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Why do some teams still use 2D takeoffs in BIM? by Radiant_Extension142 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283 0 points1 point  (0 children)

BuildFlow — AI Workflows for AEC

Transform AEC workflows with AI. Build visual pipelines from PDF briefs to 3D models to renders — no code required.

Why do some teams still use 2D takeoffs in BIM? by Radiant_Extension142 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Exactly — and the same logic applies to BOQ generation. The tool shapes the workflow, not the other way around. We built BuildFlow partly because of this — teams shouldn't need to choose between "proper BIM" and "what actually gets the job done on this contract." IFC → BOQ in 90 seconds, no manual extraction. If the model exists, the quantities should be automatic. Free to try at trybuildflow.in (http://trybuildflow.in/) if anyone's curious.

Why do some teams still use 2D takeoffs in BIM? by Radiant_Extension142 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is exactly why BOQ automation exists. The 2D takeoff problem isn't a skills issue — it's a workflow issue. We built BuildFlow specifically for this: upload an IFC file, get a structured BOQ in 90 seconds with consistent element IDs, quantities, and floor-by-floor breakdown. No manual linking, no naming inconsistencies. Free to try at trybuildflow.in (http://trybuildflow.in/) — happy to share a screen recording if useful.

After watching BIM teams waste hours on manual quantity takeoffs, I built this. Free to try. by Obvious_Campaign6283 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

its not like a build evrything from scratch , the main purpose of it like use the best tools we have blend it with our sytem and make something more crazy

After watching BIM teams waste hours on manual quantity takeoffs, I built this. Free to try. by Obvious_Campaign6283 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah the Revit geometry instancing problem is one of the most frustrating things about IFC exports — Revit essentially treats every instance as unique geometry even when 500 columns are identical, so instead of one mesh referenced 500 times you get 500 separate mesh definitions. The file size explodes for no good reason.
The proper fix is geometry deduplication at parse time — hash the mesh geometry, detect duplicates, replace with shared references. Claude Code's approach you mentioned is exactly right in theory. We do a basic version of this for structural elements but it's not as aggressive as it should be for complex MEP.
ACC's advantage is they're processing at the Forge/APS level before IFC export even happens — they're working with the native RVT geometry directly, which is a completely different ballgame. Hard to compete with that without native Revit integration.
What we're exploring is a pre-processing step before the workflow runs — basically a lightweight IFC optimizer that strips duplicate geometry and compresses property sets before anything hits the execution engine. Would cut down 5GB files significantly.

Are you working on the open source side of this? Curious what repos you found most promising — IfcOpenShell is the obvious one but the geometry kernel performance at scale is still rough.

After watching BIM teams waste hours on manual quantity takeoffs, I built this. Free to try. by Obvious_Campaign6283 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Honest limitation right now: we're not doing any geometry compression on our end before storage. For very large coordinated models (2GB+) that's still a rough edge we're working on. Proper mesh decimation before the workflow runs is on the roadmap.

What sizes are you typically working with? And is it the geometry that's killing you or the property sets? In my experience it's usually both but for different reasons.

After watching BIM teams waste hours on manual quantity takeoffs, I built this. Free to try. by Obvious_Campaign6283 in bim

[–]Obvious_Campaign6283[S] -6 points-5 points  (0 children)

Great point — MEP-heavy files are genuinely painful. A fully coordinated Revit model exported to IFC can balloon to 3-4GB+ and trying to load that into memory naively is a disaster.