Assemblies: Simplify

A typical task in data processing is managing hierarchical data structures. One of the tasks is to flatten the hierarchy in the data. In BIM models, one of the hierarchical structures is the so-called assemblies. These are building element objects, which contain other building element objects.

Often, when you get models that have assemblies (building elements that contain other building elements), you get too many details. If you are, for example, calculating or scheduling pre-cast elements, you don’t need all the information about the parts of those elements. Having all these details can also lead to mistakes, for example, if you have both cast-in-place concrete and pre-cast elements , both containing rebar, by simplifying the pre-cast assemblies, you can eliminate the possibility of calculating the pre-cast rebar. The ‘Assemblies: Simplify’ tool does two things to help you:

1. It collects all the geometry from the parts to the assembly and assigns it to the assembly.
2. It deletes all the part objects.

The ‘Assemblies: Simplify’ tool can be used in all cases where a building element contains other building elements, not just with element assemblies. Other typical cases include:

• Walls that consist of building element parts
• Stairs that consist of stair flights, landings, railings, etc.
• Roofs that consist of slabs, columns, beams, etc.

There are two special cases that you can handle as well.

If your assembly contains, for example, a window and you want to preserve the window as an independent object, you can remove the window from the assembly before you run the tool. You can do this via drag&drop in the Containment palette.

If you don’t want to include the geometry of all the parts in the assembly’s geometry, you can exclude those parts before you run the tool. The geometry of all excluded parts will be ignored, and the excluded parts will be deleted.

If you need to remove assemblies, but keep their parts, use the Assemblies: Remove tool instead.

Settings

Assemblies to Simplify

Defines the objects that are processed. The objects must be assemblies; otherwise, the tool cannot do anything.

When you process nested assemblies (assemblies that contain other assemblies), only the top-level assemblies are preserved. The geometries from all the nested assemblies are moved to the topmost assembly, and the nested assemblies are deleted.

Convert to BREP

Convert the resulting geometry to a so-called BREP geometry representation, even if the original geometry was parametric.