages

The report template is divided in the following pages to showcase some of the possibilities when using Vcad:

1. Summary
2. Space Colors
3. Asset Colors
4. Markers
5. Asset Details
6. Asset Tree

 

Summary

The page offers a brief overview of the model structure and the extracted data. The information button also links to additional resources.

 

Space Colors

The page presents a rendering of the model setup with two themes: “Floor Color” and “Space Color”.
The themes assign colors to the spaces of the model based on the their relation to a floor or the space name.

 

Asset Colors

The “Asset Colors” page contains a rendering of the model setup with two themes: “External Entity” and “Asset Type”.
The themes assign colors to the assets of the model based on the their entity type or asset type.

 

Markers

The “Markers” page contains a rendering of the BIM model with markers for each asset. The markers are automatically placed in the geometric center of each asset and are colored based on the type color.

The page also includes other visuals to filter assets and markers.

 

Asset Details

The main features of the “Asset Details” page are the rendering of the model and two related tables: Asset List and Property List.

The Asset List table lists all the extracted assets present in the model.
By selecting rows in the table, the model will be filtered and highlight the selected asset.

The Property List table presents all the extracted attributes of the various assets in the model.
When the Assets List table is selected, the Property List table will display only the properties of the selected asset.

The report page also contains slicers and a search-bar to aid in finding the desired objects.

 

Tree

The “Tree” page contains a rendering of the model and a matrix visual showcasing the model tree structure.

 

Available data-sets

The IFC template will include various data-sets divided into folders. These tables contain all the data extracted from the BIM file.

The extracted data will be structured as it is when processing an IFC model for the open viewer, but in addition it will contain the forge specific identifiers.

 

VCAD_Data folder

The data-sets defined in the VCAD_Data folder constitute the core of the data extracted from the model.

 

VCAD_Assets

The VCAD_Assets table lists all the assets defined in the model.
The table also contains information the asset’s entity and asset type and some additional information to identify the asset.

The columns that deserve more attention are the AssetExternalId, Tag and AssetGuid.
These columns can be used as unique asset identifiers. If you want to add external data sources to the template, the added data must contain one of these values for the model and
the visuals already present to be linked to them.

It is worth to mention that, differently from AssetGuid and Tag, the AssetExternalId column may change if the model is updated later on, as the software used to create the .ifc model may generate new AssetExternalId values for the elements.

 

VCAD_AssetAttributes

The VCAD_AssetAttributes table lists all the attributes of every asset in the model.
The properties are normalized in four main columns: AssetExternalId, AssetAttributeExternalEntity, AssetAttributeName, AssetAttributeValue.

The link between the VCAD_Asset table and the VCAD_AssetAttributes table is given by the AssetExternalId and / or the AssetGuid.

 

VCAD_Spaces

The VCAD_Spaces table lists all spaces defined in the model.

The unique keys of the table are SpaceGuid and SpaceExternalId.
In addition to the name of the spaces, the table also contains a description, which in most cases will contain the intended use of the spaces.

If the IFC file is modified and subsequently extracted, regardless of what software was used, the SpaceExternalId may change, while the SpaceGuid will not.
Therefore, to add an external data, it is a good practice to use the SpaceGuid column as a unique identifier for the relationships between tables.

 

VCAD_SpaceAttributes

The VCAD_SpaceAttributes data-set contains all the attributes of the spaces in the model.

The link between the Spaces table and the Spaces Attributes table is given by the SpaceExternalId column.

 

VCAD_Floors

The VCAD_Floors table contains the list of floors present in the mode. The table also indicates a floor name and floor elevation.

 

VCAD_FloorsAttributes

The Floors Attributes table contains the attributes of the floors.
The link between the VCAD_Floors table and the VCAD_FloorsAttributes table is given by the FloorExternalId.

 

VCAD_SpacesAssets

The VCAD_SpacesAssets table contains the space–asset association through the SpaceExternalId and the AssetExternalId.
This relationship identifies the assets contained in a certain space or, on the contrary, the space to which a certain asset belongs.

 

VCAD_SpacesFloors

The SpacesFloors table contains the floor–space association through the FloorExternalId and the SpaceExternalId.
This relationship therefore identifies the spaces contained in a given floor or, on the contrary, the floor a given space belongs to

 

 

VCAD_ColorTables folder

The VCAD_ColorTables folder contains data-sets used to assign themes to file types, file names, and object types. They are example data-sets, which may be deleted if not used.

 

VCAD_SpaceNameColor

The data-set assigns a color to each space in the model.

 

VCAD_FloorNameColor

The data-set assigns a color to each floor in the model.

 

VCAD_AssetExternalExternalEntityColor

The data-set assigns a color to each external entity used in the model.

 

VCAD_AssetTypeNameColor

The data-set assigns a color to each asset type in the model.