The BIM Navigator palette enables you to import and view one or multiple BIM files in ARES Commander. Supported formats include IFC (versions 2X3, 4, and 4×2), as well as RVT (Revit versions 2011 through 2020). You can further use the filters to show/hide only the objects you need, combining criteria such as the discipline, category, floor, class, or other BIM properties.

ARES Commander allows us to import BIM projects

ARES Commander allows us to import BIM projects, whether from IFC and Revit RVT formats. To do so, from the BIM tab. Select the “NAVIGATOR” tool. Here we have the “IMPORT” button. We select this example IFC extension to import into ARES Commander. In the same way, we can go to “IMPORT” and choose the RVT format. In the video above, we import one of the examples. Thus we could integrate and work with different types of files called “BIM”.

Now we are going to insert the first of the buildings into the ARES Commander drawing. For that, we press the right button on top of it and choose “INSERT”. The drawing will be inserted, respecting the absolute zero of the original project. The same way we could combine multiple BIM files in the same drawing if, for example, we received one file for the building and another one from an engineer for the HVAC systems.

Have a top view or an isometric view of your BIM drawing

By using the view dropdown menu to choose, for example, a top view. Or, an isometric view. We can even change shading-mode. Now we select a window and in the properties palette, we can visualize all its BIM properties. In turn, the selected object is highlighted from the “BIM ELEMENTS” section. Observe that we can turn it off, or turn it on. Even select all windows that belong to the same type.

Also turn them off all at once, if we wish. It should be noted that BIM objects are grouped first by level and after per type. As a result, the 20 windows found here are the ones from this level only. To select the same windows from all the buildings we could use a filter as shown later in this video. As we can see, of this type of windows there are 20 in the project.

In turn, the “WINDOWS” category contains 2 types. In one there are 20 and in the other, there is only 1. We can select them all and of course turn them off, if necessary. Here we find the “DOORS” of which there are 7 types on this floor. When closing the drop down we can visualize the 7 types. Of this type, there are 24. Of this one there are 2 types.

In this section, we can see that you are seeing “ALL ENTITIES” of the project. Now we are going to see how to create a FILTER to visualize only the doors of the project. Select FILTERS, we determine in which projects this filter should affect. In this case, it will be the IFC extension building previously imported.

In “CRITERIA” we will select “DOOR” and add it. In this way, it is grouped by Category, showing only the doors of the project. Now we save this filter with the name “DOORS”. To test it, we will ask it to show us “ALL ENTITIES” then select the filter “DOORS” that we have created. We are going to create a new filter that shows us doors and windows at the same time.

In “CRITERIA” we select “WINDOW” and add it. As you can see, we have started the “DOORS” filter to add “WINDOW”.Now if we use “SAVE”, we would be modifying the “DOORS” filter, something we don’t want. Then we choose the option “SAVE AS” to save the filter with a proper name, which will be “CARPENTRY”. Now we choose the filter “DOORS” then choose “CARPENTRY”. If we wanted to modify the “CARPENTRY” filter by adding for example the railings.

We look for it in “CRITERIA” and add it. This time, we save the changes using the “SAVE” button to modify the “CARPENTRY” filter. Let’s say we are now interested in knowing all the carpentry but only from a specific level of the project. For that, we will choose the “DOORS” filter. We add the windows. Although we will add a new criterion. For this, we choose the FLOOR to then determine the level that interests us. In this case, the Level will be 5. So we only visualize the doors and windows of Level 5.

A filter that can serve us, for example, to export this information to an Excel table or extract the data to insert them as an ARES Commander table, to make carpentry budgets for example.Something that you can learn from another video we created. To learn more about ARES Commander BIM tools, be sure to visit the extensive help offered by the software. Learn more about the new features in ARES Commander.